Sam Penny (00:00)
Welcome back to Built to Sell, Built to Buy. I'm your host, Sam Penny. And today we're exploring what it really takes to build businesses and people that last. My guest today is John Solleder an entrepreneur, author, mentor, speaker, whose 40 year career has been devoted to one thing, helping people unlock their potential. From humble beginnings in New Jersey to becoming one of the most respected leadership educators in the world.
John has spent decades building people-driven scalable enterprises and coaching thousands to do the same. He's the author of Leaving Nothing to Chance and Equity, host of the long running Leave Nothing to Chance podcast, and a firm believer that success isn't luck, it's design. In this episode, we'll unpack what John has learned about leadership, discipline, personal growth, and creating long-term enterprise value by building people first.
So if you've ever wondered how to grow a business that scales beyond you, attracts the right people and endures through generations, this one's for you. John, welcome to the show.
John Solleder (01:04)
Well, thank you so much, Sam. listen to all that. get tired, you know, it's like, man, who's this guy?
Sam Penny (01:08)
He sounds all right. Now,
John, you spent over four decades building people, businesses all over the world. I want you to take us back. How did it really start for you? Was there a defining moment early on in your career when you realized that your life's work would be better spent in helping people grow?
John Solleder (01:28)
Absolutely. 1983, I'm about to get out of college. Can't find my first job, kind of looking and the economy kind of was not doing real well in the United States at that point or the world for that matter. And April 83, a friend of mine introduces me to my first network marketing business. Do nothing about network marketing. I'd never heard of Amway or any of those companies, Shackley, Mary Kay. Never heard of them. Just for whatever reason, I was young, for one thing.
And by May 18th of 83, the first defining moment happened, and that's that Ronald Reagan was the commencement speaker at my college commencement.
And Reagan talked about two things that impacted me heavily that day. one, the fact that capitalism frees more people than any other ism on earth. It's not perfect, but it's the best ism of all for a lot of reasons. He talked about the fact that the West, the East Germans wanted what the West Germans were already starting to get in terms of everything from clothing, the food, music, et cetera. And then it eventually would happen. And it did.
the fall of the Iron Curtain. But secondly, what got me on a personal level, Sam, was he talked about mentorship. That in 1932, when he himself could not find a job, height of the depression, had just finished college, had returned back to Illinois to be a lifeguard, that he ran into a successful businessman. And that that man counseled him and said, find a mentor who could teach you a business that you're passionate about.
And he did, and in his case, it was broadcasting and the rest, as they say, is history. So I felt like the president of the United States spoke directly to me. 4,000 people in the audience, but I felt like he and I were having a conversation like you and I are having. 30 days later, the second thing happens. I go to Hartford, Connecticut for the first ever real business meeting I'm ever at. Didn't even own a suit at the time or a tie. I had to go buy one at Kmart.
Sam Penny (03:26)
Haha.
John Solleder (03:28)
and i go to this meeting and the fellow doing the meeting says for things to change you have to change it for things to get better you have to get better and see sam at that point in my life i felt like hey i had been born on the wrong side of the tracks my parents were working people they weren't business people they weren't educated ⁓ you know my girlfriend was wrong my sisters were wrong the economy was wrong everything was wrong
and when that guy said things change you have to change things get better you have to get better i said you first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to go to the public library on monday
And I'm going to study everything I can. Now they didn't call it self-development back then, but I'm going to find people about self-help. And I found books by people like Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Earl Nightingale and Mary Kay Ash and others. And those books started to kind of get my thinking right in terms of the fact that I needed to be the brand. I needed to work on John. I didn't need to work on my network marketing business per se or my business per se. I needed to work on me as the brand. And that's what's let me
you
not only counsel tens of thousands of people around the world in network marketing and another business for that matter, mostly network marketing, but I've counseled people in other businesses to do that because I tell them, the first thing you got to do is work on you. Success is an inside job. Okay. I can't make you successful. You can make you successful, but you got to do the work. You got to read the books. You got to listen to the podcast. You got to go to the meetings. You got to ask the questions. got to do all the stuff that successful people have done for generations.
And it's not hard, but you got to do the heavy lifting and the work on you.
Sam Penny (05:10)
So in your
early years, you really learned to sell lead, you built teams and that's one of the things about network marketing. It's all about building teams in particular. And you really have to have so much belief and persistence in yourself to be able to constantly push through. So what lessons in those early formative years did you learn about really resilience and growth?
John Solleder (05:37)
Number one was to get successful work habits, one of which was getting up early.
Okay. And that just kind of sounds funny, but I still to this day, I get up early. I'm up most days by 5 a.m. and I'm either at the gym or I'm reading or I'm starting to work on my day early. And I started to develop that habit early on in my sales career was to get up early and to get ahead of the day. A lot of time, just so I didn't have the noise of phone calls or, you know, those, those days weren't emails today. Of course there's emails and there's all this other communication kind of to
get ahead of the day, found out that by getting early, I added at least two hours of productivity to my day. And that doesn't sound like a big deal on an individual day, but compound that six days a week, that's 12 hours a week, that's 48 hours a month, that I'm working normally more than my competitors necessarily are.
So that being the case, I always felt like I had that extra time to work on the things that I needed to work on, being on self-development, being on my personal fitness journey, being on my health, or just being on my business that, I need to read something, I need to understand something, or for that matter, as my businesses grew internationally and I do business like yourself all over the place, all over the world.
uh... you know that uh... i could be on the phone call at you six o'clock in the morning with somebody in the philippines where it's you know seven o'clock at night or i could be on the phone to germany where it's six hours ahead of where i am here in dallas for example and i can be ahead of the day as opposed to getting up later
But yeah, basically, you know, to get up early, work early. Okay, number one. Number two is to not waste a bunch of time in my day with things that are not business development related. What do I mean by that? When I read, it's got something to do with my business, okay, or with something that's going to enhance my life. I don't read Harlequin Romances, for example.
⁓ Jim Rohn always said you can get nutrition from a half-eaten sandwich thrown in the garbage can, but why would you want the reputation? Well, it's the same thing with your mind. What you let in your mind is very, very important. I always want it to be about creativity, about business, about going forward, about achievement, and about constantly the next thing. Now, as my businesses have evolved over the years, and I'll give you an example.
When I started in 1983, just about all business was word of mouth.
By 85, that started to change a little bit because stores like Kinko's and Home Depot started to, or business depot started to open up and you could get flyers printed very inexpensively, for example. So you could advertise all of a sudden besides the newspaper, which was expensive. You could go and buy flyers and get like four on a sheet that they would cut for you this way. Right. And you'd get like 4,000 flyers for the price of a thousand flyers. So all of a sudden, you know, you had the ability to advertise
little bit. So that became part of my business. Then I started to study direct mail. Okay, it was like, well, okay, how about direct mailing, for example, I started to create systems and study other people who were already doing direct mail successfully, not only network marketing, but another field. So I started to apply that to my business. Then of course, by about 1989, is when cassette tapes became popular. And you could go into a studio or just like you and I are right now, I can interview you or you can interview me and you know, before you know what we
a cassette tape telling a story about a product or a brand or a network marketing
opportunity. That was something I took advantage of and I started to become very big in the tape duplication business. As matter of fact, had over a million tapes go out with my name on them in less than one year. And that was way back in 1989. And so on and so forth. And then course DVDs came along. And when DVDs came along, they kind of replaced cassette tapes because now all of sudden you plug it into the VCR and wow, you've got a presentation done professionally each and every time. That created what was called
Sam Penny (09:27)
Wow.
John Solleder (09:46)
universal access because whether you were in the Gold Coast or whether you were in Dallas and you put that thing in, it was the same presentation, right? Just like a movie, for example. So that became kind of the next step. And then what happened from there? You know, number of different steps in between. But all of a sudden over the last couple of years, what happened in my life was
COVID comes along, 2019. I've got this book ready to come out, moving up 2020, right? 2020 gonna be a great year. got a glass of my beer. Gonna be this amazing year for me and for the world in marketing. And we're going to 2020, the 20s, right? And of course I got this book coming out on the tail end of that in February of 2020. And what happens? COVID.
Sam Penny (10:18)
Hahaha.
John Solleder (10:34)
So I have to apply another business principle that I believe all of us have to apply at some point in our business. So that's called a pivot. So what can I do? I can cry about the fact that I've got thousands of books printed, okay, sitting in warehouses. Now all of a sudden the 60 cities I'm supposed to go and speak at over the next year aren't going to happen. Right? Obviously that's all canceled because of COVID. What am I going to do? I pivoted.
And I created a podcast which still exists today. We've done about 250 of them so far and counting. So that's kind of where the pivot came in. About a year ago is where agility came in. Okay. And I believe pivoting and agility are really, really important in business. Agility came in, you know, the agility is what, you know, think of it in the sports sense, go back and forth, go forward and back. Agility came in where all of a sudden I started to say, Hey, I keep hearing about AI.
And what am I doing with it? Am I going to ignore it because I'm in my sixties and I'm technically getting to the tail end of my business life, right? And maybe my life life, who knows, right? Hopefully not. But all of a sudden, ironically, just about a year ago, Sam, I get an email from a guy and it's this really well crafted email. And the guy says, Hey, I'd love to be on your show and blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know, terrific.
And I interviewed this guy and he says, what do you think of my email? I said, wow, well, first of all, thank you. Cause I had had a show where I had 52,000 people listen to it. So he had talked about that specific show, which I knew was a huge show. And anyway, he referenced that show. He said, what'd you think of my email? said, boy, I thought it was great. I said, did you not write it? He said, no. I said, you got a virtual assistant? No. He goes, I do, but they didn't write it. goes, AI wrote it.
And I did one of those, I was like, wait a minute. AI wrote that, that's better than any human being could write. So all of a sudden I started to use AI, not only for my podcast, but for all of my businesses. Now I'm using it to do some, what I call ghost writing. Okay. For specific subjects, sales letters that are going out for a variety of different businesses for clients. I've got clients that, that, you know, come to me to do direct.
you know, response type of things where I'm actually doing it for them and I'm using AI to do it. Okay. Now don't use AI to do it all. It still has to be personalized, you know, to them. But at the end of the day, I started to use AI and all of these different
endeavors that if you had talked to me two years ago, I probably would have said, well, AI is for young people and it's great and it's here to stay. But at end of the day, I started to apply it. And that's where the agility came in, was having the agility to say, even in my 60s, that I see the need for AI. I see the application of AI. I see the growth in AI. I see the possibilities with AI. Now, the other thing I'll caution for people that may be a little bit older.
in your audience Sam don't let it scare you okay we hear all the numbers that it's going to replace 300 million jobs that's probably a true number let's hope it's not but in reality we know it's already replacing jobs
Embrace it and use it and find out how you can apply it either in your current business or if your current business becomes obsolete. For example, you're an Uber driver and you're going to be replaced by a robot. Okay, fine and dandy. Find something to sell, find something to market, find something that you're passionate about. Like President Reagan told myself and 4,000 people way back in 1983.
find something and then use AI to help you advance very, quickly in that pursuit. And you can do that today so much better than you could even a year or two years ago. And, and, you know, down the road, who knows, right? But I mean, it's only going to get better, but that's my message to all business people is don't be afraid of these things. Use them, you know, flyers, flyers didn't replace talking to people, but they helped talking to people. Cassette tapes didn't replace flyers. They helped talking to people.
DVDs didn't replace cassette tapes, they helped talking to people and so on and so forth. And AI is going to help you to talk to more people, more prospects for your particular thing that you're selling or marketing or your service or whatever it is that you happen to be doing. It's going to help you if you embrace it and use it properly as opposed to fearing it and saying, yeah, I just want to pretend it doesn't exist. It does exist. It's reality. Deal with it.
Sam Penny (15:08)
So
John, look, I've been running my own companies for about 25 years, which feels like an absolute eternity. And as a marketer, I've always been sold into the shiny tools. When everything new comes along, whether it's TV, whether it's flyers, whether it's direct mail, whether it's internet marketing and now AI and all the tools that it provides. But all of that is great.
Except if you don't understand what your core values are and your brand values are, then you're really wasting your time wasting your money. So how did the brand values and your own personal core values deliver the value that you're expecting out of these tools?
John Solleder (15:54)
Well, I mean, first of all, I think you still have to personalize things. OK, it still needs a personal touch. What I tell people is you use AI. Well, let me back up for a second. Years ago, I was living in New York state and I actually used to enjoy cutting my own lawn on a Saturday afternoon just for exercise, because a lot of times I was traveling during the week. I was staying in hotels. I was sitting a lot. It was like a Saturday. I get out, you know, push the lawnmower, be outside.
And I was making at the time, was making about $50,000 a month US at the time. And I was talking to my mentor one afternoon and he said, what are you doing? I said, I'm just cutting the lawn. said, you're cutting your own lawn. Why are you doing that? I said, well, you know, cause I enjoy it and I'm outside. goes, okay, but, let me, let me give you an example. He
He said, what are you making right now? And I gave him that number. And he said, OK, so that's about, I don't know, $1,600, $1,700 a day. Take out eight hours for sleep, eight hours for everything else. Let's say you worked eight hours during the course of the day. You're making about $200 an hour, let's OK, because what would it cost you to hire a landscaper? $50 an hour.
He said, you'd be ahead of the game about 150 an hour. If you make 200, you pay another guy 50 to cut the lawn, you're ahead 150. What could you do with that hour? Could you make one good contact? I said, of course I could. He said, you got to get your thinking right. And he was right in what he was saying. Okay, once again, I enjoyed cutting the lawn. Don't get me wrong. And if you're doing it for exercise, great, because I'm all about exercise as well.
But at the end of the day, his point was, let other people do what they can do, let them do. You do what only you can do in your business. And that's my suggestion with AI or any technology. Don't lose the personal touch that you have with your customers.
about what it is that you're doing and the philosophy of your brand. What's the philosophy of your brand? Okay. If you're driving that, then only you can make that particular presentation or representation to that individual that or that couple or that family, or, know, depending on what you're selling or, know, to another company for that matter, if you're dealing B2B. And at the end of the day, okay, don't lose that, but use those AI tools to get you more people to talk to.
That's really the thing. If you're talking to five people a day and you can talk to 10, well guess what? You're probably going to double your production by talking to 10. Okay. Use it for that. Just like using that landscaper would let me go talk to somebody about my business that I could only, I could talk about. couldn't pay the landscaper to talk about my business, but I could pay him to cut my lawn was the point. And that's kind of how I see AI is let it do the heavy lifting that you don't want to do.
Sam Penny (18:38)
Okay.
John Solleder (18:44)
But you do what only you can do in your business, which is to represent your brand and your company and your product or whatever it is that you're selling in a very succinct professional way so that the person on the other end says, hey, at the end of the day, I get it, Sam. We got here because of AI, but we're here because of Sam. OK, Sam, what do you got?
type of thing. don't lose that. If we lose that, then we're really losing something I think that potentially is dangerous in business. We've got to keep that in mind as we go forward using these tools, because the tools are only going to get better. And I'll give you another example. ⁓ Ray Kurzweil, who's one of the brains behind AI originally, very famous scientist. I was at an event he did here in the States a couple weeks ago with Steve Ioki.
And he put up a graph about the calculations per second that are being done by AI. And the fact that in 2024, where this graph was created, that the calculations are already ahead of where they thought they were going to be in 2030. So all these great mathematicians and actuaries and these super smart people who do these projections.
are basically about five plus years ahead of where they had projected that they were going to be, which means AI is growing faster than anybody anticipated. Well, that's a good thing in a lot of respects, but
Don't let it catch you up in such a way that you're not prepared to still present who you are and why it is somebody should buy from you or do business with you. Okay, because otherwise we just become commodities in business and nobody needs any of us. They can just buy from the robots. So I don't think we're quite there yet. Maybe the next generation will be our kids may be at that level, but I don't believe we're at that level right now.
Sam Penny (20:38)
Tell me John, do you still cut your own grass?
John Solleder (20:41)
No, my wife won't let me. I'd love to. I love being outside.
Sam Penny (20:46)
I think it's one of
those things. I enjoy cutting the grass because the drone of the mower, you're outside, it's a warm day, and it is a great little escape. You touched on a very interesting point just before, John, where your marketing is all about that direct message to someone to really invoke an emotion in someone. And I often say that a brand is a smile in the mind. Ronald Reagan, obviously,
a great marketer being able to direct a message, not to 4000 people, but to you personally, and for you know, 3990 people, it may not have hit. But with you that marketing message really hit home. How have you taken that style of one on one, even though you marketing to the masses? How have you taken that ability of what you first recognized in Reagan?
to now market one-on-one to really pull the heartstrings to invoke an emotion in people through mass marketing.
John Solleder (21:54)
Well, I think the first thing is that you have to have a sincerity about what it is that you sell. know, everything that I'm associated with, I believe in. Okay. Like, for example, one of my businesses deals with a very specific health related product, for example. And I've been part of that product for 29 years. Okay. I worked directly with three of the scientists that developed it. So I really understand it. So when I talk about it, I'm very, very passionate about it because I understand why people need
it. Okay, so it's not a sales pitch that maybe somebody else in my company has a sales pitch today because they didn't know those people. I can tell them what the doctors
research actually said what they thought, what kind of people they were, what they ate for lunch for that matter, because I spent that much time with them, for example. Okay. If I go back in time before I worked with, with that's what a glutathione supplement before that, I worked with one of the people who brought creatine to the United States from Russia. Okay. Another famous doctor from, from Moscow. ⁓ same thing. I spent so much time with him and I understood what he was doing. So, and before that I worked with herbs. So I've worked with three different product
categories in nutrition that had become very vogue, but I worked with some of the originators Okay, not that they created anything they found all this man herbs been around thousands of years creatine has for that matter so has glutathione for that matter
but they found delivery systems and did research with it so I can say, let me tell you, okay, what Dr. Volkoff had to say or Dr. Bunoz had to say, you know, or Dr. Droga had to say about this or that. And I can do it from a personalized standpoint. Now that's an advantage to me, but the thing is this, once you hear me say that,
You can use that same story without ever having to have met those individuals who unfortunately have all passed away. Okay. And I'll go one step further. The great Jim Rohn right? Everybody in marketing talks about Jim. knew Jim. Okay. And Jim was a great guy. So I worked down here in Dallas with a guy who had done some writing for Jim, a guy who actually helped him put together the seasons of life. A by the name of Ron Reynolds.
And Ron says to me one day, do you want to have lunch with Jim? Now there's a million guys named Jim in the world, Jim who? goes, Jim Rohn. go, well, yeah, let me check my calendar, see if I can get free lunch. Jim Rohn, come on. I mean, next to Jesus, it's like, in marketing, it's like, Jim's about as big as you're going to get. So we go to lunch. And I'll never forget this, Sam. And it's a great marketing thing for your audience. We're sitting there, and I'm about 35 at the time.
Sam Penny (24:11)
Hehehe
the
John Solleder (24:34)
and and ron and the other guy got him charlie ragas they were in their 50s and jim we finished lunch jim looks up and he says now listen john well actually call me by my last name mr Solleder mr Solleder he said i can't help these two guys they're probably past being helped but i can still help you and i knew where he was going nobody was taking notes
I run to my car, you would have thought I was Usain Bolt. I ran to my car, I bring back my day timer, what I would call a day timer, right? Some people call it a diary anyway, something to write in. And anyway, I start taking notes. He said, just don't write down everything I say. He goes, that's not the point of everything I say. goes, the point is this. Let's say the waiter comes over and the waiter says something so profound, something so business changing, life changing, and you don't write it down.
Sam Penny (25:06)
Yep.
John Solleder (25:26)
and you get your car you go home and and all of a sudden eight nine o'clock tonight you start thinking you know that waiter said a really important thing and you say i'm gonna go back to that restaurant the next day and i'm gonna ask that waiter what he said and you come back and the waiter quit it's gone forever whereas if you wrote down what the waiter said and say well hold on waiter you just said this or that you wrote it down it becomes yours and that's the point with all marketing messages
Okay, is it they become your message? You know, Jim Rohn's gone. Zig Ziegler's gone. Earl Nightingale's gone. Mary Kay's gone. Mark Hughes is gone. All these great orators are gone. Bob Proctor. mean, all the greats. Okay, there's a few left, but for the most part, a lot of the greats are gone. Jim's gone. But what they said lives on past them because people like me and you and others took notes. We wrote down what they said and then we passed it along.
You know, like that for things to change, you got to change for things to get better. You got to get better. I say that people think I made that up. I didn't make that up. Matter of fact, Larry Thompson, who said that he didn't make that up either. Jim Rohn said that 40 or 50 years ago, and it's been passed along generationally, probably in 50 languages. And it's a life changing thing. Does it matter who said it first? Not really. Okay. What matters is if somebody adopts it into their life, into their business.
and gets an advantage out of it as opposed to the guy who just says, that's nice words, let's just pass. So don't let these things pass because these things are things that can build your business and your life.
Sam Penny (27:00)
you
John Solleder (27:08)
to more successful than you are currently. So take advantage of them by taking notes. I mean, if you came to my messy office here, you'd find day timers and yellow pads with all sorts of information on them from all sorts of people. By the way, not always the Jim Rohns or the famous people. Sometimes it's just something somebody said that I'll write it down and I'll say, wow, that really made sense. And I might even go back and read it a year, two years, five years later and just say, hmm.
how does that apply to my business or my situation now? And of course, when you do a lot of writing, a lot of copywriting, you're always looking for ideas, something that's gonna ⁓ get the gray matter up here going. But even if you don't do a lot of writing, if you're in small business, like you and I are, Sam, you're always looking for ideas. You're always looking for strategies and tactics and things that are gonna...
You know say hey, what if I said this what if I wrote this what if I advertised this? What if I put this out into cyberspace? What would happen to my business? What would the effect of that be right? So we're always looking for those bits of wisdom We can't make them all up and you can't think of them all yourself So take advantage of other people's knowledge and information. You're never gonna live long enough to think of all of it yourself
Sam Penny (28:25)
Yeah, my I remember back ⁓ my youngest when he did his first athletics carnival, he was five. And he said two profound things to me, which I wrote down and I've shared a few times. The first one was the faster you go, the faster you win. Holy shit, that's pretty profound. But also the other one was, if you look around, you lose the race.
If you're looking always at your competitors, what are they doing? Why, you know, I need to be more like them. And you're not focused on being different on being, you know, and when you're not focused on what the end goal is, what the target is, you lose the race. And I thought, from a five year old in the backseat of the car as we drive, he fell asleep five minutes later. But you're right. ⁓ There are pockets of gold all around us. And like the way that you that you mentioned,
If you went back to the waiter, that waiter probably would not have remembered that conversation or what he said. But yeah, I find it really important to always write those things down. And I always go everywhere with a piece of paper or a notepad and a pen because you write stuff down and it then cements itself in your mind. Now, you're talking about habit, you're talking about mindset shifts. So what is it then, John, that really separates the good from the great in business?
What would that be?
John Solleder (29:52)
Well, first of all, if you're building an organization, having the right butts in the seats on the proverbial bus. Now, Jim Collins, that's something that he wrote about in good to great built to last, but it makes total sense. If you look at the great organizations, for example, right now there's a company called Nvidia Nvidia now a trillion dollar company about to be a $4 trillion company actually, depending on stock value.
Now, Nvidia has put the right bots in the right seats on the bus. Okay. You look at Jeff Bezos with Amazon, same thing. You look at some Elon Musk's companies, same thing. You look at the great companies in the world and they have great people in strategic positions.
And that's everything from probably the person in the warehouse. I'll give you a fast example from a personal experience. When I first came down here to Dallas many years ago to help run a company.
I noticed that I would go in the warehouse and I would smell marijuana. And it bothered me at a number of levels. But it didn't bother me from the standpoint of somebody was smoking marijuana, okay, fine, that's their thing, ⁓ whatever.
all of a sudden i start to get reports from people getting their inventory that it looks like somebody was taking the the the supplements and supplement company and literally throwing the product in the box now wait a minute there i do have a problem because i get paid on those people so i did some some not fake orders they real orders but i didn't order to my mom was alive in new jersey and another one to a friend of mine down in florida
And I said, do me a favor. This was in the day, Sam, remember the Polaroid cameras? You'd take the picture and would like, and the picture come out, right? And it was like so cool. You had a picture instantaneously. So I said to both, these women, my mom and my friend Clarice, I said, me a favor, take a picture, mail it back to us. I'll reimburse you the, you know, the, the money for getting the picture down here fast, right? You know, use the post office, get it down here in a day or two.
Sam Penny (31:40)
Yeah. ⁓
John Solleder (32:00)
And in both cases, it looked like the product had literally been thrown into the box, like somebody had just thrown it in the box. I went to the owner of the company and I said, hey, Charlie, if we do everything right and our distributors do everything right, and you and I do everything right as executives, and the doctors do everything right presenting the product,
and some kid smoking a joint in the warehouse, throws the product in the box and it looks like you know what, when the person on the other end gets it and they've spent hundreds of dollars for our product. We got a problem. So I agree. Long story short, we did a little bit more investigation and we we found out the person doing this and we fired them, as we should have. And my point about that is, you could do everything right.
and some kid on the end of the production so to speak throws the product in the box wrong or runs over it okay or does whatever puts a crushed bottle in the box you know whatever they do and all of a sudden all of those good efforts by all those other people and by the way all that expense to get that person to buy that product you've lost and you're never going to get a repeat order okay
Well, the smart people in business, number one, they won't put up with that. And number two, they check everything. once again, it goes back to having the right seats, you know, the right people with the right butts in the right seats on the bus. The person that's running logistics, for example, in that case, would catch something like that in a good company, right? And every other thing along the line from legal,
to inventory management, to accounting, know, every facet of the business has to be right to make a great company. And we're seeing great companies today. Look at some of the stock valuations of your Amazons and your Teslas and your Nvidia's and some of these companies that are astronomical, the returns that they're giving to investors. Why are they doing that? Because those companies hired the right people.
And if they, by the way, when they hire the wrong people, they don't hesitate to get that person out of that seat and put somebody else in that seat, even if it's the CEO. Okay. Now let's flip the switch for a minute. We talked a little bit about my waiter example. Okay. Well, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's.
Sam Penny (34:10)
Hmm.
John Solleder (34:21)
Ray Kroc used to give a scholarship to somebody who came up with a good idea that the company incorporated. So there was a young man who was throwing out the rolls at the end of his shift one night and decided to take a couple rolls home. Young kid says to his mom, hey mom, why don't you make an egg sandwich on this tomorrow morning? And she did. At that point, McDonald's was not open to my knowledge for breakfast. He wrote a letter to Mr. Kroc and he said, why don't we take these rolls that we're discarding?
why don't we make breakfast? Ray Kroc said, yeah, why not? Like throw an egg on there and a piece of ham or something and before you know it, you got an egg sandwich. You have a whole nother area of income for the franchisees as well as the corporation. And I assume he gave that kid whatever $25,000 I think was what it was. read it in Kroc's book many years ago. But the point is this, a good idea.
can come from the waiter. It could come from the guy discarding the roles. It doesn't have to come from the CEO or the C-suite. Most of the best ideas in any business come from the normal rank and file person associated with that business, be it as a customer.
Or be it somewhere along the food chain, okay? It doesn't have to come from the C-suite. Sometimes we think in the C-suite, okay, which I'm not in anymore. I just work for me now. I don't work for anybody. I've got clients. I don't work for anybody else. But when I did, we always thought, well, we're going to figure it out. Hey, they're going to figure it out and tell us. And we need to incorporate what they're telling us as long as it makes sense. And the smart companies are doing that and the unwise companies, well, they're not doing that. They're not listening to people.
Sam Penny (35:59)
Yeah, you look at Apple, for example, Steve Jobs, people often think Steve Jobs, he's the guy who built Apple, the guy was a great visionary, but you need a an amazing team with the ideas around you to be able to create what Apple is today.
Now, one of the things that you've often said is that success leaves clues. So what are some of the clues that really tell you someone's on the right track to build something great?
John Solleder (36:26)
Well, success does leave clues. And what I mean by that is, OK, there's a persistency to success. Success doesn't happen because you get lucky. It might. You might be that lucky person who brings somebody. But the fact that I've had four network marketing companies that I've gotten to the top rank in.
is by design. Why have I been able to attract the other top people in those respective companies over the years? Okay. Is because I led by example. People knew I was sponsoring people constantly. They knew I was leading from the front. They knew I always had conference calls. I always had training calls. I was always traveling and driving sales.
So when somebody looked at my business, okay, they said, well, I need to be on John's team because I know I'm going to get not only support from John, but John's going to figure out the cookie cutter to make the business successful that I can follow suit and incorporate in my business. And I think that's why, you know, not only have I been successful in four different network marketing companies, most people, if they've been successful in one, they've been lucky. The fact that I've been able to do it four times and I've been able to teach it to other people that have gone on, you
example, I was with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago, he's got over a million people in his network now in a company at Oklahoma. Okay. And he, and I said to him, why do think you've done that? goes, cause you showed me how early on how to do what you did. And I just incorporated it and I did it, you know? And so I've had people that do the same thing. So success leaves clues. Okay. Look for successful people and ask them questions. You know, one of the things that I, and for the sake of time, Sam, I won't re-mention all the people I mentioned, but all those great orators that I
that. Okay, Zig, Jim Rohn, Mark Hughes, it's all the great ones. Okay, they were all really good people.
They cared about people being successful. Okay. Now, did that mean that they wasted a bunch of time talking to people who weren't serious about their business? No. It meant that they were very matter of fact about things, but they laid out cookie cutters that were successful that other people could adopt into their respective business and run up the flagpole with. Okay. And that to me is what I've wanted to be. I haven't wanted to be a guy who I don't necessarily want to be somebody's friend, but if I want to lead them
in business I got to lead myself and they go hey you know what that guy's gonna go to the top of the mountain I'm gonna follow him and he's either gonna be dead at the bottom because he's gonna fall off the mountain or he's gonna be at the top waving I want to be with him okay that's leadership be it in business be it in government be it in athletics be it in any pursuit life okay is to be successful you've got to have that attitude I'm going to the top you want to come with me plenty of room at the top okay
Not easy to get there, but there's plenty of room at the top. can go together. Okay. But let's go. Don't be holding me back with a million different, you know, reasons why we can't do what we're going to do. The people you're interviewing on your other show, I'm sure every one of has got that attitude, frankly, you know, and you got to have that in business that, Hey, I'm going to, I didn't know what I could or couldn't do when I started in 1983, honestly, but all I knew was I saw other people that were achieving. said, if they can do what I could do. When I went to that meeting in Hartford, I was a kid.
Most of the people in that room were 10 to 20 years older than me and I saw people making crazy incomes and I was like well they can do it why can't I do it? No different. I put my pants on the same way they do you know and that philosophically is what I've adopted and done for you know four generations now.
Sam Penny (40:01)
One of the key things, John, that I'm hearing through this conversation is use the word always and always really refers to consistency. And that's one of the things that you've shown across your 40 year career. Getting up at 5 a.m., whether it's training, whether it's learning, you're driven, you're disciplined. And you seem...
even more disciplined today than what you were 40 years ago. So have you really maintained that level of focus and energy over such a long period without getting burned out?
John Solleder (40:36)
Well, first of all, you got to keep healthy physically.
Okay. You got to keep going to the gym or, you know, for me, it's the gym for somebody else might be the pool. might be the cycling. might be golfing. might be tennis, might be, whatever. Find something athletically that you can always be pursuing. Okay. That's one thing is you got to keep yourself physically healthy. Secondly, as you get older, you got to keep yourself mentally healthy. Okay. And the way to do that is what I call the tennis match. You've got to talk to other people. You can't watch a lot of television, for example. Okay.
You have to have interactive conversation with people where you know, like the show we're doing right now Sam, you're saying stuff when you say enough the synapse in my brain response and vice versa, right? That's good for our brains. So that's something that we have to do One of our big universities here in the states for example are now building condominiums for retired Alumni that they can buy why so that they can actually take classes or go and listen to lectures
of people who come to that particular university. Well, why is that? To keep the brain working. So that's really important, not only as we age, but in business to constantly keep the ideas coming. Okay? Keep the flow of ideas coming. Third thing is, I work every single day in my business. I never forget, okay, that...
What is given okay to me the gifts that were given to me by my mentors by people who taught me business. Okay, we didn't take it lightly. I take it very, very serious what I do every single day and then I'm leading a lot of young people. Okay. One of things I do is I coach a lot of 20 somethings and in coaching a lot of 20 somethings. Okay. I got to be sharp as a tack because you know, they've got everything else going for them and good health and everything else. Right. But I know if I'm going to lead those 20 somethings so
that when they're at this age down the road that they're leading the twenty something stand i've got to keep my mind sharp okay i gotta keep up on information all right the fact that i can talk about a company like Nvidia that a lot of people my age are not have any idea who that company even is
you gotta keep contemporary in your thinking and in the information that you read and that you listen to so that you can have a good conversation with people. Can you know it all? No, of course not. But you can know what you know and you can become authoritative in what you know and you can teach what you know to that next generation and they can do with it whatever they're gonna do with it.
Sam Penny (43:06)
Now, one of the things is that health and fitness is so important to you, which you've mentioned a few times. At one point, I read that you lost 90 pounds and in kilograms, what's that 30, 35 kilograms, something like that. I'm not quite sure maybe 45.
John Solleder (43:23)
2.2 about 40 kilo yeah about 40 kilo yeah
Sam Penny (43:26)
40 kilograms,
that's a lot. what was there a turning point where you just go, shit, I need to lose this weight.
John Solleder (43:33)
Well, what happened was this, okay, I, for years, I, I played judo competitively for many years and there's no weight limit in judo. You can weigh 300, you can weigh 400, you can weigh 500, you can weigh 250. If you're over 220, you're a heavyweight. So it doesn't really matter what your weight, right? And, uh, I started having kids in my early forties, okay, with my, my, now wife who's younger than me.
and i started finishing everything that she didn't finish when she was pregnant and before i knew it i i gained weight well all of a sudden i was getting busier and busier with all the different businesses we were involved with and before i knew it the weight started to come on so i never had to make weight so i walk around about 280 to 90 before i knew it i was up to 333
I'll never forget stepping on a scale of 333 pounds. I said, that's a lot. That's not healthy. And I'm going to die between stress and weight. And ⁓ I decided, believe it or not, to go vegetarian. And I changed my diet. This was eight years ago now. OK, then I changed my diet eight years ago in October. And from there, I eventually went vegan. So now my diet consists of tons of fruit.
some vegetables, some legumes occasionally, very little cooked food. I'm not a big fan of cooked foods. I eat some, you know, rice occasionally and things like that. But for the most part, I changed my diet because I knew I had to not only to live, but also to feel better. Secondly, the inflammation.
from all the years judo and jiu-jitsu, wrestling, powerlifting, every sport I did was tough on the body. Sambo, which is Russian wrestling. I never picked the sports that weren't easy. I picked the sports that were super...
aggressive, let's put it that way. And, and by the way, I earned my black belts in both judo and, and Jiu-Jitsu while I was building all these companies, by the way. So we're talking about discipline, how to go to classes. Okay. Had to compete, competed internationally. We went all over the world to compete, et cetera, et cetera. So that was part of the discipline too, a business. But as far as the weight, I just decided, Hey, I can't be this kind of weight. The inflammation is going to kill me.
Plus, you know, it's just uncomfortable. I live in Dallas. It's hot most of the year. You you walk outside and you're covered with sweat. It's like, don't want to live like that. You know, so that was a decision too that I made. And I applied a lot of the same things I do in business. Discipline in terms of my food, discipline in terms of my exercise. The exercise was always there. But Jack Lillane, the great Jack Lillane had a statement that I didn't adopt until the last eight years. And that was that.
You know, exercise is king, nutrition is queen. You put them together, you build a kingdom. Even though I was always good with my supplements, I wasn't good with my food. Okay. All of a sudden I became good with my food. And once I did, you know, the weight came off and I, and I've kept it off and I, know, I, I'm to do that the rest of my life.
Sam Penny (46:16)
I like that.
So then let's talk about your daily habits being the foundation of your success. What are really the non-negotiables in your own day?
John Solleder (46:38)
Got to work out every day. Got to do something. Got to move the body. Okay. At least 45 minutes to an hour. Okay. In the morning. If I get a chance to do a second workout in the afternoon, I'll do that, but at least one workout a day, seven days a week, no days off. Okay. I don't believe in that. You got to rest. Yeah. If you're going hard in a sport, you're training at a super high level. Yes, you do need that rest. You don't need that when you get older and you're just training for the sake of training.
Secondly, find something in that exercise routine that you like to do on a regular basis. Okay. Once again, some guys like tennis, some guys like golf, some guys like cycling, some guys like walking, some guys like whatever. Find a thing that you like me. I love to lift weights. Okay. And I love to cycle. Okay. So I cycle quite a bit, but I also incorporate that four days a week with pure stretching. actually do stretching classes at a place called hot works. Okay. I've got a mat. It's kind of like glorified yoga, if you will.
but I stretch because that's just, you know, once again, great for my particular body with some of the things that I've had of spinal surgery and other surgeries as well. That's a non-negotiable, okay? Even when I travel, and I don't travel that much anymore, but when I do, if I have a flight at 10 o'clock in the morning, I'll go to the gym at 4 o'clock in the morning. I have to do that once again, not only to keep my body healthy, but to keep my brain healthy, okay? That's number one. Number two,
I don't get caught up in negative conversation. ⁓ does it mean I don't have uncomfortable conversations? Cause in business you always do. And you know, being an entrepreneur, what I'm talking about, there's things that are uncomfortable finance or, whatever this bill or that bill or whatever, those are uncomfortable. But what I don't do is I don't let people have space in my head. When I was younger, I did. Okay. Like for example, I went through a very negative thing in June.
Sam Penny (48:15)
Mm-hmm.
John Solleder (48:30)
Okay. Within the executive in a, network marketing company who just talked to me, like he didn't even know who I was. And he just talked to me in a very rude way. My first reaction was. I could take this guy and I can throw them around like I would a ragdoll or I can blow them off and not let them live in my head. And I eliminated him and his company from my thinking. I haven't talked to this man since. Okay. Nor will I ever. Okay.
I cannot give him, there's only so much room up here. It's gotta be with positive thoughts, positive people, positive things. Okay, doesn't mean that I live in La La Land, but I cannot let that person or that type of thing can get into my head, okay? Because I have too many good things that could go on in my head and too many positive influences and too many positive people to work with.
to that one individual who doesn't even know what they're doing, frankly, and has been Peter principled into their job, frankly, own space in my head. I cannot allow that under any circumstance. Now, sometimes that's a family member. Sometimes that's not even a business thing. Sometimes that's a family member and it's all negative and all that. Can't let them in. Sorry. No, no, no room up here. There's limited space and it's all rented out already. Okay. I can't let that. And what I do sometimes if I get in that situation, I go listen to Jim Rohn.
or Tony Robbins, okay, or Tom Hopkins or Zig Ziglar I can listen to any of the masters because they all went through that too. They didn't have these lives where everything was great, wonderful. They all had challenges, right? They didn't let those people live in their heads either. I can't let them live in mine.
Sam Penny (50:14)
Now, I want to bring ⁓ that personal discipline that you have back to business because obviously the show is called Built to Sell, Built to Buy, because ultimately culture, leadership, it really determines the enterprise value. Your latest book, it's called Equity, you talk about building long term value, not just income. So what does equity mean to you really in the context of business and life?
John Solleder (50:38)
But equity in the marketplace means what? It means what little space I own in the market with my particular thing, be that my product, my service, or my company. So equity in the marketplace is what I earn by cutting out that little part of the market for my particular thing. That's what equity really is, frankly.
You know, you mentioned Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs did it with Apple in a much bigger way than most people ever will. Okay. But that's really what it comes down to. That means if you're the local insurance agent and you specialize in final expense insurance, because you're really good at that, that everybody in your community knows, hey, you're the guy to go to for that particular thing. If you're the guy with wills and trusts, like my friend in Virginia is, for example, is a master selling wills and trusts.
He's created equity with wills and trust where he's become an expert. It's becoming an authoritative figure in what you do. If you're the best personal trainer at your gym, because you get results for people with as long as they listen to you, obviously, I'm going to get them just coming. They got to do the work, right? Once again, you become that authoritative figure and you earn equity as a result by your reputation that you build that you're the authority figure in that.
And that's what I've done, frankly, with network marketing over these years is, you know, I can talk about it at all levels from corporate to distributor to ownership to investor to consultant. I've done it all. So when you want to talk network marketing, okay, I probably can give you some insight into what it is that you're doing, be it that you're any of those roles within a particular company.
Sam Penny (52:33)
Yeah, and you own the equity in that space. Now, many founders struggle really to create businesses that can run without them. ⁓ From your perspective, because network marketing, it is very much building the systems and giving people the tools to run their own individual businesses, for example. But what are the key ingredients? Do you feel that really can make a business run without that founder?
John Solleder (53:00)
I well okay let's let's go back let's go back to Walt Disney for example okay Disney built a time machine not a watch okay what do I mean by that in any great founder of any great company Sam Walton same thing with Walmart now these guys are gone okay they've been dead for a long time but their businesses are much bigger than they were when those guys were here why
because they built them properly. And once again, how did they build them properly? The right butts at that time when they were running the company, their respective companies, the right people in the right seats on the bus in every area. They didn't use Peter principle. The Peter principle kills businesses.
Putting people in charge, whether you're drinking buddies or your friends, will kill a business. You've got to put the right people in. And sometimes that's uncomfortable because you might even have a family member who says, I thought because I had this last name or that last name ⁓ that I'm going to be there. Look at Ford Motor Company. Ford Motor Company is very, very successful today. The Fords have all had to earn their positions over the years. I have a friend that owns a beer company in Canada.
Same thing, even though the last name is a very famous last name with his particular brand, he shared with me through the years, hey, you start at the bottom. You don't start at the top because your last name happens to be the name on the checks. That's how you build successful brands. You don't do it by bringing your buddies in and saying, well, you need a job. Let me make you CEO or CFO or head of marketing when you don't have any idea what you're doing. You've got to earn it.
Okay. And the smart executives in business and the smart owners, they understand it's all got to be by merit. cannot be by relationship. Okay. That's the difference. think of the great companies, the companies that are sustainable. When I look at the Amway corporation, for example, in network marketing, whatever you think of Amway folks, okay. Step back for a minute. Look at the results growth almost every single year that they've been in business. Okay.
billions and billions and billions and guess what? The two families that still own that company, they got to earn their position. Okay, they don't walk in either and say, well, hey, I'm such as such, I got this last name or that last name. Let me start at the top. No, you got to earn it. Okay. And once again, I don't care what the business is, if it's the local business or the international business that we all know about, you got to earn it and the people that you employ have to earn it. They got to know what they're doing. Otherwise,
You can't employ him. can't employ him because you're your friend or your wife plays bridge with their mom or whatever. It's like, hey, all the wrong reasons. Got to employ him because they know what they're doing.
Sam Penny (55:52)
So you speak about the right people in the right seats on the bus. And obviously that CEO, the leader is the person driving the bus, steering it in the right direction. How do you see leadership evolving over the next 10 years?
John Solleder (56:07)
First of all, a good leader today needs to understand technology. I don't care if you're picking up garbage or if you're selling pharmaceutical products. You've got to understand technology and what it can do for you, where it can save you money, where it can save you resources, where it can save you, frankly, from having employees versus having robots, for example. That's number one. Number two, though, you've got to realize there's still going to always be a human touch to business. Employ the right people.
have the right people that earn their position within your company, okay? Have them earn it and let other people know that that's the only way in your company to succeed is to earn your seat at the table, so to speak. Third thing, okay? You gotta, you know, we live in, now we call this DEI in the United States, very controversial, okay? So let me make this point. DEI, okay? ⁓
stands for diversity and equity in the marketplace, think is this actual thing that the government calls it, right? And very controversial between Republicans and Democrats. So I'm not making a political point on this, but I'll make this point. Where DEI is an advantage to a CEO is to recognize that not everybody looks like that CEO. If I'm a 64 year old white guy, all my customers are not 64 year old white guys.
Some are 24 year old women, okay? Some are Hispanic, some are Asian, some are gay, some are straight, some are religious, some are non-religious. I gotta realize that I have to build a big tent to have a successful business. That being the case, I have to include people in my business, okay, that don't all necessarily look like me, okay? That's really, really important. For example,
for a business to become successful over the next 10 years? Right now, if I was running a public company, I would have people on my board in their early 20s. Why? Number one, they're consumers today, but they're going to be tomorrow's bigger consumer as they grow into owning houses and having families, et cetera. But number two, they understand technology that somebody my age doesn't. They grew up with a cell phone in their hand. I didn't, as an example.
So I've got to include them from the get-go. Will I necessarily have a lot in common with them outside of business? Probably not, realistically. That's okay. They're not there to be my friend. They're there to be my business partner. Okay. So I think that's going to be very, very important is that any business includes enough people from not only nationality, ⁓ sexual orientation, but also that they have enough people involved that have an opinion that represents
buyers in that particular arena so to speak be they young be the middle-aged be the older be the male be the female etc etc okay very very important ⁓ to you know and by the way you can't necessarily include everybody depending on what you're selling but if you're selling a consumer good if you're selling toothpaste for example you've got consumers that all those different metrics i just mentioned you better have people at the table and say hey wait a minute
Maybe the box shouldn't be two colors, maybe it should be five colors. This is a simple example, just to throw out a ⁓ simple concept. And you get that from having enough people at the table with an opinion. So make room at the table for people that you wouldn't necessarily hang out with, but you better have their opinion and you better have their position if you're gonna succeed.
Sam Penny (59:52)
So moving into this world of AI, and I see it all too often these days that many marketers and many organizations are hiding behind the veil of AI to do a lot of their consumer ⁓ front end communications. Do feel that we're risking losing that human touch, that empathy in being able to connect better?
John Solleder (1:00:17)
Yes and no. In certain respects, absolutely. But in other respects, I think it's just a necessity. And I think people will accept that because they're in some sort of business themselves, whether they're an employee or business owner, where they'll understand that, it just is a sign of the times where we're going to have to deal with AI. We're going to have to deal with robots. It's just a reality.
Sam Penny (1:00:44)
All right, now, John, I want to finish with some really actionable ⁓ things for the listener to take home. Are you ready for this? Good, because you're an educator, you're a leader. Now, if someone listening, they really want to level up as a leader, and you've shown leadership throughout your career, starting this week, what would you think are three simple actions that someone could take away and start implementing immediately?
John Solleder (1:00:49)
Yeah, I hope so. We'll find out.
Number one, personal discipline. Okay? Go to bed early, get up early.
Okay. As something you can implement ⁓ into your life. ⁓ Number two, okay. Be serious about what you do by becoming a student of what you do. Read everything you possibly can. Listen to podcasts that have, you know, word searches that are in your particular ⁓ area that you're working in. other words, become an expert, become an authority figure within your particular profession. And number three, honestly, you know, work like the future is now.
because it really is. mean business is at the speed of light now, okay, and it's only going to get faster based on those projections I mentioned at Kurzweil put up a couple weeks ago. That being the case, it's not like you've got 20 years to learn what you're doing. You better learn it now. And then you better apply it now. And then work feverishly. One thing I always did was, know, 16, 18 hour days were the norm. You know, I've never known what it's like to not work that many hours in a day.
Sam Penny (1:02:19)
John, so much for joining me and for sharing your four decades of hard earned wisdom on what it truly takes to build people, purpose and value that last. Now, what I love about your message is that it strips away the noise. It reminds us that success isn't luck or timing, but it's built deliberately through principles, discipline and developing others. And you've also shown the businesses that endure are the ones that grow people first.
John, before we wrap up, where can listeners go to connect with you to learn more about your books, leave nothing to chance and equity to listen to your podcast or follow your work online.
John Solleder (1:02:56)
JohnSolleder.com is probably the simplest way to get in touch with me. I'm also on LinkedIn now. We finally updated our LinkedIn ⁓ site to forever, but we finally did it. Our books you can get, you can get them through JohnSolleder.com. Equity's only on that particular site, but moving up, 2020.
and also uh... leaving nothing to chance uh... you get those on amazon you can get them as downloads if you want you can get them in spanish if you speak spanish uh... we have downline to speak spanish and by the way those those books were really for network marketing
But there's a lot of things in there that I have a lot of other entrepreneurs come to me, especially like in the insurance field where I've dabbled in insurance for years as well, that come to me and say, hey, I use the same principles I teach to my people. The 10 penny principle, for example. Put 10 pennies in your left pocket every time you talk to somebody, transfer one to your right pocket. And that develops discipline. Well, I don't care if you're selling cars, you're selling travel, you're selling real estate, you're selling insurance, you're selling...
wills and trust, you're selling vitamins, whatever it is, it's a good habit that it's gonna help you to create so that you do it. Do you have to do it for 40 years? No, I don't do it today. I just do it automatically today. But 40 years ago, I needed to do it every single day that way to get me in the habit and help me to become successful. it's helped, I've talked to tens of thousands of people around the world.
Sam Penny (1:04:27)
Fantastic. And I'll make sure I put all of those links into the show notes. And for everyone listening, remember this, businesses don't scale, people do. When you invest in developing leaders and building a culture of growth, you create a company that outlasts you. One that's truly built to sell If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you hit subscribe. It means a lot to me. Leave a review and share it with someone who's building their own legacy. founders and leaders
discover these stories. I'm Sam Penny. This has been Built to Sell, Built to Buy. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
