Building a Thriving Coaching Business: High-Performance Insights from Jeff Hammond

Introduction

In the world of coaching, building a successful business is about more than just having passion—it’s about taking intentional action, learning from setbacks, and staying focused on the bigger picture. In a recent episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, I had the privilege of sitting down with Jeff Hammond, an entrepreneur and high performer who’s mastered the art of combining discipline with service.

During our conversation, Jeff shared powerful stories and strategies that resonate deeply with anyone looking to grow their coaching business. From overcoming fear to creating systems that support growth, this episode is packed with lessons to inspire and empower.

The Heart of Success: Showing Up

One of the most striking things Jeff shared was the simplicity of his philosophy: success starts with showing up. As a top 50 performer in a field of 27,000 brokers, Jeff credits his success to his unwavering commitment to the basics.

For Jeff, the act of “going to work” isn’t just a physical commitment; it’s a mental one. In a world where entrepreneurs often struggle with self-accountability, simply getting up and starting the day with intention can be the hardest part. Jeff emphasized that consistency in prospecting—reaching out, connecting, and serving—is the fuel that keeps the business engine running.

Facing Fear and Learning from Failure

Fear is a universal experience, but as Jeff reminded us, most fears are self-imposed. Whether it’s the fear of rejection, failure, or being judged, these feelings often hold entrepreneurs back from their true potential. Jeff shared his personal experiences with failure, from awkward sales calls to deals that didn’t go as planned, and how each stumble became a stepping stone to greater success.

What stood out was Jeff’s perspective on rejection: it’s not the end of the road—it’s part of the journey. Every “no” brings you closer to the next “yes,” and every mistake offers a lesson. For coaches who sometimes hesitate to put themselves out there, this mindset shift is a game-changer.

The Hidden Cost of Perfectionism

Jeff’s candid reflections on perfectionism struck a chord. He shared how perfectionism often creates a false narrative—one where we convince ourselves that everything must be flawless before we start. This mindset doesn’t just delay progress; it robs us of the opportunity to learn and grow in real time.

In contrast, Jeff’s approach is rooted in action. Start where you are, use the tools you have, and refine as you go. This is especially relevant for coaches who may feel overwhelmed by the pressure to implement sophisticated systems before gaining traction.

Dream Bigger and Keep Evolving

One of the most inspiring moments in our conversation was Jeff’s reminder that complacency is the enemy of growth. He encouraged us to revisit our goals regularly, not just to check them off, but to dream even bigger.

For Jeff, every achievement is a stepping stone to the next. By constantly pushing beyond what feels comfortable, he keeps his momentum alive. His advice? Take time to disconnect, reflect, and allow yourself to imagine the possibilities. Growth starts with a vision, and vision comes from giving yourself permission to dream.

Faith, Purpose, and the Bigger Picture

What drives Jeff isn’t just success—it’s service. His faith plays a pivotal role in his life and business, grounding him in a sense of purpose. Jeff views his work as an extension of his mission to serve others, whether that’s helping a client solve a problem or contributing to meaningful causes.

For coaches, this is a powerful reminder: when your business is rooted in purpose, the work becomes more than a job—it becomes a way to make a lasting impact.

Final Thoughts

Jeff Hammond’s insights are a masterclass in high performance, but more importantly, they’re a testament to the power of service, resilience, and intentional action. His journey reminds us that success isn’t about perfection; it’s about showing up, learning from mistakes, and continually striving to serve others at the highest level.

So, what’s your next step? How will you apply Jeff’s wisdom to your coaching business? Take a moment to reflect, and then take action. Because as Jeff would say, success starts when you get up and get to work.

For more inspiration and strategies to grow your coaching business, visit www.thecoachesplaza.com.

Connect with Jeff

📞Give him a call! 210- 889-6819

🌐Website: https://www.hsicommercial.com/jeff-hammond/

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Overview

02:10 High Performance Habits

06:43 The Mindset of Prospecting

11:46 Emotional Regulation and Challenges

16:22 Transformative Practices for Performance

21:01 The Power of Systems in Business

22:00 Paradigm Shifts and Scalable Systems

26:04 Valuing Time and Productivity

31:35 The Entrepreneurial Mindset and Friendships

32:31 Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship

34:48 Embracing Failure and Perfectionism

38:53 The Role of Faith in Business

44:39 Connecting with Jeff and Final Thoughts

Full Transcript

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

don't get complacent. Don't get complacent. And because complacency is caused because you're not dreaming well enough. Once you start dreaming, even just because you got to reach a goal today does not mean that's not a goal that you want today because we're totally evolving. So once you reach it, ask yourself,

I reached it. Now what? Keep thinking, keep dreaming.

Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And I am so pumped for this episode because we're going to get to know Jeff Hammond. So Jeff and I have been working together for a little while and I couldn't resist inviting him to the show because he has so much wisdom. He just really takes performance seriously. Jeff, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having Amanda. It's a pleasure as always. Always a great to see you, especially on a Tuesday as our coaching events.

Yeah, I know, right? And goodness, we have so much to cover today. Do you mind just taking 30 seconds and introducing yourself so that folks kind of have a little bit of background on you? no problem. Thanks again. Thanks again for allowing me to be on the podcast with you. I'm super excited with you. But my name is Jeff Hammond. I am from a work for Home Smart, which is the commercial vision, which is called HSI Commercial. We are one of the top brokerage houses in around the world.

I've been doing brokerage for 14 years. I've been lucky to help so many people. And this last year I in the top 50 of all brokers. we currently have 27,000 brokers. I was lucky to be in the top 50 of helping people. But yes, commercial brokerage is what I do here in Atlanta, Georgia and all through the Southeast. That is where I've come from and love it, love it every day. It's not even a job. It's not a career. It is one of my favorite things. I couldn't see you do anything else but this.

I love it. That's spoken like a true high performer. have so much clarity about what matters to you. So, Jeff, like, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about high performance. You know, for those that are listening and they want to be in the top 50 out of 27,000 or they want to maybe make a career change, what would you say is your favorite high performance habit? going to work. Literally going to work.

That is what people in this business don't do. They don't get up. That's the hardest thing. The challenge is being an entrepreneur is actually taking your left leg and hitting the ground and get up and going. Cause you can stay there cause there's no accountability. But my favorite is prospecting and what prospecting is means so much to me and why it's so great. Cause that's what runs the engine and it's talking to people and then getting into it. And it's actually helping them resolve their

issues or concerns of why they have a property, why they have a building, a piece of land, what can we do? And just watching them just be happy and knowing that I was able to make an impact in their life and their family's lives. You have so much clarity about what matters and why you do it. And it's service oriented. You know, one of my favorite things about coaching is people, you know, the peopleing and the connection that we get to do. So

You know, that word prospecting can kind of scare people. But, you know, a lot of my listeners, they're entrepreneurs and they actually will do almost anything to avoid opening conversations with other people, even though they know the truth that you know, which is when you make that connection, you are in service to other people. So can you just like maybe give me a tip or two on how to approach prospecting? You know,

A lot of people are doing it for coaching business, but you need this for lots of different kinds of business and you've gotten so good at it. What would you say are your top tips? My top tips is one, you gotta love it. You gotta have the mindset. You gotta block your time out and ask yourself why you're doing it. What goals are there? And when I ask you what are you doing, are you really just there to try to make a dollar or are you really just trying to help someone resolve something? Second is what are their motivation? And in my case, I'll let the cow out of bag.

I call people that could get the property sold, the bill on the market expired or for sell by owners. Those are more warm calls. It's very rare that I call the lady or gentleman down the street at some random property because I just want to buy it or something. Those people, they have no interest in selling. Usually it takes so long. But look and spot who is truly making an impact that you can impact, who's interested in doing business with. That is the biggest thing from using your phone.

Then when you're out in public, you you woke up and you meet someone. Most people are scared of strike up conversation. They, they call themselves introverts and everything else. No, just it's easy. get the biggest tip. Scoop somebody and say, where are you from? And then just listen, because people love to talk about themselves, Amanda, and you will learn so much more about them. But you know, my other tip would be don't ask them what they do for a living. People want to talk. They do enough at work. They don't want to talk about work.

They wanna talk about themselves and their family. And that's part of having engaging with a relationship that you're developing there from a network standpoint. But prospecting can come from all different places, but really at the end of the day is getting there, being disciplined, knowing how many dollars that you're gonna make each day, staying in with that, and then going from that level. And we can talk about more depth about systems and how that kind of impacts it, but you should.

But that's the biggest thing to be in the service industry. You want to serve and serving is the one of most important things. And if you're not willing to serve our community, then this is not the business for you in the business I do. So just like in coaching, like you're coaching, for example. Yeah, you probably can, you know, one of my colleagues, one of my, your colleagues made a lot of significant amount of money doing something before. And now he's coaching and he makes a lot less. But the reason he makes a lot less, he gets up every day. He spends a lot more energy.

but he does it because he loves serving people. And that's the key. And if you can do something every day, and that to me is amazing. God serves us, Jesus served us. We need to be his little servants in the same way. And that's the mentality that I have. Yeah, I love this highlighting of, you have a service business, so lead with service. And it's so easy to forget that. You said something at the earlier part of this about,

You know, just try not to think of it like you're just going out to get money. I think that's probably one of the things that a lot of service, especially helping entrepreneurs, you know, they have this mindset of like they want to be of service, but they're so worried about what other people think of them for having systems and for having the follow through. like, what would you say to somebody who's worried that they are still going to be thought of as, as maybe money hungry or

being disingenuous, what would you say to that person?

I would say they put a fear into their mindset and that they made something to tell them, no, they were giving themselves a reason why. anything is, the only things we were born with to be scared of in this world is loud sounds and fear of falling. That's only thing we were born in. Everything else is manmade. So we put that in ourselves to tell us why we don't want to do something. And it was the old adage, put your hand on the stove burner.

and you can sit it there and you're not going to move it until it actually burns you. So it's the same thing. People are scared of change, scared of failure, scared of the unknown. They're just making things up excuses. Sometimes they just don't want to do it. Then they say that, you know, that's well, you're you're you're kind of you're a guy that I know can really activate your courage like you. It's true. You've done like skydiving, for example.

So you were literally leaning into one of those innate fears of falling. Can you tell me a little bit about like what possessed you to want to do something like skydiving? Skydiving, I did it 20 some odd years ago and then I just always kind of wanted to do it again and to be able to do it by myself and a friend of mine has her, what they call it, AFA, which is their Accelerate Free Fall license. And I just wanted to do it. And when I did it and studied on it,

It was one of the most impactful things. was a total different mindset. And I have a really good friend that was in the special forces and he said could just change, see how I changed mentally from it. Because what you're doing there is you're defying death every time you go out there. You're laughing in death's face. So you get that rush, but once you get past the initial adrenaline rush, you still have it. Then you get to do something other people around the world. You get to go play in the air.

and to put it together and it's just great. mean, a lot of people look at skydivers like they're crazy and fun. Yes, it's all fun and games on the ground. But as soon as you walk on that tarmac, it is serious business because you can hurt someone else in the air and you hurt yourself. But they go back to your original question. Why? What I learned from it was I can overcome anything. If I can go jump out of a plane, what's next? And then the other thing about product that got out of it was my adrenaline.

Because your adrenaline is rushing, you got to stay calm in the air. Same thing there. It's here in business and there's people upset you and everything in business at home is to learn to control your adrenaline and to be able to in the moment. Keep your emotions between the two lines. If you draw, write the word emotion, put a line at the top and line at the bottom and just trying to keep it right there, even kill and not say not be emotional, but think before you speak.

really think about what's going on, internalize it. That's what you get out of skydiving that you can play. I can tell when I haven't dove in a while that I need to go back because I get a little antsy here. mean, and but then it's like when I go, it just calms me down. that's so interesting. And I love I love what you're pointing out here around emotional regulation and how when you do learn to master your emotions,

You know, I've been through a lot of different coaching programs and a lot of different experiences over the past several years. And I have to agree with you that one of the best ways to emotionally regulate is to learn to challenge yourself, whether it's skydiving or whether it's learning a new skill or whether it's walking up to somebody and saying, hi, my name is Amanda and I want to be friends with you and just like risking the social rejection, whatever that thing is, that's like.

keeping you boxed in, we have to do things. And to your point, there's ways to learn how to do it in a safe way with mentorship and all of that. But we need to expose ourselves to that discomfort so that we get the opportunity to learn the skill of emotional regulation. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I'm curious, like what has been in the last, five years, what would you say has been

some of the most transformative things that you've done to enhance your performance. Cause I mean like you're operating at a really high level, know, being top 50 out of 27,000, that's significant. So what would you say has contributed in the last five years to being able to perform at such a level? Well, man, there's probably three things that occurred that one is reading.

which I didn't know that existed. reading the right things, that has been one of the most powerful things with different books and open your minds to other people's critical thoughts and looking at other entrepreneurs and seeing how they have felt. They've gone through the same thing that I have, but also to realize that two is coaching is...

One of my new genres or new mottoes is, calls me up on the phone and says, how you been? What you doing? Just growing and learning every day. Growing and learning every day is one of the amazing things about what I've done from high performance. just like recently, I was down at another coaching event that I have two coaches. I don't have just one, I have two. And you're great at yours and I have...

but I have a different coach for something else. But even going back to skydiving, I do the same thing, by the way. I have multiple coaches for the different domains of my life. Yes, exactly. I hired a skydive coach that teach me how to skydive because I want to perform at a high level. And it makes me go all the way back to that story when I used to play golf. I knew I had the talent, but I went out there and spent $80, $90, $100 on balls and on a round and shot really bad score.

But until I actually got a coach, that was it. Look at your best of the best. Look at Michael Jordan, Kobe, the Wayne Wade. They only just had a regular coach, but they had also a mind coach, a mental coach. Because everyone's talented. You just gotta be obsessed. We're all born with the same talent. We're just gonna be obsessed and take that on. mean, those are what you can to get there to that next level.

Those are what I changed in the last five, six years to accelerate. The other one, don't get complacent. Don't get complacent. And because complacency is caused because you're not dreaming well enough. Once you start dreaming, you get to something, even though you reach a goal, just because you got to reach a goal today does not mean that's not a goal that you want today because we're totally evolving. So once you reach it, ask yourself,

I reached it. Now what? Keep thinking, keep dreaming. Every day should be Christmas for you. And I challenge anyone to go out there and just turn off all electronics, everything, go sit in the dark room with a legal pad and just start dreaming, thinking of anything. And when you think to one level, go further.

I mean, do you not think that Elon Musk said, I want to somebody live on Mars. Why not?

How about, hey, I wanna go to Mars. I wanna be, how you gonna do it? Whatever your dream is, keep dreaming. We're talking about skydiving. One of my things I love about skydiving is there's seven places in the world I wanna go skydiving. And I've already been to one. And in planning that and dreaming, people, think the millennials call them vision boards. I just call them pictures on a board, pictures on your wall, whatever you wanna call it. And that's what you have to do. Those are some of the things that you are.

critical on you performing. Everyone has standard instruction, standards that they have. And it's how you, are you disciplined enough to go to those standards and those standards help you. And yes, we fall off those standards and our goals and stuff. But if we're just out there, just for example, spending money unwisely. Somebody asks you, hey, how much money got in the bank? You go, I don't know.

Then you're just letting it go. You have no structure, not focused. There's that complacency, right? It's always there. It's always been there. It's got to work. I get a check is there. It meant something. But you really have to sit down and I don't know, do a thing called a budget. But that's the same thing. You have to look at your time. We waste so much time during our day and we really need to own our time. Put a value dollar amount on our time.

What does it cost? Such a great insight, you know, because a lot of a lot of times when we want to achieve those goals or we want to go after those goals, one of the biggest excuses that I hear from people is I don't have time. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think about that? Like that that excuse or that tendency that people have? I think that I've been there. I've done it many times. I'm I'm I'm busy.

Okay, give me that big award. I'm busy versus actually when I hear that says I'm busy, hear I don't have control of my time. I don't have control of my time. That's really what's going on there. And they're just telling themselves to make themselves feel good and making mistakes. If you actually look at your time, I would challenge you to get a piece of paper again and say, where's every minute spent? How many times this little phone goes ding, ding, ding?

Coles is having to sell, the weather is coming out, this is happening. So if you get one of these, it don't do all that. So this is more than anyone else. There was a great man named Warren Buffett. He said that would have iPhone was gonna be the biggest problem in the world because it was to be distracting. And he was right. So he went back to a flip phone. If one of the richest men in the world has a flip phone, don't you think I wanna do that? And guess what? When this rings, you know what it makes it sound like it says?

Money, money,

That's awesome. You know, Jeff, one of the things that really surprised me when we spent some significant time together was you were telling me about your system that you used to track your prospects, your leads, the people that you were going to talk to. And you were telling me about it. And it was paper based. And I almost fell off my chair when you told me that. And then I thought later, I'm like, that's freaking genius, you know, because a lot of times

You know, I know you're implementing some additional systems, but you got to a pretty high level with a paper system. So do you mind like just telling us a little bit about that system, how it came about? And, you know, I think it'll really inspire a lot of new entrepreneurs who are intimidated by tech or who who think that they have to have something that maybe they can't afford or that they can't figure out yet. You did it with paper. So do you mind telling us about that?

No, not at all. So the paper system was pretty simple. It was for prospects, previous customers, and current clients I like to do business with. And we taught it the flip and turn method, and a gentleman kind of showed us how to do it. And I just took it at a little extra edge, but I just took folders one through 60, took print off the V card from Outlook, and just dropped it in the folder. So when I walk in today, I know it's day one, I pick up the

pick up there and say, what's in there? And I call Amanda Coffin about her building that she has at 123 Main Street. And then I put it right back and I go to next next to Mars Tuesday, all the way through for 60 days. So we're 45 days. So every 60 days I'm calling him, but there's only 45 work days. So have 45 folders. then the stable I see, and then to stay in contact with my clients every two weeks, I've got folders one through 10. So I've talked to him every 10 day or every two weeks.

And it's great, but with anything else and my prospecting is the same thing. Name a number, a little bit of information and calling that. But where I looked at it was this was great. It was like a true Rolodex and I have paper stack. But I said, if I want to go somewhere else, I need to take a pause because I had a TV in the 1990s. I had a 60 some inch TV in the 90s, but I have a TV now.

It's a 60 inch TV now in 2024, but it's still a TV, but the technology is better. I can see better. can view it better. I got all the clarity, all the bells and whistles, but still a TV, but it was never taking me to the next. So with systems, the acronym is save yourself time and energy. And when you look at that, what I've done now is taken and started digitizing some of my information.

but I'm also 10Xing my information now and prospecting where I'm having others do some of the heavy lifting of finding my information, my numbers. I'm letting the computer come in and telling me, here's who you need to call today, Jeff. And it's a little bit easier for me on CRM. It is nothing. You can use Outlook, you can use phone burner, which is what I use. But what I got out of it was multiple things.

I've been, being told for years and years and years to use it. But I was like, why should I change here? I made money. But then I think about things in the past, like Kmart didn't change. Sears didn't change. Guess where they're at? They're dinosaurs. A lot of people on here probably don't even know what Kmart or Sears is. UPS, you know, they had to change. We changed so much. So I had to say, what do I need to change? Cause I'm going to get passed by. am I really, and plus I said,

Am I really helping my clients? That's one of my things. And one of the things I realized was I to talk to my clients a little bit more versus every two weeks. I wanted to be more engaged with them. And so that was one of the objectives of it. Then the byproduct, what I found out was by putting a digital system in for me was the amount of time I got back. Because there's only 24 hours a day, say you work eight hours a day, whatever.

that is, but then I hire a virtual assistant who can scrub my data. Then when I'm calling, I'm actually calling the person I'm to call. I'm also having the email of the person versus making 70 dollars and then only actually 17 people or 20 people were there 70 dollars. How much time did it cost me in that? And that's what the aha moment was recently. And

I had to have a paradigm shift. I fought it and fought it and fought it, but it came to a point where numbers don't lie. I was plateauing and I'm like, why am I... That's the key. That's the key. Like what you're reminding me of is a little saying that I share with my clients all the time, which is it's a great strategy to start, but is it going to scale? And I think sometimes we rob ourselves of...

progress and this is one reason I really loved your paper system. You call the flip and turn. Is that what you call it? Flip and turn. Yeah. I loved it because I work with a lot of coaches that are starting and they have a hard time gaining traction because they're trying to do scalable systems like the ones that you're implementing now, but they're trying to do that before they've ever made a dial before they've ever tried to reach out to someone. And what helped me start my business way back.

was, and I'm techie, like I'm natively techie, I love tech, but I was so overwhelmed by all these systems and what was optimal and what was scalable that I just wasn't starting and I was kind of sabotaging my progress. So I created this, I call it the grid, and it's kind of a flip and turn sort of a thing. It's just laid out on a piece of paper instead of being a bunch of paper, but that was like the little nudge that I needed.

to make things really simple, kind of getting back to what you said earlier about having the legal pad in the dark, by getting down to a clipboard-based system, it allowed me to really feel and understand the system of prospecting and how people react to me reaching out and following up and actually moving the names down through pipeline physically helped me understand later then when I went to go

digitize and use scalable systems, I think I had a much stronger understanding of how that digital system works. Because as soon as you put it into the computer, it's out of sight and out of mind. Whereas when you have that paper, you can really sort of see the pieces move around. So yeah, I appreciate what you're saying though, that my clipboard only took me so far. And at some point I had to decide, am I going to stay

at this level or in the same number of hours per day, could I start to scale my time and increase my time? So I went through a very similar experience in my own business of needing to digitize and needing to automate more. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. That's great. I love your story, but in going along, what you're saying is new entrepreneurs, they come in, they try to get by that Cadillac and at first or that Lamborghini, the dude, you got to learn to drive.

And a very simplistic thing is you had to learn what two plus two plus two is before you could use the calculator. So doing the systems, you need to know a calculator because anybody can type in whatever, but that calculator comes out. How do you know what's right or not? If you haven't done the foundation, then know what two plus two is. So if it pops up six, you think that's right because it's calculator set it. So that's exactly what you're saying is that's where a lot of people is.

You need to know it because not only are you the entrepreneur, you are the boss. You are the employer. And to be able to look and run, because if you don't know your numbers, that's going to be important. If you don't know what goes in behind it, it's going to cost you more money. And being a high-product core performance person is to slow down for a moment and think. To ask, what if, break it all the way down to the minute level.

and then slowly add things to it. That is one of the things you have to do on the business standpoint, and that's with anything, but people just don't slow down and think. Then once again, they say what? Too busy. No, you're not too busy. You just don't value your time. And if someone can actually... Talk to me about that, because we've talked a lot about valuing your time, having like solid self-regard and self-respect. Tell me about that. Like what role has...

kind of working on, on that and showing up with high value for your time. How has that affected your outcomes? my outcomes have changed. It makes it actually going into a different thing. You had suggested me to, to look at getting them. What is my hourly rate? And then say, I want you to be productive for four hours. I'm like, what four hours. But when you actually think about it, why is it eight hours versus four hours, eight hours because of the Hawthorne effects and what?

person as being productive manual production, but I'm using my mind. My mind is a computer machine and I need to use it correctly at the right point of the day and take those breaks. But if I turn off all the distractions such as your iPhone and computers and really lock and hone in, I am more productive. For example, if someone actually looked at how many minutes and they did the challenge and say how much they wanna make per year, back it down to 252 days.

to eight hours, et cetera. And that's what we give you an hourly rate. But if you really, really get, really want to fine tune it, what's your, what is your rate per minute? So when you do rate per minute and say you're a $800 performer, hour performer, well, someone calls you up and you, and it's just your friend, John, and he wants to talk to you about whatever, Jane, fantasy football, the family picnic, but during your productive time.

and it takes 15 minutes, get to ask yourself, was that worth $300 of my time? That's freaking gold, right? Because you're right. Was that worth $250? But also, there's that additional effect where if you had the deep work concentration that you needed, there's been plenty of studies that show that just getting one interruption, can cause you to lose 22 minutes.

So I love that valuation of it per minute, because it's just like that reminder. It's like, would you pay $250 for this experience? No? maybe you might want to consider how you're setting yourself up for success. Yes, definitely. mean, you have that, because it's thing that someone just went and took $200 from you. You're going to be upset. would assume, I mean, nobody, whoever it is, is still going to be upset that they just took that from you. So you've got to guard that four hours of your time.

And prospecting is what you guard more than anything else because that is what makes your company go. Sales makes your company go. And like my father had told me that long time ago, I why does salesman have to be the highest paid dad? And I was a teenager. He says, how do think your company grows if you don't have sales? You don't have revenue. It's It's the point of commitment. It's where people decide to choose you, Pikachu.

If you don't prioritize selling, then what are you doing? How are you going to serve people? Right. absolutely. And you're talking about service. know, one of the things too is to get to that next level of high performance mindset. You have to do some really hard thinking up such as, are my friends? Am I training my friends and who are they? I mean, if you're out with a bunch of retired guys that want to play golf every day, they have all the time until they

Go meet their maker. They're not doing value for you. So if you're producing, you need to ask. If you got someone's bringing drama in your life, they gotta go. Really do your checking. And... That can be hard for people. It is. But here's something I struggle with, but here's what I have to do. I have to go up to such a person and say, look, I'm really gonna hone in on my business for the next three months. And I just wanna let you know right now.

and then I'm gonna be dark. And if I call you, I'll call you. But I'm not mad, but I'm swimming too. Now I have to explain myself, but it's a currency because if you matter to them, they're gonna be there in three months for you. If they don't matter, they're the ones who go, where you been? You don't call them where, guess what? You don't need those people in your life. You need to look at the local people. And you know, one of my weaknesses, and I'll raise my hand out there, is being a traveling salesman doing what I do.

I stop in, start working, grab a beer or two at the local ordering hall a couple of times a week. I have to rein that in. I actually have to protect Sunday through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, go to the local order on, but Sunday through Thursday, because if I don't come in sharp every single day, then I take away from my performance. And being an entrepreneur and being an owner of a company, I need to show leadership to those employees. I got to serve them.

I can help them make money for their family, but if I'm not performing and my mind's not set, not there, I'm not doing what I set out to do. It's not serving just only and helping my clients, but it's actually my employees and the community. I'm helping their families. So I need to come engaged and having that mindset is what you've got. It's scary at first. I'm first of all, I was scared when I talked to people, but I tried it.

It works and the people that matter are like, hey, Jeff, how's it going? Great, you doing? Et cetera, et cetera. What are you doing? Just growing and learning. Just growing and learning. And those are the things that are important, but it's a mindset and it does not take overnight. It is a progress, but you will find out who really does matter in your life. I know high successful people that have changed their friend groups and still have friends from years and years ago, but they evolve. We are human beings. We evolve.

I think you and you and I were talking about recently. One of my goals was having season tickets to a sporting event that I loved. But then I got it. Then I'm like, okay, but then I got just the rhythm of keeping it in versus I meant, you know, it's Tom that took away and where I'm at now that needs to go away. Of course I got rid of it, but that's where you have to start getting back to also like what you said earlier in our interview about how important it is to

continue to ask yourself the question about what is important to you so that you can stay in that alignment. You you bring up something pretty provocative here about the entrepreneurship lifestyle. I know you have experienced being the employee. You've clearly chosen to be the entrepreneur and play all out as the entrepreneur. What would you say to someone who is right now maybe an employee and are thinking about like crossing

crossing the fence, coming and joining this dark side of the force and becoming an entrepreneur. Cause you know, it can be pretty intimidating. The leadership requirements, the self leadership, all of that. Like what would you say to the person who's thinking about it? I'd say, what, what are you waiting on? What are you waiting on? That's good. That's good. And go ask yourself, go stand in the mirror, ask that person in the mirror, what are you waiting on? What are you scared of?

It's all you put in there. One of the things that I think about is I want to go do the best and serve the best I can and help people and make myself better every day because I don't want to get to the pearly gates. And they say, I look at the person in face and say, that's who I could have become. And I left it down here because what a reason. And like I said, our time is finite and people fell. I mean, how many times did you fail to go to the moon or?

anything, but making a car or just a widget and look at great things that come out from serving people. And even this building I'm setting in right now, this young lady, came from, she evolved into an unbelievable place, an organization that she created. But she took the risk and bet on herself because you're the only one betting on yourself. Why wouldn't you? You want to bet on someone else to do it? You're betting on

UPS, or I'm saying UPS because I'm familiar with that company, or any big company to give you a check, they can walk in the next day tomorrow and just say, hey, you're laid off. Then what do you do? And Sam, why don't you take the bull by the horns and just go for it? Because you're going to fail. There is no doubt about it. But what I do is I fall forward and I get back up. I learn from it and keep going. I'm not a failure because a failure sits on the sideline and waits.

I'm not. love this so much. And I'm so glad you brought this up because, know, from coaching you, one of the things that I really notice is that you're you're the kind of person who might stumble, but you don't let yourself sit in it. You don't let yourself, you know, identify with it. You know, you you choose another identity for for people who kind of struggle with that. You know, I'm thinking in particular about perfectionists, you know, people who want to have everything be

be super, super perfect before they ever start, but then they're robbing themselves because they're never really starting. They're just kind of kidding themselves. You know what I mean? Like, what would you say to that person to help them move past perfectionism and to embrace the experience of failure in a healthy way? I think that's what makes your time go faster because you're making perfection on something that you think in your mind and you haven't gone and learn what the other three or four things that can happen.

to you. that's so good. So that that's where you have to go do it. It doesn't have to be always and you just tweak it. That's the great thing is your plan. You can do anything with your plan. You might not meet your goal, but you're striving to it. You might adjust that a little bit. It's it's all about you and your family and what is that going to attain your personal emotional goals to get you where you want to be? Who really cares?

I mean, it's not like I'm writing a thesis paper and everything has got to be, every word or letter has got to be correct. But I learned from that. I have failed so many times, got an egg on my face, say, well, I won't do that again. Or, wow, I learned something from that. And because of that failure, I will do this this time. And that's how you grow. Like, you know, the things I say on the first time on the phone, for example, first person said to me, don't ever call me back. Bye bye bye bye. Boom.

and they hang up the phone because I never gonna list again. Well then several weeks later I look on the out there and they got the property listed. You know what they did? They lied to me. That's what they did. They lied. How dare? my gosh. I think that's a perfect perfect example of what you're saying though is like when we get into this perfectionistic mindset or when we let fear win like you said earlier in the in in today's episode what

we're doing is we're basically playing this game in our own mind of what we think the truth is or what we what we think reality is. And the real truth is probably getting exposed to the real world and realizing like things are often not what they seem. And we are going to get surprised. I'm curious, you know, what would you say is the biggest difference between the pursuit of excellence and perfectionism? How do you how do you keep those things kind of sorted in your mind?

Or do you? I don't know if I do, but pursuit of excellence is probably different from perfectionism. Pursuit of excellence is literally growing and learning like how to become a better, have a better relationship with God, my father, have with my children and have them with my business. And it's doing, it's like how you do anything is how you do everything. And so if you just do

shortcut it and you procrastinate at home when I pay the bills and the bills stack up and all this and you cause yourself all this anxiety versus taking care of it the very first time you come in. Are you developing those same habits when you shortcut your family or your relationship with God or business? Are you like, I'm letting all this stack up and then got a deadline I got to get to and I got to study for whatever I'm studying for. That's kind of the analogy. Perfectionist

They want everything perfect and what is more of a pride thing for them, I believe, in my personal opinion, because they want to say, I'm perfect. I'm the A plus student. You need to celebrate me. No, great. But just because that's how I take it. And perfectionism. Yeah. And perfectionism, people like, they don't want to make a decision a of times, but they already did. Making no decision is making a decision.

That's so true. Yeah, that is so true. And Jeff, you know, you you are a man of faith and you've brought it up a couple of times in the call. I'm I'm just I'm so curious, like what is the role of faith in your life? And like, does it show up for you professionally as well? Like, do you mind sharing a little bit about that? yeah. I mean, I get myself to the Lord, the Shun lady. And I got down and I always was the.

Joyce Myer calls it a check mark Christian. I went to church, check mark. I prayed, check mark. I did my check mark. But I was never embraced and fell in love with God. I have the best- interesting. And the romance is that I'm not embarrassed to pray in front of people and talk about it because he put the suit on me. It's his money, not my money. He gives me the chance. He gave me skillsets to learn, to bless other people.

He gave me a gift of speaking, I really believe, and the mind to help other people and other families resolve problems. It's just like yesterday. I had a gentleman call me over the past week, said that, and he was a very spiritual guy and said, Jeff, I prayed for some help on a project that he was doing. And he says, I said, show me the person. Well, actually, God told him to call me. He called me and I sat down with him, but it was...

not because of my knowledge and I didn't think about it. So I asked God who should I talk to? Well, I had a dream about this gentleman. He was one of my clients. I called him today and they come to find out he had so many different things that he was a perfect fit. So God uses you in so many different ways where potentially these two gentlemen can get together and just go. And the gentleman that was there, when he, and he's a true believer, when he passes away,

His company is going to be worth over almost a billion dollars, but when he passes, he doesn't want any money in his bank account because he wants to give it away to everyone. And everyone means people that help. His biggest focus right now is helping children that do not have food to eat from reducing free lunches. And if you really think about that, we can talk about blue people, red, what side of the fence you are and go that, we can't agree. But do you want to see a child go hungry? And I don't.

Yeah, it doesn't matter, you know, how you pray. It doesn't matter where you live. Nobody wants that. Right. Right. And we've all been there as adults. We've been hangry because we're hungry and we haven't got to eat. We can't think. But we have little children that their minds are going to run this country and do businesses. We need to feed them to make sure they're engaged in school and where they don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. So it's a really great thing that where I believe God is doing all this to help

other children and family that we don't even know that we're fortunate enough to go out and have steak dinner. They don't can't even get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So that's what I look at. My father up in heaven, he provided these things and it is about giving that love and sharing cause he loved us. He did the biggest thing ever. His son, Jesus Christ, gave that Jesus Christ died for me, died for me. And he already knows.

I make mistakes every single day. And I tell him he tests me. I'd say he's the biggest comedian. I was like, well, you know, I was going to do that. It's like, you just let me do that. But that's what I love. It plays so much of faith in my children, teaching them, because in what my children, they're going, my daughters are going to marry a man like their father. And if I'm out doing things, they're watching me, for example, and they're going to follow that example. So I need to lead them that way. And also,

in business, I need to lead the right way that I've seen other entrepreneurs who have faith and what God's done for them. It is not about the money. God will give you so much. You're never gonna outspend it and you can't outspend God. But to do what right, I'm not gonna hoard it. Give it away. Give it away to the people that need it and make an impact in society. And my impact in society might just be helping families resolve things and how to disposition properties or whatever it might be that they need.

And that's where I really believe that I truly believe where God was at. I did not brace that. So Graham, basically when I met you, believe it or not, God put you in my life for a reason. Through one of my colleagues and introduced you. And I was bragging about you. And I got down on my knees with a young lady on the phone and gave myself to the Lord and everything I asked him to show me. And he showed up and showed me. And ever since then, it's just energizing and being around you and enjoying it.

But God put you in my life for right now for a reason and it is taken off. There's no doubt. I'm more successful now and being learning and growing every day because of it just God. There's no other way. He knows what the path is. He knows our true path. He's the one who designed it. And I love that. I love how you describe this and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts around the role of faith because

You know, there's a lot of ways to do it. You know, there's a lot of different belief systems, a lot of different religions, but I really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this because it very clearly shows up in, you know, how you do life, not just not just like what your specific beliefs are, but just that you have such strong beliefs that are allowing you to, you know, trust when things don't turn out the exact way that you think.

that they were supposed to, but then also have awe and regard for like, wow, look at this amazing connection that I was able to make and be a part of that's going to have such a huge impact. that capacity to think so much bigger is a really beautiful thing. So I really appreciate you sharing that perspective. Jeff, what is the best way for people to follow you or to find out more about what it is that you do?

Well, not a big social media person, of course, I got a flip phone. you can find his flip phone at you actually can call me. have a HSI commercial. The dot com is our website here in Atlanta, Georgia. We're nationwide company, but my direct phone number is two one zero eight eight nine six eight one nine. Once again, that's two one zero eight eight nine six eight one nine. You can call out.

I do control my time. I won't call you on the weekends, very rare. So I'm spending time with my family and, but don't call me anytime. And I would love it. And even it's kicking around an idea or questions and stuff like that. But if I could tell everyone, if they could do one thing is there are two things is let fear go is what you put in your mind and every day grow up there and grow and learn.And that's what is going to get you to learn how to serve others too. So.

I love this. love this. Jeff, thank you so much. This was such a pleasure to get to dig in deeper with you today. And hey, listener, go ahead and share this with three of your friends. know, Jeff is a really incredible high performer. We talked about a lot of different secrets for things that could really help your friends. So go ahead and share this episode with three of them.

and then do us a favor, go ahead and subscribe and leave a five-star review. It helps other people find the episode and of course get more traction in what they are wanting to do that matters. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Thank you, Amanda. It was great. Thank you for the pleasure. anyone who reads this, just skip to the end and call Amanda. She's a life changer. She will change your life and make you, take you to the next level that you never knew. Thanks again. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you.