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What is the secret to building a steady culture for long-term growth? John Malott, Chief Executive Officer at O’snap Active Lifestyle, is here to share theirs. In this episode, John shares how he’s staying at the top of the leaderboard as CEO and shares tips on how they’re recruiting employees to keep this momentum going. John also shares his thoughts on the emergence of digital tech in marketing and how you can leverage it the right way. Success doesn’t come easy or quickly, but by having the right processes in place, you can maintain that success even longer. Get more helpful tips and valuable business insight by tuning in to this episode.
John Malott: Building A Steady Culture
I have a friend, a CEO, and a leader in the industry. He has built more times than I can count. I’m not sure if that is good or bad, John, but you have done it. You have been there, done it, and seen it. You have found your home as CEO of O’Snap. I have known you. We are going close to 25 years in 2023. I’m to have you on.
I have been there and done that. I got all the scars to prove it.
You have seen it from the field perspective. I will give you kudos. As a CEO, you may not be number one like you used to be all the time, but you are at the top of the leader board, which is crazy for you to be CEO, building an organization, and being at the top of the leader board in prospecting and follow up activity.
I believe in leading by example. I would rather have somebody show me than tell me. The industry is filled with tellers. I’m a walk the walk. I never ask our family and team to do something I’m not willing to do. The last thing I want to hear as a CEO is someone say, “It doesn’t work, or this or that.” I’m like, “Let me see. Let me be out there on the front lines with our people.” It works if you work it. I’m out there making it happen, plus I love it. It is in my blood. I have been doing this for many years. I don’t know what else to do. That is what I do. It is a reflex.
You mentioned this concept to show versus tell. It is even more difficult now because you got all these social media. I hate to label them, but Pied Piper is leading the lemmings over a cliff when they are digital marketers or superstar salespeople, but they are not professional networkers. That is a nuance to discipline. Can you talk about that for a second on how maybe the superstar sales trainer or the digital marketer is not? What makes the network professional unique?
I have worked a lot with digital marketers, social media groups, package pushers, and that whole clan. They are good at generating revenue for themselves. That is what I have discovered. They are not good at doing what we do best, which is scaling or getting a concept to duplicate rapidly. That is where merging some of that but understanding that what I bring to the marketplace and in our field is not necessarily about closing techniques and fancy this and that.
It is about a simple system that I can get moving 30 levels deep, 3 states and 3 countries over. That is the difference. You see the frustration when people buy these packages. All of a sudden, they are getting no traction, and they are wondering why. It worked for him. What was designed to work for him wasn’t designed to get much further than him.
The old saying of what works doesn’t duplicate. Not to date you because you look young, but you started an era with a VHS tape, a cassette tape, a fax, and a phone in a meeting. There was nothing else. It was simple. Now you have to fight that whole storm, the 5,000 digital impressions a day. The technology helps, and we can talk a little bit about that, but how do you keep the team on point with all those distractions and those digital gurus saying they can teach?
What I do on a daily basis is distract from the distraction. That is what a big portion of my role has become because I’m getting hit. I know if I’m getting hit the way I’m getting hit, everybody is getting hit. On social media, you will have an eighteen-year-old kid taking pictures in front of Rolls Royces and big mansions. He will sell you a course.
People are like, “Everybody wants to get rich quickly.” People won’t say that because it is not politically correct, but the bottom line is they want to get rich right now. What ends up happening is they are violating all the laws of nature and success. They don’t even realize it. You have this whole thing about multiple income streams, which I’m okay with to a certain extent. If you haven’t already built a systematic way and if you don’t have some rank already or made some money that is fairly significant, you having thirteen different things is only going to make you poorer. It is not going to make you rich.
You can build on a core set of principles or values that have gotten you there.
Our minds are even built for it. When we got too many things going on, we become less productive. That is what leads to procrastination, frustration, anxiety, and all these things that people feel. They are wondering why. We used to do the 90-day runs all the time. Now you got to have a nine-day run because it is hard to get someone. On their 90-day run, they will start on the week before the run, and the 90 days are up. I’m having nine-day runs now because times have changed. The attention span is gone. It is shut.
It is refreshing talking to you because you know this game inside now. I would be frank about it. I have trainers on sometimes on this show, and they are that social guru or what have you. I’m like, “You don’t quite get the fundamentals.” There are many get-rich-quick opportunities.” I spoke to somebody the other day. They added 100,000 recruits in several months from scratch. You were like, “Those aren’t recruits. You don’t have any relationship with any of those people.”
I’m in relationship marketing and building. There is a false sense of just because you recruit a lot of people and you are going to build a big business, you are going to have time and financial freedom. What is happening is we are putting bodies and people with pulses. Those people aren’t locked in because they are distracted by fifteen other things. You don’t have anything.
We go back to the time when we got in the trenches with people. We showed them step by step and we developed them. My job is simple as a CEO. Help our brand new people get paid and promoted. Show them the way and have them on a simple system. What I like about the technology, and you have this technology, and I use it, is I have a simple approach, and I can push some buttons. I can marry the two, but you still got to have the relationship aspect. In middle age, for every 1,000 people you recruit, I could recruit five the traditional way, and those five would outproduce your 1,000. The numbers are dramatic.
Explain this concept of what works doesn’t duplicate to people. I hope everybody reads this. Whether you are a leader, running an organization, or CEO, it is easy to get mesmerized by what works but often not understand what duplicates.
I have some friends at our powerhouse salespeople. They crush it personally. It is funny if you ask them, “Tell me how you do it.” You start to get some cracks in their system. It is maybe their charisma. There is something in there. There is some fancy footwork. You and I know great salespeople don’t always duplicate well, and they work forever. They got big incomes, but they work. They are putting in twelve hours a day. They are not seeing their families.
Great salespeople don’t always duplicate very well.
I caught on quickly. I would rather, in my business, give me ten stay-at-home moms that don’t consider themselves salespeople and let me show them a simple system. I’m talking about exactly. Here are steps 1, 2, and 3. They can go and teach their sucker mom friend, “Let me show you how to pick up an extra $1,000 to $3,000. All I did was do steps 1, 2, and 3. I did it part-time while my husband was at work or I was running the kids around.”
That is the difference because I get that. Maybe they won’t come out of the gate, and people will be like, “She was this and that.” Give it 1 or 2 years. All of a sudden, people are like, “She got a new car in the driveway.” You can start to see the results from that. In the beginning, the foundation is important. I see many people building organizations on shifting sands. They don’t even know it because they are getting a body count and checks, but a year from now, they are going to double down again. They are going to work even harder to get their check.
We have seen it. You can start to tape off. You start building a large organization. It is different for different people. Maybe someone is at $10,000 a month. They were like, “I’m feeling good here.” They have time and freedom, which is what the traditional salesperson never gets. We are building organizations where I’m telling people, “Forget money for a second. Time is what you want.” What do you want to do? You want to hang out with your kids and family. That is all I ever wanted. I wanted money, but I have a lot of rich friends. They didn’t see their families and kids. I’m like, “Maybe I don’t want that so much. I want to play, travel the world, and hang out with my kids.”
That is what not only can the industry offer, but that is what people are starting to be more attracted to. They hear many stories about the get-rich-quick, and they are starting to see through it. That is why relationships are important. You are building this culture of relationships, and it is sticky. You have time and space to help people evolve their mindset.
I like the word sticky because, in the end, that is what we do. We build a reoccurring revenue stream that is unrealistic. When I look at a lot of organizations, and I see the culture they are building, it is a money grab. I don’t knock financial deals or crypto deals, but you see it more there because it plays on the person who was desperate. They were like, “I want to get rich right now.”
When you hear the horror stories later on, “I bought Bitcoin at $62,000, and now it is at $16,000. They are waiting for the return. Instead of getting rich quickly, they are frustrated. Every now and then, people hit there. I’m big on process-oriented and system driven. You and I have talked about this. We had a mentor that would talk about mastering the mundane. I do the same boring stuff over. We rally our troops, praise them, and give them tons of recognition. Even with little wins, we make them feel good about what they are doing.
The key in any business is if you can get them to stick around long enough to be successful because the guru is going to throw some stuff at them, saying, “Buy this package, do this, jump ship or spread yourself thinner because I’m going to get you paid quicker.” It ends up in debt and disappointment. The other thing they do is blame us, the industry, and the company. They don’t necessarily look at themselves and say, “I was stretching myself thin. I was following every other guru.”
I put out a post. I said, “Mixed martial arts is a scam. Only the people at the top have a black belt. I’m going from martial arts studio to martial arts studio trying to get a black belt in a month, and this guy is not working.” It is the same thing. People say, “Only people at the top.” It is designed that way because only the people who are going to go through the process, go through the pain, and focus are ever going to get to the top. You can’t get to the top if you are chasing 3 or 4 different things and you are all over the board.
Only the people who are gonna go through the process and go through the pain and are ever gonna get to the top.
I’m open to looking at other things. I tell some of our family and team, “Part of your challenge is every time your friend or relative calls you or you see something online, you are open to looking. In the time that you take looking at potential opportunities to make money, I’m already making 15 to 20 new conversations and relationships happen during that time.”
That is a hard conversation because you want to be open-minded. You have to have a growth mindset, but you can’t start over all the time. You have to go to where you can serve your purpose and your values and get to work. I said you had done many different things, but it has been over a long time. You have never been a jumper. You have always been locked and loaded with major money and built a great book of business, and much respect for that. That is awesome to answer this for me.
Four companies in several years.
You got to the top of all of them.
I didn’t even think about multiple income streams until I was at the top of a comp plan. What happened is I had a goose that was laying golden eggs. I had a cashflow machine. I took that money, invested it, and did a whole bunch of other stuff. None of that pays out because I would buy into the gurus. I’m like, “Here we go again. I lost another $100,000. I lost $10,000 and $5,000 over here.” I realize I’m better at staying in my lane. In the book, is it Outliers when they talk about 10,000 hours? I’m like, “Get your 10,000 hours in.” If you want to play around, or you already have the formula, you could take that formula and do it else.
Elon Musk is a great example. People think he started PayPal. He saw something there. He drove that thing like crazy. He had a big exit. He parlayed that and other things. He goes to the top in something and moves on to another industry. If we follow that model, it is okay to have multiple income streams. Don’t get to the second rank in a company. Go look at four other companies and do two others. To me, it is insane.
I mentioned this book, Dan Sullivan’s Who Not How. It reminds me of network marketing away. It has nothing to do with network marketing, but the power of that model is you can find whos in the world. You can help a lot of people create freedom. You got the time and space to help them do it, which is exciting. You have been able to help a lot of people get there.
Let’s wrap up with this. You are using our technology, but most importantly, I don’t want to talk about the concept, this idea of authentic sharing technology. We live in the digital age. It is hard because there are many distractions. The worst thing a networker can do is hide behind digital technology, but at the same time, you have to leverage it. In some ways, that is harder than it has ever been, but it should be simpler. What are your thoughts on some of that in terms of keeping the team from being too distracted?
We used to talk about people who were doing busy work because they were sitting and cleaning their offices. They are organizing folders, putting labels, and stuff. That’s not money-producing activity. I see this new busyness, which is posting all the time on social media. I’m operating in the digital era. I’m on these platforms that have a billion people.
I think I’m working.
It feels like I’m working because I’m putting out the post. It is only certain people are seeing the same post. It is your same friends that are commenting. Every now and then, you might get some other person. You puke all over them, and they are done anyways. What I’m focused on for our team is there is a way to use that, but you still have to incorporate the relationship side. First off, that is the first step to building your brand, who you are, and what you are about to get your content together and showcase what you are an expert in.
For me, that became the setup because the next thing was I had to have proper exposure. Your platform made it easy because I could use a video as a quick setup. I could send an email, text, or do it through a DM on social media. I still had to take them through a process and be involved in that process because how often have we said over the years that people aren’t necessarily buying your product or your company? They are buying you first.
What happens with a lot of these digital tools is they are taking us completely out of the equation. There is no connection. Maybe they buy it or don’t, but there is no connection there. There is nothing that is going to lock them in or keep them in the game. We have these tools that we are working on with your team, and we created our stuff. You had the platform and all the stuff ready to go. We plug and play. It allowed us to take people on a little journey with us.
We were the tour guides. I always say, “I would rather be a tour guide type leader than a travel agent type leader. The travel agent has never been there. He tells you you should go. Tour guide is walking you through.” We became tour guides with the technology. I got NFL professional players, NBA professionals, UFC, and people that are busy. They got other stuff going on. I would take them on tour and say, “Let me show you this doesn’t require a lot of time.” Your credibility and validation connected to this will put you in a position to have NFL-type income down the road when most of these players end up breaking down the road.
When you are using your process to recruit, you are tight with your process and systems. You can use it as a recruiting tool because people go, “I can do that.”
We get more people in, maybe not more, but the numbers are pretty high because of how we do it and how we bring people. They were like, “I thought I had to go door to door. I thought I had to come up with all kinds of big presentations and all this stuff.” We teach them, “No, it is simple. Press a button to a couple of little words, maybe a little text message, and dump the whole thing down. Move people through a process quickly.” We call it sorting.
You are not convincing. You have to be engaged a little bit. That is the difference. We look at our retention number. We have a great product, but part of that is these people are locked in with us. They bought into us first, and they liked the product, which is going to be necessary for this day and age. They saw a system. They were like, “I got kids and family. I could do this without disrupting my life.”
I’m not going to knock any industry, but I got friends that sell things that the sun makes light up their houses. It is great. I love the energy, but these guys sometimes work twelve hours a day going door to door. It is an intense deal. You can make some big money doing it, but at a certain point, there is a breakdown, and there is not a residual component to most of that.
It is a skillset that is hard to teach in depth in all of that. It is also hard for the part-time person, which has always been the bread and butter of networking. You and I could go on and on. We are going to do this again. I know you got some scheduling stuff, and I did. We are going to keep it tight now. I appreciate you. It is fun to watch what you are doing. I have been jumping on training calls with you because I love the energy and excitement of what your team is doing and the way that you are building. It is fun to watch.
I appreciate it. It is always a pleasure. You and I have a lot of history together. We came up in an industry that keeps changing and evolving. If you don’t change and evolve with it, you will go the way of the dinosaurs. I am fired up. I’m charged every day. I’m excited. My wife is crushing it. The team is growing, but we are only a few years into it. We got a long way to go. We are going to change a lot of lives before we are done. I can tell you that.
It is great to have you on. Thanks, my friend.
Thanks, brother.
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About John Malott
John Malott gets results! From humble beginnings to Founder and CEO of O’Snap Active Lifestyle. John is a world-class entrepreneur. He is a Branding, sales, marketing, and leadership expert! Over 1 million people have attended and benefited from his training and experiential seminars worldwide. John has the ability to take what appears to be complex and break it down into simple, easily executable steps. John has become one of the most sought-after business mentors, educators and keynote speakers on the planet.