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Hi, my name is James Shepherd.
Today I want to talk to you about a really important question.
Why are you calling me?
Why are you talking to me?
This particular video came out of a situation I had last week.
I was talking to an individual agent that had reached out to schedule a time to talk
with me.
We talked for maybe 15, 20 minutes.
I answered some questions, gave him some tips and advice.
Towards the end of the call he says to me, “So James, how do you make money by talking
to me?”
I replied, “I don’t.”
He said, “Okay, so why are you talking to me?”
It’s just a really interesting question and it really stuck with me because you know,
why am I talking to him.
This is somebody that wasn’t selling for a processor, where I have a referral relationship.
He wasn’t using our software and I actually hadn’t even brought up either of those things
yet in the conversation.
I was just trying to help him out.
I was thinking about that and I was thinking, “You know why do I do that?
Why do I spend so much time?”
It’s not uncommon for me to have one day where I wake up.
The first thing in the morning what I always do is I get out my iphone.
I pull it up and I look at my schedule.
All right, what do I have today?
It’s not uncommon for me to have a day where I look and I have 20 or 30 you know 15 minute
phone calls.
Most of them with individual sales people in the merchant services industry who are
calling to get my advice and get my tips and how can I grow my merchant portfolio, and
yet most of those calls are not going to make any money on them.
I was thinking about it and I thought, “Really there is several reasons that I spend so much
time doing that.”
The first reason is because I believe that creating massive value for others is the only
guaranteed long-term way to be successful.
If I look back 10 years ago at what I was doing, well 10 years ago I was going out to
merchants.
I was trying to help them.
I would even, I’m a quickbooks expert, so I would help them with their quickbooks account.
I would do all these different things for them.
I would help them with their marketing and even if they weren’t my clients, I would
give them free advice and I would help them out.
I made book recommendations.
I was helping them.
I had actually a guarantee in my local market.
I’d advise some of you to take this advice and do this yourself, but in my local market,
what I would do is I had a guarantee.
I was the “credit card guy.”
So when people would come in and they’d say, “Who are you?”
I’m like “I’m the credit card guy.”
That’s what I always said.
People were like, “Can I tell Bob who is here?”
“Just tell him the credit card guy is here.
He’ll know.”
So that was my name.
I was the credit card guy.
If somebody’s terminal broke down, I guaranteed that I would fix it for free.
You might think, “Well, of course, you are going to fix the terminal for free.”
No, no, no, not just my client, anybody, whether they were my client or not.
Anybody in the area, I’d give them my card and say, “Hey look, if your terminal ever
breaks down, even though you are not my client, I guarantee I’ll come here and fix your
terminal for free.
That was my guarantee, whether they were my client or not.
That’s a pretty big guarantee.
I did all that.
Why did I do that?
In my spare time after spending hours and hours and hours in the field selling, what
did I do when I got home in the evening?
You know newly married.
How was I spending my time?
Well, I was making videos to help sales people in the industry and guess how much I charged
for my videos?
Zero.
I didn’t charge anything.
They were free.
Now you say, “James, you probably never made any money.”
Guess again.
Guess how I’m making money now.
Well, I have merchant portfolios from all the merchants I sold.
I have referral portfolios from the merchants that all the sales people that I eventually
they asked me who to sell for and I referred them to somebody and I’m making money off
that from doing that for years.
Now I also have a successful software company that is serving the same sales people and
ISOs that I helped all along the way and I learned from that, what kind of software they
wanted, and we created the software that they wanted.
So all of those things that I did that were technically not in my interest.
They were just helping someone else.
That all came full circle to help me out.
What I would challenge you to do today is a couple things.
First of all, ask yourself this question.
Am I leveraging my strengths to help other people regardless of how it is going to benefit
me short-term?
If you are not, how could you do that?
Could you volunteer in your local community?
Could you be helping merchants that maybe aren’t even clients of yours?
What are your strengths?
How can you help?
How can you provide value to other people?
Because if you are not focused on providing that long-term value through your strengths,
you’re probably focused on trying to generate short-term success.
“I got to make all this money this month, this month, this month.”
Well, there is two problems with that.
That type of success is almost impossible to achieve, that short-term get rich quick,
and if you do achieve it, it doesn’t ever last very long.
The best and most guaranteed way for you to hit your goals and achieve your objectives
is going to be to provide value to others without regard for your own interests and
then over the long-haul, you know that’s going to pay off.
One last story I’ll tell you real quick and then I’ll be done.
I have a relationship right now with an ISO that is very valuable to my company and we’ve
made tens of thousands of dollars from that relationship with technology and consulting
and training.
That relationship all started because one day I took one of those 15 minute calls and
this representative then started using our software because he enjoyed the call with
me.
Then he recommended that to his manager.
Then his manager recommended that to the CEO of the company.
Then I had a conversation with the CEO and developed into a relationship and so you know
things like that happen.
That’s when happens when you are out in the field every day talking to merchants,
not just there to sell them, but there to help them, there to generate a relationship
with them.
Those things will happen to you over time, but you’ve got to put the work in.
I love the statement.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
I think that is a true statement.
My name is James Shepherd.
Thanks for watching.