Motivation, Business and Sales Magic: the Secrets You Need to Succeed!: Don’T Open a Business Until You Read This!

By Daniel J. Praz

Just one or two missing elements can make the difference between success and failure in a business. All too often, business owners and salespeople focus on the mechanics rather than psychology of business and sales. The purpose of this book is to rewire the thinking of anyone who wants to open a business or franchise, succeed at the business they already have, or increase their value to a business they work for. The author achieves this with a three-way approach so that the reader understands the business cycle from foundation to sales, with dozens of true anecdotal stories and chronic real examples of business, life, and sales successes, as well as failures. The powerful stories here will instill in the readers mind, and they can instantly recall them, most especially in their business lives. This book is a must read for anyone contemplating to open a business or franchise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543454857

Daniel J. Praz

Daniel J. Praz is the CEO, founder, and creator of the Mr. Sandless® wood floor refinishing system, a top-ranked, award winning business that he started in 2004 with just one truck and grew to more than 250 locations in ten countries. He is an ace guitarist who has toured and performed more than three thousand live shows and written, produced, recorded, engineered, mixed, and mastered multiple albums. He wrote his first novel at the age of twenty and Corner Store, his second novel, at the age of twenty-six. He has also written eight other books, all nonfiction of various subjects, with six published.

Book preview

SECTION ONE

MOTIVATION

Chapter One

It Is All about You

I was invited to a party where I didn’t really know anyone. The hostess was only recently introduced to me, but since it was a new acquaintance, I decided to go to the event. When I got there and entered her beautiful home, I poured myself a drink and sat down on the couch in the living room. There was a guy on the other end of the sofa who didn’t even look over when I sat down. Now let me say right off that I am not a couch type person, and within less than thirty seconds, I launched up to try to find something entertaining to do—after all, it was a party!

I made my way to the closest group. It was four people, who apparently all knew one another well. I took it that they were neighbors. Try as I may, I could not interject myself into the conversation. So I moved on to the next closest group.

This was three guys who, at first glance, were complete nerds; and as I listened in on the conversation, their nerdum was more than I could stand. I hadn’t played video games since I was a kid, and I wasn’t about to discuss the graphic differences between PlayStation and Xbox. So I moved on to the next group.

Two women and two men formed the next group and were talking about the Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey team. Now I wasn’t currently a big fan; however, I was a fan when I was a teen, which was when they last won the Stanley Cup. I could jump into this conversation seamlessly. Within a few minutes, one of the guys asked if I played bubble hockey.

Only if you want to get your ass kicked! I replied. That elicited some laughs, and we headed down to the basement for some rousing games. I remember that we were the last ones to leave the party, somewhere around three in the morning. We didn’t want to leave because we were having so much fun. It was a great party!

The next day, I was downtown for an office meeting and found myself in the lobby of the building waiting for an elevator. Ironically, someone who also was waiting was talking about the very same party. His friend or coworker asked him how the party was.

It totally sucked! he said. Just totally boring.

What is this guy talking about? I thought. I had a great time! What in the world was this guy’s problem? That is when I realized where I had seen him at the party. He was the guy sitting on the other end of the sofa when I first sat down. Then I realized that when I was headed to the basement with the group, I found that I saw him again. He was sitting in the very same spot on the sofa.

My hope is that this one story changes your life. The moral of the story is everything; and when I say everything, I mean that—life, love, spirituality, success. All these things are on display here for you to see. I call this Get in the Dance—the name I came up with based on the song I Hope You Dance written by Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers and made famous by country singer Lee Ann Womack. A line from the lyrics of this great song says, When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.

At that party, one person on the couch decided he would get in the dance and participate in the party, and the other sat it out on the couch. What does this have to do with life, love, spirituality, and success? Everything! None of these things are possible unless you get off the couch and get in the dance of life! You will never find life, love, spirit, or success sitting out the dance on the sofa.

This true story I told you is so perfect because it is very realistic when it comes to life, love, spiritually, and success for the simple reason that it didn’t come right to me the moment I jumped off the couch! The success I had at the party was not immediate. I had to work for it! I had to work at it! I failed connecting to the first group. I failed connecting to the second group. You may fail finding love the first time, the second time, even the third time or more. You may fail at finding success the first or second time. But if you stay in the dance, you will find these things! There is one thing that I can promise you, and you can write this in stone because it is 100 percent a certainty. That is, if you don’t get off the couch, don’t get in the dance, and don’t look for life, love, spiritually, and success, you won’t find any of it. Do nothing and get no return.

This is the same thing with your business and sales success. If you are in the dance, off the couch, and working toward life, love, spirit, and success, this all contributes to you having a great life overall just as in my example—the result was a great party. Sitting on the couch assures you of a boring, sucky life just as the guy got sitting on the couch at that party.

I can’t tell you how many times in business I have heard someone complain about their results, yet when I engage them in conversation, I learn they were doing nothing to better their business! Doing nothing assures you of a return of nothing. They can’t read a book, watch a video, learn something about business. Instead, they just complain. That is a couch sitter! Just because you have the business doesn’t make you a winner—doesn’t make you succeed in anything!

I have given many speeches over the years, and one element I have used is movies. I love movies. But I have noticed in life that a lot of people treat their life or business not as the movie but as the previews that play before the movie starts! They have their slushy and their popcorn, and they are all settled into their seats and are just watching the previews. But the reality is this isn’t the preview. This is the movie of your life and business right now!

Now why is this notion all tied in to sales? It is because of truth. The truth is there is only one thing standing in your way of success, and I must be honest with you—that one thing would be you. This is exactly why I will tell you a story of the gal and the salon! She is the key to her own success, just as you are the key to your success. I have known this for a very long time. In my franchised business, I could place a great owner in the worst kind of market—a market with a low percentage of possible customers or a market with very low per capita income, and that owner will light it up! I could place a terrible owner in the best kind of market, one loaded with a high percentage of possible customers and a high per capita income, and they will do very little.

So if the business you own or work for is the vehicle—the race car—and the fuel for that car is the marketing, the driver of that race car is you. Let’s speak the plain truth here. You are the driver of your life, the driver of your love, the driver of your spirituality, and the driver of your success. If you don’t do the driving, you won’t have success! No one is going to do the driving for you, I promise you that!

Again, this doesn’t mean success, life, love, and spirituality are going to find you because you are driving to find those things. But in time, you will find them because at least you got off the couch, got in the dance, and were driving toward them. These things are not like little puppy dogs who run to you wagging their tail, jump into your lap, and lick your face. It is extremely rare in life to find anything that works like that. These days, to be successful in these things, you must chase that puppy down the street and tackle it to get what you want. But sitting on the couch is a sure way of failure.

Since you are reading this, you most likely want to improve yourself or your standing in life. Make a pledge right now that you will not stand in your own way! Learn not to be your own worst enemy. How do you do that? By using the power of your mind.

Chapter Two

Mind-Set

What makes one person successful and the other not? I can tell you, in my experience, it is not luck of the draw. In my experience, it is a choice. As I showed earlier, you can choose to sit on the sofa or choose to get in the dance. You can choose to view your life as a preview or as the real movie. It’s your choice. You can be an active participant in your quest for life, love, spirituality, and success and be able to tell people you are living a great adventure, or you can sit it out on the sofa and tell people your life is terrible. You have that choice.

I would venture to say that if you have a lousy success rate, a poor spirit, no love in your life, and a terrible business, you most likely will have the same kind of life. Everything is connected by your active participation or nonparticipation. There is one thing that made a difference between the guy on the sofa and me. It is mind-set.

Think of it this way: You have your vehicle, which is your business or the business you work in. If it is being marketed, the vehicle is fueled. What kind of driver are you going to be? There are people who will be race car drivers, people who will drive the car safely like a family sedan, people who will push the car, and yes, people who will park it in the garage. I love my concept of vehicle, fuel, and driver because driving is everything! It doesn’t just mean drive the car but drive your success. You are the driver of your own success!

Going back to the end of last year, my business was in a dog race for top-earning franchise of the year. I challenged my guys to not be beaten. Just about every month, my manger would ask, What did the other guys do this month? referring to the franchise that beat us the year before and took the top franchise award. Some months, I had to tell him that they beat us soundly. Other months, we were ahead.

We were down to the championship rounds, the months of November and December, and it was neck and neck. So my manager went out of his mind and overbooked November. My guys in the field were feeling the heat and basically were all crying about the workload. So I had a meeting one very early morning to attempt to pump them up. I know I came off sounding like Leonidas of the 300, but it wasn’t fake or putting on a show. It is really and truly how I felt—and what I believed.

I told them a couple of stories I want to share with you. One of my largest and oldest accounts is with Campus Apartments of the University of Pennsylvania. We were booked solid, and they called in needing three units in a new complex they had purchased done that day. I went out to do the work of refinishing three apartment wood floors for them by myself, as no one else was available to do it.

There was no parking anywhere to be found. I had to drop the equipment off on the corner of the street in Philadelphia and park three blocks away. Let me explain how this job went. I had to haul the equipment down the city street, up a huge flight of concrete stairs, across a courtyard, up a set of stairs, up a second set of stairs, and into the first building. The elevator was out. I hauled all the equipment up three double sets of stairs to the third floor and the first unit to be serviced.

In the process of getting the machine up the stairs, I blew out my left Achilles tendon. When I got everything up, I found that the first apartment was huge. Normally, their apartment units were small, around three to four hundred square feet. This apartment had wood floors that were one thousand square feet with no electricity in the apartment. I had to run a hundred-foot extension cord just to do the starting process.

After that first unit was prepped, I carried all the equipment down the three sets of stairs of that building, down the stairs to leave the building, across the courtyard, up the stairs to the next building, and up three more flights of stairs to the second apartment unit to be serviced. It was another one-thousand-square-foot apartment. After getting that one processed, I carried the equipment down the three flights of stairs to the lobby, down the stairs to exit the building, down the concrete stairs to the courtyard, across the courtyard, down another set of concrete stairs, down the street, up another set of stairs, across that courtyard, down the stairs to enter the building, and up three flights of stairs to the third one-thousand-square-foot unit. I carried all the equipment myself and did the entire process myself, all with a blown tendon!

Once I was done the beginning process, I began to coat, moving from unit to unit, moving the air blower from unit to unit. I had to apply three coats of sealer and finish on each unit. That’s nine thousand square feet total, all with a blown Achilles. I completed the job in under ten hours.

Some fourteen years earlier, the next story begins on a Saturday. Back then, in the prototype tests for Mr. Sandless, I still owned my other cleaning company. I had to pile work on weekends to continue to test the Mr. Sandless system. It was our third apartment of the day, and it had been raining all day long. We were in West Chester, Pennsylvania, finishing the third apartment. I needed some rags, some tape, and some gloves to start coating, so I went out to the van to get the supplies.

The rain was coming straight down hard and in sheets. I ran to the van barely able to see, slid the side door open, grabbed the rags and glove and tape, slammed the door closed, turned to run to the apartment because I was being drenched, and ran right into a low-hanging street sign that split my head open.

The blood was pouring down my face, so I duct-taped a rag