The Secret Behind the 1%: Why Leaving Corporate Might Be Your Best Decision

Justin [00:00:00] So people are always saying, how can I sell a million books? How can I make a million dollars? I can do this. I'm like, figure out what you're good at, right? The God-given gifts, however you see God, and figure out how to build a business around that and right. You'll never work another day in your life.

Justin You'll love it. Make sure it helps people far more than your help. And there'll be plenty of money around. Get your mission down. Yeah. And then just go look for one client and powerfully serve them, right? They'll tell some other people.

Intro Welcome to, and then I did this. Prepare to be inspired as we celebrate the unique journeys of individuals who've had the courage to break free and live life on their own terms. Their lives. Prove that you truly can be free to live your bus and most authentic life.

Intro Let's get to it.

LuRae Welcome to the show.

LuRae Today I have a special guest, Justin Michael. He's the secret behind the 1%. Bestselling author of 10 books, former sales leader at Salesforce and LinkedIn. He's trained teams at global companies like [00:01:00] HubSpot, and he's recognized as one of the premier executive coaches and business strategists in the world.

LuRae Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Great to be here. And that's quite an auspicious intro. I will endeavor to live up to. Appreciate that.

LuRae Yeah. Share your background and where you started and before we get into what you're currently doing.

Justin Yeah. So, it all starts kind of falling into sales at 21 in kind of a boiler room telemarketing environment, which I know is a lot of people.

Justin But the advantage to that is I read the same nine minute script, thousands of times. So all you could really adjust was tone, tonality, and persuasion. And so you kind of really learn the frame idea. You know, how you carry yourself. And so right around my mid twenties SaaS was blowing up and I got into the mobile revolution and started working in tech incubators, like in Southern California and LA and Santa Barbara area.

Justin And around 2009 I was running global teams in Costa Rica in the Philippines doing. [00:02:00] Big telemarketing work, but I was like the supervisor up on the DA and a lot of crazy stories there. But by 30, 31, I bit the bullet, followed the gold rush and moved up to San Francisco. I have a brother who's been at Google forever, since like 2001, 25 years.

Justin So I got there and he's, he didn't help me get a job that was interesting. I don't code or anything and my first role ever was working for Sean Parker at this nonprofit. Startup called causes.com, which was the launch application with Joe Green, and I was an account manager there. I worked with like 200 different nonprofits.

Justin from there I was able to parlay that into a job at Salesforce, the next year and from Salesforce, I ended up, you know, moving from San Francisco to New York to Seattle. And basically, long story short, working in 13 different startups. I worked at LinkedIn at the Empire State Building, and by the time I turned 40, I was like one of the top VPSS sales, you know, in your industry and ad tech and MarTech and selling all this stuff in the mobile apps.

Justin So. When the pandemic hit, I went for it and I started my own consultancy and there was a [00:03:00] lot of interesting challenges around doing that. I had a book coming out with my mentor called Tech Powered Sales with Tony Hughes from Sydney, Australia, who had mentored me for 10 years in Salesforce. Wow. And the book did really well.

Justin I mean, we, um, I. We kind of went worldwide on this thing. We were the first book ever about rev ops, sequencers and all the tech stacks. We put 500 tech stacks in it. Mark Roberts endorsed it. Aaron Ross wrote the Forward, and I just kind of launched this global consultancy there. And since that day. It's just celebrating six years.

Justin I've worked with over 250 startups, a thousand people one-to-one. I've written seven bestsellers, probably 11 books, 10 in my name and just done, a ton of speaking and training and pretty much all virtual, training people on sales methods, communication, linguistics, heuristics. I train a lot of consultants now.

Justin And yeah, it's just a really unique, interesting niche. And I'm kind of, oh. I'm torn 'cause I could have been a CRO and I could have stayed in tech companies. I have a lot of respect for operators, but, uh oh man. Yeah, consulting's interesting. There's [00:04:00] 1 trillion a year that goes through it, and so I think 40% of tech people side hustle and there's maybe 10 or 20 million people out there that do about 5 million sales people.

Justin So I'm helping them build effective side hustles with their expertise and to monetize and find clients over LinkedIn. And that's kind of. My day to day. So that's it. That

LuRae is so cool. That is so cool. what number employee was your brother at Google for goodness

Justin sake. I don't know. I don't even think he was that early.

Justin I always ask him, I was like, are you the best engineer over there? He is like, nah, not at all. Seriously. But he's, he's an architect, so he invented a couple divisions that bo scale to a hundred million each. So he's had a agree. Run. And he teaches, he's a teacher. He, his books have sold more than me. He does Python programming, which is like the super nerdy thing.

Justin And I mean, there's a lot of debate now if AI's gonna take it all away. But he was at the perfect timing. So yeah, about five. We were to close this story about five years ago, he called me and he is like, what's the challenger sale? And I was like, oh see, even at Google you need to learn about selling.

Justin 'cause you just assume at Google everything. Yeah. [00:05:00] Comes inbound, right? They just open the front page. But yeah, we have respect for each other and, it's been a cool ride. You know, I, I got into the life coaching side recently in ontology and I wrote this new book called The Frame, which is about being and consciousness and identity, right?

Justin 'cause usually people are looking for systems and tactics and techniques,

LuRae right?

Justin Their mindset's messed up, which is the Tony Robbins world. But really their identity of how them see themselves exactly, is preventing them from getting the income they're looking for.

LuRae Yeah, absolutely. Yep. I hear you on that one.

LuRae Yep. Well, it's funny because I think back, I was one of the only agencies I think that host, I was the second agency to ever host a client event at the partner Plex. San Jose, you know, and so we brought all of our clients into Google's headquarters and, wine and dine them. I remember Intel was a client.

LuRae I remember there was a big, big woo ha that the VP of marketing at that point, she stayed the entire day. and we, I had the futurist there. I had like [00:06:00] talking about, talking about starlink stuff back before starlink was even a thing. So that was like mm-hmm. Back, back in the day. So, yeah.

LuRae Yeah. So cool. So cool. So talk a little bit about like what you're doing now. I mean, I know you talked about like the books and the training and all that stuff, but like talk a little bit more about that and

Justin Yeah.

Justin people come to me and they wanna leave maybe corporate.

Justin So I have a client here and he's at AWS for six years and he's going, you know, I'm really called to coach people and train sales team and train ams and AEs. Kind of like what I find is people end up developing. A gift or a talent, they have something that they truly have the 10,000 hours at, right? But then they kind of think, well, how do I advise?

Justin Do I need a course? Do I need a book? Right? Do I work by the hour concierge? Do I do a combination of these things? And then we see like the Alex, her Moeys, and a. All this stuff going on and it's, it's really overwhelming and it's a huge leap of faith to go out and build a business around your [00:07:00] brand or your name.

Justin Yeah. And you understand this, right? So yeah, I help them take that leap effectively. Yeah. And figure out the vectors that they like. 'cause most people think, well, I have to go crazy on LinkedIn to get the followers. I have to write all these books. I have to have this YouTube channel. Right. But there, there's a lot of nuances to it, you know, I mean.

Justin The cool thing about building a knowledge business is you can build it in your own image. Right? Right. So like Seth Godin just has the blog, right? Her mosey huge on YouTube. Some people are doing books, the way I grew up, like just the written word. And my father was linguistics PhD too. And so,

LuRae wow.

Justin I just always wanted to write.

Justin I always had to ability to write really long books. And what's funny now is my books are shorter, so like I wrote this Justin Michael Method series about. Top of funnel, full cycle, and then a book called Attraction Selling about mindset and metaphysics. But then this whole idea of side hustles and solo entrepreneurship was really powerful.

Justin So I work with a super wide variety of clients from CROs, fractional CROs, team leads, SDR [00:08:00] teams, consultants, coaches. You name it. You name it. It's a lot. I, I niche on the problem. One thing I would share with, listeners is everyone's like, nail your niche. Like, okay, I'm gonna work with series B companies in the northeast.

Justin Right? For me, it's like I am known. Alongside people like Josh Braun maybe for helping crack the top funnel for opening business, for net new client acquisition. And so all sorts of different ICPs and personas have that problem,

LuRae right?

Justin And then I sit with them and I solve them. So I might be training a team on an outbound strategy to leverage technology and automation sequencing ai, and I just might be helping, a chief revenue officer.

Justin Get paid to advise on the side, not just equity.

Justin but the big thing that people coming to me for and why they invest high fees is they're really trying to double their income. Five x their income, five x their pipeline. They're everyone's pushing them. Like, Hey, you should be advising, you should be coaching.

Justin And that market's really underserved. It's a red ocean. There's 500 million small businesses, there's 5 million [00:09:00] salespeople. I know. And if you think back to your, you know, time in corporates, you don't really get that much hands-on coaching or training usually. Right. So people that are going into this, there's a real opportunity to expand the pie for sure.

LuRae It, it's just funny 'cause it's taking me back to when I very first started at the time, my, children's father was in school and, I started with a phone company, right. 'cause my brother he was with the Bell system. So I'm like, oh, that, that would be a good place to go, you know?

LuRae So it was at the time, it was Pacific Northwest Bell. and. I remember when I took the job, I didn't know it was a sales role, and so I was like, oh, okay. So I was literally selling call waiting and three-way calling and call forwarding and all that, and I, I wound up being like the top salesperson within a matter of.

LuRae I don't, it was just a few months. I was like a part-time temporary employee working full-time and then got promoted and moved. the first time they've ever done that moved from, technically I [00:10:00] didn't join the union, but it was like, technically, you know, it was like a union shop. But I, I didn't join, I actually wrote The Anatomy of a Successful Salesperson, which I wish I had that now.

LuRae 'cause we're talking about Back and Lake. 84. It was like way back in the day. and then they moved me to Seattle and then, and so I was blessed to have been exposed to, well, I actually was selling athletic and sporting goods stuff at a sporting goods store, so I've I hear you with what you're doing.

LuRae Like, you know, huge respect for going all in and doing everything you've done. It's like amazing.

Justin Yes. Well thanks. It's interesting 'cause people say it's a commodity and it's a red ocean. I mean, I think I was talking to this guy, Steve, Richard. he, I think he's at Mediafly now and he had this like cool early chorus or gong competitor called ExecVision.

Justin That was it. And he's like, Hey, you need a book so you can do sales kickoffs? And like Todd Caponi who wrote the Transparency Sale mm-hmm. Was my trainer at Salesforce. And I thought, [00:11:00] okay, I need to do something different with technology and really assess all the different tech stacks that are possible.

Justin Right. So that's kind of where I started. And that was Rev hops. And now. Revenue operations has gotten extremely technical. Now with things like clay, it's a lot more like coding. right. It's very technical. So I focus on a lot of the soft skills I help people with C-level communication to.

Justin Right. You know? How do you get to Fortune 10? Fortune a hundred, fortune 1000? How do you even get these folks to take a meeting with you? Right. What's your value prop? How do you tell stories? How do you use neuroscience? So I have advanced email techniques, advanced cold calling techniques, visual prospecting.

Justin Things around voice drops video. And I wrote a book called Cold Call Algo, because actually what's happening is it's very hard to automate a lot of the prospecting and outbound, processes. There's a lot of hype. Like you can just a hi your top of funnel.

LuRae Oh my God.

Justin But the truth is you actually can't, and if you're receiving a lot of emails right now from Chad g Bt, you're getting this kind of sloppy, big dashes.

Justin It's vanilla. So insert I work. [00:12:00] Yep. it just truly generic junk. Yeah. So. I'm, I'm working with people on, slowing down. Right. Hyper personalizing their messaging, getting business acumen, understanding how people's business work. And so 75% of the workforce are millennial, gen Z. Exactly. And a lot of them have been digital native and they just haven't done cold calling and they don't have to actually get in front and talk to or present.

Justin So there's a gap there. Not all of them, but they're coming to me and they're kind of. Really interested in different methods because a lot of the methods to do outbound sales are almost identically. Everyone says, did I catch you at a bad time? I know. Can I get 15 seconds? It's, it's when you walk into a retail store and they're like, can I help you?

Justin No, thanks.

LuRae Exactly.

Justin And a hundred percent of the people ask it the same way. Right. So how would you pattern interrupt that and what would you say to stand out? Right, right. So I send Venn diagrams and pictures and gif and different things, and that, you know, tends to. I send a lot of gifts to George Clooney, I'll be honest.

Justin And they love that. And this team, team in Canada is like, well, [00:13:00] have you tested the impact of the Clooney gifts? I'm like, yeah, I do a lot of testing and no, I just send a cat gif and it works. And sometimes people pay me a lot of money and they're like, why am I paying, paying you to send a cat? And then they send a cat and they get a meeting,

LuRae right?

Justin I, I had this situation down at HubSpot in Australia and they were like, oh, they're like, oh, I we're not gonna, Get meetings with, with any kind of CMOs, right? Because they're not on LinkedIn. And so, they went on there and they started using my chat flow techniques. 'cause I have sort of these DM flows I call the fourth frame.

Justin And within a few days the CMOs 17 back and forths in these DM flows when no one would answer. So that's the kind of stuff I work on, is just making LinkedIn come alive. And LinkedIn is not an email platform. It's a chat flow. It's a, it's an interactive experience and people don't get that

LuRae exactly. I'll say I've even experienced that more like now, kind of at the beginning of the year.

LuRae Like I obviously kinda went all in on LinkedIn, like, you know, about a year, not quite a year ago. And just the [00:14:00] way people engage, like and I even write about that we're human beings. We're not human doings. Like we want to engage with each other, not just have a. copy and paste, people who are using AI to comment.

LuRae I, I just, I just can't, I, I'm just like, lose my number. Like lose my, lose my LinkedIn, you know?

Justin Yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah. It's. It's, the promise of AI is interesting. I mean, it is, generative. It, it kind of takes the same patterns over and over again. So there's really a power to being strategic, being able to think, read, write.

LuRae Yes.

Justin And a lot of the humanities that haven't gone away, so Exactly. That's made my books different. Different, you know, like I've, I've used a lot of LLMs and models and editors to enhance and synthesize. Content, but I'm really writing the core, right? And I'm coming up with new methods and models informed by these great leaders.

Justin And that generation is kind of moving on. They're in their eighties, they're retiring. There's this old guard and, and I think new [00:15:00] generations think like, ooh, it's not valid. Like people don't buy like the nineties, like writers from 2005. It's not relevant. However, the human brain is identical to a hundred years ago and will be the same in a hundred years.

Justin We're not evolving that quickly.

LuRae Right.

Justin So the neuroscience, the powers, your brain is identical.

LuRae Yeah.

Justin And so like, that's what, you know, I almost wrote a book called 1910 because in 2010 or 2110, yeah. It's still gonna be Psychology, persuasion, neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming, behavioral Psychology.

Justin Yeah, relationship dynamics. so I could go on and on, but I think, I've brought new approaches, fresh approaches to communication and B2B sales, and then how to create consulting. Deliver that and just how to build up clientele if you go to, into business for yourself. Which is daunting.

LuRae Which is key.

LuRae Yeah. Which is key. So talk a little bit about the books. I mean, 'cause I think, people listening to this can get a, you know, straight from the horse's mouth. Like, here's, the method to the madness of 10 books. And [00:16:00] then what, they can zero in on. Yeah.

Justin Yeah, so, originally I was part of a book called Combo Prospecting and I'm the case study in that, and that's with Tony Hughes and that's a straight up the middle cold calling manifesto.

Justin And it's done great. It's still in the top 25 cold calling books ever. Wow. That kind of gave me my start. And then Tony and I did tech Powered Sales, and this is a prediction of sales all the way to 20 35, 20 55 through the singularity. So in many ways we predicted chat, GBT. We called it buying and selling agents and high frequency training.

Justin A lot of that is happening. then I went on and I understood that it was way too expensive. People can't spend five grand a month buying all this automation, AI technology. So what if you have a MacGyver tech stack or you just have, email and a phone and a LinkedIn and you're limited? Well then it's really comes down to your tone, your communication styles.

Justin It's the neuroscience, it's the psychology, it's persuasion. So I wrote this Justin, Michael. Method series. The first one's called Sales Superpowers. It's all [00:17:00] about top of funnel prospecting, and I released these 17 Codex guys to Reddit, and they went crazy. It's all just like email templates and phone techniques, so if you want them hit me up.

Justin I can get them to you.

LuRae Wow.

Justin The second book is for full cycle sellers, so people that have to do negotiation, closing presentation, demos, and it's all. Different techniques, patterning, ops, it's all, you know, neuroscience based stuff. And then,

LuRae yeah,

Justin the third book is called Attraction Selling. And that's all about mindset and metaphysics and sort of positive psychology.

Justin Oh God. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's kind of hidden. Hidden and encoded with a lot of kind of woohoo stuff. And people love that book. I thought it would be controversial. Yeah, the fourth book is Seven Figure Formula. That's the perfect resource for side hustles, consultants, solopreneurs. Mm-hmm. Coaches, executive coaches, that type of thing.

Justin Right. Then I just was so, Sort of miffed by these, cold call books that were being released with a lot of transactional techniques that I wrote a book called Cold Call Algo, and that's sort of a sequel to Tech Powered Sales. Mm. It explains the regulated climate now where you want to [00:18:00] cold call with an ai, can't do it.

Justin It's been banned. it's kinda like you can't fax someone. It's banned. You know, you can't text people. You can't SMS right. Without opt-in. We know that from MarTech, so. If you really want to use all the technology right now, where can you actually use ai? How do you get clean phone numbers, clean lists, right?

Justin How do you do outbound prospecting for tech companies? So, there's about 700,000 SDRs, but there's about 5 million AEs. They're all hunting for new business right's, tons of small businesses. They love that book. So if that wasn't enough, I finally, decided I'd do one more. And that's this frame book.

Justin And this is kind of like 48 laws of power meets. Maybe James Bond and John MCC car, or think billions in succession. If they wrote, if like Bobby Axelrod wrote a book right? On how to do big deals, right? It's all about C level. frame posture psychology. People are saying this is the magnum opus. Ah, it's set in a way where it's timeless.

Justin You can read it a hundred years from now, a hundred years ago. there's nothing in it that signifies that it was written in the two thousands. That's one cool element. It's [00:19:00] sort of cinematic and noir and has a spy novel James Bond type style to it. and I'm working on some other stuff, more like kind of a challenge for the law of attraction.

Justin And I don't know how many books I'll write, but the thing about the last two books is I wrote them with clients. Right. So there's this guy, Steve Chandler, and he's done 50 books. so I, I worry that I might release way too many, you know what I mean?

LuRae Ah, so good though. It's just, it's so good. It,

Justin Well, I probably could have written less books, and it's not that I sold that many. I mean, maybe, you know, overall I have a thousand reviews. I'm somewhere in the top 1%. I mean, the days of books are kind of gone. I always, yeah, I always just say that I'm like the Taylor Swift of author because I have a book for everybody.

Justin And I don't make money on playing the music on Spotify, right? I make money on the touring. So someone comes to me and they're like, Hey, I need to get a CRO role. Help me. my team's not hitting quota. I, we have to get this business five X pipeline in the next six months. Can you help me? They usually read two [00:20:00] or three of my books.

Justin They watch them interviews like this, then they come in,

Justin people have a lot of ambitions and aspirations They wanna build. Consultancies and they wanna coach people. Yeah. And then I just, instead of them reading the all the books, I just coach them for 90 days or six months. And, but the beauty of it is about 97% of my clients have had hundreds, have at least doubled their income and brought in new revenue streams.

Justin Because the core of what I teach is client acquisition. Yeah.

LuRae And

Justin net new business and hunting and effective ways to do that.

LuRae Yeah. Yeah.

Justin E everything under the sun. So the cool part about my coaching is I can directly tie it to ROI, and I know a lot of life coaches maybe listening, they're like, I'm a conflict resolution coach.

Justin I'm a wellbeing or mindset. Like, how do I charge 25 grand or five grand or any high fee? Because it's, they can't directly see.

LuRae Right.

Justin The money coming back.

LuRae Right.

Justin And I've been able to work with people like that because I can show, you know, if someone is healthier or has a better mindset, the company does better.

Justin There's less conflict, that type of [00:21:00] thing. But yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

LuRae So good. So good. Well, I'm thinking of some other folks that are in my Rolodex that I know would definitely love a conversation with you and maybe good, good prospects and you know, people that would, love what you do.

LuRae Yeah, so I'll be sending those your way. Talk a little bit about your journey to stepping out into your own endeavor and kind of the mental psyche, the thought process, how you went about doing that, and any advice you'd have for people thinking about it.

Justin I've started a great question. I've started to compare that to skydiving.

Justin I mean, when you're gonna skydive, you literally jump out with someone else rights, you know? And when I learned to ski, actually at Mammoth Mountain, I had a ski instructor, so within a couple trips I was doing black diamond ski runs and even doing mobiles. Mm-hmm. Another thing is I tend to work with people that are experts.

Justin They have the 10,000 hours they've done 10, 15, 20 years in the seat, and they're ready now to teach others.

LuRae Right.

Justin So they're kind of [00:22:00] like the skier. That's black diamonds gear or blue. Right. And they're now trying to learn snowboarding and I'm kind of like, this is a goofy foot surfboard. You're gonna fall.

Justin Right. And it's really tough on their ego because it's a change management thing, right. It's like you're gonna learn standup paddleboarding, you're gonna learn to surf, you're gonna fall out on the waves. Like if you've just done Right, right. boogie boarding or whatever. Exactly. So the thing is though, that they're experts and they have good balance and they have good acumen, so they will learn it.

Justin But for me, I was just sort of terrified, like. It was the unknown, unknown, like I had for 20 straight years done. W2 full-time work for a company, always an ad tech, MarTech company. And you know, I finally got the self-belief to do it. The weird thing is they're not rejecting Salesforce.

Justin They're rejecting Justin Michael. So the rejection's very personal and you're always looking at yourself like, you know, is my brand good enough? Do I have the right positioning? You're always psychoanalyzing yourself, but ultimately it's usually them. They don't hire you because they're not ready. The money's not in the right place.

Justin They're scared of change. They're going through their own [00:23:00] process. So a lot of what I'm coaching people on is how to get up the testimony. There's two ways to buck this. One, go get psychotherapy. It's good. Number two, market validation. So what I do with new coaches. Or people transitioning, right as they say, okay, go get testimonials from people you've already helped.

Justin Not just the LinkedIn recommendations. Get videos, get testimonials. Read them. So it's funny, all the actors don't watch their own movies 'cause it makes them self-conscious. But it's the opposite process. So you're right, you're going and you're worried about not getting clients. You read, you know, like I look back at the HubSpot trainings I did and people are like, wow, I got like five x more pipeline.

Justin Or had this guy up in Canada, I've worked with a couple times, he literally five x his income. I have a client who's doing a hundred thousand a month. It does happen. usually validation seeking is not good behavior, but it's just there's a lot of internal pressure when you work for yourself and build your own brand.

Justin So that's one little shortcut and I think I took that from David C. Baker and the business of expertise. So like that first, four or five months I was kind of in free fall and even doubting like, [00:24:00] should I go back and just be a COO? You know, I can make 200, 200 K, 400 k, but I just saw myself sitting in the Atlanta airport, God, right.

Justin And just flying all over the world. And now I'm going to Europe and getting these bigger roles and you know, I, I work with some CROs and they're working 70 hour weeks and they're grinding for seven years. And my gosh, some of do make a million dollars and it's high tax and it's tough. But I wanted the freedom to kinda yes.

Justin Write books. So. I realized around 40, I've been told since I was 10 that I would be a great writer and I had elements of. Different kinds of geniuses I could leverage. But the weird thing was I would meet with multimillionaires and they'd say, I'd say, well, what's my genius? You keep saying on his part, they're like, you're a communications genius.

Justin I'm like, okay. Those were the people at UCSB that became bartenders and trainers. No shame in that. But that wasn't a millionaire. I was like, so I should be a sociology major. What? And so, but that gift translated into me building a science of communication. Right, and building like a linguistics method.

Justin Yes. Called Justin Michael Method, which is [00:25:00] heuristics, which is B2B. Sales, right? Let's just call it reverse psychology or, or a new method for the top of funnel. a lot of the problem when I have clients is they feel like that. I say, okay, go ask your friends and family and you know, 12 people what you're great at.

Justin And some someone's like scotch, you know, they mess with 'em or you know, they come back with that. And, but a lot of people say things like, you know, trustworthiness, expertise, calm under pressure. When I'm working with people to translate that into. An ideology for consulting a methodology. Right. Oh, smart.

Justin And so I have a consultant coming on right now. He's done, you know, 25 years in the seat, five years at Oracle. He's making half a million a year. Yeah. And he's going out to build his consultancy up and he'll be like, what will I do? And I was like, well, it's all gonna be easier than working for Oracle. You know what I mean?

Justin Like, so they, they always come from like something impossible. They're like, yeah, I'm doing all these Fortune 500 deals and I'm working at SAP, and I'm like, but I don't know if I can coach people. I'm like, it sounds impossible what you do now, you're like a brain surgeon. You're wondering if you can open a lemonade [00:26:00] stand.

Justin I'm not devalued. It's not quite that. There's other pressures and stresses, but

LuRae Yeah, yeah,

Justin yeah. The thing about coaching is. You've gotta be prospecting all the time for yourself and getting into tons of conversations. So it's a lifestyle where you're sitting on a plane and you're talking to the person next to you, and it's a right, there's just like a constant churning of conversations to get enough pipeline going, to really build it up.

Justin And I think people expect that they can do a book or a blog or a Kajabi or Teachable, and they're just gonna be her mozy, like, Hey, I made, I just for fun, put out like 60 YouTubes once and it didn't do anything. I got like 50 views on 'em because it just wasn't. For me. But the books took off for me because I had the passion for the books and people sense that and they gravitated for it.

Justin And I pushed through and asked for the reviews and I, so there's this naval aviant idea of the, pyramid of leverage. And your greatest asset is your content and your sweat equity. 'cause you can put out unlimited content. So what you're doing, right, you're building these different podcasts and then it lives forever and it's YouTube's the second largest search engine.

Justin And then people can find you and find ways you [00:27:00] can help them and their team.

LuRae Yep. Exactly. Yeah. No, it makes total sense. I mean, it just, it's that, you know, kind of that saying like, yeah, working as a CRO and flying all over the place is hard. Starting your own endeavor is hard.

LuRae Choose your heart, like choose it's gonna be like, do you want like to live a life on your terms or do you wanna have a boss and a performance review and a go here, go there, put your request in for time off and hope you get it. Like, no thank you. When I was in New York and I, I walked from the bathroom back to my office when I had gone back to New York after helping. You know, the in agency in San Diego grow to acquisition and I was just like, I was miserable. And I was like, when is my sentence gonna be up? no one does anything forever. So, yeah.

LuRae And that's like prison, that's like someone who was in prison would say that. So it's like, it was like, you know, golden. once I walked out, which is over 10 years ago and stopped doing that, it's like. It's the golden handcuffs, but it's a [00:28:00] cage you create for yourself and once you get out what you thought was your comfort zone really wasn't all that comfortable because you're, yeah, jumping through other people's hoops.

Justin Well, you're bringing up another concept, which is when you, if you build a knowledge business or if you build your own sort of four hour work week or you work for yourself. Yeah. You have to be really careful that you don't rebuild a gilded cage. Right. You don't just turn into an agency and overload. So by the fifth month, I had 40 clients.

Justin 'cause I, I, I panicked and just went sort of Tasmanian devil, you know, it's like. You know, different energy drinks and I was working at like six in the morning, one at night. And then like to fulfill the work, I failed over. So I hired my friend. So I was already in an agency model by like the fifth month as a victim of my own success of pipeline generation, right?

Justin And then I decided that. I scaled back and let him go. We just stopped partnering. He was also a consultant. He is done great. but the, the thing is that I wanted a boutique nature so I could fully customize and [00:29:00] tailor and have the space to work on things in a really bespoke way. Because when you get into that level of like a Sandler system, it's really consistent delivery and that's great.

Justin You go get challenger training, it's great. What I do is different people are always like, what's the package? What's the brochure? I'm like. It's not a brochure. Like Yeah. The subject matter is like, your problems, your challenges, the things holding you back.

LuRae Right,

Justin right. And so it's, all custom, it's all tailored to you.

Justin And, and that's why it's different and that's why the fees are higher. and some people love that. They love the codification, the process. Yeah. They love to just do it all the same in cookie cutter. But for me that's kind of what SaaS sales was. It was a really stringent methodology. Yeah. And, and blue collar.

Justin Pale blue Cloud work. Now, if I'm coaching A-A-C-R-O, it's totally different than I'm, I'm working with maybe like a junior sales person. Right. Or I'm working with a team versus an individual coach. Right. And I love the variety of that. It keeps it fresh. I learn from them. Yeah. I'm always reading up on different styles and methods and, but the [00:30:00] beauty is, it's, it's only what's absolute and true for you, what you love to do.

Justin So there are people that love. Operations and being in corporates and want to be a CRO. So I have respect for that. It's like you just have to write, Tim Ferriss's blog. Oh my God. Before our work week was called Experiments in Lifestyle Design. I'll never forget that. That was his original one. Yeah. Wow.

Justin And that's it. You have to ultimately, at some point live for yourself.

LuRae Exactly,

Justin yes. Obviously there's sacrifices and compromises for your family and the different dynamics and putting others first. Sitting in a corporate hamster wheel if you're miserable. Yeah. When you have gifts and things and you know, like I knew I had a book in me for like 20 years and then I finally did it and it was really successful.

Justin Absolutely. So maybe you're sitting here listening to this and so Wayne Dyer said, you don't wanna die with your music still inside you. That's how he called it.

LuRae Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. when I went, I went through the coaching program at the New York Open Center and one of the books that was on, like on the reading list was Donna Kovas, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life.

LuRae Yeah, that is that same kind of message. [00:31:00] And so yeah, I'm like beating the drum, I'm not even selling anything at this point on, I, on LinkedIn. I'm just like, step out, like an AI prompt guide, like step out, like explore, you know, your nine to five exit, what does it look like, you know? Yeah.

LuRae And, and just get started in that direction. Yeah, I'd probably say, I'd definitely say no to more. Business. Then I say yeah, because it's like I know my enough and I know the quality of life that I've created, and I just don't need to be going crazy. You know? It's like there's no point in it. Yeah. I'm writing books too, so that, that There you

Justin go.

LuRae Yeah. Just,

Justin just doing, doing what you love, getting up and, um. think the key to success for me has been service like Ian Koac sent me the Go-Giver I read that was powerful. People are always saying like, what did it take to get you to a hundred K month or to like a seven figure year to that level, right?

Justin Because I couldn't really reach that in these startups because even making 200 grand, you're getting paid, you know, more than the Right, the C levels usually. But to me it's like. [00:32:00] The philosophy of selflessness and just really powerfully serving clients. And like I'll go for a 10,000 step walk or something and I'll be thinking of my clients and innovative ways to help them grow their businesses, right?

Justin I have the attention off myself versus when I was selling software was all like, how will I hit my number? How I'd be the best seller in the world? And that's cool too. So. You know, if you're gonna go into the service business, you gotta love service and you gotta fall in love with it. And then the second tip is you have to love the prospecting.

Justin Everyone's like, okay, can I hire an agency to do that? Can I put VAs in my LinkedIn profile? They want to hand off. That's the good stuff. Yeah, it's kinda like master networkers, like they love going to networking events, meeting new people, talking to strangers. Right. It's not that you have to be. extroverted versus introverted, right?

Justin But half of your life is really acquiring the clients and having that new conversations. Right? And that, that kind of comes from Steve Chandler and he had a, a Crazy life. But when my clients, my main goal is for them to fall in love with the hard part, the part that's. [00:33:00] The solid, not the steepness there.

Justin 'cause everyone wants to just get the clients and do the coaching. Right. They spend fortunes becoming, you know, ICF certified and getting all the credentials and that's great. Right. And they think that just be so good they can't ignore you. Like if I'm just the best coach. Ah, the problem is there's 11,000 books a day.

Justin There's millions of people you're competing with. Exactly. You're getting on LinkedIn, there's someone with a bright red hat and a red book. Thumping it like, you know, you know, like a missionary. And then you're in there going like, oh, look at this. I'm becoming an amazing coach. And you're just shouting in the void.

Justin You're in the woods. No one knows you exist.

LuRae Exactly, exactly. So yeah.

Justin Yeah. That's, that's the paradox is, people usually are good enough of what they do, even when they start these businesses, they have 10, 15, 20 years experience. You, you'd be amazed, I meet people all the time who are just genius level.

Justin Right. And sometimes they can't get a single client. And they're wondering where they come from or why, and they're sitting thinking like, why aren't I good enough? And they're, they're approaching, the wrong problem when obviously, right. the problem you have to go out is, is actually the client acquisition [00:34:00] motion.

Justin Great. And going in, you know, getting in dms and doing that sort of thing,

LuRae finding that in a meaningful way. Well, all your links are gonna be in the show notes below, because I know people definitely, like you said, it may be like the entree of a book and then they're like, okay, yeah, this guy is, is the real deal.

LuRae Or they may hear you today and you know, so we'll have all of your contact information in the show notes. So Thank you so much. What final words of advice would you have for anyone out there who's miserable doing what they're doing?

Justin Yeah, I mean, it's, I was thinking, people, they forget what you say.

Justin They forget what you did. They remember how you made them feel. That, that, my Angelou quote, and another one is people by you. So like CB and Gardner had done all these tests on, why did they buy? And they say things like, well. You know, they understood my business, this and that, but it's the experience of the interaction.

Justin Yes. That that creates it. So my dad used to always say like, your superpower is your you. And I'm like, huh? It was like the zen cone. Like, what the heck does that mean? Like, there's only one [00:35:00] of you that's your superpower. Right?

LuRae Right.

Justin What do you mean? And so, so even in a world where everyone does what you do, there's a million coaches or a million sales trainers or a million writers, and you're like, oh, I don't need to write a book.

Justin Like. Ray Ali already wrote that book, or Oprah wrote that book, whatever it is, like you still should go out because you have a voice, you have a flavor, you have a lens. There's millions of colors of just the color blue. Exactly. And your voice matters. And, and share your story. Go out there just. Don't live a life where you're playing it too safe because you're worried about what's gonna happen.

Justin Most people become millionaires be like, I think it's between the ages of like 55 and 65 when they actually measure it.

LuRae Wow.

Justin So people are thinking like, oh, I can't do this. I'm in my forties, it's too late. The shift sale, like I'd be Mark Zuckerberg like. Yeah. They're, they're young people that do it, but you know, a lot of people start to do well Yes.

Justin In their mid forties and in their fifties and, sixties, the new 40, that type of thing.

LuRae Exactly. it's making me think of the, the analogies of, people think like they don't think they can make a [00:36:00] difference, you know? It's like the Dalai Lama said, like, tell that to a mosquito in the middle of the night.

LuRae That's a good one. So much like

Justin That's a good one.

LuRae I know. And then the butterfly, that is a law. Yeah. I posted yesterday, it was just like, you know, like at the butterfly effect. Like you can put out one simple thing and that simple thing will, could ripple through around the world and you would have no idea the effect you had.

LuRae Just start, just start. Messy. It's true. Start now. Don't wait.

Justin Yeah.

LuRae Perfect. Doesn't exist. Like just go. Just do it.

Justin So true. Yeah. Yeah. I'm always trying to slow down and. Mother Theresa said, just, help one person. So it's about being that garden snail and being really patient and going out there one at a time.

Justin Margaret Mead had the quote that, you know, everything positive in, in the world's from a small band of people. There was an essay called A thousand True Fans on the Technium, and that became redone is a hundred true fans. So people always saying, how can I sell a million books? How can I make a million dollars?

Justin I can do this. I'm like, figure out what you're good at. Right. A [00:37:00] God-given gifts, however you see God and figure out how to build a business around that and right. You'll never work another day in your life. You'll love it. Make sure it helps people far more than you're helped. And there'll be plenty of money around.

Justin Get your mission down. Yeah. And then just go look for one client and powerfully serve them. They'll tell some other people. And you know that one where the guy starts? Dancing at the weird concert and he is dancing all crazy. And I was like, what? And then two more people go and three more. And then the whole place jumps in.

Justin The first follower concept, that's kind of what it was like. I started and I photoshopped the robot on my face like the Terminator. I had the bloody terminator on my face, right? And this famous guy, I won't say his name, he said, that's a career limiting move. You won't get corporates. And I just sucked the oxygen 'cause I was, I was the only guy with a robot.

Justin Looked a little crazy but I sold a lot of books that way and 'cause I just felt like that would be hilarious and like, you know, Arnold or something. So. Yeah, that's what I got. I'm, I'm easy to find just Justin, Michael on Amazon. Justin Michael on LinkedIn and I got a lot of Easter eggs in my books and a lot of additional materials and yeah, if you're looking to have the best financial year of your life and you're somewhere in sales or coaching or [00:38:00] technology go to market, I could help you.

LuRae Awesome. Love it. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and giving people hope. Hope is live. People can, they can jump out and be successful. You know, if you and I did it, anybody can do it.

Justin Totally true.

LuRae Thanks so much.

Outro and that's a wrap on another episode of, and then I did this, celebrating the lives of those who've walked away from the beaten path to pursue work and a life that nourishes their soul.

Outro If you're feeling inspired and ready to explore your own path to freedom, check out you can be free life where you'll find resources and support to help you break free and live life on your own terms. See you next time.