79 Years, 7 Careers, and the 3 Hidden Patterns of Reinvention with Jay Sargeant
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Transcript
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 79 years, 7 careers, 1 realization that completely changed the way we think about success. It wasn't talent, it wasn't timing, it was discovering 3 hidden patterns that explain why some people reinvent themselves again and again, while others stay stuck.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Before this conversation ends, you'll hear all three, and you may never look at your own story the same way again.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the You World Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life health transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to empower coaches and entrepreneurs to amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: without chasing them down, or chasing algorithms, or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission, head on over to Coach's Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. It's the first step.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: building a business where your clients seek you out rather than you hunting them down. Today, we're chatting with Coach Jay Sargeant. Jay is the author of Shift, The Gift of Reinvention, and the creator of The Shift Project. After 79 years and 7 careers, he discovered that reinvention isn't a one-time event.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's a skill built through courage, adaptability, persistence, and willingness to begin again. Today, he helps people recognize the hidden patterns in their lives so they can intentionally shape their next chapter. Welcome to the show, Jay. It's great to have you with us.
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::Jay Sargeant: Great being here, Jill. Thank you for having me.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, so let's ask you the big question. What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, an individual can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
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::Jay Sargeant: Smile.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, I love it.
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::Jay Sargeant: I believe in the ripple theory of life.
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::Jay Sargeant: Of course, I have done everything in this lifetime to, at times, affect social change. So one of my… my first invention, my first Jay Sargeant.
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::Jay Sargeant: was a community organizer for 7 years, morning, noon, and night. I got words in my head that people don't know anymore. Gestetna, where we used to print flyers and get ink on our fingers and wake up at 5 in the morning and go to the GE plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, and pass out flyers for trade unionists. So I've done the very active part.
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::Jay Sargeant: But I gotta tell you, at the end of the day, you're gonna do what you're gonna do in the supermarket today. And from my experience, I smile, I open every door. I'm the first guy to open the door. If I've got 100 items in my grocery cart.
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::Jay Sargeant: and someone has 2 or 3 behind me, I pull my card out, and I say, please, prerego, go in front of me. And at the end of the day, I smile at everyone, because I never know, and none of us ever know, that that person may be depressed for a moment.
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::Jay Sargeant: And that smile can turn it around. And I know that it sounds sophomoric, but to me, it's the most important thing, and I want to give credit where credit is due, Joe.
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::Jay Sargeant: I don't usually share this, but because you asked this very wonderful initial question, I learned it from my father.
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::Jay Sargeant: My father was a Teamster. He delivered the Boston Record American newspaper all night long, took bundles of newspapers, and threw them in front of drugstores in 1947, when he was a young man.
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::Jay Sargeant: And at the end of the day, my father sold. He got out of the blue-collar working class by becoming a life insurance salesman. That's a whole story in and of itself.
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::Jay Sargeant: But what I learned from my dad was my father was a beautiful dresser. My father looked like, leave it to Beaver dad every morning, no matter where… he was in a tie and a sport coat. He never had a budget for clothing, but he
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::Jay Sargeant: hunted in Fileen's basement for discounts, and he hid things so that they would continue to cost less and less, so he always looked great.
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::Jay Sargeant: But when my father met someone on the road in downtown Boston, and they said, Bernie, that's a great-looking tie. What did he do, Jill? Every time.
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::Jay Sargeant: took the tie off and handed it to the other guy. It's a legend, it's a myth in our family. We just love it. We live to that spirit.
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::Jay Sargeant: So every time I smile at someone, I bring that energy, my father's energy of benevolence and sending out love. So that's a… I think we can all do that today. It's an actionable item today.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is, and it helps people feel seen.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In this world where we're connected so frivolously through the internet.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Being seen by a real human being, where they connect with you eye to eye, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and accept your smile, it says to them you're important, you're significant, and somebody recognized that today.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It says so much without even opening your mouth.
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::Jay Sargeant: I'm gonna brag a little bit. I'm gonna… I'm gonna brag about the quality of my smile. Good lord. How could you compete over that? But I once smiled at some… it's just an interesting memory that just popped up, responding to your reaction.
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::Jay Sargeant: I had someone go around the block
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::Jay Sargeant: I'm walking with my wife down the street, a car goes by me, I glance, I see someone, and I smile.
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::Jay Sargeant: Years ago.
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::Jay Sargeant: We go and continue our morning walk, and the person comes back and finds me and says, hey, by the way, that's the best smile I've ever had in my life. Thank you, you changed my day. That was many, many decades ago, this experience, but, it is a siren song for me.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is so important.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you've… you've lived…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Good life, and you've done a lot of things. You told us about being a community organizer. There's… there's more careers that have gotten you…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To this point, which has allowed you to become…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: An encourager of people to embrace change.
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::Jay Sargeant: I love that. I love that title. I'll take that.
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::Jay Sargeant: Yeah, you know.
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::Jay Sargeant: I've had 7 different, entirely different careers or businesses. I went from community organizer to tennis professional, from tennis professional to franchise developer, from franchise developer to sales
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::Jay Sargeant: consultant. I owned a big sales training company. From there, I operated and developed a business in my backyard.
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::Jay Sargeant: all by myself in the beginning, and took it to $1.2 billion. And then, inexplicably, when all of this was over in retirement, basically.
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::Jay Sargeant: I took the tennis background, because my wife fell in love with pickleball, and I'm now, at age 79, a pickleball coach. I'm probably retiring from that, because, Jill, thank you, you're part of my eighth reinvention, this shift moment. And so,
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::Jay Sargeant: You know, I originally wrote the book behind me because I have 3 incredible daughters. I've been so blessed with 3 incredible daughters.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I have been telling them stories to inspire them, instruct them, download information.
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::Jay Sargeant: that they love. And those stories I also tell on podiums and on stages, year in and year out. 79, so a lot of storytelling. And my kids came to me and said, Dad.
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::Jay Sargeant: There's gonna be a great grandchild someday who will never hear your rendering of the Ray Sprinkle story. And it's a very special, very funny, outrageous story.
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::Jay Sargeant: would you write it down or speak it into your iPhone? For God's sakes, let's get it down. And we just didn't do it, year in and year out, and then I started to hear the oof prints of time, and I realized, well, you know, someday I won't be around. I do want them to know this story. So about 7 months ago, I started typing. I'm a pretty good typist, and so I started typing, and I've written two other books prior to this.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I just had a blast outlining the chapters, just the major stories, the fun stories of my life.
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::Jay Sargeant: And of course, I'm a teacher and a trainer, I've owned a training company, and, you know, I just love coaching.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I started to see, oh, the book is really developing 3 models. I'm an NLP trainer, so we care about expert modeling. So I said, you know, there were 3 really big points here that if somebody knew
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::Jay Sargeant: these big points, it could create a huge change or shift in their life. And so, that's what I'd love to talk about today.
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::Jay Sargeant: Those three.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We used to.
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::Jay Sargeant: Okay, number one, people always say, what's the number one impediment to entrepreneurship, to developing something new, to making a shift? And I think it's boundaries. I think people get stuck because they think they're not good enough.
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::Jay Sargeant: And the good enough thing comes from what I call over-relying. I think credentials are overrated. Now.
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::Jay Sargeant: Jill, I'm not an idiot. If you and I, God forbid, got in an automobile accident, we'd want to be taken to a hospital and operated on by someone who went to medical school, who had an internship and a residency. If they're going and opening up my brain, I would prefer credentials.
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::Jay Sargeant: But in soft skill development, the kinds of things you and I have been doing our entire life.
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::Jay Sargeant: it's really breaking through boundaries. And I'll give… and my favorite story, I'll share it with everyone is…
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::Jay Sargeant: And, you know, people ask me this all the time, so I'm just going to foreshadow this.
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::Jay Sargeant: Do you change when you're suffering, or do you change when you're on a roll? And in my life, in the 7 Invention, it's a 4-3 balance.
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::Jay Sargeant: I'm gonna tell you a story to begin with, where I was as good as it gets, making great money. From the outside, I should have been the happiest guy in the whole world. I was a tennis pro.
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::Jay Sargeant: I had a list of people that would pay any amount of money to take privates. I had clinics that were full, I had 30 pros working for me, I had a pro shop with stringing money and all kinds of money coming in, and I was a kid with a skinny waistline! Oh, how cool was that?
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::Jay Sargeant: And I was unhappy.
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::Jay Sargeant: That's just the bottom line, I just want everyone… I have no tolerance for psychological or emotional pain. I can take a punch, I'm an athlete, I'm a rebounder, you know, physically, I've been through cancer, I'm a cancer survivor, I did the whole route of the chemo, blah blah blah.
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::Jay Sargeant: But when it comes to emotional discomfort, if I'm not happy, I'm thinking about how to change it, or move on. So I'm on Court 8,
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::Jay Sargeant: I want everyone to get the picture. I'm on Court 8 at the Charles Street Indoor Tennis Club. We're raging, everything's going good, and I'm standing there thinking to myself.
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::Jay Sargeant: God has a bigger plan for me. I can do more. I can touch more people in a different way. This is glorious, but it isn't good enough. How do I shift?
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::Jay Sargeant: So, here's a plan, here's an actionable plan. I'm a teacher, I'm a trainer, I want people to write this down if they care.
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::Jay Sargeant: On that day, I said, I know how I'm… I know how I'm gonna do this.
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::Jay Sargeant: I teach some of the wealthiest people in New England. Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, taught his whole family tennis.
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::Jay Sargeant: I went to the 5 most powerful people that I was teaching tennis to. I asked them for a 15-minute meeting, because they were all big shots, and when I sat in front of them, I just asked them to be my mentor.
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::Jay Sargeant: I said, you've watched me in action. I've worked with your children, with your family, you've watched my junior development program, all of this work.
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::Jay Sargeant: Who am I? If I were to make a change, what would I be?
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::Jay Sargeant: you're brilliant, you're no business, I don't know anything about business. What would I be? And every one of them, Jill, said the same thing. Sell something. You need to be in sales. But you, with your ego, you can't sell pencils. You've got to sell something grand.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I was very excited with that information. I could go dive into this very deep, I was conflicted, but I was mostly excited.
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::Jay Sargeant: One of them, God bless him, one of these titans of New England business.
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::Jay Sargeant: said, Jay, I have the perfect guy for you to meet with. His name is George Nadef, and he is the king of franchising.
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::Jay Sargeant: I said, wow, what's he do? He sells franchises for about a quarter of a million dollars by putting speakers in fancy hotels in front of 50 to 100 people, giving a 45 to 60 minute speech. You would be great at it.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I say, great, set the meeting up. Now.
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::Jay Sargeant: I'm not foolish. I realize I'm going for a job interview in something I know nothing about with no background.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I decided not to fudge it. I decided candor would be the order of the day. But I sort of backed that up by doing one strategic, intelligent thing. I went and bought my first blue suit. I went to Simon & Sons in Copley Square, downtown Boston, bought a blue suit.
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::Jay Sargeant: And then went to Fileen's basement and bought a Mark Cross briefcase. I never opened that briefcase. I spent more on the briefcase than on the suit, but at the very least, I wanted to feel like I was stepping into something that was authentic.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I wanted to look the part before I was the part.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I walked into George Natif's enormous, just imposing office. I saw him sitting behind the silliest, largest desk I've ever seen. It was like, you know, Hulk and the Vikings meet the Pope. I mean, it was like, whoa, that's a desk!
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::Jay Sargeant: And immediately, my assessment, I'll never forget the moment, I said, oh my god, this guy is bold. I gotta be bold. I gotta step this thing up.
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::Jay Sargeant: timid, so I go sit down in front of him, and he very politely says, Jay, Mark Roberts has told me wonderful things about you. He tells me you're a great, great talent, and so I'm so excited about this meeting. Can I read your resume first?
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::Jay Sargeant: And I said, well, George, I don't have a resume. He said, oh, you left it in the car, or you forgot it at home. I said, no, no, I don't have a resume. Oh.
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::Jay Sargeant: Well, then why don't you just talk me through your business and franchise background? I said, well, I don't have either of those. In fact, I don't even like business. If I'm at Logan Airport getting on an airplane, and I'm looking at the magazine rack, I'm certainly not buying success, or fortune or entrepreneur. I'm over in the sports section.
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::Jay Sargeant: So then he gets perplexed, and I see it, and I say, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, why did I even come here?
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::Jay Sargeant: And I'll tell you why. And just help me out a little bit. Mark tells me that you put men and women in fancy hotels in front of qualified audiences to tell a 45-minute story and get them to say yes to something. Is that how it works? He goes, yes. I said, well.
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::Jay Sargeant: put me on the team, because me standing up is the best thing you could ever do. Put me in front of your audience. And then I watched them be deliberate. It worked a little bit, and then I said, but I can prove it. You don't have to take my word for it.
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::Jay Sargeant: Is that your brochure? And he had a three-fold little crappy brochure on his desk that described their business offering. I said, I'm gonna take that brochure, and I'm gonna go out into the lobby, give me 15 minutes, and I'm gonna come back in this massive office of yours.
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::Jay Sargeant: You put every salesperson you have
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::Jay Sargeant: partners, managers, put everyone in this room, and I will give you a presentation. And if it sores, put me on the team, and if it stinks, throw me out the back door. End of story. I want to prove it to you.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I went out, and of course, Jill, I'm not telling you this story because I puked on my shoes. I walk into the room, and he had done exactly what I asked him to do. That was what was curious. He put the whole sales team in the room.
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::Jay Sargeant: couple managers, and I recognized immediately, I want everyone… all of this stuff is important. I recognized immediately that I didn't have a friend in the room. I had a… I knew that they wanted to assassinate
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::Jay Sargeant: the young upstart. I could just feel that negative energy. So I did what, if you remember Spinal Tap, where the drummer keeps exploding? I just deleted the entire group of them, and I had an audience of one, George Nataff.
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::Jay Sargeant: Just me and George in that audience. And I went on, I don't know, 8 to 10 minutes. God knows what I was doing.
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::Jay Sargeant: He then throws everybody out of the room. The minute I'm done, he says, get out of here! Jay, come here.
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::Jay Sargeant: Kid?
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::Jay Sargeant: Not one thing was accurate, not one detail was correct, it was ridiculously foolish, but boy, was that a great presentation. That was a great speech. We can smooth out the edges, you can learn the content.
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::Jay Sargeant: But I want you in front of my audiences. So, that is my most important share with people.
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::Jay Sargeant: Know what you do well, whatever it is. Now, sometimes people say, oh, well, Jay, that's just about you, because you've been telling stories, and God gave you words, and that's true.
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::Jay Sargeant: I have a lot of limitations, but not speaking is one of them. I can speak. And the more people I'm in front of, the happier I am.
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::Jay Sargeant: So, but the truth of the matter is, that story, I hope, is going to resonate with some plumber. Some 25-year-old plumber is in a truck in Akron, Ohio. His name isn't on the truck.
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::Jay Sargeant: He's riding beside the owner of the truck, yet he's young enough to still be dreaming of owning a beautiful home in a residence in Akron that has
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::Jay Sargeant: 3,500 square feet in a swimming pool and a playroom for the children, but he's not going to get it sitting next to the owner. He's got to get it by dreaming about scale. I want to own my own truck. I want my own name on the truck. I want to then
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::Jay Sargeant: duplicate and scale myself and have 5 trucks, and eventually, 10 years from now, I want 10 trucks. So, it's all about… and you don't have to wait, you just don't have to wait for credentials. That's what I believe. That's my first thing.
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::Jay Sargeant: What do you think?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I couldn't agree more. And leaning into your superpower.
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::Jay Sargeant: Thank you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So often, I'm a homeschooling mom of 5.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I looked at all of my kids, and, you know, they… kids will come to you, and they'll say, I want to do this, or this is really cool, or they… they exhibit some skill, if you watch them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And that's their superpower, it's the gift they come with, and we all have them. And so often.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Parents are like, no, you have to go sit in this box!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And do this thing, because that's how it's done.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Instead of just saying, oh, that's interesting, I wonder how that will work for you if you just pursue it. I have a son who is… he's so mechanically inclined. I mean, there's nothing that he can't fix or sees how it goes together.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: His name is Bob.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bobs are like that. And he's a heavy equipment operator.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He crushes rocks, and he is so happy with his job, and he just, like, he loves what he does.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He also has other things that he gets his tentacles into, but they're things that are interesting to him, not because he's credentialed. And it's not because he couldn't go to college, he just chose to pursue something that was interesting to him.
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::Jay Sargeant: I love it. I love it.
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::Jay Sargeant: My second thing that I noticed, Jill, was that there are no small moments.
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::Jay Sargeant: And what I mean by that, and I'll be very specific, because, you know, when it's chunked up like that, God knows what it means, but I'm going to tell you exactly what I mean by it.
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::Jay Sargeant: There are moments in my life where I've been in between trapezes, where I've had existential crises, where either something's working and I'm unhappy, the tennis story, or inexplicably something fails because somebody else shuts something down and we're done.
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::Jay Sargeant: And at that moment, the most important thing people need to do is not get stuck on the Barca Lounger.
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::Jay Sargeant: You can't make a new life, you can't shift, you can't reinvent, without sometimes doing things that have no particular reason at all.
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::Jay Sargeant: And… that are not outcome-based.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I'll give you an example. I'm not a social guy. My wife, God bless her, can get me maybe 3 to 4 times a year to double date.
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::Jay Sargeant: That's it! That's the yearly budget. Because I want to be with her, I want to be with my kids, and I want to be alone. I want to be writing, studying my Italian for decades now. The things that I love. I love music, opera, blah blah blah. But I'm…
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::Jay Sargeant: only
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::Jay Sargeant: selectively gregarious. Now, if you put me in an environment, I'm highly skilled, but I don't want to go. I don't want to go.
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::Jay Sargeant: So I was in between one of these trapezes at one moment in time.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I needed to create something. I had a small, failing business.
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::Jay Sargeant: And… Someone invited me to a dinner party. Well, I'm not a dinner party guy.
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::Jay Sargeant: I don't want to get the outfit on, smell good, get my hair right, tibets with people, eat hors d'oeuvres, I'm not a drinker.
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::Jay Sargeant: Whew! But I said to myself, for God's sakes, you gotta go shake it up, you gotta go somewhere. Who knows what will happen at this party?
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::Jay Sargeant: I go sit down at this Italian marble dining table at this dinner party, worth more than at the time I was worth, for sure.
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::Jay Sargeant: I'm at this fancy party, and I'm sitting next to a guy, and again, instructional moment, Coach J moment, beep, beep, beep, Coach J moment. I don't talk about myself, Jill. I turn and I say, hello, my name is Jay, who are you, and what do you do?
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::Jay Sargeant: The more he told me what he did, the more questions I had what he did, and he was fascinating. No one's old enough, including you, my dear, who looks so beautiful for your age, but at the end of the day, this is 1981, and he is Mitch K. Poor.
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::Jay Sargeant: Mitch Kepoor is one of the three developers of software for microcomputers in 1981. This is the beginning of Microsoft and Word processing. Ashton Tate has a DBase management program, and there is a spreadsheet program back then on five and a quarter inch…
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::Jay Sargeant: floppies called Lotus123.
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::Jay Sargeant: This is the guy next to me who has developed Visiplot to VisiCalc to Lotus123, and it's the beginning of the wave.
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::Jay Sargeant: When I hear his story, I start to realize, wow.
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::Jay Sargeant: I don't know anything about this, but this sounds like it's huge, and I've got a franchise development company. Now I own a franchise development company. I wonder what I should acquire. And finally, 25 minutes into this, I say, well, listen, let me just quickly ask you a question. First, this is what I do. I own one of the most successful franchise development companies in the country.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I'm always looking for entities, properties, concepts that are new wave, that are going to be huge. Sounds like you are at the beginning of something incredible. If you were me, what property would you be acquiring? What needs to emerge?
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::Jay Sargeant: in this microcomputer revolution you're talking about? And he said, oh, it's very simple. And it may sound self-serving.
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::Jay Sargeant: But you should get your hands on a software retail chain. Put those stores in front of a computer land. They want to sell the box.
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::Jay Sargeant: They'll buy the box and walk right into your software retail store. That's what I would do, and I said, wow, that's great! Are there any of them? He said, well, I'm a… I'm one of the people who makes the software. I can tell you, I only know of four. One here in Boston.
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::Jay Sargeant: One in Washington, D.C, one in Chicago, and one in LA. Now.
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::Jay Sargeant: I didn't have Bupkus. You know, Bupkus had no money. At the time, we had been bleeding for a while. We weren't succeeding. We had clients, but they were mediocre at best. And…
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::Jay Sargeant: I took every penny I had, literally every penny I had, and I got tickets all over the country. I went to the Boston store, I flew to Washington, D.C, took a hotel room, cab ride, reviewed it, then went to Chicago.
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::Jay Sargeant: They were just terrible offerings. Just terrible.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I was getting a little disappointed, and then I showed up in Los Angeles on Pico Boulevard to a 1,500 square foot store called Software Center International, and the minute on a Saturday afternoon I walked in, I saw action, energy, a crowd!
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::Jay Sargeant: 50 to 60 people there. Now, they were early…
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::Jay Sargeant: developers, they were copter heads from Caltech who were playing Pong and working on TRS-80s and Ataris and Commodore 64s, and there wasn't a Mac, and there wasn't anybody… Big Blue wasn't in the game, it was just Apple IIe's. But they had computers on these car tables, and people were enthralled and yakking and talking, and I went.
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::Jay Sargeant: Thank God this is it, this is the one, Software Center International. I went over to the kid at the counter who looked like a skateboarder to me, floppy blonde hair, and I said to him, I'm looking for the owner, I'm gonna make somebody in this space the king. I am a kingmaker.
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::Jay Sargeant: Some version of that.
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::Jay Sargeant: And he said, I said, I'm looking for the owner. And he said, well, I own.
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::Jay Sargeant: I said, oh my god, are you a decision maker? He said, no, I only know the little piece. I said, well, who is the… who's the decision maker? And I want to drumroll Jill, because when the name came out, it was a stunning moment in my life. He said, George Tate
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::Jay Sargeant: is the decision maker. Now, I want everyone here who's been listening carefully, Ashton Tate was the developer of the third piece of software, database management, DBase 2.
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::Jay Sargeant: And when I realized that one of the major forces in the beginning of this microcomputer revolution owned this little dinky store, I thought, well, there's my leverage piece. They've got money, they've got background, they've got credibility, cachet. I said, well, where is this, George? He said, well, here's his address.
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::Jay Sargeant: I take a cab to Venice. Now, this is Venice when it wasn't shixi. Venice before it's been gentrified. Venice was with hobos.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I get in the cab, I don't know where I'm at, this is my first foray into Los Angeles. I get in a cab, and I notice as we're driving that we're not driving to an elegant neighborhood. I think, in my mind, that we're going to Bel Air someplace, and we're going to be in a mansion next to Magic Johnson's mansion, because this is the great Ashton Tate. And we're driving into this kind of crappy neighborhood.
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::Jay Sargeant: He stops in front of a terrible apartment house, and he says, this is it!
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::Jay Sargeant: And I said, oh my gosh, really? I climb up a set of stairs, I knock on a door.
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::Jay Sargeant: and a gentleman comes out with a cigarette hanging out of his lip, no shirt with a big belly hanging over these gym shorts we used to wear, those scandalously short gym shorts. It was quite a visual, and I said, well, I'm… I'm looking for George Tate!
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::Jay Sargeant: And he said, I'm George Tate. I said, you're the George Tate.
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::Jay Sargeant: who's an owner of Ashton Tate, right? He says, yes. I said, well, I… and then I gave him the spiel, and he said, come on in.
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::Jay Sargeant: I go in.
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::Jay Sargeant: And in less than an hour, on a yellow pad, we develop a contract, George and I. I get commissions on the sales sold. There's none. It's been packaged, by the way, as a franchise. I didn't have to do that, but they had only one company store.
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::Jay Sargeant: I got a budget. This is very important in case entrepreneurs are really watching this. One of the most… I was a kid, but thank God I was smart enough to not only make sure I got commissions big enough for me and a team to share my commissions with a team, but I got a $75,000 budget in 1981 for launching the marketing campaign.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a lot.
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::Jay Sargeant: It was a lot, it was a lot. And we sold 154 franchises in the next 18 months, and made them the market leader.
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::Jay Sargeant: And so, it just… I mean, if I hadn't gone to that dinner party, if I didn't get out of the couch, if I didn't smell good and look good and engage, if I didn't ask questions instead of being boorish and dumping on that guy. So there's a lot of moves here that are very important for people to consider.
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::Jay Sargeant: Move. I have taken bad gigs to get good gigs, but you can't make change or money by sitting on the couch. You just can't do it. You gotta do it. Gotta expose yourself.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Risk.
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::Jay Sargeant: Risk, yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You took a risk. You… you scrapped
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: grouched up everything that you had and risked it on going to find the one place. I mean, and that is risky. I mean, you could have gone to all four places and… and come up with Bupkis again. Yeah.
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::Jay Sargeant: For sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It was total possibility.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But I think fortune favors the adventurous.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And… And things connect for a reason, and usually, if we step out in faith.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The universe will rise up to meet us where we're at, or God, or whatever you believe. It…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It… we will come together.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I have a burning question for you, to describe George's shorts. Was he wearing the white knee socks?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The tube socks from today, and sandals.
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::Jay Sargeant: I think he was barefoot. I… honest to God, it was… it was…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Such a visual.
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::Jay Sargeant: I have… I have such an interesting… read the book, because the follow-up story, which I don't have time to tell, is pretty amazing. Suffice it to say, he was a troubled individual, I'm not going to get into it, and he eventually, at the height of our success.
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::Jay Sargeant: At the height, we sold 60 franchises in a quarter.
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::Jay Sargeant: And at that moment, he… Died of a heart attack.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, that's sad.
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::Jay Sargeant: And… His wife, who he had only recently met through unusual circumstances.
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::Jay Sargeant: disbanded the company, kept the core company, and took the distribution company and the retail locations that we put our heart and soul into. We were about to go public with Alex Brown. I mean, I was imagining wealth beyond belief, and she shut it down. She just shut it down.
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::Jay Sargeant: And it led to, you know, another kind of existential crisis, which really leads into, by the way, my next story, just so you know.
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::Jay Sargeant: When that business got crushed, I had just met an angel.
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::Jay Sargeant: And that's a whole story, but I met my Lee. She was 21, just turning 22. I was 37. I met her in a coffee shop. I was affirming because a guru told me to write on
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::Jay Sargeant: many, many notebooks, I am finding my perfect soulmate. I am finding my perfect soulmate. I had filled books of, I am finding my perfect soulmate, walked into a cafe called OG Cafe on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, and just like Michael singing Apollonia in Sicily in The Godfather, I was a thunderbolt.
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::Jay Sargeant: I saw Lee, freckle face, brown eye, brown hair, and I said, well, that's it.
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::Jay Sargeant: That's what God sent to me. That's… that's the work. That's her. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with her. We met, and that became true. That became true.
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::Jay Sargeant: When… and she was with me during the failure of when the business got disbanded.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I did exactly what George Nadeff asked me to do. When I left him, he said, Jay, if you ever fall down with your own franchise development company, the light is always on. I knew I leased or rented you, I don't own you.
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::Jay Sargeant: Pray that you do well. But if anything ever goes wrong, call Uncle George. The light is always on back here.
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::Jay Sargeant: So in that moment, when that business failed.
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::Jay Sargeant: even though I was high on the hog, that business, but I called up George, I told him the story, and he said, Jay, this is fortuitous. I cannot believe you're calling me right now. I'm about to launch a major franchise out of New York.
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::Jay Sargeant: I need a president and a developer, I want to put them in mid-city, New York, Manhattan.
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::Jay Sargeant: And it's called Boston Chicken. It's gonna be huge. I've got it incredibly well funded.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I want you to be the president, I will send you $10,000, wire it tomorrow, I'll move all your furniture from the west coast, I'll put you up in the beautiful place in mid-Manhattan. You bring your new bride, I'm so excited to meet her.
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::Jay Sargeant: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I had everything… the dream, the dream, you know, the base, the commissions, the commission, stock, bonuses, and the whole nine yards.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I go up and I tell Lee.
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::Jay Sargeant: that our life is secure. We've got this big thing, and we're gonna go to one of the most exciting cities. She had never seen New York at that moment. And so I was all excited about that, and then the minute I got those words out, Jill, to her, I was telling her the story, I thought.
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::Jay Sargeant: I don't want to do that.
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::Jay Sargeant: I don't want to leave Los Angeles. I don't want to be in New York, and I don't want to be talking about chicken for the rest of my life. I don't want to be a chicken empire builder. It could be glorious, but not for me.
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::Jay Sargeant: And so I said…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Did turn out good.
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::Jay Sargeant: Yeah, it did turn out good.
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::Jay Sargeant: So…
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::Jay Sargeant: I didn't tell Lee immediately, because I knew it would be disappointing, and that it was another one of my…
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::Jay Sargeant: Bold move, so to speak.
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::Jay Sargeant: So when she went to sleep 3 nights into this deliberation, I went down to a swimming pool. We were staying in a one-month rental in Marina del Rey, and I was at this Olympic swimming pool with 250 chaise lounges around it, and I was deliberating.
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::Jay Sargeant: Thinking deeply, profoundly, about whither thou goest.
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::Jay Sargeant: And a bald-headed gentleman in Bermuda shorts with a baseball cap sits down right next to me.
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::Jay Sargeant: 250 options, sits down next to me and says, a penny for your thoughts. And I said, you don't mean that, because next to the word loquacious in the dictionary is my picture.
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::Jay Sargeant: Do you really want me to… he said, I have all the time. I want to hear what you're thinking about.
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::Jay Sargeant: And it took me about 15-20 minutes for me to describe being in between those trapezes again.
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::Jay Sargeant: And he got up, and he said, don't move.
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::Jay Sargeant: Ran to his car, and he brought a book back.
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::Jay Sargeant: And he said, this is what you should do with the rest of your life.
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::Jay Sargeant: read it. And I said, well, I don't have any money. He said, no, it's a gift.
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::Jay Sargeant: I said, okay, I'm gonna take it up. He said, no, I want you to begin to read it right now.
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::Jay Sargeant: So, I read exactly 11 pages.
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::Jay Sargeant: I was… my… it took my breath away. Just absolutely took my breath away. I turned to thank him, and he was gone. I never saw him again.
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::Jay Sargeant: I went up, To the rental apartment, where we were on a futon.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I woke up Lee, and I said, we're not going to New York, we're sending the money back, we're not going there. I am going to be an NLP trainer. I'm going to teach these 11 pages
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::Jay Sargeant: to my brothers and sisters in sales, sales management, and leadership and communication. These 11 pages
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::Jay Sargeant: are the missing piece of everything I have ever done, and that's what I'm going… that's what God put me on the planet to do, is to teach those 11 pages.
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::Jay Sargeant: And in the next 7 years, I sold $11.2 million worth of NLP training to corporate America.
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::Jay Sargeant: But the move, as you know, is again risk, because it sounds great now.
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::Jay Sargeant: But, you know, the next day, sent the money back.
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::Jay Sargeant: Sitting at a card table in my underwear with a phone.
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::Jay Sargeant: smiling and dialing and finding people who loved me and knew me, and I sold my first $5,000 one-day Saturday training to someone who just believed in me.
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::Jay Sargeant: And from that, we grew it and scaled it and made it something very large. And that came very late in life. It's never too late to change. Never too late to change, is my mantra.
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::Jay Sargeant: And I learned that. I learned that from, I gotta tell you one quick, charming story, if it's okay.
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::Jay Sargeant: My maternal grandmother, Lillian, Nana Lil, raised me for 5 years because my folks married very young.
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::Jay Sargeant: They didn't have a car, we lived in her and my grandfather's apartment in a little room, the three of us, and my parents went off to go sell something downtown at countertops at Finelen's and at Jordan Marsh.
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::Jay Sargeant: And they left me with my maternal grandmother, and so our connection was incredible. And she was a tough old bird. I mean, if you crossed her, whack! You know, and washed your mouth out with soap and the whole nine yards, but I adored her. Adored her.
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::Jay Sargeant: As she aged.
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::Jay Sargeant: She did two things that basically gave me the instruction manual for the rest of my life.
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::Jay Sargeant: Number one, when my grandfather died, she realized that people had stiffed him. She found a little black book where contractors didn't pay him $7.27 for nails. She found that book. He was a soft touch.
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::Jay Sargeant: She was a 64-year-old Jewish booby with no automobile license.
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::Jay Sargeant: Of course, because that was the period of time he lived in downtown Boston. She went and got a license at age 64, and drove the family car to every location in Boston, banged on a door, and collected every penny in that black book.
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::Jay Sargeant: Shame on you. My jack was good to you. You owe him for these nails. Write a check. I'm not leaving to him. Write a check.
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::Jay Sargeant: Whoa, so we were just all blown away.
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::Jay Sargeant: But the biggest one, the one I want everyone to know, I just love sharing this.
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::Jay Sargeant: Is finally, at age 94, in the same apartment.
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::Jay Sargeant: In Brighton, same apartment. She'd never want to leave it, but she started falling down. We'd find her in trouble.
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::Jay Sargeant: So my mother and I,
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::Jay Sargeant: who were the closest to her, went over, and we said, Lil, it's over, kid.
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::Jay Sargeant: The next new chapter is about… yeah, we're selling it hard. We're putting you in the Roslindale Hebrew Rehab Center. It's glorious, it's this… She was so mad at us. I can't begin to tell you how mad she was. One week later, I had a business trip.
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::Jay Sargeant: One week later, I just went from Logan Airport right to the rehab center, and I said, well, I'm gonna get a beat. She's gonna… but I'm gonna take it. And I walk in, and I got a beat, and you know what she said, Jill? Jay, you're an idiot. Why didn't you get me in here faster?
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::Jay Sargeant: There are 3 terrific meals a day, there are snacks all day long, we got bingo, we got movies, we got mahjong, we got card games, but Jay, this is the big one.
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::Jay Sargeant: When I was a little girl in the second grade, in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
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::Jay Sargeant: I fell in love with a little boy named Louie. He didn't know that I was in love with him, but I adored him. Then my folks moved from Dorchester to Brighton, I never saw him again. I lost him.
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::Jay Sargeant: He's here at this rehab center, and we have fallen in love.
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::Jay Sargeant: you've fallen in love! He said, Louis brings me a muffin in the afternoon, wrapped in a napkin like it's the Hope Diamond. And we sit all afternoon long holding hands, and I loved your grandfather dearly, but this is my Romeo. This is my Romeo and Juliet moment, Jay.
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::Jay Sargeant: They had a 5-year relationship before they both expired, and in the last time I saw them.
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::Jay Sargeant: I had already, unfortunately, moved away to LA,
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::Jay Sargeant: Because of the story I told you. But I went back to see her on an autumn day.
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::Jay Sargeant: And Louie and Lil were sitting side-by-side in a courtyard with their walkers in front of them.
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::Jay Sargeant: I sat for 2 hours, kibitzing with them, loving them, sharing stories, hearing their stories, and then eventually I had to go. The sun was setting, it was getting a little chilly, and I hugged them and kissed them both goodbye, and as I left, I got a level higher up, and I could see them through a window. They couldn't see me.
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::Jay Sargeant: And about 5 minutes after watching them, they both got up, And they…
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::Jay Sargeant: Grabbed their walkers, and they waddled, waddled.
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::Jay Sargeant: Impassioned, stopped, and kissed. Waddle, waddle, kiss. Waddle, waddle. Couldn't keep their hands off of one another.
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::Jay Sargeant: It's never too late to change.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Never too late for a new adventure. I… My 90-year-old dad is…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the same way. He… my mom passed, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 12 or 14 years ago, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He had a relationship with a gal that lived across the street. In fact, she just called me. She… her family moved her to… back to Denver. He lives in Arizona.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 90, my dad's 90. And, she still calls him every night, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They've just had the best relationship.
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::Jay Sargeant: Oh.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: All this time, and… He's just, like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I talked to my dad, because, you know, she… now she lives a long way away, and he'll probably never see her again in this lifetime, but I was like, are you sad, Dad? And he says, no!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I got a few more on the line.
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::Jay Sargeant: Haha! I love it!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He's 90!
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::Jay Sargeant: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And he still lives alone. He doesn't drive anymore, so he needs people to drive him around.
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::Jay Sargeant: Yeah, you know, we're vital as long as we're relevant, as long as we're relevant, there's hope.
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::Jay Sargeant: And hope is the food that we all… the nurtureant we all need. We talk about oats and vegetarian… I mean, I believe in all organic everything, but it's the information we feed ourself that is the ultra… ultra-nutrient, ultimate nutrient.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is for sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how can people get ahold of you, find your book, get in touch with you, and…
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::Jay Sargeant: It's all starting now. I have a website where everything… if you… they'll go to the website. We're developing a YouTube channel where I'm going to tell many, many stories.
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::Jay Sargeant: We're developing, thanks to you, a YouTube challenge that will be adjacent to our substack, God bless you. And, but if they go to the shift
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::Jay Sargeant: project.academy, which I'm sure you'll make available. They'll be able to find everywhere I am, and I have developed an online course that I want people to check out. I decided
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::Jay Sargeant: I was advised I never… Well, no, that's not true. I take advice.
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::Jay Sargeant: I was told, Jay, you should charge $1,000 for cohorts, blah blah. I said, no, I don't want to do that. I want to charge as little as I can, and throw everything I know into an online course, and then love on it and support it. So, go to theshiftproject.academy and…
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::Jay Sargeant: Get on our mailing list.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Excellent. Thanks so much for joining us and telling us your stories today, Jay. This has been great.
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::Jay Sargeant: Thank you, Jill. It's been a pleasure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can learn more about Jay and find his book and other projects that he's working on over at theshiftproject.academy, and we will put those links in the show notes below. Thanks for tuning in with us today. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Head on over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. Join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today and get visible.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That was great.
