🚀Consult And Advise For Exponential Growth With Jim Padilla 📈
Struggling to scale your business? This episode is packed with golden nuggets for coaches, course creators, and network marketers. Jim Padilla, of Gain the Edge Sales Systems, reveals a counterintuitive strategy for growth: consult and advise instead of trying to do everything yourself. Learn how to leverage partnerships, build systems, and free up your time to focus on what matters most. You'll also get access to Jim's FREE "Anti-Closer Sales System" to jumpstart your sales conversations.
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I'm super excited to dig into this masterclass style training because I am here with Jim Padilla. He is the Founder and CEO of Gain The Edge, which is a done-for-you provider of industry-leading sales systems and unicorn sales professionals. He co-leads this with his wife and entrepreneurial partner in crime, Cindy Padilla. Through their unique blend of laser-targeted selling systems, inspirational team-building expertise, and over 60 years of combined sales experience, Jim and his wife have generated over $100 million in sales for a long line of high-level visionary entrepreneurs.
It's why, over the last decade, Jim has become the online education industry's go-to expert on launching high-ticket sales, live events, and one-to-many scaling. We had to have him here to talk to us about how to streamline, systematize, scale, and do it masterfully. Jim, we're so excited that you're here with us. We can't wait to dig into your topic.
Adrienne, thanks so much for having me, and I’m excited. I've been looking forward to this conversation.
Whether you're brand new in business or whether you're working on scaling to six-figure months or multiple six-figure months, everyone loves the idea of scaling and growing, so I can't wait to dig into this topic. It’s because if you're learning it ahead of time, you can set the stage far in advance. Mentally, you can plan things out the right way rather than having to clean up messes, which I know you see a lot of whether you're further along, and this is perfectly timed for you.
JIM’S STORY
This is going to be perfect for everyone. However, before we dig into all the good stuff, just in case someone is meeting you for the first time, do you want to tell us a little bit about your story and how you find yourself in this space of being an expert on sales systems, sales teams, and organizational design?
I'm going to go back to my childhood just because it's relevant. I was born to teenage parents. My dad took off immediately, and as a 16 or 17-year-old kid, my mom responded with a very challenging situation. She's surrounded with a lot of rage, anger, and fear. A lot of that landed right here on me. It was a very abusive environment. I ended up in foster care at 16, the gangs and streets at 16, and in jail by 19.
If you imagine spending every single day, every waking moment learning how to read the room and to master the environment so that you could bend people's will to your direction because you didn't want them to see you as a threat,. You needed them to see you as an ally because that's the only way that I could stay safe. Whether it was, “How do I make my mom an ally?” I thought I was doing something wrong, so I was like, “How do I make her not see me as a threat?”
When you're on the streets or when you're in jail, it’s the same thing. It’s how do I make myself an asset and an ally to this environment so that I become needed? Little did I know, fast forward twenty years, I’m making millions of dollars teaching other people how to influence the room, read the room, bend the will, and influence your direction so that people will see you as an ally and not as a threat.
That's what you need to be in business, especially in sales. You need to be an ally for people so that they don't see you as a friction piece. They see you as a means to an end to get the things that they need. I started teaching that in sales training years ago. I've been a lifelong entrepreneur. I had alarm sales businesses. I had offices in three cities of door knockers and a phone room supporting them.
We were out banging doors selling alarm systems, and then I jumped into a mortgage in the 2000s until that went bust in 2008, largely because of a lot of things I was doing inappropriately. People didn't need mortgages, but they still needed to know how to sell, so I jumped in and started teaching people how to sell, but I was making sales. I spent the first couple of decades of my life selling for what I needed because I was trying to take care of myself.
Also, because of mortgage situations, I put people in loans they didn't belong in, and I ruined some people's lives. I had to start recognizing that I needed to use my powers for good and not evil. I had to start stripping away the things that left me feeling slimy and awful. It started leaving me feeling good and leaving other people feeling served. That was 2008, and the rest has been a crazy, wild ride.
In 2013, I met an entrepreneur named Bill Baren, who was one of the smartest people I've ever met, and an emerging rockstar at the time. He was getting ready to do his first seven-figure launch, and he wanted sales support. He didn't want us to come in and train his people. He said, “Can you provide sales support?” We said, “Sure.” Like a good entrepreneur, I had no clue what a launch was. I had no clue how to pull all this together. I got Jeff Walker's Launch book and read it on a weekend. I hired twelve of my buddies and clients to say, “Let's go make a bunch of money on this launch.”
Seventeen days later, we had an incredible, wildly successful train wreck of a launch that was $1.6 million, and a week later, there was a line at the door. We became the go-to experts for launches and events. We spent the next two years delivering nothing but launch support and sales support for events that became a massive wild hit. People started wanting us to stick around between launches and events and start selling for them more, so we said, “Sure. Let's figure out how to do that too.”
Here we are, a few years and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales later. We're the most loved and well-respected sales experts in the game, and it's all by God's choosing and doing, because if I had to choose all this and do it ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have done it. Everything we figured out, we did on accident, but it's been incredible.
I'll be honest, I have goosebumps right now. Hearing that story, I’m like, “Holy cow.” First of all, God works in mysterious ways. It's incredible. A lot of people would look at your early story and see it as the terrible story that it is. “I'm so sorry those things happened to you,” but also, it's part of what made you so wickedly emotionally intelligent and able to read a room. Also, able to understand the dynamics of everything going around you. You chose to see it as an asset. A lot of other people would choose to see that as all the reasons why I can't possibly succeed, but you didn't. You were like, “This is an asset. I have some skills here.” Maybe you didn't see it right away, but eventually.
Also, it built what you could say is Teflon. Some people say Teflon, and some people would just call it this indestructible nature about me. You just start getting in tune with reality. It's like, “I'm a living and walking example of that which doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.” As long as you're standing on the right side of the grass, you still have work to do. That's been a big part of this journey. Even in my youth, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was a bad kid, and I never blamed my environment. It was because I chose to be a bad kid. It was never, “I grew up in a rough place, and my mom abused me.”
“It's not my fault.”
All the way along, there was this feeling inside that, even though I was doing wrong, I knew I shouldn't. I was ashamed of it, but I just didn't know what else to do. I was still like, “No. This is the path I'm on.”
However, it's never too late to change your path. You found yourself in a situation that frankly would scare the pants off a lot of people of someone saying, “Help me have a seven-figure launch,” and you're going, “Let me go figure out what a launch is.” You saw an opportunity, and you knew you had some skill sets. You knew you had some things to bring to the table and instead of running the other way, you leaned in.
LEAN IN TO YOUR PURPOSE
For everybody reading this, we all have something similar. It doesn't have to be some rags-to-riches overcomer story, but as an entrepreneur, opportunities are made from the problems that present themselves. It has been my DNA from the time I could walk, and now it's something that we lean into on purpose. Everything that's going on in the world, whether it's creating fear, doubt, anxiety, and all these challenges, but all of that is not a reason to run for cover or circle the wagons. This is the time to lean in, press in, and figure out how to solve problems.
The moment you can solve a problem, if you do it once, you can do it twice. If you do it twice, you can do it ten times. Too many times people wait to “scale” their business, and that's an overused term right now. I want you to think about this differently. Scale is about units. Scale means how can I plug on more parts? Growth is about zeros. Scale is about units. You don't necessarily need to scale to grow strategically, make more revenue, and provide more impact. It can be part of the formula and often is, but not always. That's what we're going to talk about.
It's one of those buzzwords that people were trying to find out, “How do I explain what it is I'm trying to do? I'm trying to grow.” I get your definition, and that completely makes sense. I imagine whether it was that first launch you helped with or as you started moving towards people saying, “Can you just stick with us even in between launches? Can you help us do this next bigger thing?” Every step of the way, the structure of your team, how you delivered your deliverables, and the manner in which you did it.
CONSULT AND ADVISE
Obviously, there's only one gym. You can only be in so many places, yet you're providing these amazing, high-quality services to all these other entrepreneurs. I know you recommend this consult and advice model as opposed to the typical growth or scaling model. Tell us a little bit. When you say consult and advise, what do you mean by that?
I'm going to be careful not to say this because one of my pet peeves is when people say, “This is contrarian,” or, “This is controversial, and then they say, “Let somebody else tell you is contrarian.” Most people teach to master something first, then outsource it, or master something and then grow it. I tend to go the opposite. Once you've done it, once you've proven it can be done.
Once you've done something, you've proven it can be done. So now start looking for how else it can be done in a way that you can do more of them.
Now, I immediately start looking for how else can it be done in a way that you can do more of them. If I can do one, I can do two. If I'm going to do a meeting, it's like this. I could meet you and me one-on-one or I happen to know that this is a leveraged conversation because you and I are talking and we have a bunch of friends with us who are watching in.
Also, we could be live-streaming this to ten places at once. There are lots of ways where we could have more leverage.
I had this thing where, a lot of times, we grow through stages of business and growth. From an early age, I didn't want to let go of everything. When I left my alarm company, I sold my piece of it so that I still had a piece of it. When I was in mortgage, now mortgage was different because we shut down the whole thing because it blew up on us.
However, every time I've been in a business opportunity, it's like, “How can I have a tail on it?” When we are creating revenue packages and consulting with people on that, I want you to always be thinking about how can you get paid in advance. How can you get paid ongoing? How can you get paid beyond the opportunity? It doesn't mean every single opportunity's going to present that, but if you're not thinking that way, you'll never find those opportunities.
We're always like, there's always some sort of investment upfront. There's always some sort of ongoing component, and then there's always a, “When this sells, we'll get a piece,” or, “When this comes about, we'll be able to have a piece or we get commissions ongoing.” There's always something there. Every business has a way to do that. That I can promise you.
We can help you find it, but start thinking that way all the time. Also, start thinking about how you can continue to be part of it. We did sales training for years. I got tired of sales training, so then we stopped doing it, and then what we've done since then is reengaged it, but now we have somebody else doing it.
We're still doing it. We put in all this time, effort, energy, work, process, systems, strategies, and programs. Why just put it on the shelf when someone else can benefit from it? I just don't want to do it anymore. Now, we have somebody else in it. From the consult and advice perspective, what we're doing is, “What's the solution that we're providing here? What is the one part of it that I have to do?” Also, what's the rest of it that I can have somebody else do? Also, I can just consult and advise. It doesn't mean you have to set up separate companies, but start thinking of every offer you make as its division, and how can that offer run without you or only leverage you to the places where you are needed?
Audience Explosion: “Consult and advise” doesn't mean you have to set up separate companies. Instead, view each offer as a distinct unit that can operate independently or leverage your expertise strategically.
You have all these divisions, essentially with a general manager overseeing each one, where the heart of what's happening in that division comes from your mind. It's your strategy. It's your system. It's something you've proven, but as quickly as possible, you get someone else in charge of it, running it, and operating it. Your level of involvement then is simply consulting and advising the general manager, who now takes over.
That's the goal. The beauty of it, though, is that it doesn't have to necessarily be something that we created. It could have been just something that we inspire or something that we know is valuably needed for the clients that we serve or for one of the markets that we're in, so then we could bring somebody in who provides that solution, even though we never did, but we now partner with them. It is a combined solution that they're offering under our umbrella. Again, we are partners in this opportunity, and we consult and advise, but they're the full operator of this opportunity.
You have a lot of partnerships, like affiliate relationships and that kind of thing.
PARTNERSHIPS
Partnership is one of our core values. The way we define partnership is two people combining their resources to serve the people we care about in common. If you ask myself, “Where can I get another client?” Then all you're ever going to be doing is looking for clients. If I can figure out, how can I do this better? How can this be delivered better? How can I get an exponential return on this, and then you start seeking different solutions, different partners, and different ways of thinking? All of a sudden, those ideas come up. Sometimes, even try to comprehend ten years from now seems like just a ridiculous exercise and nonsense.
However, if you can't start seeing it, then you won't even start asking the kind of questions. It can be around, “What are the things that will make my business obsolete? What are the problems that the clients that I likely serve now will want to have solved a year from now or two years from now? What kind of business will they still begin? What kind of opportunities will exist for them? How can I be part of that landscape?”
What are some symptoms that they might be experiencing right now that might clue them in, like, “You might want to reevaluate how you're thinking about the structure of your business.”
The symptoms that'll be happening in your business that you're focusing on either too small of a thought process. You're not thinking far enough out, or you're thinking more transactional in nature. If it's more directly tied to number one and, first and foremost, if your question set starts with, “What do I have to do?” then you're already starting to think wrong.
Don't think, “What do I have to do?” Think, “What do I need to make sure gets done?” Those are two very different statements or questions. What do I have to do? “What am I capable of?” My knowledge, my expertise, and my physical being, what outcome can I affect? What can I ensure gets done? It says I have the entire world at my disposal. I can call Adrienne because she knows something I don't. I can call Kevin Harrington because he can bring something I can't. I can call a friend or colleague. I can find a new solution or new technology. I'm not married to anything.
I could create a whole new invention that solves this thing. Everything is at my disposal. You start saying, “What is the thing that gives me high value and low cost?” I can get something with great value and less cost, which oftentimes is a partnership opportunity. If you're starting a business and you don't even know what products you're offering, offer somebody else's. Who the heck says it has to be yours?
Just start selling other people's stuff right now until you figure out the right product suite that you want to be able to jump into and say, “I can provide something in the middle of these two that provides the glue between these two experiences.” Do that. First, immediately stop thinking about what can I do and start thinking about what outcome I can affect. The second piece is how is this going to ensure an outcome that pays a result in the future?
It goes beyond the initial transaction. There’s a whole pathway.
Is this going to feed me now, or is this going to feed me for a lifetime? Always be asking those questions, and there's nothing wrong if what you're selling is only going to feed you now because you have to eat today. Please eat today. I don't want you to starve. Here's a news flash. Running a seven-figure business is easier than running a six-figure one, and running an eight-figure business is easier than that.
It’s because you have more resources, you have more strategy, you have more leverage, you have more impact, and you have more credibility. Also, we have more self-worth because you can look back and say, “Look at what God has created through me,” versus the person who's only sold a handful of things and is still trying to reach that six-figure mark. Again, there is nothing wrong with it, but you have a different level of credibility. You're still trying to prove yourself to yourself.
Immediately start looking at, “What can I do to get beyond these measures? You need to be thinking about that right from the beginning. How do I position what I do so desirably that people want it, and then pursue me for it?” When you have all of that in place, now you start figuring out, “How do I replicate myself so that this offer can do the work for me?” Now, I can put an average salesperson who can follow a system and can consistently and predictably overachieve.
As you're building out these divisions, it could be in the beginning, you're a solopreneur and you're wearing twenty hats. You're the VA, and you're the graphic designer. You're the copywriter, and you're all the things, but at least you recognize it's twenty separate hats. The minute you're able to section them into divisions, and the minute you're able to hire one, you could have a division of one and then a division of two. You can start small, but you're thinking of this structure ahead of time in your mind.
This is an area where I think differently than most people. Most people will say, “Build something out, get profitable, out of profit, hire a team. I've always been the opposite. As a visionary, I could see something happening. I'm like, “This is going to work great,” and then it’s how fast can I get somebody in place who can help her run it?
Sometimes, running means running alongside me, but I also know my limitations. If I have to be the one to power it and build it, it's not going to go anywhere because I'm already focused on too many other things. This allows me to keep focusing on where we're going while the people I put in place focus on getting there. What happens is that it takes you a little bit longer to reach profit, but if you're in profit for a long time versus trying to do it on your own, it could take you forever to get into profit.
It’s because you're the one trying to move all this stuff. Here's the thing that you want to think about with that, what I always say is put your hands in your pockets. Right now, Adrienne, put your hands in your pockets, and everybody reading, put your hands in your pockets. Now, write an email. How would you write an email with your hands in your pockets? How would you reach out to somebody and have a conversation with your hands in your pockets? How would you build a webpage with your hands in your pockets?
Not very well. That's for sure.
You would have to ask great questions of other people. The moment you do this, put yourself in that situation. Every time you're going to start the next project you're going to take on, put your hands in your pockets and say, “How do I accomplish this?”
You have to rely on other people.
One hundred percent, but you're going to be more creative because you're trying to overcome that challenge. Most of you are evaluating the ROI of your time and measuring it with a stopwatch. The people who win are the people who measure the ROI of their time with a calendar.
I'm going to flip my thinking. I'm going to try what he said. I'm going to invest first in getting some help or expanding my team, expanding my help, and expanding my systems so that I can bring more in the shorter term. It’s because I'm opening up more of my valuable time and I think the example you gave was perfect.
Get just enough sales in the door to kind of pay for a month's worth of those people's time. You're like planning ahead, you're paying it ahead basically, and then you can repurpose your time to bringing in. They're realizing, “I just need a handful of more sales,” and I know sales is one of your expertise areas. I also know you have a free gift for the audience to help them bring in more sales and to get more closes. Do you want to tell us about that?
ANTI-CLOSER SALES SYSTEM
I do. I'm excited about this. I created it by accident. This gift that we're giving you was created in the middle of an interview because somebody was asking these things. I was like, “Yeah, we can do this.” I just kind of created it on the fly, but now I love it. I share it. This is my number one go-to. It is called our anti-closers sales system, and it's based on the framework or the philosophy that you don't want to hire a closer. We want to create a system that can deliver a closer and that is what you want.
It's helping you get dialed in on what is your clear offer and what's the prospect journey. What is the bleeding neck problem? It’s not just the problem they have, but a bleeding neck problem that compels people to move forward. Also, understand their core story and what's at stake for them. Also, being able to put it all in place in a simple system. Is this going to give you the results that we can get? Probably not, but it's going to give you a head start on this path. It’s going to get you to start thinking. How can I put a structure here?
Here's the difference. There are some other offers we have too, but the whole focus on this is, “Do you want to become better at selling or do you want to create your world in such a way that sales happen?” I prefer the latter, and I'm a sales expert. I'm a sales guy. I don't want to get better at selling. I want to get better at structuring my world in such a way that sales happen because that's the life I live, and that's what I want you to be able to live. It's all centered around putting a system in place that's not designed to pull something closer in place. It's designed to replicate you and get you out of the way.
This is the easy button. There are no easy buttons in business, but this is about as close as it gets. If you're realizing that this conversation is what you need to hear, you need to start thinking differently and acting and behaving differently. Also creating more leverage. Scoop up this free gift. It's going to be huge and instrumental in helping you to create that leverage. I know you also have a VIP gift for anyone here who's a VIP ticket holder. If you're not yet, what are you doing? Grab that VIP ticket. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your VIP gift?
I do. Whatever the cost is for the VIP ticket, you're going to get it back in spades because I know all the other experts are putting together some cool stuff that's going to deliver you a powerful ROI. There are two things. We created what we call a bundle here. It's basically the ultimate sales bundle. It's based on two things. One is our Leads Made Easy program, which is something we do as a live challenge a few times a year. It's literally hands down without question, the program that we get the most feedback and input on.
A lot of our clients teach this as their own concept to their clients but it's basically the difference between who you're serving and when you're serving them. We have zeroed in on mastering the when of the process. That’s what the trigger event that they have that helps them grow exponentially in the need and the problem that you solved, so that way you're not trying to search out there for everybody. You want to find the people who are in the right stage of readiness, need, and desire for what you have so that they're much more bought into the conversation when they show up. The Leads Made Easy program, you absolutely want that.
With that, we'll see you next time. Bye for now.
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About Jim Padilla
Jim Padilla is the founder and CEO of Gain The Edge—a done-for-you provider of industry-leading sales systems and unicorn sales professionals—which he co-heads with his wife and entrepreneurial partner-in-crime, Cyndi Padilla. Through their unique blend of laser-targeted selling systems, inspirational team-building expertise, and 60+ years of combined sales experience.
Jim and his wife have generated over a hundred million in sales for a long line of high-level, visionary entrepreneurs. It’s why, over the last near-decade, Jim has become the online education industry’s go-to expert on launching, high-ticket sales, live events and one-to-many scaling.
