Aldo Gomez
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[00:00:00] Welcome Mr. Aldo Gomez to the show. This is a very special day today because Aldo is one of my favorite people. I've known Aldo for a few years now. I trained him originally. now he's A board, our Team Business with Purpose.
He is our lead sales trainer. In this business and, man, talk about hiring someone or adding someone to your business that is better than you. I have certainly done that in this case. welcome Aldo to the show. And it's so good to have you here. Well, thank you. And I'm happy to be here.
Good deal. So, Aldo, um, everybody wants to know, you know, where did you, how did you get your start? Well, I've been working since I was about 15 years old, so my start was there and it was maybe before that my dad had a, a maintenance landscape company. He used to take me to work and.
My official start was I used to put my bicycle in the pickup truck 'cause I, he would drive to different residences and I would ride my bike. And when I was loading up my, [00:01:00] my bike into the pickup truck and, and he said, no son, what are you doing with the bicycle? And I said, I'm loading into the truck dad so we can go to go to work and I'm gonna go ride my bike.
And he said, no, son. you're leaving the bike behind now. So that's when I got my start. Right? Right. Then and then, then I tried to find every job with anybody that would hire me because I didn't wanna work with my dad. 'cause if I worked with my dad, I'd be working for free. Yeah. So my start was right around 14 or 15 years old.
So it was basically go to work, not to ride your bike. 'cause that's fun. go to work with me for free or you need to find a place to go to work for, to get paid. And you chose to get paid. Yes. And when you're a, when you're, when you're a kid, not many, not many people wanna hire you because it's against labor laws, right?
Yeah, yeah. But somehow there was always, there was always somebody that would be willing to gimme some kind of, some kind of weekend job that I could get lost for a little bit. Yeah. What kind of weekend jobs? Well, after my, after working with my dad, then I went to go work with my [00:02:00] uncle who owned an upholstery shop, and I would take staples and, and tax out of, furniture.
Mm-hmm. And I would sweep the floor and keep all the tools organized. And then after that I found another job with a, with a man that would put,it was algae killing bacteria, and I would've to. Carry five gallon buckets of algae killing bacteria to this pump that he had near a lagoon. So he, we would drive with different lagoons and we would, and my job was to schlep that five gallon bucket of stuff around with me.
Nice, nice. So what was your first sales job? When did you first, 'cause you're a sales trainer now, you're one of the best sales trainers that someone's gonna meet and, and I'm telling you, that's just the truth. So when, when was your first sales job and what happened? It was when I worked at a landscape construction company and I started as a purchasing agent, and then I wanted to be, then I wanted to have more responsibilities and they moved me to project management.
However, the project management came with a, with a [00:03:00] also sales part of it, because it wasn't, we had to sell the jobs that we bid. And at that landscape company, I, I got to, that's where I got my start is that was my first sales job and they were on big. Large construction jobs,
did they train you at all or if, if they did train you, how did they train you? Most, most, in all of my training until I was properly formally trained by Barry, was at a, was just hardened knocks man, people te telling me how to do it. And the, the landscape job that wa the owner was. A, an amazing salesperson.
He taught me a lot. He taught me about the value of, doing, doing, having formal procedures. He was a great people person, ultra intelligent, had great vocabulary, had a lot of attributes that, that I learned to really love and want to emulate. [00:04:00] So he, but he taught me just through just helping me. But he was never, he was never present at the sales.
Mm-hmm. He would, he would help me and tell me what we were gonna do. And, you know, I'm a, I'm a big fo, I'm a big proponent follower of Jim Rohn and there's a, there's a, in his character audio series, he talks about confidence and he talks about. Confidence is something that you instill in someone and that someone feels confident about leaving you to do a task, or in this case, with the owner leaving me to do a sale.
And I've to this day, still been amazed by that ability and how a lot of us already have it inside of us. We just don't know it. And other people are confident in your abilities. Even if you're not confident about your abilities, they can see it in you. I gotcha. Okay. So do you think that he, [00:05:00] this, he's your first mentor, right?
He's your first person showing you how to be a salesperson or, or how to model this thing? Yes. Did, do you think you were his only person? Did he have success with everybody? He tried to do that way, like tell me about that. I. No, he didn't have success. And I'll tell you why. Because he was, uh, now when I look back the, I say the school of hard knocks because
he was a little pushy with what he expected out of you, so I don't think he had the success 'cause most people were too wise or weren't gonna do what he said for the amount of compensation that you were getting. Mm-hmm. I was a little bit, I was young, I was 23 years old or 24 and I was naive, so any little, I remember I got a cell phone and a cell phone was really, I thought I was like on Wall Street right with, with my cell phone.
And little did I know that he had just found a way for $80 a month to keep a tab on you and be able to access you whenever he wanted. [00:06:00] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's good. That's good. So he, he didn't have a lot, you had to show up and be the right kind of person, and did you have that gift for people at the time that he could just feed off of, I mean, what, what's the magic there?
Yeah. it had to have been, it had to have been, because the, so I was, my, the first job that I sold was I think $137,000. I made it up to my, the last job that we sold was $1.2 million to a, man that owned several fast food chains. And, yeah. I mean, he had, he, there was enough trust in there in my abilities to let me, Go into a meeting without any kind of, you know, there wasn't a talk in the truck.
Said, Hey, Aldo, when when he asks this, don't say anything. I'll take it from there. There was, it was just more of a, how do you feel about going into this meeting? Do you think you have all the information you need? And we did it together. So there was a, there's [00:07:00] a huge amount of trust and I don't, I don't think he had it with everybody because that was, that was the biggest job that we sold when I was there.
So, um, It, it was,few and far in between and, and still to this day, you know, when I left, when I left that job, I took him a lunch and I wrote him a long letter telling him how much I appreciated him and how much he changed my life. Oh, wow. Gratitude is the seed for more, right?
Mm-hmm. So if you had it to go back and knowing what you know now, what would you have changed, if anything, about your learning process when you first became a a salesperson? Well, I would've, Hmm. if I had to go back and, and do it over again, I would be, I would learn to, to be able to separate value versus.
what you bring to the company and how you get compensated, and then the limits of what.[00:08:00] you're supposed to do as a salesperson, and by limits I mean what is encompassing your area of what you should be responsible for. Mm-hmm. And I, and you know, I think of my father and I think that because my parents, they were first generation,Mexican immigrants, the.
They, I didn't get a real, they both worked for themselves and I didn't get a good opportunity and I didn't get a whole lot of insight from them about the business world and I, and that limited my ability to navigate the business world. So if you That's would do differently. What advice would you give to the young Aldo.
I would tell him, talk to your dad and tell your dad, and tell your dad, ask your dad what he thinks. Ask your mom and your dad about what they think about what you're, what you're doing. Mm-hmm. Do you think they could have been equipped to give you the advice in business that, that you, it took you to get to the next level?
yeah, they would've at [00:09:00] least told me You're asking the wrong person. Mm, yeah. That's good. So a, a kid that has limited resources that, because I mean, that's what you had, right? You had limited resources. I know that, that's how I grew up. What would you tell 'em?
What would you say, Hey, this is, I've got limited resources to learn. What should I do? Learn to enjoy reading. Mm-hmm. And okay. And, um, be less. Be less. Yeah. I would say learn, enjoy reading. if you really enjoy sales, then go all the way with it and, and, and learn to learn that there's, that's what I've been learning, this, this entire voyage that I've been on, is that there's, there is higher learning to everything in this world, and sales is one of 'em.
That, that, that the more you learn, the more you realize that, that there is so much to it. Yeah. Just like there's just so much to every, a lot of professions. So if you could have given yourself a book, what book would it be back then?
[00:10:00] Mm.
Never split the difference. Well, that book wasn't around. Okay. Well then if I had to get then than a different book that I have would have to pick is you're 20 years ago. Right? Yeah,
outwitting the devil. Outwitting the devil. Why outwitting the devil? Well, outwitting the Devil is all about the doubts, and the devil is the devil is really the doubts that you have in yourself. Mm. Right. So, outwitting the Devil is a lot of questions and the, and it's, and it's mainly a, a, a contemplation of your thoughts and how your thoughts can play games, play tricks with you about what you think is happening and what's actually happening and, and how you feel about something.
Well, it would've let me know that, that self-doubt and anxiety and, um, and, and not having complete trust in yourself is [00:11:00] normal. I. And that it's something that, that, that you just need to learn to live with and that you can, and that everybody has it. You're not the only one.
It would take some of that guilt away, I think. Oh, wow. So, I mean, that's really good right there. So just listen to what Aldo just said. He said if he could've went back in time and read a book, he would've read this book. And what he would've gotten from it was that, Pretty much everybody fails and you don't feel bad about that.
It's actually a thing to feel good about because then you learn more and then you'll be successful. 'cause of those failures. Is that, is that about sum it up? That's right. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's so good. I love that. And then how, how many years do you think that would've fast forwarded your, your learning process?
Hmm. I don't think it would be a night and day. It, would've, I don't think it would've fast forwarded things. Mm-hmm. As much as it would've stopped, it would've made me change my behavior. Wow. About what I did. Okay, good. [00:12:00] How so? I would have, I would have less fear. Less. I would have less fear.
Okay. Good. How's the fear that you've had in the past held you back? I. Well, because the fear has moved me into a position where, All of my moves had a, a, feeling of is this gonna be secure or is this a for sure thing or not? And the fears at that age of 24 or 25. And at that time I didn't have a family.
I was a, just a, a single man. So, you know, I had, I had. Grown up fears already, family fears when they didn't need to exist yet. Hmm. And I think that that would've, that would be the biggest, the, the biggest roadblock I hit. That I was attached to a lot of, a lot of, a lot of fears that didn't exist in my life.
That I knew that at one point they would be. Important or something that I would have to think [00:13:00] about before I make a move. So I was just having a, I was having a, a very small mindset at a very young age already. Where do you think that came from? The more I, Do self inventory is that I believe that it came from not only being an immigrant mm-hmm.
And experiencing some of the, some of the stereotypes that, that, come with being an immigrant. Hmm. And with, um, with growing up in an, in an area that was affluent and I wasn't wealthy. Mm-hmm. So I was always, I was already different. And then on top of that, I was e economically different. So between both of those things, they combined and, um, and then that's where I, that's where that fear came from.
I was already, I was, you know, at that age it was, it was, I would ask my dad to drop me off a couple of blocks away from school because I didn't want anybody to see that, that he had lawnmowers [00:14:00] and such in his truck. wow. Wow. Yeah. And now, and now if you go back, like how do you feel about that your dad had lawnmowers in his truck?
Man, I couldn't, I couldn't be any prouder of my parents, you know, with the lawnmowers and the 'cause. They, they'd, as a grownup, I could see that they gave me love and it was the, the, the most important thing that they could've ever given me. And there's a, if I, if I look back at that, I also got a great gift that most people don't have is that both of my parents were self-employed.
So they never worked for anybody, and I never heard them come home and complain about their boss. They never came home and, and said, I don't like my job. They, I never heard any of those conversations. So for all the drawbacks, I had huge advantages that I just didn't see yet. That's so good. That's really good.
Um, you know, we met five, almost five or six years ago. Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:15:00] Tell me about that time of your life and where were you, what did you, where did you think you were going? I was at an automotive shop and I was a parts manager and, I knew I was a parts manager and I was very good at it. I, I did a fantastic job.
Mm-hmm. I was always a, I always, liked interacting with people, and I was good with people. I know that, that now there's certain abilities that everybody, that, especially, well, you know, salespeople, business owners, they all have, and it's a, it's a way to make a connection and there's so many different types of connections that could be made with people.
I have a ability to be very open without being, open without being embarrassed about what I'm talking about, and I know that, I have people open up to me pretty quickly. It's because I initiate a conversation and I'm friendly and I can tell you about something that's embarrassing the most, and I'll say without any kind of embarrassment.
And [00:16:00] then people tell me the same. They'll open up and tell me things that they might have not told anybody else. Because the, because it's set in a position where we're both safe. I wouldn't open up to you like this if I didn't feel a hundred percent confident. And I really, and I sincerely feel that most of the things that go on in these people's lives happen in all of our lives.
So there's really nothing to be embarrassed about. Right. Because it happens to everybody. Yeah. It's that, it's that so rough edges of being human. Right. I. Right. Yeah. And so I was a parts manager and I had asked the owner if I could become a service advisor because I wanted sales.
Mm-hmm. They had people in the service advising position already, and they had brought other training groups in and they would leave their presentation or their, or their sales, phone script. And I got my hands on it and I started picking up the phone and, and answering in the script that was provided for the other people, and they weren't following it.
And I said, you know, if I just practice myself, I'll get good at it. So I was, I was picking up the phone as soon as I could. I would then I then I would move [00:17:00] into pricing the, the parts on the work order, and then I would start adding them to the work order. And then I would start adding the verbiage about, you know, breaks are at two millimeters and they need to be replaced.
So I started doing all these things before I got my actual shot at being the service advisor. And the more I decided that that's what I wanted to do, I said, well then if they're not gonna gimme the position here, then I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna go get that position somewhere else. And I had a conversation with the owner.
I said, listen, I'd be, I wanted to become a service advisor and if I don't become a service advisor at this company, I'm gonna leave your company and I'd be happy to train my replacement. All right. So it wasn't, it wasn't an ultimatum. Right. And I don't know your relationship with him. Absolutely. It was just like, look, I have bigger dreams.
This is what I want. I'm happy to do it here. and, and if not, that's okay. I'll, I'll train my replacement and then I'll go do it somewhere else. Yes. I even gave him two months. I said, I'll give you two months of, because I'm happy. I'm happy and I appreciate everything you've done, [00:18:00] but I cannot. Keep doing this.
I miss what I don't even have yet, which is talking to people all the time. Right now. I got to talk to the delivery drivers, but I, I wanted, I, and I knew I could do it. So that's where I was in that. And then, then the service advisor, he was, he was the kind of guy that every once a month he'd be gone, and then he ran into some kind of personal problems and then he just was, was gone too long.
That same Friday after work, the owner asked me, he said, are you ready to start being a service advisor on Monday? And I said, absolutely. I've been waiting. So there I go. And then I become the service advisor. And then about a month later is when, um, when they brought Barry on, I. But you weren't really waiting, you were preparing.
Yeah. Is that right? Because you know, I, I always talk to people and I'm like, Hey, by the time the the time is right, if you're unprepared, it's too late. That's right. You have to prepare before you ever get there. And so you're saying, and I never knew this, so he [00:19:00] said, Hey, look, this guy is, You know, he may show up, he, may not.
I'm gonna give you your shot. You still want it, you said Absolutely. And then a month later, you engaged with me in training. Is that how it went out? Yes. It. That's good. It was, it blew me away that people were so against in that time that, that I was at that shop. I saw service advisor trainers, a few come and leave.
And, it, to this day it still bewilders me of how people don't invite training. I mean, I, I couldn't wait, you know? I was like, please gimme training. Please gimme training. Yeah. But so, and the names will remain. We're not gonna mention names because Anonymous. Yeah, anonymous. To protect the innocent. I was hired to train two of you.
And the other person could not have been the, more of the opposite of you, of anybody I've ever trained. Literally, this person was the most untrainable person I've ever met. And, and so I, I went so far as to tell him, say, Hey man, you know, [00:20:00] it sounds like you could train me on a lot of stuff. And he said, absolutely.
Yeah, which I don't disagree. I'm sure he could. Right. But a month later I called the, the owner of the business and I said, Hey, look, I, I'm no longer gonna train this person, but I still want to continue to train Aldo. And if this means I don't get to train Aldo, then so be it, because I can't train someone who doesn't want to train.
It is like it, it is the most, number one, it's it's soul sucking. Number two, it's not the right thing to do because I'm basically, you're giving me money to train an untrainable person. And to me that's tantamount to stealing your money. Mm-hmm. And, and as a matter of fact, I told him, I'm like, I'll give you all the money back that you, that you've paid so far, if that's what it means.
And, and I'm okay with that, but I can't train this person. Then he says, well, give him another 30 days. I, I think he'll come around. And I said, well, that's fine. But if he doesn't come around in 30 days, I'm still no longer, I'm gonna tell you that [00:21:00] I'm not gonna train him. And the, the deal of me giving your money back is no longer relevant because I've told you that he's untrainable.
And so 30 days more rolled around and I fired him from my sales class. And you continued. Right? Right, right. So tell me after that, like what happened with your growth and, and, and look, this isn't because of the way I trained you. I'm, and I'm sure some of it is. I, I'll tell you, 15% of the credit I'll take, but 85% you showed up, you were the right kind of person, and it just took off.
So from that moment, Those first couple of months. Tell me about the rest of your experience in your growth. Well, the, what it did was, was I grew because, I became much more aware and open that there's more to it, right? It's like, like peeling back the layers. I've, I've, I, I've only touched a little bit of layers.
Now going back [00:22:00] to the training, there was a lot of, a lot of concepts. And I, and I will always remember Agape, right? Agape, yeah. Love and, and pathos and ethos, right? And we, we all, all of these different terms that were introduced to me mm-hmm. At a young stage. So it would be, it would be like you taking coal.
And creating a diamond. But in stage two of the coal, you just flickered a diamond at someone. Yeah. And, and that person that was interested got a glimpse of it and they said, wow, I saw it and I saw it for a split second and it's gone. But I know that it exists. Mm-hmm. You ever heard? And that's what I got.
Yeah. You ever heard that? That, that we're talking about agape. Agape means unconditional love. Um, it's where we get the word agape, which means surprised. Mm-hmm. Um, we're talking about ethos, pathos, logos. Mm-hmm. You know, you can go back to that, the three ways you make decisions, [00:23:00] those types of things. But they are, and I love that what you said, but one of the guy that TD Jakes, he's a great preacher, and so he says that God put your dreams in a seed.
Mm-hmm. Because if he'd have put it in an orchard and just anybody could walk in and pick it. Right. So what, what, what was it? It was in the seed that you had, and then all we did was feed it, water it, nurture it, fertilize it. Mm-hmm. Plant it, right? All the laws of the planet, we call it. And then you started to grow, right?
Mm-hmm. And so that's what happened. And so how long did we work together from there? We were, we worked together for over two years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I love it. And so from there, you grew for two years and then e eventually you left. Right? Right. So tell, tell us what made you make the decision to leave that shop and go somewhere else?
Well, so I had a, and I still do, have a wonderful relationship with the owner. [00:24:00] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, I thought, well, if I, if I don't make. you know, there's a level of, of money that I wanted to make, and if I was not gonna be able to make that amount of money there, for whatever reason, I thought maybe it's time for the training wheels to come off.
Because I always wondered, I always wondered, because I've made mistakes. I made mistakes at that job, and I wondered if. If I had been working anywhere else, would I, I been terminated or would I gotten written up for things that I didn't get written up for, or I didn't get terminated and all of that. At the same time, I thought, well, maybe that's why I'm not getting, I'm not making the amount of money that I want make because there it comes, you know, the yin and the yang, they both go together.
Mm-hmm. One goes with the other, and the only way I will ever really know is if I, if I go and leave and, and I also thought that because our relationship, he's my best friend. Mm-hmm. I thought at one point, if there's no friction [00:25:00] now, there may be friction later because we're best friends.
Yeah. And be, and we work together. So, it's all good. It's been wonderful, exciting up until now. And now it's probably just time for me to move on. Mm-hmm. So that I can ask. For what I want. And if I don't get what I want, then there's no hard feelings about it. Mm-hmm. And there's no, there's no more quandaries on my side about why it didn't happen or why it did happen.
Yeah. So then I left and I went to a auto shop, where it was a complete, it was a whole new world. It was a whole new world because this other auto shop ran perfectly. We worked many more hours and I learned what it's like to work with someone that the owner had everything perfectly done, perfectly documented.
We did the process exactly like it should be, but I had already, I had already come in with my training. Mm-hmm. I already had my presentation and, um, If I were to put it in a way for the listeners to, [00:26:00] to think about what it would be like, it would be like me showing up to the job and I have my little toolbox, right?
And everybody kind of does it their own way when there's in sales. Mm-hmm. You know, this guy does it this way, this guy and I came in with my toolbox. And my toolbox was nothing like the other guys' toolbox. It was completely different. It was. My presentation was different. My, my, my questions to the customer, the way I presented the information, and there was a, um, a, a man there named Matt, and he's my friend also.
I haven't lost contact with him. He was the top salesman for the past, I don't know, five years. Yeah. And, in month, I think in month six, I beat him. And nobody had ever beat 'em. And nobody had ever, no one had even, I don't think they came in within $10,000 of them. Oh, wow. And, and what did he think about that?
Tell me, tell me about that. Well, at first, at first he, so Matt would, Matt would, he, he did all [00:27:00] of the, he did all of the fleet work, so he had that, that cushion, right? Mm-hmm. That he did all of the fleet work. So not only did he get the, the customers that. The individual customers dropping their car off as a personal repair, but he also got the fleet vehicles and they were all put into his total amount of sales.
So the month that I beat him, he said that the fleets that we didn't get that many fleet customers that month. Right. Well, That's been your advantage for the whole time. And he had a, he, he had a hard time accepting it, and I think he said at one point he said that I must've got lucky or something. But the, but if you look at our, if you look at our sales scores every month from the month that I got there, I was inching on him.
And inching on, yeah. And getting closer and closer until I beat him. Yeah. Did you tell him Luck stood for a living under consistent knowledge. No, I didn't know that one. L u c K. Right. Living under consistent knowledge and living is the doing right under consistent knowledge. So you, you work, you, you, you learn, you work, you [00:28:00] learn.
And I would just look at him and I'm sure you, you know, I'm very competitive and I'd say, well, let me ask you a question. You know, you, you've been dealing with these fleet accounts, are you not doing enough follow up for, to be consistent and not enough of them came in that month. Is that what happened?
Mm-hmm. Would you like me to take some of those off your hand so that could, so we can all manage them, more properly? Yeah. Yeah, that would've been a good one. I, I'd love to have that problem because the thing about Fleet, is it, you know, you're doing it for companies who need their trucks and need their vehicles to operate, correct.
Correct. Well, and they also have a larger bank account than normal individual citizens. Well, if you got the normal individual citizen come out, they don't have, as much a bank account to deal with normally. And they don't have to have it to operate necessarily. They don't have to keep it to make money.
And so there's all these things that go around, but hey, you know what we always say? Excuses of the crutches of the uncommitted. Right. How to, right. So when [00:29:00] you start finally beating someone, and then that gives you confidence, right? Because you're like, I've got all these tools that I've been taught, and, you know, they, they're, they're, they're timeless.
And so, so many people are trying to make up their own thing. And I think you alluded that before, they don't have a plan. So the, the, the plan that we equipped you with, does it work with everything? Yes. I love that. That's, that's a yes, that's a true, that's what we call that a true believer. That's right.
True believer, right? So now you were doing that. Tell the listeners how you and I got back together a because you know, you left there, I stopped training you obviously, I think you, you tried to get them to, to have me train you again. Yeah. They didn't. It didn't work out. And then you and I never lost, contact.
And then you know, I would ask you, do you, is there anybody that you need me to train? Is there anybody that you need me to train? 'cause that's what I wanted to do. Right. Well, and let's, let's also back up a little bit. all throughout from the moment that I began my training to today, [00:30:00] I've never lost the cadence of working on becoming a trainer.
Mm-hmm. And, and, and I don't know if it'll ever stop, but it, during that time when I didn't have anybody to train, I was reading all the books that I needed to train, and, I had sold motorcycle boots. To this guy on online, and I asked him what he did, and he said he was in pest control.
So I, I asked him if he needed anybody to train him in, in sales and he said, well, I'm not s I don't know what you mean. I said, well, why don't we meet at, at, at a, at there was a Coco's a a coffee shop. And I started meeting him on a Tuesday or a Wednesday night, and we would do it for free and we would meet and I would buy him a cup of coffee and I would begin my training, and then I found an, mm-hmm a, a guy that delivered uniforms.
For a, for a uniform company like the, the kind that drop 'em off at auto shops with the rags and all that. Mm-hmm. And I started charging him $25 a Saturday for us to meet on Saturday morning. [00:31:00] And, that, that's, I was in, I was already trained. I just didn't have an official person to train yet. Right.
Yeah. So, and I never lost contact with you. And then I moved to a, another shop and another shop, but they were all already with the vision that I was gonna be a trainer at some point. You knew, you began with the end in mind. That's what I love. And, and everybody listening, I want you to talk about, think about what he just said.
All he did was he just, he didn't care about getting paid to do it before he was worth it. He would learn how to be a trainer. 'cause there's a big difference between doing something and training something. You know, the old adage says, You know, those who can't do teach and, and, and I added that as well.
Those who can't, teach, consult, whatever, right? Yeah. Well, that's just not true, man. If you wanna put me on the front counter, you wanna put me on your sales team, I'm gonna be able to, to do some things. And Aldo, he's the right person, so I. What he said is, I, I just showed up and I knew I was gonna do it.
I have a vision for my life and I just did it. Not worrying about how much I was gonna get paid or if I was gonna get paid. He kept following up with me and [00:32:00] said, Hey, do, do you have anybody to train now? And I'm, and I'm growing a business and, you know, revenue has to be there and all, all these things.
And it just over time and those relationships. But if you listen to him, he has maintained relationships and left jobs from mm-hmm. Business owners. From coworkers to me. He, he is just a relationship guy. And, once you are in Aldo's life and he knows you're the right kind of person, he keeps you there because of who he's mm-hmm.
And so I've had four or five guests that started businesses and things like that. And they all say the same things that you just said. You know, they went and did things for free while they learned. Mm-hmm. My brother said it. A guy named, AJ Neely said it. Aldo says it. And that's the other thing about Aldo.
You know Aldo now is, has earned a, he earned, right? I didn't give him anything. He's earned a percentage of ownership in our company, and so he is a entrepreneur and five, six years ago you just heard it. He started it as [00:33:00] a parts person and just kept doing the initiative and, and having the things and have the, in the initiative to, to do the things.
And then today he just living a different life. So tell the listeners what kinda life you're living now, Aldo. it's a wonderful, wonderful life. And, the, it's, it's exciting and getting to, I'm, I've learned to love learning right? To, to, to learn to, and then to be able to, to grow. You gotta be able to grow all every day in, in your life to learn.
And, and something I want to touch on is that, For everybody that's starting a business and listening to this or that's already owned a business. You won't have, you won't have a little, you're gonna have a lot of people that may think you're crazy or they may think, they may not know.
They may ask you what you think you're doing or if you think you can find someone like that. Because when I was doing that [00:34:00] training on the Saturdays, it, my family would say, are you crazy? What are you doing? Are you, where are you gonna find these people? I. But the people are out there. Mm-hmm. And they're, and what The other thing you get to, the other thing that I was thinking about when we were,about this podcast is that you really gotta, you really gotta love to work at things.
Mm-hmm. And not, and not see something as hard or easy or difficult, or a task. It's really just, It should just be something that you're willing to do or you're not willing to do it, but not attach hard work or easy work to it. It's what I, it's what I train a lot of my, service advisors on is when you get on the phone and the, and the person says, well, for something like that, or something that's so involved, you know, that's, that's not how you can see what you're doing for work.
It's not involved. It's simply what needs to get done to get that result that you want. Mm-hmm. Yeah, [00:35:00] that's good. I love it. It doesn't always work out the way you en envisioned it, and as a matter of fact, it rarely does, but what's on on the other side is, is pretty beautiful, is it not? Absolutely. Yeah.
That's good. And so, you know, you're training people now that are, you know, in all different kinds of businesses. You know, we've got a lot of, you know, we've pushed the flywheel and if you read Good to Great, you know what that means. You know, you push the flywheel now the flywheel's starting to spin pretty fast and.
Aldo is the epitome. If you google the Chinese bamboo tree by Les Brown or Zig Ziglar and I, I've done that, speech a couple of times. I love it. The Chinese bamboo tree where you, it takes five years for the Chinese bamboo tree to break ground, and every day you put a seed in, you have to feed it, water it, nurture it, until on the fifth year it finally breaks ground.
And if you don't, Do those daily feeding, nurturing, watering, fertilizing. The Chinese bamboo tree seed will die in the ground, but on that fifth year, it [00:36:00] breaks through the ground and then six weeks later, within the, that six weeks, it grows, 90 feet. And so I think that that is your story where you, you told and learned, in whatever you needed to, and then on that one day that you just broke ground and then you grew 90 feet in six weeks.
Mm-hmm. Would you say that's true? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I love it. Absolutely. And you've gotten to where you are by being the right kind of person and just saying yes to opportunities, right? Yeah. So what's what you. Three stages of growth. There's a startup stage, there's the growth stage, and then there is the scaling stage.
What advice, are you gonna give the listeners in the startup phase? start with, start with the foundations of what your life is gonna have in it, or your business is gonna have in it. So your startup should really be foundations that, that become non-negotiable. [00:37:00] Your startup is your, your, when you make a, a commitment to yourself and to your family or to your business, that these are certain things that I will not negotiate on.
I will be ruthless with anything else that invades this part of it. Hmm. That's good. That's good. How about the growth stage when we're, we're, when you're growing a business, I would take the growth stage would be, that would be really the, the part where you can start to leave things behind that are no longer serving you.
Hmm. So you set the foundation and you begin growing. And what's limited you from growing more is that you're still hanging on to things that have to be shed and let go of those so you can keep growing. We're already, like Jim Roh says, we're, a tree doesn't grow eight feet tall. It grows as tall as it possibly cans, but if you put that tree in a, if you were to put that [00:38:00] tree in a container, like a pot or something, then it can't keep growing because it's limited by this container that it's in.
In this world we live in a free nation. There's nothing that's limiting our US other than ourselves. Just begin to shed those things that no longer serve you, man, that'll preach right there. That's good. And so how about at the scalability stage? The scalability would be, as you know, I'm a process, I'm a checklist guy.
I've, I've, I'm a checklist guy back to 13 years old when we would go camping. Mm-hmm. I would make a checklist of firewood. It said firewood, snorkeling equipment. I would, so I would always. Always doing checklists and processes. Scalability would definitely be right there. Is it, is it, if you can't, if you can't give someone a manual or some kind of instruction booklet that that's made, then you won't be able to scale because you need to be able to put it in, in a way where, where if you weren't there, everybody would know [00:39:00] what to do.
Wow. That's good. So give me one last piece of advice that you would give. Anyone. Hmm. It. Last piece of advice is don't let your opinions become your beliefs. Hmm. Unpack that well. We often say things and we hold whatever we believe or say things about. We could talk about bringing a child up, we could talk about a business.
And when your opinions become beliefs, it means that you think that that idea is really a golden idea because it's your opinion. And now you've said, it's my belief, so it must be true. And most of. Most of what we go through on a daily basis and in business can be boiled back down to an opinion. And when your [00:40:00] opinions become a belief, then you can no longer change and you can't see.
Another point of view is possibly a better perspective or a better way to do it because your opinion became a belief. Hmm, that's good. It, it, it dovetails with a lot of, so I, I say that, somebody asked me what the answer is and I'm like, well, I don't have the answer. I have an answer. Because when you have the answer, you really cut yourself off from all other.
All other possibilities, and so rarely is there the answer. There are some things in life that are principles and that is the answer, but it's pretty rare. And so we just need to look for an answer and it may or may not work and, and so we're gonna test it and then adjust on what we, all the feedback that we get back so we can change our opinions because too many people are just opining about things.
Mm-hmm. And not. Is it [00:41:00] rooted in truth? so that's, that's really good. So, Aldo, man, I really appreciate you. you have been a blessing in my life and, and I love working with you every day.
So Aldo, if people wanna find out more about you, what are the, how do they contact you? You can find me on bwp coach.com and my email on there is [email protected].
Thank you so much, Aldo, and you have a great day. You too. Thank you.
