IAM1955 – Coach Helps Professionals Build Sustainable Business Culture

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Michael Castiglione 00:00

A lot of people, they'll get their first couple clients and they'll forget about prospect. That's very typical in those first years where they get all excited and they get the energy and they start implementing.

Then that project comes and goes and they're like, Oh, now I got a prospect.

Intro 00:18

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:45

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we were purposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners and what I like to call CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, it could be everything from a project, it could be from a day, it could also be from a business in and of itself, and it could also of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes because what we're gonna really focus on is the last question that we really ask, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

All the creative, innovative and I think truly insightful questions that we received from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode to think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcasts.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Michael Castiglione of Sandler Training Center. Michael, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Michael Castiglione 02:17

Gresh, thanks for having me. I'm excited for this afternoon.

Gresham Harkless 02:21

No problem. Super excited to have you on. Before we jumped in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Michael so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Mike owns a Sandler Training Center in Los Angeles where he coaches and train sales professionals, business owners, and professions through the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques that drive sales. Prior to owning a Sandler Training Center, he was a professor and director at Loyola Marymount University, where he focused on leadership development.

Mike is a passionate leader that is dedicated to collaborating with professionals to build a systemic and sustainable culture for business growth. Mike, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Michael Castiglione 02:56

Yeah, let's get started.

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Gresham Harkless 02:57

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how and what led you to get started, your CEO story, as I like to call it.

Michael Castiglione 03:06

As you mentioned, as a professor at LMU, I wasn't a traditional professor, I had a nonprofit. So I was running that CEO leadership skills had to do all the biz dev, all the marketing, all the things came down to me loved the nonprofit world, loved everything I was doing. But I read it isn't exactly corporate, but it is and wanted to go start my own thing and the rest is history.

And for a few years now, one of my own business, and it's as all CEOs will know, there's ups and downs. The first year won't push it on anyone in your life. It's so hard once you get that second, third, you get the momentum, you're doing behaviors and all of it.

Gresham Harkless 03:51

Yeah, absolutely. I think so many times there's not as much information or enough awareness about that first year, as you like to say. But I think yes, understanding that process and respecting the process of going through those steps is so huge.

Michael Castiglione 04:05

Gresh, so many people hear the sexy stories of the self-made millionaire, the overnight transition, what they don't see is the 70, 80 hour work week that led to it. They don't see all the no's that CEO or entrepreneur had encountered and didn't put their tail between their legs and go. But they just got up and reflected and analyzed what can I do better? Who can I meet? That is a no for now, that's not meant to be.

And, especially young entrepreneurs coming they think it's going to be easy. And if it was easy, everyone would do it, but it's not easy. It's hard, and that's what we do. A standard really helped, not just CEOs and entrepreneurs, but all business professionals really focus and create structure to create order amongst the chaos.

Gresham Harkless 04:55

That's extremely powerful. So could you take us through a little bit more on how you're supporting these CEOs, these entrepreneurs, these business owners to be successful.

Michael Castiglione 05:03

So, as you mentioned earlier, we focus on three things, the behaviors, the attitudes and the techniques. Behaviors are the things you do every single day. A lot of people, they'll get their first couple of clients and they'll forget about prospect. That's very typical in those first year or two years where they get all excited and they get the energy and they start implementing. Then that project comes and goes, and they're like, Oh, now I've got to prospect again. So create the behavior so you don't have that ebbs and flows that are as deep. Life happens, ebbs and flows will be present throughout all businesses.

But can you track every single day what are you doing to prospect? So behavior is keeping that at the forefront. Attitudes, your beliefs. Can you believe that this can happen as some people are afraid to pick up the phone and call. They're afraid to get a note. They're afraid to have high-ticket conversations because their mind gets in the way and it's not their fault. We come into business with a lot of preconceived beliefs from either how we were raised or how we engage in business in the past. We address those and make sure that we level the playing field so that the business professionals can think it's business, not personal.

We want to create good relationships, but we want to find the prospects that are qualified and we have a solution for it. And then obviously the technique. Third is, how do you take control? How do you ask those good questions? It's 2020, no one wants to be sold. I'm a huge advocate of the phrase, if you can be replaced by a computer, you should. So that professional who's the product or service sells itself, then it should! I need to take the commission for doing something that you don't need to. There are so many relationship sales out there, though, where we're providing a customized solution or really trying to interpret what the prospect needs, and that will never be replaced by a computer.

So that's creating those questions so that you have better communication and you don't come off like an aggressive salesperson. You come off as someone who's a valued consultant, but not giving up free consulting. There's a big blend between the two.

Gresham Harkless 07:04

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the first step towards getting past a lot of stuff is being aware of those things. So I love that you guys help out with that.

Michael Castiglione 07:11

My father said two things that stick with me as a business professional. Don't talk to strangers. It's not our job to go and find new people. And we don't talk about money. I didn't have any idea about my father's financial earnings until I was 17, filling out my college application and needed for him. He was like, I'm going to see it as opposed to be open and transparent about it. It's okay, but let's talk about it now versus down the road where, identify that we don't have a solution for you. So having open conversations is very important in a professional way.

So those two tracks in my head always early in my career, professionally hurt me because we should be going out. If you believe that you have a solution to help others, then you should be talking to every stranger that you can talk to. So there are these little talk tracks that we get when we're growing up and early in life or just an experience that sets us the wrong way and it's overcoming us and it takes time.

Trust me. That's something you just read a book and you read it, you hear the quote or you listen to this podcast, you hear it and you're like, Oh, I'm now going to be different forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes time and reinforcement.

Gresham Harkless 08:27

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Michael Castiglione 08:36

First and foremost I journal every day. Journaling every day is pivotal for a CEO. Just to be present, focus on the tasks at hand. I do what's called bagels, morning bagels, write down my behaviors in the morning, everything I have to do. So this call is on my journal for the day, my prospecting activities, my sales activities, my behaviors, my affirmations, my attitude, reminding myself how great I am and the impact that I'm doing my goals for the day. So if I do everything I need to do, hopefully what will I achieve?

Evaluate yesterday. How did yesterday go? And then that turns into my lesson, L for lesson, after I evaluated what I learned from yesterday, and then finish with a success. Always find the silver lining in everything. So I start every morning with quick bagels, and that's what sets me as an entrepreneur in the right spot as far as what we do is the reinforcement. So we meet once a week. It's not a one and done boot camp. It's not just come get motivated and feel great. It's address it each and every week. So, obviously, since end of March, we've been 100% virtual, which we used to pride ourself in being in person.

Good facilitation is good facilitation and using zoom rooms and being able to break the people out that they can do the role playing problem solving. Just think about it. How many business professionals do practice in the sales call? That's the first time they're going through the pitch. That's the first time they're going through the sales call. That's the first time they're trying to overcome a stall or objection. That's game time.

That's not when we're practicing. We shouldn't be shooting from the hip gun. We should be going into a well-oiled machine. That's what we do over time. You do situational learning, problem-solving through a strategic system to put the entrepreneur in control.

Gresham Harkless 10:30

So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. You might have already mentioned this, but this could be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Michael Castiglione 10:41

Habit or, again, it goes down to my behaviors. Just a branch from that journaling is I have behaviors I track every single day. So it's how many calls am I going to make? Cold emails. Network, everything that I do as a business professional, I track every day. It takes me 30 seconds and I track daily. I reflect weekly and I analyze monthly, but I don't get too bogged down in every day. Some days I might have more meetings so  I can't do all the behaviors. That's why I don't want to analyze every single day.

I'm just quickly tracking. I have an Excel sheet, pump them in, analyze at the end of the reflect, at the end of the week that I do what I needed to do. Just fill my pipeline. People down and out, and then once a month, I take a look at what's working. Obviously, over the last couple of months, as we pivot virtually, are my behaviors still current? And am I getting in front of the right decision-makers and having the right conversations? Or do I need to hit it a little bit?

You do that all over the place.

Gresham Harkless 11:39

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I think so many times when you are able to track those numbers, you're able to see that story and then make decisions based off of that. So I love that hack.

What about a CEO nugget? That could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Michael Castiglione 12:01

A word of advice is learn through everything. There is no failure. That's the hardest thing to do because those were emotional. We all have different communication styles and some of us were a little bit more attuned to emotion. Some of us are less. Look at what the silver lining is. If you're always learning, that first year of business for me, I learned exponentially and I'm a lifetime learner. I'm all about going back and getting new ideas and have a couple of different masters. You can argue about the pros and cons of that, but I'm always learning.

That year I learned more than any other year in my life because I was constantly doing new things. So you can call that as constantly failing, but I'm constantly stepping outside my comfort zone to do something new and then just get beat down and go out about it, but learn about it. How can I do it differently? How can I do it better? Just keep learning and growing. That's any entrepreneur, any CEO, I think can agree that you learn through every action. Then also learn through your positive.

So, when you got those deals, what did you do to find the person? Reflect on the process. What could you have done better? Did you have some missed opportunities on the table? Don't just go to the bank and celebrate. Reflect on both your successes and your challenges. So that would be my absolute to any entrepreneur out there.

Gresham Harkless 13:32

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And so many times again, if we don't track those things that you mentioned in your hack, then it starts to become harder to understand why you did what you did and how you got that success or how that quote and quote failure came.

But I think a lot of times that we look at it in a different way rather than a failure, but as a learning process, learning a part of the process and learning tool that allows us to be, I think, sometimes more excited about getting and trying different things getting outside of our comfort zone. So we can get that feedback and be better.

Michael Castiglione 13:59

Yeah, there's no law in business. There's strategy, there's hard work, there's putting yourself in the right situation to have that conversation. I don't know, you just got lucky that you put yourself in that position for a reason.

So keep planning, keep strategizing and keep prospecting. Don't ever stop.

Gresham Harkless 14:20

Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Castiglione 14:22

You have 99% of your business coming through word of mouth in the world. Keep trying new stuff because you never know when the next crisis is coming, whether it's a financial, whether it's a pandemic.

Just keep thinking outside the box, you never know what happens next.

Gresham Harkless 14:39

Yeah, absolutely. And having that mentality definitely helps increase your likelihood of success. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show.

So Mike, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Michael Castiglione 14:53

For me, it's all about leadership and really being able to guide others that can be more impactful, empower others. For me, that's what a CEO is. It's those who are not only in my business, but in my clients.

Putting them in the position to succeed.

Gresham Harkless 15:12

Yeah, absolutely. You get the right people in the right bus, in the right seats in order for them to be successful. And that's truly, about leadership and being able to see the force for the tree, so to speak, and be able to make those decisions in order to make that happen.

So, Mike, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the Mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Michael Castiglione 15:38

Yeah, absolutely. Again, anyone who's interested in learning more in this virtual world, anyone can crash a class for free. So if there's a topic or idea that we talked about today that you're like, Ooh, I'd like to see that in action, give me an email at michaelcastiglione@sandler.com.

You're more than welcome to come and attend any class and see how we might be able to help.

Gresham Harkless 16:02

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Mike. We will have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you as well, but I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 16:11

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you listening.

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