Dominick Izzo: Toughness And Vulnerability: Yin And Yang

Listen to the podcast here:

Watch the episode here:

Network marketing is the greatest source of creating wealth. In this industry, the problem is not a bad network marketing company but a bad network marketing leader. In this episode, Dominick Izzo, a retired police officer, shares how being authentic by showing both toughness and vulnerability creates success in this space. We must change a pattern to recognize a predatory behavior in network marketing; it preys on the weak mind. Let’s change the industry of network marketing today! Tune in to this episode now.

---

Dominick Izzo: Toughness And Vulnerability: Yin And Yang

I’m with Dominick Izzo. Dominick, it is great to have you on the show. I’m excited to hear about some of the background and for everybody to hear your perspective on the industry, which I already know is on point but we will have fun discussing it.

Thanks. I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Share your background a little bit. Give everybody one minute on Dominick and how you got to this place in time in the networking space.

I have so many things going on. I’m a retired police officer and a former gym owner. I’m a radio show host and a podcaster as well. I’m a published author and a former politician with three stints out here in Chicago as well. I have a brief stint in real estate. I have been involved with the network marketing industry for the last few years. I’m doing something else. I have a cigar line or cigar brand. I’m not married. I never got married. I don’t have kids. I have to keep my days obsessively full. There are so many things that I have going on but the 360-degree view of me is I’m me.

Years ago when I started on social media, I had a brand. It was Officer Dominick Izzo. Back then, this was probably in 2015, the social media personas started to grow. You had Officer Daniels, Mike the Cop, and myself. We had these big social media followings but I also did some other stuff out there. I was very passionate about the martial art that I teach, and I had a big following with that. I was passionate about my faith and all this other stuff. I got caught up in the niche. The officer defined me. My title defined me.

 

 

The problem I had was whenever I wanted to introduce a different part of myself, I would get my audience and go, “We are not here for that. We don’t want to hear about your faith. Talk to us about more law enforcement stuff.” Over the last few years, I’m focusing on myself. I’m the brand, end of the story. I don’t niche down in a lot of areas, especially my social media content. If there’s something I’m passionate about, I talk about it. I typically stick to the areas of the network marketing industry, politics, my faith, fitness, and martial arts and then I pepper that in with inappropriate humor here and there.

Is that your model for building as a leader? You have got this brand. You are building an audience. You keep it somewhat generic. You are not niching down but then through that, it allows you to build a business.

I have to because specifically, I don’t know whom I’m going to attract, specifically in the industry. One of the streams of income that I focus on the most is network marketing. I made a public declaration that within the next twenty years, I’m going to be the single greatest known network marketer or wealth creator in history more than Dexter Yager. To put that down as a goal, I have to burn my boats and focus on that. How do I attract people?

If I go up and niche down on network marketing, I’m going to lose a lot of other people that would have probably wanted me somewhere else. Something that happened a couple of years ago is I had a person who said, “You are not growing for a reason. You are always putting your political views out there.” I was very careful about my political views. The problem is when you tell me no on something, I have to double and triple down. I said, “Screw this.” I tripled down on my political views.

My building of the business grew even more because people knew exactly where I stood even if it was like, “I don’t agree with you politically but I agree with what you are teaching here, so let’s do business.” We got our emotional views out of the way. The second I saw that happen, I went, “I’m done. I’m not going to niche down on anything. I’m going to put myself out there because even if you don’t like who I am personally and you don’t agree with my faith or this but I have a skillset in X, Y, and Z, you are never going to question me and my integrity.”

Here’s one of the big challenges. I came from a big event where I spoke. There were a bunch of networkers. There were people talking about building the brand, which is powerful as an individual leader for your personal recruiting but from a duplication standpoint, there are struggles. A lot of people don’t have your personality. You are a good–looking guy. You are charismatic. You have got this podcast. You do all these different things. There is a danger in the average person going, “I cannot do what Dominick does.“ How do you bridge that? How do you help your team understand that’s okay?

That is the hardest thing on the planet. It’s one of the biggest objections the people above me in my last company had. I’m not duplicatable. I said, “What do you mean?” “You are in a suit. You give presentations on Zoom. It doesn’t look like you are in your car. It’s the way you talk, this, and that.” I started to have massive self-doubt. I have been in the industry for years. I want to start recruiting. You are not going to find anybody better at the pitch and the close or objection handling than I am.

“Does this mean I’m not going to be successful?” Ironically enough, there’s a friend of mine. There’s a woman, Jessie Lee Ward, who’s in this industry. She’s probably one of the number one network marketers in the world. We developed a friendship. I got pissed at this girl, a female of all people because I’m a male and I’m sexist. This woman who is 14 to 15 years younger than me is doing what my mind says, which is, “Stop apologizing for who you are. Be exactly who you are.”

I have to create the gravity of a black hole to draw people in. Where you duplicate that is I tell people who are on my team to be as ruthlessly authentic as possible. That means if you suck at this industry, you go online and say, “I want to talk about network marketing. I am horrible at this.” If you stutter, stutter. The more you admit, it takes the fire out of everything. I have gotten that from examples like my very first night on patrol as a police officer. On day one out of the academy, we had a big fight in progress. It was hot outside. We put a bunch of people in handcuffs.

The next thing I remember is I’m sitting on the ground. I have got a paramedic over me. He’s taking off my vest and gun belt. I have got all these cops on me, “You passed out.” “What do you mean I passed out? I came from the nightclub industry. I have been in fights. I was a collegiate and high school wrestler. What are you talking about?” They said that it was an adrenaline dump. It was all this stuff. I was overheated.

The next day when I went into roll call in a brand-new department, I didn’t know any guys. There are going to be fifteen guys all getting ready to make fun of me. I walked into the roll call room and went, “Did you hear about that guy who passed out last night?” I addressed the elephant in the room. There was instant laughter. It was never brought up again. I saw immediately a power in acknowledging vulnerability. That kept me free from attacks when I ran for office. It kept me free from everything else. It keeps me unbelievably not even relatable but authentic and trustworthy in any business I do.

I love the authenticity. We invented a concept called authentic sharing technology because you have to cut through the noise. There’s nothing that does that like authenticity. The problem still exists though for the average Joe coming into the industry. I built an organization and did all the big stuff but the reality was I needed a system. I started when there was a VHS tape, a fax, a phone, and a meeting. It’s so simple. Somebody said, “What order do you do things in?“

Who cares? Hand them a tape and invite them to a meeting. Now, you go, “I got all these digital tools.“ Where do I start? Even being authentic for somebody who’s not is a tough place to start. We are finding that you go to these organizations and say, “There are 10,000 people in the organization. Find me 25 people that all do the same thing to get somebody started.“

It’s hard to find, which was paramount back then. Everybody did the same thing. You had one VHS tape, not two. There was one. There’s a cassette tape, a fax, a phone, and a meeting. What do you do now with that brand-new person? We can talk to them about being authentic but they can’t launch their podcast. They don’t have a following on social. They hate Facebook. Do you say, “You are not my crowd?“ How do we help that person that is hungry and teachable? How do they get started?

We have to undo the mistakes of the past. The biggest problem with duplicability is what it did. It created a 97% failure rate and a bunch of people who weren’t trained properly who now say, “The industry is a scam.”

The biggest problem with duplicability is what did it do? It created a 97% failure rate, and many people who did, weren’t trained properly.

That’s going to change. It’s true in real estate and insurance. It’s true in every industry that exists. The 97% rate is true in every other vertical in the world. Marriages are approaching it.

It’s because people have zero work ethic in their expectations. If you get involved in a marriage, all of a sudden, it’s going to arbitrarily work out. My system is backward. When I first got started, I was so frustrated. I’m with the first company I started with. I left for a while and came back to it. This is where my career is going to wind up excelling and ending. I was so good at selling the product because the product sold itself. I had other people who were authentic. It was great but I couldn’t build the business.

It was the same thing, “Pass around this flyer. Let’s watch this tape. Get the living room.” I couldn’t be me. Every single millionaire I ever talked to in the industry always said the same thing. I would say, “How did you build?” “I talked to three people a day.” “What time of day did you call them? Did you email them? Did you text? Did you stop them in the grocery store and sound like a psychopath? How did you relate to these people?” That was the biggest hurdle I had.

I followed the traditional network marketing model for years until I realized I’m the greatest salesperson in the world because my job was to talk you into handcuffs and think it was a great idea to give up your freedom without any resistance. If I wasn’t good at that, then there was no way I was going to be good at influencing people in network marketing. The biggest thing we have to come back to is we have to teach people this business. I fought against it for years. It’s not personal development. They sell that crap all over the place. I come from an Italian household. I’m the oldest of three. It was independence.

I never understood how you would see these mass people at these network marketing events. You would have the people with the microphone telling the crowd of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, “I believe in you until you believe in yourself.” I would go, “Are you kidding me?” The number one thing that we have to do to start to change a pattern is to recognize there’s predatory behavior in network marketing. We have to recognize that. It preys on the weak-minded who think that they have that set-it-and-forget-it aspect of, “All I’m going to do is talk to two people.”

In all fairness, that is true of every large organization with an agenda or the world.

It’s a numbers game.

Once the organization becomes overly large and they have an agenda, they tend to do all that other stuff but you continue to be authentic and be on purpose.

My view is I want to go the opposite route of the original upline I had. They came in, “Get people on the phone with me.” My role was to stay ignorant. Let me put it this way. I don’t care who says what. I’m not a fan of humility. Humility is false. You have a lot of people, especially in the network marketing industry who claim, “I want you to be better than I do in this and that,” but we have so much guru worship that they never pour into their people because they want that high of being on the stage with the microphone. Everybody does that.

I got blessed. I have been to documentaries. I got podcasts. I have been in the news and all this. I don’t need that crap. I want success and money. That comes from making others successful. I looked at it as, “What was I missing?” I was missing passion. If I wound up recruiting you, “Patrick, you have to get on the phone with,” and maybe they didn’t answer that day because they got ten of the people vying for their time, or by the time they got to me they were at level 3 instead of level 10, I needed to solve that problem.

I needed to break the mold of network marketing to be independent. I don’t do third-party calls and edification. I need to be taken seriously because you are going to be doing business with me. The number one thing I had to look at which I tell everybody is, “If you are going to get in this industry, the first duplicatable thing is you have to know what this industry is. Know your numbers, the business, and how it works.”

The second thing we have to do is go reverse. I don’t tell my partners or my people, “Get people on the phone with me.” This is business. I work for them. I will set the table with everything possible. I can’t force you to sit down and eat but the food is there when you are hungry. I’m going to be a good old Italian father and ask you every ten minutes, “Are you hungry yet? The food is there.”

In network marketing, we only have four things we do. We contact, invite, show a plan, and follow up. That invitation is the most important skill set anybody is ever going to learn because you have every methodology from Ray Higdon who is a great guy. I have done a podcast with him. He’s an amazing guy. You have to change that go-for-no mentality and psychology. I go for yes. Everybody is going to be a yes but that’s my mentality.

You have to fuel that by educating yourself and being seen as an expert in the field, which comes from knowing what the field is. We all talk about believing in ourselves. You can’t believe in yourself until you are educated and then put people first. I’m all over the place because I’m so passionate about this damn industry that needs to be changed. Many people get into the business and say two great lies.

Number one, “I’m not in this for the money.” If you are not in this for money, get out. You have to go. Money is energy. You are going to change people’s lives. The other one is, “I want to change people’s lives with the greatest product we have.” That’s not up to you. You might be 500 pounds overweight and I might say, “I have got the best diet plan in the world for you.” You are like, “I’m happy being 500 pounds overweight.”

You have to find other people’s needs and serve other people. That’s where I come back to. The fulfillment for me and what I was missing with law enforcement is serving. I love to serve based on my ability. I have a great ability to pitch, close, present an objection handle, and invite. I believe in working backward. When I recruit somebody, I will work for you to the nth degree.

Let me back up on that. I was taught three-way calls not because my sponsor did them for me that long but after we did 10 or 15, I learned the business. I got to hear him. He wasn’t doing the three-way to do it for me. He was doing it to teach me. If you don’t do three ways, how do you replace that ability to teach the person? What do you do? Fundamentally, what’s the how–to?

I will clarify that. I do three-way calls for my people. They are insistent. I get irritated if they don’t. Personally, I stopped. My recruiting went through the roof when I didn’t have to do a three-way call.

You learned it. You didn’t need to do it personally.

I learned what was wrong.

I will counter one other thing you said. It’s about the money. That’s the beauty of culture. Different teams have different drivers. Some of them all swear their reason for living is to create a world that’s greener. God bless you if that’s your thing. You create a bunch of people that do that same thing and believe the same thing. That’s okay. Our organizations tend to resemble us a little bit. Whatever you believe, I can guess but politically, I will bet your organization has a little bit of mirroring and matching, which is a healthy thing.

 

 

I don’t have an answer for that, to be honest.

It’s healthy though. It’s the nature of it.

I teach three Cs. The model for traditional network marketing, which didn’t work for me, is you sell the product and then try to get somebody to become a business owner. It didn’t work for me. I went with the Robert Kiyosaki model, which is you sell someone the business and teach them to become their customer. It made more sense to me that way. It’s easier for me to pitch and close. People see what I’m able to do. I try to recruit all the time. I still entertain people. I let them do Zoom calls and pitch me because I’m always sharpening up my skillset. I always want to learn. What can I improve on?

Everybody so far still does the same thing. They lead with products, “How is this going to change my life X, Y, and Z?” When I talk to my team, they have to discover one of the three Cs. It’s either cashflow, culture, or commerce. You are going to fall in love with one of these three things. Synergistically, you are going to work together. If the product is what you love, that’s great. You have a phenomenal product that you back up and reinforce by a culture that we are all involved in and how we make our money in cashflow. They are all synergistic. I went the money route because money can help the culture.

Is that commerce? Is that the third one?

With those three, you are consistently offering value. It’s an easier objection.

How is cashflow different than commerce in your three?

I look at it as the product. Commerce is the product. It’s a vehicle for how we wind up moving it. If you say, “I heard your pitch. I don’t need this product,” years ago, I had a hang-up on that going, “I don’t know how to handle the objection.” Whenever I leave with products, it’s always, “I’m with this company. The product is better.” That’s fantastic. I ask all the time, “Do you eat McDonald’s?” “I would never eat McDonald’s. That’s Grade D meat. It’s probably carcinogen basics.”

“Would you own a franchise?” “No. I don’t believe in it.” “You wouldn’t own the most successful franchise in the history of all capitalism that also creates a culture that gives back to their community and winds up employing other people who may eat the products and believe in it. You may not like the products but you are showing your entrepreneurial mindset barometers off because you won’t even leverage the biggest cash cow in the world and then employ other people.”

Anytime somebody has one objection, we have the other two to back up to show, “You may not be crazy about how we make our money because you are not money-driven but this is our product. This is our culture. You may be extremely introverted. You don’t know how to teach people and talk to people but we will take care of that for you. Let’s talk about how we make money or products.” We incorporate three different areas of value to present to help somebody’s decision-making process be easier.

 

 

Talk to me about the ratio. You mentioned it a couple of times. It’s that numbers game. It seems like that is something near and dear to you. The one thing people can control is the lead measure. How many people are you going to talk to daily or weekly that a lot of people are afraid of? What do you do about that? How do you coach it?

What is the John Wayne film where he is standing with a kid on the shore? It’s like, “I don’t know how to swim.” He picks him right up and throws him in. If I have value for someone and they want to work with me, which is usually the case, I had to accept early on that people are getting involved in the business, especially if they are going to do the business because they want the association with me. It’s horrible to say, “I don’t know if I can.” “Let me know when you can. Our business is done here.”

The biggest problem the network marketing has is they make it personal, “Get involved in this. You and I are going to make $1 million. We are friends together. In six months, we will be rich.” You leverage that friendship, “The kids were a pain in the ass. My wife has me mowing the lawn and all this stuff.” I can’t tell you because I leveraged our friendship to get you in the business, “I thought you want to be a millionaire with me. What’s going on?”

I have to be more apathetic and understanding of your needs. I am so cut and dry off the bat. My job is calling. This is a profession for me. I cold-call as much as possible. I’m not a fan of those funnel-filling services. I want to get back to old-school business where we build relationships but I will tell you flat out, “I’m not your friend. I don’t care about your wife and kids. I don’t care if you got a hangnail that day. You put your trust in me to make money for you. You have to use me. I work for you. If you have excuses, that’s great but I don’t want to hear them. The day you get your 102-foot Benetti yachts and we are fishing in the Florida Keys off of it, then we will relax but now, we are not friends.”

I was introduced to a tracking sheet decades ago. Some people take ten pennies. You move the pocket and the whole thing. What are you doing to help them hold themselves accountable or for you to help them stay accountable?

That is a never-ending project. I come from a time when you went to wrestling practice. If the coach did something, you didn’t debate it, “It’s okay. I have to do this a thousand times.” I went to an FTO or Field Training Officer school in 2015 for a cop because I was going to train other cops. It was horrible. There were 40 of us all squeezed into a room. The lead instructor said the first thing you opened up with, “Congratulations, you are all going to be training the future generations of cops.”

The phrase, “Because I said so,” is immediately removed from your vocabulary. They got us so down to the point where if you got in a gunfight and your trainee was asking you, “Why do you want me to get behind the engine block for cover?” You can’t say, “Because I said so,” because they are going to file a complaint against you for a hostile work environment.

The problem now becomes network marketing. Set your goal down and be as unrealistic as possible. If you see that it’s making $500,000 a month and you want that, then you have to say that. We have to put a formula behind that. The formula says, “Ifs, ands, or buts have to have ten conversations a day, you figure 30 to 40 minutes per conversation. You are going to need to contact 100 people per day. That’s going to probably take you a good three hours to do. Do you have six hours a day to do this?” “No, I don’t.” Scratch it off your list. You have to start there to find the why and define the what.

Once you set that standard or model, there’s no deviating from it. Where I go back to is I immediately remove myself from the equation if I get one excuse. I used to sit there and drag you across the mud, “You said you wanted to make $10,000 a day but why aren’t you doing this?” Now, I go, “I appreciate that you have my number. There are 329 million people in the United States alone. I don’t need you. I will find someone else who I will work for.”

How do you know if they’re doing the activity? People will tell you, “A shallow brook runs the loudest.“ They talk a good game. I found it very difficult in my years. Over time, you could always do it but in the beginning, some people talk about such a good game that you are like, “This guy is doing it. How many people are you talking to?“ “You wouldn’t believe it. There are so many freaking people. I‘m just not getting the result.“ I dive in with them when it turns out the numbers weren’t there. What’s your quantifier with where you invest your time?

My partner is on my upline. I have known her for years. She has a great saying, “Watch their feet, not their mouths.” It’s rare. We know that out of 100 people who come into the business, 80% disappear. They don’t even return your calls anymore. Out of those 20 that are left over, 12 of them are going to do something here and there. You are going to have 8, and out of those 8, 2 are going to do something. It’s the recruiter, the upline, or the people who are in the leadership position who see this. It’s our job to constantly be going through those people. I believe in pressuring.

I tell the people who get involved with me, “I love what you do online, this, and that.” We have that conversation. Dominick is what you see online. That is me but you chose to do business with me, so now you are going to get a different version of me, “I love hearing your voice and talking to you.” You are going to get sick of it. It’s every single day with people I see even in the most minute area.

If I have a group chat for all my brand partners, I look for who acknowledges, “Good morning, everybody. Let me know what you need.” I look for people who say, “Good morning,” in return. I look for the people who haven’t even read my text yet. When I see what you are even willing to do on a base level, then it’s like, “What do you need from me?” I will continue to ask every day, “What do you need from me?” Until you stop responding. I go on to the next. That’s our job. Our job is not to find out what they’re doing to keep themselves accountable. I want to weed out all the shysters. I’m so tired.

You keep it as simple as, “What do you need from me?“ You start to find out if they’re thinking, “I need your help with a call. I need you to talk to this person. I‘m stuck with this issue.” “I want to talk about the Patriots,” is not an answer.

I was on a call with a partner of mine. She hasn’t seen the results she wants. It has been months. I have to remind them that it took eight years for this business to click with me. I operated on faith. I left it for a little bit and came back to it. It wasn’t until I sat there and took the industry seriously. I had to burn every bridge. I adopted the moniker of the Bull of MLM. Tilman Fertitta said, “Be the bull at anything you do.” I went, “I’m tired of apologizing for wanting to be the best at something. I’m the bull of this industry.” It was my delivery to these people.

“I can’t get people on the phone with me. I can’t do this and that.” You have to stop being nice. The diluting of this space with social media is people have gotten niceness to business. That’s where we have to start all over. People ask, “Patrick, can I get you on the phone?” Instead of saying, “I need you on the phone. Give me your schedule.” We have learned to stop telling people and giving directions. Going back to it in a big circular way, the upline has to work for the downline. You pressure the crap out of them until they either become a diamond or they break.

The upline has to work for the downline, and you pressure them until they either become a diamond or they break.

I like your mix of tough and vulnerable. It’s a dichotomy. It’s the yin and the yang. That’s attractive. Being tough gets denoted as being a jerk if you don’t mix it with the vulnerable side, compassion, and understanding but that doesn’t mean you can’t be tough. That seems to be lost on a lot of people. Good job on that front. If somebody wants to reach out to you and find out more about what Dominick Izzo is doing, how do they get in touch with you?

I have a personal cell, (708) 982-0974, specifically if they want to talk about business. I am the Bull of MLM. I have a podcast and a YouTube channel. Dominick Izzo is all over social media. You can see everything I have done from martial arts to a nightly live show that we do on politics and everything else that’s trending. Type in my name Dominick Izzo, and you will find me all over the place on social media.

It has been great spending time with you. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having me.

Important Links

• Dominick Izzo – LinkedIn
• Jessie Lee Ward
• Ray Higdon
• YouTube – Dominick Izzo

About Dominick Izzo