How To Change Minds - With Rob Jolles
Sep 27, 2021Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Rob Jolles.
A sought-after speaker and five-time Bestselling author, Rob Jolles has spent over thirty-five years, logging over 2.5 million miles in the air teaching, entertaining, and inspiring audiences worldwide. His keynotes and workshops have allowed him to amass a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 companies, including Toyota, Disney, GE, Lilly Pharmaceutical, Bristol Myers Squibb, Northrop Grumman, a dozen universities, and over 50 financial institutions.
Why you've got to check out Rob's episode:
- Learn how Rob helps sales teams, financial organisations, business owners and entrepreneurs to shift their mindset around sales and persuasion.
- The importance of the 'Fear of Change' when it comes to sales, persuasion and influencing. People want to address their problem, but they have a fear of change you need to help evade.
- How the inability to change can hamper success, both on the business side and on the customer side. When you can't get past your fear of change it leads to a slow slog through life with a victim mentality.
- Why you have to go deeper in conversations and why you need to find out what is really holding then back. People don't fix small problems, they fix big problems so you need to move past the surface level problems.
- Get access to Rob's resources on his website and find out why Rob believes you should get access to a journal and complete it on a regular basis.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Rob Jolles who is a sought-after speaker and five times best-selling author. And has spent over 35 years and over 2.5 million air miles teaching entertaining and inspiring audiences worldwide. So, Rob, hello and welcome to today's episode.
Rob Jolles: Oh, it's great to be here at Tom. Thanks for having me.
Tom Bailey: Awesome. Thank you so much. And just out of interest, whereabouts are you in the world?
Rob Jolles: I am about one mile out of Washington, DC, right in the United States.
Tom Bailey: Excellent. I know it very well, thank you so much. And just to share a little bit more about you before we do get started, Rob has delivered keynotes and workshops to numerous fortune 500 companies, including Toyota Disney, General Electrics, and a dozen universities, and well over 50 financial institutions. The title for today's episode is How To Change Minds. And Rob is going to show us how to do that in just around seven minutes. So, question number one for you today is who are your ideal clients?
Rob Jolles: Yeah. You know, the one thing you don't want to do is you never want to write a book for everybody. You don't want to build a program for everybody. You build a website and, you know, I sometimes struggle with, well, let's see who doesn't need to learn the skills of persuasion, but ideally I typically work with sales teams, as you could hear in that bio I work with lots of banks, wirehouses, but my work now with the how to change minds book was to all those people who say, oh, I don't really sell. And we've always said, well, yes, you do. I don't think we've ever written for them. So, there's no dollar signs. There's no, I'm going to make you more money more than you've ever seen, where there's more of a cat and a mouse and the ethical responsibility to persuade. So, anybody who needs that, that's my ideal client.
Tom Bailey: Excellent. And on this topic of you know, persuasion and you know, how we're all need to be selling, what would you say is the biggest challenge that people typically face when it comes to that mindset around sales and selling.
Rob Jolles: Well, you know, it's interesting. I think they face the same obstacle, their clients face, and that is fear of change. That is huge. It's why, if you look at my bio, yeah. I mean the financial institutions, but you'll see me working with, I've done a dozen seminars for NASA. I trained hostage, negotiators, polygraph examiners. The biggest challenge that many people face is acknowledging that they not only have a problem, but they want to address that problem. So that's their challenge. And ironically, I'm teaching them how to work with their clients to get them over their fear of change as well. But it's a big one. Fortunately there's process behaviors in place that are repeatable and predictable and measurable. So as long as we can get somebody who's ready for change, we're ready to go.
Tom Bailey: Right. And it might seem like an obvious question, but if people are unable to change, what impact can this have on either of them or their business.
Rob Jolles: Well, it hampers success. As simple as that, it's just, I think we all, sometimes we don't, we're what we call unconsciously incompetent. We don't know that we don't know, but we can see it in others. And so when you see others repeating the same mistake over and over again, and kind of expecting a different outcome. When you can't get past your fear of change, it's a slow, slow slog through life. It's frustrating. And again, what we do is our, the penalty for it is just repeating the same errors and mistakes taking on almost a victim mentality.
And, and assuming that we are marred by bad luck, I don't believe in bad luck. I do believe in luck. So let me correct that. I think we make our own luck and we did. We decrease the chances of bad luck. That's a better way to say it.
Tom Bailey: But it makes complete sense to me. And I'm sure there's a ton of advice in this book. But what would you say is the one most valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody who wants to make a start on.
Rob Jolles: Yeah. The first thing we have to do when you're, and let's take it and change somebody else's mind. Okay. The first thing you have to do when you're engaged in a conversation, much like we're having today, Tom is. In two words, we got to go deeper. So, what holds people back? What's going on on their side? Well, most people actually do know they have an issue. They just don't necessarily want to do anything about it to them. It's not big enough. And we have to remember that people don't fix small problems. They fix big problems. So our job. That one piece of advice is don't just take what the client with somebody giving you as their potential problem and say, well, okay, let me fix it for you. You're going to see them stuck in that fear of change. Go deeper means. Ask more questions, more questions, problem solve. Act like a consultant act like a three-year-old ask them cause why? And stay there, the bigger the problem become. We don't have to wait for it to actually happen, but the bigger vision of the problem they have, the more urgency they have to fix it in the more urgency they have to fix it. Obviously the faster they'll do it.
Tom Bailey: That's more questions, a critical skill in sales and absolutely. So, what is one valuable resource that you can share with people to help them make a start on changing?
Rob Jolles: Huh, you know, there's a few ways to look at that question. I know a good book called how to change minds, but that's an easy resource. How about this as a church, as something? Cause it let's make this a free resource. Okay. How bad. And I mean really pay attention to that journal. I stumbled upon writing a journal some years ago because I just kept coming back with stories from the road. And that journal has taught me so much because not only am I mythologically observing. Which is what a journal will do if you keep it on a regular basis. But then I look at it and I realize for every 10 stories, nine of them, aren't that hot, but there's, there's legs to some of these stories and there's morals and there's lessons. And I can tell you as a guy who's about 2200 pages deep into journals, there's a lot that can be learned. Last thing, it's a wonderful thing to be able to give your friends or maybe your children or where people to say here's the way I was, what I was thinking when I was in the wheelhouse of my career.
Tom Bailey: I love that great advice. And what I'll do as well by Rob is I'll post links on the show notes to your book and also to your website as well.
Rob Jolles: Super.
Tom Bailey: So, you've clearly had a long journey. You talked about 2.5 million air miles. I think it was in the bio. And over that journey, what would you say is one of your greatest learnings, mistakes or failures that you've made either in life or business? And what did you learn from it?
Rob Jolles: Good. I can, this is an easy one for me, because as a professional speaker, I'm on stage a lot. I'm not, not so much these last year, but I bought a virtual and the one thing that I would share with other people, and that really puts a smile on my face, even for the conversation we're having right now, Tom, I've never met you. And, you know, we were going to see what we were going to see, but I was very confident into this call because I have what I call the great equalizers. I there's so much, I can't control in a sale in front of an audience delivering a seminar, whatever, but there's one thing I can control and that's my energy and enthusiasm. I, and I, and it gives me great peace to know. I always have either. They're always with me. I don't need the block. I don't. Well, all I need to do is bring them and I recognize many people will forgive a lot of things, but we won't forgive a lack of energy and enthusiasm it's in our control. And it just it makes me beam because they're my greatest companion.
Tom Bailey: Excellent. I love that answer can take into that one a little bit more just out of my own interest. Do you have something you do to specifically put you in that state or is it, is it quite a natural process for you?
Rob Jolles: Love the question. And I do, I'm and I, I'm not wearing it right now because I don't wear it for podcasts. But note to self I will in the future, I actually have a little lightning bolt that I, I clip on. I put on my suit, I put on my shirt and that lightning. Stands for energy and enthusiasm. And, and as a guy who's been at this for close to 40 years, Ooh obviously you can wake up one day, but what if we forget, I mean, I'm not going to intentionally forget by methodically putting that lightning bolt on and clipping it on. Even as a guy who's been doing it 40 years. Let's meet bang, bang, look in the mirror and go, hi brother, let's go. Let's bring it. And whatever else happens, we'll play that where it lands, but I'm not forgetting it clips on.
Tom Bailey: Awesome. I love it. Yeah. I love that great tip. And it anchors that feeling into your every time, which is so important. And the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked that also brings some great value to our audience.
Rob Jolles: Well, I guess a great question that you could or should ask is. How much longer is Rob Jolles going to be doing this if he's doing it for 40 years. And the answer is I, one of the greatest gifts we can possess is loving what we do. And, and I, and I talk to anybody out there who might not be at it for 40 years. Don't be in such a hurry. You'll get there, but build a path. Don't be frustrated. Build a path that says it takes, you will never be a direct line, but on a line to get there because that's the reward. That's not necessarily the finish line, but that's the line we're looking for. And I'm a very blessed man that I happen to love what I do. I don't love sitting in an airport. I don't love it. There's always aspects of what we do, but to be able to engage in a conversation with a, with a person like you Tom, or to be able to take it in front of an audience. Boy, there's just nothing better. So, build that path and stay on it.
Tom Bailey: I love it. Thank you so much, Rob, for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing such great value with our audience .
