Mastering the Art of Sales and Personal Growth with Eric Lofholm

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{ Helvetica;-----BEGIN MASTERING THE ART OF SALES AND PERSONAL GROWTH WITH ERIC LOFHOLM-----

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Dan Woerheide>

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0>03 Welcome to Narrowing the Divide. I'm Dan Warheide, your host, and my goal is to connect with and inspire others. If you want to improve yourself, your lifestyle, you can also feel free to send me questions, topics or ideas you have, or sign up to receive updates by visiting our page at podcastdanwus. Welcome back to another episode of Narrowing the Divide. Today. I have a special guest for you, like most days, but today's guest is someone I have been engaging with and observing not really from a distance, but certainly observing and interacting with for the last few years, and I've watched some pretty incredible things unfold, not just in his work and the things that he's doing for others, but the work of the people in the communities that he's created. Our guest today is Eric Lofholm. He's the CEO of the being Movement LLC.

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Dan Woerheide>

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1>03 Eric has been in leadership roles his entire life. He began his career in the being Movement LLC. Eric has been in leadership roles his entire life. He began his career in the training industry in 1992. During the 90s, eric worked for Tony Robbins for three years. He then started his own training company in 1999. Eric has been trained by some of the top trainers in the world, including Steve Hardison, dr Donald Moyne, michael Gerber and Jay Abraham. Eric is the author of three main books. He lives with his wife, heather, and his children in Rockland, california. Eric, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

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Eric Lofholm>

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1>37 Hey Dan, it's great to be here.

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Dan Woerheide>

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1>39 Thank you. So let's just start by if you'd share some of the background, anything you'd like to share with us. You know you can start with, you know 1992, when you sort of began your career in the training industry, and then I'd like to maybe pause in there somewhere and discuss anything that comes up. But then, moving into, you know where you're at today.

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Eric Lofholm>

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2>13 Yeah, I everyone in my family is is college educated, and I started on that path and it just wasn't the path for me, and so I ended up dropping out of college. And in 92, I was 21 years old, I had no plan and I went to a real estate investment seminar and I met a very successful multimillionaire real estate investor and so I thought let me go work for him. Maybe some of his success will rub off on me. And so he offered me a sales job, and I wasn't there to sell, I was there to associate with him. In order to do that, I had to sell, and so I wasn't very good at it and I missed my quota two months in a row at the end of my first year and was told that I had one more month to hit the quota or I was going to be let go.

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Eric Lofholm>

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2>58 And that's when I met Dr Moyn, who you mentioned in the introduction. Yeah, he is. If you're familiar with Star Wars, he's an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like human being. So he taught me selling and I became the top producer at that company very quickly after meeting Dr Moyn. And at my core, one of the things that I love the most is teaching, and so when I had Dr Boyne's advanced sales ideas, I started teaching his ideas to my coworkers, not as a consultant but just out of my love for teaching, and I realized I was very good at teaching sales.

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Eric Lofholm>

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3>48 And I then went to work for Tony Robbins and I was employed by Tony for three years, 96 to 98, and did quite a bit of speaking for Tony hundreds of speeches, wow, working for him, and I didn't really connect so much with him personally. I was immersed in his culture and so I learned about peak performance. I learned a lot about how to produce a result and then started my own company, my sales training company, which I've been doing for 25 years now, right, helping people all over the world with selling. And then more recently the being movement just kind of organically unfolded. It was never on my goal board to start a second company. I'm a very busy individual, raising four kids and running a company and so forth, and so there really wasn't any space to start another company. And yet I started another company. So that's a little bit about some of the background.

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Dan Woerheide>

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4>56 Yeah, it's wonderful and you know that's. I see a lot of the work you're doing in the sales training side and you know the opportunity to speak with you and maybe glean some insights. One of the challenges I think most coaches and entrepreneurs face is, you know that sales conversation and I can say that, having been in direct sales the last few years and having seen quite a bit of success there, I enjoy the process of one learning but connecting with others. And something you said that stood out to me is my affinity for teaching, training, coaching, and that has I've learned to translate that into my sales approach. But, having been a top producer for much longer than me, I'd love to hear some of your insights, or maybe even some of the lessons that you've learned in in building that sales training business. And, um, yeah, let's go there for a minute, if you don't mind.

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Eric Lofholm>

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6>03 Well, we can intersect the two companies, the being and the sales. Training in the sense of, to me, what being is about. It comes down to the starting point is that there's three ideas. Number one, we're always being. Number two, we can observe our being. And number three, we can shift our being. And that can be done in all areas of our life, including sales. And the problem that a lot of people have around selling is and they're not really present to what to do about it, and that is they're being resistance, they're being uncomfortable, they're being I don't like to sell. They're being I'd rather do anything but sell. I just want to coach, I just want to do the photography work, I just want to be the real estate agent to help buy or sell property, but I don't want to do the sales work.

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Dan Woerheide>

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6>58 Yeah.

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Eric Lofholm>

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6>59 So one way of thinking about being is the position you're coming from.

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Dan Woerheide>

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7>04 So the stories we're telling ourselves? Is that what you're you're implying?

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Eric Lofholm>

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7>15 Yeah, a way to think about being. You could think about the story. Yeah, right. And so what's my sales story? My sales story for some people is um, I don't want to be salesy, I don't like sales, sales is high pressure, manipulative, arm twisting, and so if your world view is that and you show up needing to sell, because any small business owner, probably, unless they have a sales force, they're gonna have to do the selling themselves sure and so, if they're, they're being that.

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Eric Lofholm>

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7>43 It's kind of like walking around the planet with a 50-pound weight vest on. Nobody does that, unless you're doing some training for something. No one's walking around planet Earth with a 50-pound weight vest, but we do this with our thoughts, and there's all kinds of thoughts that we have that make our life way harder than what it needs to be, including thoughts about business, and we can go within sales to business skills like email marketing. People go well, I don't understand email, I don't do the email thing, I don't know what software to use, and so, there being, I don't do email marketing. Well, email marketing is a way to get on somebody's smartphone, because people are addicted to their smartphone and so, as a business person, I want to have my message be on their smartphone.

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Dan Woerheide>

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8>38 Absolutely.

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Eric Lofholm>

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8>40 One way to do it is through email marketing. But if your story, your position you're coming from, your state of being is I don't do the technology thing or I don't do email marketing, so we do this all over the place and when we learn what we're doing and then we learn that we can shift it. So I can go from resistance to sales to embracing sales. I can go from I'm not good at sales to I'm living into the idea of becoming a master of selling, which is a possibility that anybody could live into. These thoughts change the trajectory of our future.

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Eric Lofholm>

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9>18 So it's not like hocus pocus, it's very real. It's very real to be able to change the thought and have what shows up a reality shift. And that's what I've learned in this work I've done with Steve Hardison and learning about being. I didn't know being as a distinction until about two years ago, and so I've been studying the mind since 1988, but I had no awareness on how to shift being because it wasn't in my known realm. So once it became known, it became very simple of how I could create transformation in many areas of my life, including sales.

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Dan Woerheide>

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10>00 This conversation. I'm sitting here listening and fascinated because it's so timely. Now, eric, you and I both know and I'll share that we didn't really know where this conversation was going to go when we started. We both just agreed to kind of jump in and go with what comes up, which is fascinating enough because of the being, movement and the things that are shared in that community. But beyond that, I've just recorded another episode It'll be the one published before this with a friend of mine named Justin Janowski, where we talked about our messages about sales specifically to ourselves.

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Dan Woerheide>

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10>36 Right, that keep us from taking the actions that you've just alluded to and talked about. It's the you know sales is sleazy, sales is yucky, sales is hard, and his suggestion was very similar, in alignment with yours and reinforcing both of those conversations right here, that you know you can change that way of being and the message that you're telling yourself in the process by thinking about sales as sales can be leadership. Or the message would then be sales is leadership, sales is kind, sales is helping someone achieve their goals, right? You know things that feel good and make that whole way of being in that process feel good. So I love what you're saying and it connects so well and it's just fascinating to see how these two conversations have tied so closely together in just a few minutes.

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Dan Woerheide>

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11>35 We've already been chatting, so I'm curious you well, and I brought him up in the intro. You've talked about him and I know not through direct one on one engagement per se, but I know about Steve Hardison. I know who he is and sort of where he is in the world and what he's done. How did you come about and I'll say so, steve Hardison is referred to as the ultimate coach how did you come about your relationship with Steve and what can you say about that experience in your own growth and learning? Because I think that's sort of where we're going by talking about the being movement. Would you care to share some of that?

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Eric Lofholm>

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12>19 Yeah, I mean, everybody deserves to know who Steve Hardison is and he knows more practical ways of explaining the mind and how the mind works and how we can better understand our mind to create the results we want than anybody I've ever met and I've worked with some of the best on the planet studying personal development since 1988. I was introduced to Steve in 2010 by one of my coaches, a gentleman named Gary Henson, and Gary said you know, you ought to check out Steve Hardison. And I said I've never heard that name before. He goes. Well, he's got the best content on the planet and I'm like, okay, I guess.

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Eric Lofholm>

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13>00 I need to check out Steve Hardison then, and at the time I guess I need to check out Steve Hardison then and at the time Steve's never been one to. You know a lot of speakers like me. I probably have created over a thousand pieces of content. If you Google Eric Offhome, you'll find videos and podcasts and websites, and you know that's what a lot of speakers do, is they just? That's part of the part of the business.

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Dan Woerheide>

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13>25 Yeah.

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Eric Lofholm>

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13>26 Steve's the opposite.

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Dan Woerheide>

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13>27 You can't find much.

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Eric Lofholm>

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13>32 He never cared about YouTube videos and books. And so you go, google him. Now it's different and I'm largely responsible for that. But prior to my involvement back in 2010, you google steve hardison and there was this one video that was the deuce latui story, tvl by nfl. And uh, if you guys google you're watching, listening to this to google deuce latui, steve hardison, you'll find it and it's like this brilliant piece of content that just, if you really pay attention, to blow you away. So I'm like, wow, this guy's amazing. And then I reached out to him. I connected with him on facebook and he's steve hartson's very friendly with people, especially facebook, and he started interacting with me and that's many people's story and and so I'm like, hey, I'm going to be in Phoenix, he lives in Arizona, can we do coffee? And I didn't know this at the time, steve doesn't do coffee. No.

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Eric Lofholm>

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14>34 So he didn't tell me that part, but he just said you know, yeah, I won't do coffee, but if you want to come to the house, you come to the house. I'm like, oh, that's even better. So I got invited to his house. He charges for a two-hour session $10,000 currently and I got a two-hour he calls it a be with session, but back then he wasn't charging, so I had no idea I was about to get a two-hour session with the ultimate coach and so we had the session. And then he told me his fees at the end of the session and that was way beyond what I could afford. You know, currently he charges $200,000 for a 50-hour coaching agreement. It wasn't that price, but it was still astronomical in my mind. So we stayed in touch, but it was still astronomical in my mind, yeah, so we stayed in touch.

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Eric Lofholm>

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15>28 And then his book came out. His wife wrote a book about Steve called the Ultimate Coach. It's a story about Steve to give us access to being. Anybody can read that book and get access to transformation. And so the book came out and I'm reading the book and I'm on I think it's page 351. I'm not sure the exact page, but anyway I'm in the book. It's not a big chapter or anything.

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Eric Lofholm>

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15>55 I mentioned like barely, and I just thought it was the coolest thing because of my respect for Steve, and so I reached out to him and I said you know, hey, thank you for including me. I really appreciate it and I meant that sincerely. And he goes call me tomorrow Okay, call them the next day. And we're chatting and he's very excited about the new book and and I told him that he needed a Facebook group and I didn't go to the call to pitch him on you need a facebook group. It's just like our call right now. We're just talking about whatever's occurring for us in the moment.

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Eric Lofholm>

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16>31 Yeah, and so it was just screaming at me to tell steve, you need a facebook group because the book enthusiasts are going to want a place to gather and facebook is one place that they would logically gather. And he said, well, I don't know anything about Facebook groups. And I said, well, I know a lot about them. So for you, because he's such a special human being, I said I'll do it for you. If you want, I'll set up the Facebook group, I'll lead it, manage it, run it, turn key. You don't have to lift a finger, you don't even have to be in the group, just if you give me the green light to go. And so by the end of the call he said go ahead and do it.

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Eric Lofholm>

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17>09 Then that night I created it and I reached out to him and I said okay, it's ready to go before I tell the world are we good? He goes yeah, we're good, let's do it. And so within a week I think we had a thousand people in the group and now we have a little over 9,000. And that organically unfolded into he watched what I was doing and I was leading the group beyond Dan what you could hire somebody to do so you or I could go find whoever out in the world that leads Facebook groups for a living and say okay, I've got this Facebook group, I need to hire you. What's the fee? And they tell us the fee and we hire them. Okay.

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Eric Lofholm>

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17>51 So we get someone who's elite at leading Facebook groups. Sure, okay, I was doing a better job than that. Not as a brag, and look at me at how great I am, because I was. I was leading from commitment. I was leading from love. You can't hire somebody to lead your Facebook group from love, no, no, I would agree with that, and and and.

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Dan Woerheide>

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18>16 By the way, I watched this unfold in the timeframe and I remember when the group stood up and, and I was I don't know if I was one of the first thousand, but I was certainly in that top few um and and have been there ever since and it was just fascinating to watch how quickly everything unfolded and and just how much you were pouring into leading that group. You're absolutely right. Very rarely do you come across someone you can hire. I would say there might be exceptions for people where that's their absolute zone of genius and power and that's the thing they love to do the most, but it's not very common. So testimony to your work there, for sure.

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Eric Lofholm>

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19>06 So there's an opportunity for all of you that are listening to this right now. So what Steve will tell us to do is read the book the Ultimate Coach about you, and so, instead of reading a story about Steve, it's like well, what does this have to do with me? How can I apply this in my life? So miracles got created by me being of service, coming from a position of love. Well, as all of you are listening, any of you could do that. Any of you could. Whatever you do for a living, you could come from love. You could be service.

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Eric Lofholm>

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19>47 We can go into a really practical place. So there's a relationship that some of us have. I have it, and it's a little bit complicated, and it's a step-parent and a step-child, step-kid relationship. So I have that. I have two stepdaughters, and so a blended family. It's complicated, it just is, and so I can be.

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Eric Lofholm>

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20>13 I'm not interested and show up that way. I don't. But I could. Yeah, I could be. I'll do the minimum I could be. It's my, this is who I be, who I am with my stepdaughters. It's one of my purposes in life to be a stepdad. Why show up that way for them? So not every step parent shows up, as that's my purpose to be a step parent to these kids. But anybody could. So we start becoming aware of how could I show up in business? I'm showing up as I dip my toe in the water. Let me try out this real estate thing. I'll dip my toe in the water. I'll dip my toe in the water with this coaching thing, or we can show up powerful and committed. So after I launched the Facebook group, I told Steve I'm committed to leading this group for the next 20 years. Wow, and I wasn't compensated and I wasn't asking for compensation. Right.

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Eric Lofholm>

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21>15 So he's watching what I'm doing and he's like wow, this is like incredibly powerful. So he goes hey, could you do it on Instagram, sure. So now we have Instagram, then's, how about youtube? Right now we got youtube, uh, podcast, sure. Now we got a podcast um linkedin, yep. So now I'm I'm running this whole enterprise for no compensation. I'm not asking for it, i'm'm not expecting, I'm just serving. It is creating.

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Eric Lofholm>

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21>44 It's creating, okay. And then eventually he says, Eric, my wife and I have been talking and somebody needs to organize all this in a company. And you're the person, you're the only person, so do you want it? And I said yes. And so what's fascinating is he didn't say we're looking for a rev share, so give us a piece of the deal. He didn't say I'm looking for a partner. He said if you would like to do this, you do it. It's yours and you own 100 of it, and it's like.

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Eric Lofholm>

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22>18 That's like unheard of yeah, that's fascinating and so now I have you know the big movement company and for all the listeners. Back in the day there was essentially one piece of content on Steve Hardison the Deuce Latouille story, and now you can go to the YouTube channel. There's hundreds of videos, including full hour long videos of Steve being interviewed or Steve sharing content of Steve being interviewed, or Steve sharing content. That YouTube channel in its current form. There's $100,000 in free content.

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Dan Woerheide>

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22>51 Yeah.

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Eric Lofholm>

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22>52 Anybody can access and the Bing movement. It's not a movement that requires a big financial investment. It creates the possibility of transformation for a $20 book. So you get the book on Kindle, amazon, uh, kindle paperback or audible, and then you join the community and the websites being movementcom, and then at the bottom of the site, there's the podcast, the Instagram, the Facebook. So you, whatever, if you're a YouTube person, you do the YouTube. If you're on Instagram, you do the Instagram.

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Eric Lofholm>

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23>25 And if you lean in which is one of my two favorite new words lean in If you lean in what's being taught, because somebody could look at this and go being, okay, that's interesting, I'll learn a little bit about it and then I'll go learn some other mindset idea. Well, what I've chosen to do, I've leaned in and I've been working on being as a distinction now almost every day for two years. So you can imagine my skill level has gone way up. And.

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Eric Lofholm>

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23>59 I likely work on my being skill set pretty much every day until my last breath. So that creates a predictable path to mastery. It's predictable that I will become one of the top experts on being that exists in the world. Not look at how great I am, but as a, if I work on it pretty much every day for the rest of my life, that's the predictable outcome. It's not that it's possible, it's predictable. But what's interesting, Dan, is anybody could do it. You're not wrong.

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Eric Lofholm>

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24>36 Anybody could lean into being. The community is in place. You don't have to go spend 10 grand with us. You could hire Bing coaches. You could hire I have some services, but forget all that. You can just do the book and the community. Never invest another penny and you and your family and your loved ones can access one of the most, if not the most powerful, personal development ideas that's ever existed. And basically, steve's like here you go, eric, you're in charge, and it's not just me, because other coaches are taking being and they're doing it in their way.

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Eric Lofholm>

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25>17 Right, this isn't me. I'm just a person that's organized the content and I'm one of the people teaching it. It's kind of like nlp was created by richard bandler and john grinder. It swept the world and all kinds of people did all kinds of things with nlp, and then there was the guys that created it. I didn't create being. Steve hardison didn't create being. Yeah, but he's the best at and explaining it in a way that we can access it, and then I'm good at organizing it so people can access it. People that aren't able to hire Steve and it's just wild.

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Dan Woerheide>

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25>59 Miracles are happening every single day all over the world and a lot of them I'm not even aware of, because there's so many miracles happening that and that, there's so much in there, really I didn't even know where to go with it, to be honest. But I there are a couple things that stood out. So you know, earlier you talked about the 50 pound vest and I retired from the army, so that hit home and I was like, well, yeah, there's lots of people walking around with 50 pound vests on or other yucky stuff. Right, it just that resonated with me. But going back to, you know, commitment and and being fully engaged or fully immersed in something for the purpose of learning, trial and error, et cetera, right, not just dipping your toe in the water. So I remember distinctly when I started this sales role, uh, that I I'm a, I'm a self-employed contractor in the sales role, so it's a hundred percent commission based, and that was scary for me. I'd never really realistically I mean, there are ways that I can look at things I've done were in 100% commission capacity, but from a job perspective or work perspective, my career had never consisted of 100% dependent on me, commission, and so I made a conscious effort at the beginning. I remember thinking through this process and saying you know what? What if I suck? What if this isn't for me? You know what if it is? And all of those thoughts came up and I remember I said, okay, I'm going to try this for 60 days, I'm just going to fully immerse myself in this for 60 days and if at the end of 60 days I haven't been able to produce, then I'll know my answer. And so I did that, and in the first 30, 45 days I had my answer, and I'm still doing it at the moment as I work to shift into full-time coaching. But just that experience allowed me to well one. I gave myself the permission to be that, as you would say, I think, and and it was fascinating how well it worked I shift that into recently. I applied, really it's, the rule of 100, but I've been working to schedule 100 powerful coaching conversations as my creative contribution to the world. I'm not asking for a fee. My creative contribution to the world. I'm not asking for a fee. I'm not asking for people to ever become my client. In fact, I make a promise that I won't even talk about what it's like to have a paid coaching engagement with me in that first call. And what I've observed in that process is the ability to recognize where all of my biases are, where I'm inviting people to these coaching sessions that I would never have invited, and what's come from being immersed in that process has been tremendous growth, not just for me but for the people that I'm able to serve as well. It's fascinating what happens when you fully commit, you practice intentionally every day, which is where I was going with that you practicing being and teaching and facilitating being on a daily basis. You're absolutely right. You are projected to be one of the top people to speak on, teach on, train on and coach people on being, simply because you're putting in the repetitions on a day-to-day basis. I love that idea. So I feel like you've already said what people would most want to know about what the being movement is.

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Dan Woerheide>

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29>42 A little bit about who Steve Hardison is and your experience. It's so funny. I was listening to one of the podcasts just just before coming on today and that same story was shared by someone else he was having. He came, oddly enough, from the commercial real estate investment side of the world and met with Steve's sons and, and the conversation unfolded that you know they were like. You know you're a lot like our dad, you should meet him. And he was like, okay, what's his name and what's he do? Well, his name's Steve and, oh, you should meet him. So they didn't really get into what he does and I don't know what do you think? Is that just because the experiences that people have with Steve are really difficult to explain?

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Eric Lofholm>

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30>30 Well, I've sat with him on a number of occasions and the way I would describe it is it's helped me see aspects of me that I had never seen before. You know, it's like a mirror and when we look in the mirror, but it's like a, it's more than a mirror, because when we look in a mirror we see what we see. And when Steve looks at me, like he'll say things like you lead like Abraham Lincoln and and it's just like what did you just say? Like what? Like you would never look in the mirror at yourself, I mean, I guess it's possible, but it's unlikely.

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Eric Lofholm>

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31>14 You wouldn't look in the mirror one day and be like, oh, I lead like no, probably not when he's seeing things in us that we've never seen before, and then, when he sees it, it helps us see it Right. So, for example, one of the things that occurred when I was with Steve is my father and I were in a. Our relationship was broken, and so we're talking about this relationship, and what was obvious to Steve and it wasn't obvious to me was I wasn't being forgiveness. So, eric, as long as he didn't say this but he said this as long as you're going to be not forgiving, you're not going to be forgiving, you're going to be in a broken relationship with your father, because the path to healing is forgiveness. And so I said so what do you want me to do? Just like call up my dad and go have coffee with him and just be loving towards him, and he goes, yeah, yeah, wow.

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Eric Lofholm>

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32>28 In that moment I couldn't even see that as a possibility because I had placed a number of hurdles in front of being loving. It's like, okay, we'll be loving. When we address hurdle number one, two and three, loving is hurdle number four. So there's no, we can't, even let's shell that idea. And Steve's like he's like no, you don't, you're creating those hurdles in your mind. He didn't say that, but he said that Right, and be loving. And so then I'm like, all right, I'll try it out.

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Eric Lofholm>

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33>05 So I called up my dad and like, hey, you want to go to coffee? He said sure, and I was loving with him and we had a nice time. And then I got in my car and I was still angry and what I got out of that was I had reached a level of forgiveness where I could be with him and be loving, but there was still more work to be done. So it's like it wasn't just snap your fingers and it's all gone. It was leaning into forgiveness, working on forgiveness, getting it to a certain level. Hadn't fully gotten it, but got it to a level At least we could be in the same room together, be nice to him. It wasn't about him, it was about me, but then since then, I further have broken through that and so, as a result of that, I now have a repaired relationship with my father, and that was directly related to Steve helping me see something that I didn't see as a possibility until we had that conversation.

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Dan Woerheide>

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34>12 You know, I appreciate you saying that, because this title of the podcast and the premise in which I created it was narrowing the divide. And it's really about you know, we have the things that inherently we know right in front of us and we have access to those thoughts and ideas on a regular basis. We have the other answers, but sometimes it takes a nudge in someone else's perspective to help us see them, because we can't see them for ourselves. And you just shared something else. I posted this on my timeline just this morning because I saw a quote that provoked this thought. It says the only people who deserve to be in your life are the ones who treat you with love, kindness and respect. And initially I was like huh, and then I said wait a minute, that is, I think it's backwards. So I wrote what if treating people with love, kindness and respect, really pouring into others, allowed you to have only people who would share that with you in your life, that thought that you can create that for yourself. And it's not about deserving Sure, we all deserve, I think, that kind of dignity and respect as human beings to and with other human beings. But if we're not being, as you say, love, kindness and respect. We don't deserve to have people treating us with love, kindness and respect in our life.

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Dan Woerheide>

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35>44 I love that you shared that. It ties so well into the theme and the ideas that I really want to bring to light in some of these conversations. So that was beautiful. I would from a, and I want to be mindful of your time, eric, and the things that you've already shared have been powerful. I wonder if we can't backtrack a little bit just to the sales conversation, and in your experience in sales, you know, I go again and say that I think a lot of people tell themselves these stories about sales and we would say that you know there being a way with sales that is keeping them from achieving their maximum potential. What would you say to them and what kind of tips would you offer with regards to improving sales?

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Eric Lofholm>

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36>38 Well, one of the nice things about being is that we can look at being as being implies choice. So if I say I have anger issues, right, that's a statement that's essentially declaring this is who I am. And if I put the word being in front of it, I'm being that I have anger issues. What that's implying is there's a choice Be angry or I can, can be loving, but if I am an angry person, there's no choice, it's just, it's the way I am, right, right and so if we think about that as it applies to selling and then we say, like somebody will say to me in a coaching call, I'm not good at sales, and the problem with that statement is there's no optimism, there's no space to. I can become good at sales and I used to be terrible at sales and then I became a sales master. Sure.

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Eric Lofholm>

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37>43 It's possible and I, the way I look at sales, is, if you look at it as well, it's arm twisting, high pressure, manipulation, thoughts like that you're going to create a certain way. And if you look at sales as I, look at it as service selling equal service. So in my life I serve the person that's in front of me all day long. So right now you're in front of me, so I'm serving you and I'm serving our audience that will be in the future. They'll be in front of us.

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Dan Woerheide>

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38>11 Exactly yes.

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Eric Lofholm>

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38>13 So I found that many people, if they, if they shift from how they look at sales to selling a service, it opened up something for them that was never there before. And if you look at every sales technique closing skills, objection handling skills, productivity tips, prospecting every sales technique can be learned. So it's not a matter of well, I'm not good at sales. I mean, it's just like anything, you can learn it. And so the idea is, when somebody really gets what I'm saying, it creates potentially a motivation for them to lean into sales.

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Eric Lofholm>

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39>01 Because I talked about I learned Bing as a distinction two years ago and I said, okay, I'm going to work on this skill set as a distinction until my last breath. Well, let's pull out being, let's put in sales. So somebody listening right now could be like I'm not good at sales and they could say, okay, I'm gonna lean in and I'm gonna become a sales master over the next 10 years. That is accessible, and so this is something that I do. I help people get as good as they want to get, including mastery, including a black belt in influence.

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Eric Lofholm>

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39>32 And if somebody's listening to this. If I'm not the right person, find the right person. There's other people like me. This is what they do for a living, and so for two years I've been doing the being thing. For 25 years I've been doing the sales thing, trained by Dr Moyn arguably the brightest sales mind living today and so my sales skillset is deep as far as my knowledge on it and my natural gifting is teaching. So I've had a lot of success finding people that want to really get good at selling. Take something like prospecting. Most people would agree, yeah, I need to be doing more prospecting, and the reason they're not is fear.

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Dan Woerheide>

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40>19 Oh, absolutely true.

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Eric Lofholm>

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40>21 So they have a thought. That's like wearing that 50 pound weight vest. So what if we put the fear thought down? And what if we like, literally just flipped it? We flipped the thinking and so now, all of a sudden, there's no fear when you're prospecting. And this is how I prospected NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry. He was the underhand free throw guy. He's NBA Hall of Fame.

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Eric Lofholm>

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40>48 And so my son, who's 21, 21 when he was younger was really into basketball and I wanted to nurture his interest in basketball and one of the many things I did for my son is I wanted to see if rick berry would coach my son for a half an hour, and rick berry didn't know me and I didn't know him. And I prospected him, among of all the places, over Facebook Messenger. We were not friends and I sent him this message and the bottom line is I got that deal to the finish line and my son and I flew to Colorado and Rick Barry trained my son because I cold prospected him. But how do you not have fear? I didn't have an ounce of fear when I prospected him. So how did I do that and what?

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Eric Lofholm>

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41>37 I retrained my thinking, and so I don't focus on the other person, I focus on the activity. So when I prospect, I win. When I book the appointment, I double win, I win, no matter what. So when I prospected Rick Barry, when I book the appointment, I double win, I win, no matter what. So when I prospected Rick Barry, I was like Eric, you're awesome. Yeah, so I get to win all day long when I'm doing my prospecting, because every reach out is a win and every appointment is a double win. There's no loss if they say no. So if I open up like I do, prospecting on facebook messenger sometimes I can open up, show you.

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Eric Lofholm>

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42>17 Here's a guy, and notice, the last nine times he didn't respond to me like well, eric, why are you keep prospecting? Because every time I reach out it's a win absolutely it doesn't matter that he hasn't responded, but I had to.

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Eric Lofholm>

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42>34 I had to train my brain to think that way because I used to think, if they didn't respond, that what's wrong with me? And they, like me, they're protecting me. So there's many, many, many things like what I just shared, that somebody could be listening and if they got what I said, they could let go of fear for the rest of their life, which changes the trajectory of their commission income moving forward. So I have a lot of fun helping people you know really up up level themselves in sales, and so that's what I've been doing now for the last 25 years.

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Dan Woerheide>

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43>08 I love so much of that. I mean this has just been a fascinating and revealing conversation and, I think, impactful for whomever might be actually listening to the message not just listening to the podcast, but hearing the message that you've shared. I want to reinforce one piece of that right the ability to change our thoughts. So that is founded in positive psychology. I was a master resilience trainer for the military and I helped other trainers get certified to go back to their organizations and deliver the master resiliency program, which you know encompasses a wide array of different techniques and tools, you know, from goal setting to navigating difficult conversations, but really it was about navigating stressful situations in our lives on a day-to-day basis. You know whether it was at home in the field, you know, in Afghanistan, whatever it may be, getting people to take that step across the starting line and continue putting foot in front of the other to get to the finish line, whatever it looked like. That was kind of the premise of it.

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Dan Woerheide>

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44>19 But one of the things that stands out to me and I share this occasionally is that our thoughts are, you know they're triggered by activating events and you know, thinking about prospecting.

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Dan Woerheide>

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44>34 Prospecting would be the activating event or the idea of prospecting being an activating event that triggers a certain thought for us, which then drives our emotions and reactions.

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Dan Woerheide>

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44>46 How we do or do not carry that out is in this conversation and context, and the one thing that we would teach is when you, when you, think about changing that thought pattern, you can change your emotions and reactions, and you're absolutely right with saying that you can change that fear for the rest of your life, in everything you do, if you can change your thought about it. So I love what you shared there. It is researched and it's there that says yes, if you change your thought, you can change the way we feel about it, the way we act as a result, and it's wonderful For me. I used to have a problem with traffic and I still get impatient in traffic, but now I just speak it out loud and let it go. But I used to get angry and when I learned that skill and I started thinking about it from maybe that person or they are having a much worse day than me and it allowed me to just think about it and let it go.

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Dan Woerheide>

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45>58 So much different way of being. If you will, did I hit that one on? Yeah, ah, perfect, I'm learning, learning as we go. So now, eric, hey, is there anything I didn't ask that has come up that you'd like to share as we work on wrapping up our time together?

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Eric Lofholm>

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46>17 Well, I think what I'd like to leave the listeners with is an idea of optimism around selling and being, and that you, as a listener, I've accessed mastery in sales and I'm in the process of accessing mastery and being, and you can do it too if you're willing to lean in and do the work, and you might not aspire to get to mastery, which is fine too. You could be like I just want to get good at it.

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Dan Woerheide>

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46>43 Sure.

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Eric Lofholm>

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46>45 So just know these are things that you have access to and you just got to lean in and do the work. And sometimes we feel resistance, like prospecting or with my dad with the forgiveness. There was a lot of resistance, Right, but in order to have the breakthrough I had to lean in and it really took a lot of. Took a lot of being willing to shift my thinking. So it's available. You can come and connect with me in my sales training community. You can connect with me in the being Movement community. These are great ways to access profound knowledge to improve the quality of your life.

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Dan Woerheide>

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47>27 I love that. I appreciate you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. Now, to clarify beingmovementcom is where they can connect with and engage with the being movement and the different places in which it exists Facebook group or Instagram, linkedin group, youtube, etc. As you already mentioned but where can they go and find more about your sales business and that group?

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Eric Lofholm>

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47>56 Yeah, so I'm the only Eric Lotham on the planet, so if you Google me, that's me and my website is ericlothamcom, so you can find me there like any other trainer. We've got an email list. You can get on the list. We're on Facebook and YouTube, et cetera, so same kind of a thing as the being movement. There's lots of free options to get access to great content to better your sales results.

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Dan Woerheide>

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48>25 Beautiful. I'll make sure that those links go into today's show notes or the show notes as you're listening to this and if you enjoyed this conversation. I noticed my verbal pause. That's why I extended that one. If you enjoyed this conversation, please do share this with someone in your world. Don't forget to hit subscribe and let us know by visiting podcastdanwus. Wow, I'm having all kinds of brain trouble today. Podcastdanwus, you can leave comments or send us a voicemail and something you heard today resonated with you. Love to be able to share that on upcoming episodes. Eric, thanks so much for being with me today. No pun intended.

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Eric Lofholm>

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49>14 You are welcome, Dan. You did an amazing job of interviewing. Just the conversation flowed. I think we're able to really capture some great, great content for the listeners. I think they'll really enjoy what we created today. So thank you for all you're doing.

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49>-----END MASTERING THE ART OF SALES AND PERSONAL GROWTH WITH ERIC LOFHOLM-----