Differentiating Yourself with Matthew Pollard

george grombacher 0:02
Matthew Pollard is the Rapid Growth Guy. He is the Best Selling Author of the introverts edge book series. And he is the world’s number one story sales speaker. Welcome to the show, Matthew.

Matthew Pollard 0:14
Man, I’m ecstatic to be here. Thanks for having me on.

george grombacher 0:16
Yeah, I’m excited to have you on. Tell us a little bit your personalized more about your work, why you do what you do?

Matthew Pollard 0:24
Well, I guess I’m best known as the rapid growth guide. But really, I develop my popularity in the nation, or I guess the world by really focusing on helping introverts realize they’re not second class citizens, their path to success is just different to that of an extra burden. You know, for me, I feel like there’s something heroic about a person with enough talent, skill and belief in themselves to go and start a business of their own. And because I was lucky enough, and we can talk about how I should not be the one to help Incans I was the last person that you could ever imagine would ever ended up to be successful and be responsible for five multimillion dollar success stories. Now I really spend my life helping other people realize that the key to success is not by getting better at your functional skill in a lot of ways. Most people that come to me or most people that hear podcasts, about how to improve in their in their businesses, they’re already amazing at their functional skill, they spent decades perfecting that art, what they really struggle with is three things outside the scope of their functional skill that really allow them to build a business that revolves around their family and their life, not the other way around. And that’s why I love trying to get people out of their functional skill and really focusing on these three key elements. Because if they do that, then they can have the lifestyle that they actually want. And don’t get me wrong, there are people listening that probably want to make multimillion dollar businesses, there are a lot of people listening that are probably service providers that want to make just a great six figure income in a business revolves around them in their life and their family. And, and a lot of times because they struggled to articulate their value, they constantly end up in this battle of trying to separate themselves from the other functional service providers trying to find their people. And they will often end up competing on price, which is the worst thing in the world for feeling like you providing a great service and then also keeping the respect of your clients even when you’re working with them.

george grombacher 2:10
I appreciate all that. Give us something personal, Matthew.

Matthew Pollard 2:15
Well, so if you want to hear something personal, I guess the the most important thing for me is that I guess when a lot of people hear me speak, they assume that I’m just this natural extrovert that has gift of gab and I think that drives me nuts. I mean, firstly, I’m not the only introvert that has created success. I mean, Zig Ziglar, you know, Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman. You know, I mean, even your favorite character of the Groundhog Day is, is an introvert. But for me, I didn’t know that I think a lot of people don’t know this. So for me, when I was in late high school, I had a reading speed of a sixth grader, I was super introverted, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And if it wasn’t for losing my job, just before Christmas, I would have, I would never be where I am today. I mean, I was the guy that got diagnosed with this thing called Erland syndrome when I was 16, which basically means I put on this funny pair of colored lenses, which really did not help with the confidence by the way, especially with my acne and, and learn to read. But, you know, I hustled for the last two years of my high school career or high school life. And luckily, I got into the top 20% of my state, but I, I was lost. And I think my family and I all agreed that I was not going to last in college unless I figured out what I wanted to do. So I spent a year finding myself. And I actually took a job at a real estate agency, which worked out great for about three weeks until they shut the office down, and I’m out to work again. And so that put me into commission only sales, which was the only job I could get. I mean, there were three jobs in the paper. I mean, this is Australia at Christmas time, by the way, we take our summer and Christmas break at the same time. I mean, nobody’s hiring. And everyone’s on holidays from the 20th of December to the 15th to 20th of January. So the only jobs you could get were commission on the sales roles. And he was me having no other option and really terrified to tell my father who broke his back 80 hours a week to the amount of work, right. So for me, I applied for all three jobs. And I actually got three job offers. And I’m like, oh, maybe they see something in me that I don’t see myself. And I was wrong. I was in my first day of training and I had this chip on my shoulder like, Oh, I got three jobs. Everyone else here probably only got offered one. And my manager said that we just hire everybody like we have this saying we just throw it up against the wall and we see what sticks and that was my birth into the world of sales that in five days product training and getting thrown on this road called Sydney Road in Melbourne, Australia. Over 1000 doors on each side saying go sell I didn’t even know what to say. I mean, I had five days product training and not a single second of sales training. And it was 93 doors before my first sale. It was the worst day in the world. And if you think if you think getting told no is the set is the scariest thing or the worst thing. You’re wrong. The worst for ones that aren’t well, of course, getting sworn out is bad. But my personal favorite was always Why don’t you go and get a real job, any job I could get. And that was what I heard that so often, as I slowly approached that 93rd door, where I made $70. And I remember being ecstatic for about 45 seconds until I made my second big realization for the day, I’m going to do this again tomorrow. And I think that while I’m sure a lot of people listening, aren’t going cold calling. They’re very used to rejection. They’re very used to writing proposals and chasing only to hear that people went with somebody else, or they decided to think about it or leave it for now. And, you know, what I realized was that sales was a system. I mean, I had to make that decision that sales was assisted, because otherwise the rest of my year would have been horrific. And it was that real, that was that discovery that really changed my life.

george grombacher 5:49
I appreciate that. Do you think that? Did your reading? Did you struggle with reading lead to being an introvert?

Matthew Pollard 6:00
No, no, no, I struggled with reading and I. So I have this belief on introversion that everybody has made, I believe that people have made the the idea of the concept of introversion, way, way, way too confusing. Maybe there’s too many grant dollars out there for it. So for me, I believe that introversion is simple. It’s where you draw your energy from. So for me personally, what’s interesting is I actually I mean, I actually taught myself how to sell watching YouTube videos. And every day, I would spend eight hours out in the field, applying what I learned, I’d spent eight hours at home, practicing to get better at at sales, and we’re working on the thing I was working on or the next step. And you know, soon it was 71 doors, then it was 43 doors, then it was 18. And it was nine, I got it down and making a sale, on average, on average every three doors. And I remember my manager pulling me in about six weeks in and I thought I was gonna get fired. Like he had this weird look on his face. And he’s like that we just got our national sales figures. And it turns out, you’re the number one salesperson in the company. Right? It took six weeks. But what’s weird about that, I mean, I don’t know why people think this in sales, but oh, you can sell you can manage. So we’ll put you in charge of a team. I don’t know why people think that I got thrown 20 people and I have no idea how to manage them. And they reminded me don’t worry, man up against the wall, we’ll just see what sticks. Well, no one stuck. Everyone quit within 24 hours. But I went back to YouTube and I learned to manage. And here’s what’s interesting, I found that when I learned to sell, it was really emotionally tough for me, and therefore I was exhausted, I was tired and you could say I was more introverted. Then when I got put into leadership, the same thing I found that it emotionally tolling I was more introverted leadership. But as I learned these skills and strategies, I guess you could say I became less introverted, it’s all rubbish, I got my energy from being by myself, I could charge up by being by myself. And because I didn’t have skills and strategies that allowed me to leverage into my natural, introverted strengths. And because I didn’t know what I was doing, which I mean, if you don’t know what you’re doing playing basketball, it’s going to be emotionally totalling and exhausting, then I took more of my energy. So for me, I see introversion is just where you draw your energy from, and I definitely draw my energy by being by myself. Now, that being said, all these external activities take less energy from me, because I had now have the systems and processes for doing things like that, like podcast interviews, that don’t take as much but no, I’m definitely introverted. And while I think that these issues played havoc on my self confidence, which again, made me feel more discomfort in these scenarios, which of course, allowed led to me feeling like things were taking more energy from it, I also learned strategies and all elements, my life, like surviving Christmas, that actually allowed me to take it to take less energy from him. But I do see a lot of people that are shy, that are also introverted, and that’s tough. It’s worse actually, for extroverts that are shy. I mean, they don’t want to talk to people, and then they need to talk to people. And that’s tough.

george grombacher 9:05
That is, that is a bit of a pickle. Right? So you’ve got all these people out there who are really highly skilled with what they do, but they lack or they struggle with three things. What are those three things?

Matthew Pollard 9:19
Yeah, so I think it really comes down to differentiating yourself so that you have people see you as the only logical choice, you understand that you can’t speak to everyone because that’s speaking to no one and therefore you have to niche down to a group of people that see that are really willing to pay you what you’re worth. And just so you know, and everybody listening, everybody has something unique and innate about themselves that qualifies them to provide something not just valuable but something in need the your clients in you the people you serve as needed. Not all of them, but a small group and don’t get me wrong if you put it on your website. If you’re an accountant, and you put on your website, you’re a dentist, your current clients and I’m not going to fire you at all say, I don’t want to work with you anymore. They’re gonna say, Hey, you’re a really great accountant. I see on your website, you’re a dentist, can you still work with me, so you’re not losing anything by specializing, and I use the word specialize not saying work exclusively with by by niching down. What you are doing, though, is making this group of people feel like you have a specialty, which, if you’ve picked it, you should, and it should be something that you’re passionate about as well. And for a lot of those introverts listening, we tend to be very practical and logical minded people, though, pick the practical and logical space, I mean, you can fail at what you don’t want. So why not take a chance at what you love. And I promise you, there is nothing worse than a rapid growth business with customers, you can’t stand in a business you don’t like and I can tell you, you really can create a rapid growth business out of anything, as long as you’d have those two steps and, of course, a sale system. And I think that a lot of people, they really get lost in this. So I actually, if you’re comfortable with you, I can give you an example to kind of really hone those ideas in, right. So I think that probably the best example that I can give is probably, actually let’s think of something that’s really commoditized. So like the the market of language coaching, so I remember working with this lady Wendy out of California, and if you can think of a commoditized industry, this is it. I mean, when she came to me, she’d been successfully charging $50 an hour for about a decade. And now I mean, there were people moving into California willing to charge $30 an hour to start their businesses. There were people on Craigslist, thanks to this global economy we now live in in China offering to do it for $12 an hour. And then there were people that were, you know, I’ll teach you manner, and you teach me English, we just won’t charge anyone anything. Thanks to this technology. It’s been created out of Silicon Valley. So she comes to me, and she’s looking for sales advice. And I think a lot of people think your problem is sales when it’s actually step one. And two. As a matter of fact, I think if you start with sales and a lot of ways, you’ve kind of already lost, because what are you competing on if you’re just talking about your functional skill, outside price. So I said, what I want to do is show you how to avoid the battle all together, what we did is we looked at all the clients she’d worked with, and I mean, she worked with hundreds, there were two specifically. And by the way, there is always a group, no matter how many people I work with, the only thing that I’ve discovered is there’s always a group of people that are willing to pay you higher prices that sing your praises that pay you what you’re worth, it’s just you don’t recognize them, because you’re hustling so much to service, everybody. So what I discovered is these two people were executives being relocated to China. And she helped them with these three pretty amazing things. The first thing she helped them understand was the difference between ecommerce in China and the Western world. The second was the importance of respect, like handling a business card isn’t enough, right? Sorry, learning the language isn’t enough. You’ve got to reduce your accent, how to handle a business card and why it matters so much. And then the third probably the key actually was the difference in rapport like Georgia now Western culture, like we might sit down, if we’re bad at sales at the end of 45 minutes, say, Do you want to move forward if we’re doing sales, and if we check in a week later, and they still say something like, they want to think about it, we know we’re not getting that sale. In China, they’re gonna want to probably meet you four or five, maybe even six times before leaving discuss business, they’re probably gonna want to see you drunk over karaoke once or twice. It’s just I mean, it’s just who they are. Right? But the difference is they’re talking 1220 30 deals, not one month, 12 month contracts, right? So it’s important to understand that characteristic, and I was like, when are you doing so much more for these people than just language tuition? What are you doing? Well, they’re just a few things. I’m just trying to help. This is what I mean by getting stuck in your functional schedule. I said, is it fair to assume, Wendy, that because of this help that you give them, they’re gonna be more successful in China? And she’s like, I mean, yeah, that’s the point. Right? So I said, Great, let’s call you the China’s success coach, then. And we ended up creating what we ended up calling the China’s success intensive, which was a five week program that would with the executive, the spouse and any children being relocated to China. So this is what I mean by differentiation. But for her, she’s like, well, that’s great. But who do I sell it to? What she’s saying is who to go networking to meet. And what she’s really looking for is a niche. So what I said is, who do you think you should sell it to? We always go to the easiest, obviously, the executives, that’s basically everybody. Okay, that’s not really a niche. But I understand what you’re saying. I moved from Australia to the United States. That was terrifying. Imagine going into a place doesn’t even speak the same language. I get it. But I don’t think it’s your ideal client. And this is what obviously it’s, you know, the companies will pay like, yeah, they got millions of dollars riding on the executive being successful all the time. Still don’t think it’s your ideal client. So frustrated, she’s like, well, who then I said, I just I think it’s the immigration attorney. Now she’s looking at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. And I said, think about it. These people spend, well, they maybe get paid five to $7,000 to do a visa. That’s all the paperwork, all the bureaucracy that comes with that they got rent to pay staff to pay all the costs of getting a client they’d be lucky to make $3,000 So just offer them $3,000 For a simple introduction. They love the idea that like simple introduction, you know, to double my Have it What have I got to say? And she said, All you got to do is say, congratulations, you’ve now got your visa. I just want to double check, you’re as ready as possible to go to China. And usually you get this really overconfident executives that Yeah, I think we’re good. We got our place sorted. learning the language kids, we’re getting pretty good at it, too. You know, we’re going to your visa now. I think we’ve set and they should just have them respond with there’s a lot more to it than that. I think you need to speak to the China Success Coach. I mean, when you get on the phone with the easiest sale in the world, I mean, they’re recommended, they were terrified to go the company was motivated to pay she charged $30,000 for doing this, minus a $3,000. Commission, she made $27,000 for the easiest sale in the world instead of struggling every day to charge 50 to $80 an hour. And that’s, that’s what I mean, like for her. She looked at the three things outside the scope of a functional skill. And the higher level benefit was China’s success. For me. I’m a branding expert. I’m a social media strategist. You know, I’m a master in NLP. I’m a Sales systemization expert. I mean, I could go on and on. Nobody cares how hard it was for me to learn these things, or how difficult it was how long it took. But when I say I’m the Rapid Growth Guy, and I work at a specialize with introverted service providers, it’s the simplicity of that message that gets me heard in a crowded marketplace. It makes sales, easier networking, easier podcast, interviewing easier, everything.

george grombacher 16:13
I love it. How long did it take you to figure out? And how long does it take you to help other people figure out that for themselves?

Matthew Pollard 16:20
Yes. So I will always say it is much, much harder to figure it out for yourself. And for the people listening you don’t I’m not saying this because I want you to hire me. I’m saying this because you need somebody’s help. But I would highly recommend I can give you a template, you can do it. Matthew polar.com forward slash growth there, you can download a five step process that you should do with someone else. So get them to listen to this podcast, this story. So they understand what they’re doing, and spend an hour working on them and get them to spend an hour working on you. Now this should be if you’re a florist don’t work with another florist. If you’re an accountant don’t work with another accountant, because you gotta get yourself out of your functional skill. But the reason I’m saying this is for me, I mean, it took me months is a fair understanding. And in fairness, the concept of unified messaging, the Rapid Growth Guy didn’t exist before I created. What I found is there was nothing really for you to say, at a networking event. When somebody asks you what you do, you’d say, I’m an accountant, and then that would lead straight to a conversation on price or that they didn’t need an accountant. Like if I say I’m a sales trainer, people look at me like I’m one step up of a scam artist, if I send me marketing, they’re like, oh, ad marketing, how much do you cost? It’s horrible. So for me, I wanted to come up with something different that I could say. And then when people responded with what’s that, which is kind of the expectation, I could then talk, by the way, not an elevator pitch. I hate elevator pitches, but I could respond with my passion and my mission for serving. And we can talk about that if we get time. But the framing that I want people to listen to hear is that if they do this template, I mean, I did this at a national freelance conference, and then 200 people in the room and at the end, I said, Look, do me a favor, put your hand up, if you now believe you’ve got a unified message that will excite and inspire people to want to know more. And you’ve got a niche of willing to buy clients. And I mean, 97% of the room put their hands up, which sounds great, until I said, you’ll do me a favor, keep your hands up, because this is the most time that you’ve spent actively working on your marketing. And I say actively, because most people are used to reading books churning through them listening to podcasts and doing nothing. So if you do this to this podcast, I am not going to be ecstatic that you say that you’ve got a great outcome listening to my podcasts. But if you say I downloaded the template at Matthew pollard.com, forward slash growth, I apply that template I worked with a buddy of mine that wasn’t in my industry and I came up with these answers, I will be ecstatic 85% of the room put their hands up, kept their hands up, I should say when I asked Is this the most active time. I mean, the whole session was only 90 minutes long. So the key is this works. If you spend the time doing it, they say if you allocate two hours an hour to work on your buddy and an hour for them to work on you, you will be miles ahead if not having the exact answers that you need. The problem is that people don’t actually spend the time doing this stuff.

george grombacher 18:59
We think about it, we think about it, we think about it, we really ought to do that. We know we should do that. But yes to actually download it, get a copy of the book, go to the website, find somebody that’s not in your industry to have the conversation with everything you want. Matthew is right there. Just it’s just right there. Well,

Matthew Pollard 19:21
that’s the important thing. And I think that for me, I’ve spent my life trying to get people the answers. I mean, the two books that you see behind you, I mean, they’ve sold over 100,000 copies, which is I’m ecstatic with, but the number one thing that I hear when people respond to me is, you know, your book changed my life. And I say, Well, how did it change your life? Like I’m ecstatic to hear that it changed your life, but how like, you know what, you know what story, you know, how have you structured your system, you know, your networking structure, so you’re not being transactional and not being doing that elevator pitch, although I haven’t really got it structured the way you’ve highlighted yet. That is usually the response that I get no okay, well, what stories you’re telling us That was a network Oh, well, I haven’t really structured stories the way you’re talking about it yet. Well, how exactly has it changed your life. And that was just knowing I can excel as an introvert in sales in networking that’s changed my life and like, Well, it hasn’t changed your life, because you’re not doing it, you’re not, you’re not applying the strategies and the systems, which drives me nuts, because in both of my books, which by the way, for the people listening, this isn’t a pitch for my book, you don’t have to buy my books. My my publisher hates me when I say this, by the way, but if you go to the introverts, edge.com, you can download the first chapter of the sales book, and it will literally give you the full seven steps of a sales process. And it will also get you over the fact that you think you can’t sell as an introvert because most of the best people in the world at sales are introverted. And that’s kind of counterintuitive. It also happens to be true. So if you go there, you’ll learn that if you just grab the headings out of first chapter, put what you currently say into it, you realize some things just don’t fit. Throw that out. You shouldn’t be saying that to customers, you realize some things are out of order, fix that. And then you’ll realize this some gaping holes, fill those gaps UW sales in the next 60 days. And by the way, you can get the introverts edge to networking, first chapter at the introverts edge to networking.com. But the reason why I’m saying this is that people reach out to me that a lot of them are telling me that the books have changed their life, but the books have a free video implementation training in the back. So it’s not only here’s what to do, and here’s how to do it. But here’s a video implementation training in the back to walk you through step by step. It’s totally for free. I mean, global gurus listed the training and the back of the introverts edge, in their top five sales programs in the world. It just happens to be the only one under $5,000. And it’s free, yet people don’t do it because they want to think that, yes, it’s nice to know I can, it’s changed my life, but I don’t take action. So for the people listening, here’s the thing, I want you to understand, the reason why this stuff doesn’t work for you. The reason why you can’t is you’ve actually spent no time trying, and it kills me to hear that. So I want to hear about your success stories. But I want to hear how you downloaded the Matthew poehler.com forward slash growth template, you worked with someone and you got to an amazing outcome. You know, how you dealt with how you read the book, you did the implementation training, and it changed your life. Not changed your mindset that changed your life. And to do that you have to take the concepts and actually apply them into your life.

george grombacher 22:11
Amen. Matthew, thank you so much for coming on. Give us the websites again.

Matthew Pollard 22:18
Well, thank you for having me on. Firstly, and for those people listening. I mean, yes, you can obviously check me out on pretty much every social media. I put a ton of free content on YouTube, because that’s what taught me. But yeah, I would suggest just go to Matthew pollard.com forward slash growth, download that template, and then download, you know, the first chapters of the book at the introverts, edge.com and the introverts edge to networking.com.

george grombacher 22:41
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show Matthew, your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Matthew pollard.com. It’s Matthew P O ll ard.com. Check out the introverts edge book series as well take advantage of the first chapter in the templates that Matthew has been talking about and don’t fall victim to, to humanity or to human programming and simply think this was great and then not take action. Be in the small percentage of people that actually take and apply these things and follow through on everything that Matthew has been talking about and actually do. Change your life for the better. Thanksgiving, Matthew. My pleasure. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.