Certain Success™ Podcast

God Given Sales vs Pushing Uphill with Justin Janowski

August 22, 2023 • Matt Fagioli • Episode 17

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Do you believe that sales can be an avenue for serving others, aligning with your faith, and achieving success without resorting to pushy tactics? 

Well, you're in for a treat with today's episode!

Joining us today is Justin Janowski, a seasoned pro in helping coaches shape their dream businesses. Justin, the mastermind behind Faith2Influence, brings a solid foundation in faith to the table, spearheading the transformation of coaching from a mere profit-making endeavor into a profound journey of purpose.

We discuss the spiritual essence of selling, how aligning your beliefs with your sales approach can transform your results, and the balance between faith, authenticity, and profitability in business.

This episode is a goldmine of insights and practical advice that you won't want to miss if you're eager to infuse purpose, faith, and profitability into your coaching journey.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Building a personal relationship with God through unscripted rhythms in prayer
  • The concept of playing chase with God as a metaphor for prayer
  • The practical steps and insights to build a personal relationship with God

Links from this episode:

Justin Janowski  [00:00:00]:

We should be preparing ourselves for the future, preparing ourselves for easy deals in business. And I think we can prepare ourselves in a couple of ways, and that preparation begins with our character. And so for us to be ready for all of God's blessings ready to be received in the marketplace, I think it's really important for us to focus on development of our character, meaning, who are we? How are we showing up? What level of integrity are we bringing to the marketplace?

Matt Fagioli [00:00:31]:

Hey, guys, welcome back to the Certain Success podcast. I'm your host, Matt Fagioli, and today I have an awesome friend as a guest, and I think we have a fun subject for you. And this is about how God drops clients in your lap. Everybody always says, how do I put God first? And if I focus on all, like, where's the business going to come from? Well, it literally falls from the sky. And cool thing was that this happened to me yesterday and happened to Justin yesterday. So we're going to talk about it. So welcome, Justin Janowski, what's up?

Justin Janowski  [00:01:11]:

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. This is fun already.

Matt Fagioli [00:01:14]:

Yeah, it's going to be a blast. And we've been connecting recently, talking, and I think we're going to do 27 podcasts, but I was like, what are we going to talk about? I'm like, and we get on the phone and I was telling you what happened to me yesterday. You were like, I had the same thing happen to me. All right, so you go first. Tell me your God story about how the business dropped in your lap yesterday. Yeah.

Justin Janowski  [00:01:36]:

So I was introduced via email, and you shared you had a very similar experience six months ago by a friend of mine to a potential prospect, and somehow I missed the email. I was in a period of transition with my team members, and I had somebody who was monitoring my email, and then they weren't, and I took over. And I was a little bit disorganized and chaotic during that month of January, and so I somehow missed that email. And in June, I was going back through old emails, cleaning out my inbox, and I found this email introduction, and I sent a message to the gentleman, and I said, oh, my gosh, I'm so embarrassed. I'm sorry I never followed up on this before, but I would love to meet with you if you're still open to it. And he agreed to meet, and we spoke last week briefly, but he was with family, he was traveling. He lost reception. We barely got to know each other. And so we booked a call for this week, for yesterday, and it was scheduled for an hour. He sent the calendar invite, and five minutes before the call, I noticed he switched it to a 30 minutes call slot. And so that showed how much he was looking forward to the call, I suppose and we ended up talking for like an hour and five minutes. And it turns out that right now, in this very season, my perfect, ideal client, he had some changes take place in his business. He wouldn't have needed me in January. Right now, he absolutely needs me and we're going to do work together. And it was just a blessing. And he felt like it was a God thing too. He's like, oh my gosh. Just amazing that we didn't talk in January and that we're talking right now. Right when I need you.

Matt Fagioli [00:03:14]:

Yeah, man. The whole idea that God's going to deliver the right business at the right time. But when we talk about that in the abstract, sometimes it's a little hard to trust. And you're like, what? Is that really a thing? And then you see it happen all the time, and then you forget about it. So at least we're going to have this one recorded. Well, what happened on my site is so similar, it's ridiculous. So literally six months ago, I guess it's seven months, it was in December that I now realize I had this email. These guys called me Monday, hey Matt, we want to talk to you about X. Awesome. Love to talk to you, had a great conversation. The guy says, hey, I'll call you on Wednesday when I get back in town. I'm going to Atlanta. Guy doesn't know that I live in Atlanta. I was like, you know I'm in Atlanta, right? He goes, what? Yada yada. They come down, we have this amazing dinner last night, the kind of dinner where I left, and I'm like, these are now my best friends in the world. We talked about 1000 things that weren't business. Of course we talked some about business, but it was just one of the most amazing connections. So I come home this morning. I'm digging for the email from the other day. So I search the guy's name in my email, and up comes this email from December where the guy had sent me this big long introduction. Hey, we'd really like to work with you. And blah, blah, blah, cricket. No response from me at all. We were traveling. I just missed it. Just straight missed it. And I'm like, that is so unbelievable that God would be like, hey, I really was trying to give you this client and I'm going to bring them back just at the right time. And dude, it's gold.

Justin Janowski  [00:05:03]:

Super cool. Yeah, that's how God works sometimes. I used to hear this idea that sometimes God will try to send us a message with a feather, and we might feel just like this little brushing of a feather. And if we don't listen, then maybe he'll send a brick. And if we don't listen, then maybe he'll send a truck. It can be good or bad. By the way, this analogy, the feather, the brick, and the truck. But wouldn't it be nice if we learn to trust and to receive when God sends the feather.

Matt Fagioli [00:05:38]:

Man, I love that. Yeah, I always talk about it. Similarly, God has to hit me with a two by four. They're like, oh, I got it. Okay, I got your, uh, Justin, you know that I'm trying to finish my book, and I talk a lot in the book about sort of the Bruce Almighty analogy, right? Like, God, give me a sign. And then there's like a truck full of know going by that say, stop stuff like crazy. So, you know, tell me what you think about that in the larger context. I mean, you're so well spoken. I love your podcast about how you and you're so good at articulating how these things work in the real world, in a sales world. When I started this conversation intending to do this podcast with you, I was going to go straight at the sales piece because that's such a sweet spot for you. I know I'm catching you a little off guard. This is completely unscripted. But in the context of sort of letting God drive the bus, can you think of a couple of things that we can do to sort of open the door for that and or maybe catch the ball better when it happens? Any thoughts?

Justin Janowski  [00:06:59]:

Yeah, definitely. So I'll say this, that part of being ready is preparation. We should be preparing ourselves for the future, preparing ourselves for easy deals and business. And I think we can prepare ourselves in a couple of ways, and this is going to make business easier for us a year from now, three years from now, five years from now. And that preparation begins with our character. And so for us to be ready for all of God's blessings ready to be received in the marketplace, ready to be referred in the marketplace or have people seeking us out, I think it's really important for us to focus on development of our character, meaning, who are we? How are we showing up? What level of integrity are we bringing to the marketplace? My friends Tommy Breedlove and Chris Tuft talk about being a net giver in the marketplace. Can we be more generous? Can we try to outgive everybody else in relationship with them? And as we give, we make the referral for someone we support, someone we generously give to a cause we tithe. We show up with honesty and integrity and do the right thing by people, especially when money is involved. Those things will build and compound over time and develop our reputation to the place that people want to work with us. And it's easier for God to bring people in front of us and for them to just receive the presence of our identity and say, man, I really want to work with this person. Like, you have these people who just really, whatever reason, they wanted to work with you. And it's a reflection of who you are that they naturally trusted you and it was easy for them to want to work with you and do business. The other part of preparation is developing a skill set. And so for me, I know that that skill set sales. And it might be that your skill set is the thing that you're going to coach people on. Maybe you've developed a marketing skill set, maybe it's sales, maybe it's relationships, maybe it's health and fitness. But if you've developed a skill set and you're continually developing your skill set in the area that you're going to coach people in, that's going to make it a lot easier for people to find you. And additionally, though there are certain business skill sets all of us should develop, which sales is one of them, we need to be prepared to receive an opportunity and convert it into an actual sale, an actual paying client who we can have significant impact on over time. But then along with preparation of developing our skill sets, developing our character, it's super important for us to be praying for God to deliver business to us. I pray very specifically for God to bless my business, for Him to bless us financially, for Him to bring in the right clients and the right sales, the right opportunities. When I'm in seasons of deep prayer around that God brings more and more surprising opportunities my way. And then the final thing I'll suggest is we must also be in action. And so we can't just be praying and thinking, oh, God's going to do this for me. God can bless us so much more easily when we are taking massive action. So I think we want to really combine prayer with massive action. And that means prospecting, it means meeting people, it means having conversations, it means putting ourselves out there in the marketplace. It might be marketing on social media or doing a Facebook Live or running a podcast or whatever. It is like allowing ourselves to be seen and be in action. So I think when we combine the preparation of our character and our skill sets with real prayer and real action, god blesses us abundantly.

Matt Fagioli [00:10:37]:

Dude, that is some gold, that whole package. Thank you. I'm so glad that you brought us back to prayer because that's been a big deal for me. Well, I want to be more specific because of course prayer is a big deal, but I have of late been intentionally asking God to bring the business that way. I want it to present itself and I'm praying like that. And for me, I don't know if this rings true with you or anybody listening to this, but for most of my life, I didn't think that was okay. I was like, I can't ask that God that he's going to be like, go get that business, man. What do you mean you want me to do it? And I finally was like, you know what? I'm just going to tell you what I want. I want God, you to bring me. And I have a number. I'm not going to say it, but I have a number I'm like. I would like you to please bring me this amount of business per month. It's not that I'm not willing to work for it, but I want it to come just the way it came yesterday. And it was such an answer, prayer. And I did thank Him this morning for that specifically, but my mind didn't immediately go to it in this podcast. You brought it there, so thank you. But anyway, what do you think about that little bit, that little rant?

Justin Janowski  [00:11:54]:

Yeah, I think that we find it very easy to pray thanks and gratitude for the things that God's giving us. Hopefully we do. And I think most people find it easy to pray for health, pray for other people's health, pray over our marriages or our kids. But when it comes time to actually pray for the thing that we want, the thing that we're working towards so many hours a day, somehow we feel like we can't pray for that. And I just want to remind everyone listening that God already knows the desires of our hearts. And so if you're working hard to build a business that is good, that does good, that serves people well, and that compensates you, and you've got a financial goal that's going to allow you to provide for your family at a higher level. It's going to allow you to give more to your church and your community and people in need. That's going to potentially provide jobs and opportunities for people. If you want that to succeed and you want more income, you want more impacts for your business, god already knows that you want that. You're not hiding it from Him. And so if he already knows it, why are we acting like we're trying to hide it from Him? Why aren't we having that conversation? God, please bless my business. I'm praying consistently. God, please bless faith to influence, help us to grow. And God, as you bless me and my business, help me to become more and more of a blessing to my family, to my community, to my clients, to my church, and to the Kingdom. In Jesus name. Amen. And think some of us have old stories about money, that making money is bad, that money is the root of all evil. The Bible actually says the love of money. If we make it an idol, it's a problem, right? But if we use it as a tool, it can be really good. And so we might want to just check and have an awareness around our stories about money. And if we've got healthy stories around money, we'll probably feel good about having conversations with God about it. If we've got stories that need to be healed, we're going to have a little bit of resistance there my story around money is the more I earn, the more I can give. So I don't have any resistance around earning. I want to earn as much as I can, so I can give as much as I can.

Matt Fagioli [00:13:52]:

Yeah, well, everything you said resonates with me, but this thing of late, that has really clicked for me, and I think it's helpful to people too. It's like, get really specific, and there's no poverty in it. So it's like, God, it's not, oh, God, please take care of us and give me enough. It's like, here's the number that I've kind of come up with as my goal. That goal puts me in a good place to feed my family and save and give and all the things. This is the number. It's a big number. God, show me how to do that. Put those opportunities in my lap that are exactly the kind of business that I want to do. You said earlier when you were talking about this thing for you yesterday, that it was your ideal client at the moment, and that's what I was talking about with my people last time. These are literally the exact people that I want to be around, that I want to work with. And here God has made them fly across the country, buy me an amazing dinner, drive all the way across the city when they got here to have dinner with me, and then leave happy that they did it. I'm like, this is awesome.

Justin Janowski  [00:15:03]:

Anyway, super cool. Super cool. This is an aside, but I haven't had a chance to tell many people about this yet. I think I've told two people so far, and I want to tell you because I think you'll think it's interesting. I also had a conversation yesterday with someone who wants to introduce me to a company that needs sales support. And she asked, Are you willing to sell things outside of, like, high ticket coaching packages? I said, well, maybe. What do you want me to sell? What would it be? She said, Well, I've got a client that she does marketing for that just moved on from their salesperson. They need some sales support, and they sell private jets.

Matt Fagioli [00:15:38]:

Oh, that's terrible.

Justin Janowski  [00:15:39]:

Private jets. They make about 18 sales a year, apparently. I don't know how it all works. I've definitely never sold anything like that. But I said, absolutely, I'd be interested in that. So I may be introduced, and of course I'll update you if I end up becoming a private jet salesperson and see how that goes. But God likes to bring interesting opportunities in front of us sometimes as well. And of course, we need discernment to say, like, is that for me or not? I'd like to take a look at it. Sounds pretty fun, certainly.

Matt Fagioli [00:16:13]:

And I think that kind of brings me to another rant or related thing that I've been passionate about, which is every time I have any kind of coaching conversation I'm always just immediately going to what is it that you want? Are you clear at all about what you actually want? Because if you're not praying intently about what you like, I'm getting crystal clear. Like, God, I want somebody that's in this specific, like I said, exactly the person that I want. And I'll give you a non business example. I have a good friend who this story goes back a long ways, but his wife passed away and he was passionately seeking a new spouse. And he wrote out these elaborate three by five cards that described this person in such granular detail that I couldn't even fathom it. And then he just prayed it every day for years, a couple of years, anyway. And then it happened. And then he was like, this is literally so I think you put that in the sales context. It's like, well, what if half of it is just I don't know about you, Justin, but most people I talk to are just not clear about what they if that if that could somehow get worked out. And you could have that kind of clarity. It's like, what if you got up every day and your ideal customer avatar was written out in granular detail and you prayed it every day?

Justin Janowski  [00:17:58]:

Yeah, that's so good. Well, the reality is this is the kind of conversations we need to be having when we're having a sales conversation. Sales when done right is just coaching. Sales when done right feels like leadership. It might even feel like love. It can be a significantly valuable opportunity and conversation for the other person, whether they buy or not. And so if we're having a great sales conversation, we're helping people gain more clarity and verbally express what they want. When we're doing sales, we're oftentimes wanting to have a period of discovery where we're asking questions about the present and past, so we get to understand where someone is and where they've been and how they got to this point. But then if we know where they're at, we need to have the conversation about the vision of what they want. What is their ideal vision in whatever area we're working in? Maybe it's their marriage. What would their ideal marriage feel like if they could show up any way inside of that relationship? What would it be like? Or maybe it's what would their business look like in the most ideal form? What would they really like their business to be producing income wise? What would they like their structure to be like? The amount of hours they're working. Like, the more specific we can get, like those note cards you're talking about, the better. Or if you're a health and fitness coach, what would they like their health and fitness to look like? How would they like to feel each day? What would their emotional experience be at their very best? And if we help people get really clear on what they want and express it out loud. There's power even in that they begin to desire it even a little bit more by saying it out loud, by recognizing it. And then our brain begins to find ways to pursue and solve the problem. Like, we're very smart. We're hardwired this way and God it makes it easier for us to it's easier for God to bless us, I think, if we're looking for what we want, because oftentimes how many times is God probably trying to bless us and we're just missing it because we're not looking for the right things. And so I think that clarity allows God to bless us. And even if there's a non Christian listening to this, one of the first personal development books I listened to in my life was called Think and Grow Rich and an incredible book. Honestly, I don't agree with every word in the pages, but most of it really spoke to me and a lot of it has really resonated and supported my career. But part of the idea of it is that we need to think about something first, desire something first, see it, imagine it first, and then we'll start to find the solutions and we'll start to take the right actions and all of those things can fall into place. And again, like I said, it becomes a little bit easier for us to receive God's blessings because we can see them if we can see where we're going. So if we can give somebody the gift of that on a sales call, saying like, what do they really want? But then get into the question of what's the gap? What's the challenge? What's really standing in the way, or preventing them from having that? And if we can discover the primary problem, the primary challenge they need to solve and they can commit to solving that problem, well, then maybe if we have a solution to that problem, they'll want to hire us and work with us, and it'll be really easy and really fun and a total win win. But if they didn't decide to work with us, if it wasn't a fit for whatever reason, and we help them get really clear on what they want and get really clear on the problem they need to solve to get what they want, and we help them commit to solving that problem, whoo. We've given them a gift that changed their life forever. And naturally, many of those people, if we've got the right service, we're talking to qualified prospects, they're going to want to do that, work with us after we've given them this gift.

Matt Fagioli [00:21:21]:

Well, there's a bunch of things you said there, but there's two things I want to chime in on and get your thoughts about. But my good friend Barry Jenkins, you remind me of him in a way because he wrote a book called Too Nice for Sales, and he's amazing at sales, incredibly successful, but takes this incredibly nice approach. But one of the things he talked about was what a disservice you're doing to the person on the other end of the phone. If you are afraid and you're, like, panicking and just want to get off the phone and you never get to, what is this customer's need? What do they want? How can I solve their problem? And sometimes when you get on the phone with somebody, they're not immediately going to go to that. And if you're operating out of fear and scarcity, you're going to run from that conversation instead of diving deeper. And lots of salespeople think, well, if I'm diving deeper now, I'm bugging them, or I'm being pushy, and you could bug them and be pushy if you did it wrong. But if you're just coming from a place of like, I'm just trying to figure out how to help you. What is it that you want? And at some point that can go too far, but I think most salespeople shy away from that way too quickly. What do you think about when I say that?

Justin Janowski  [00:22:49]:

Yeah, I really think that it's important for us to be bold. If you're a coach, you're an entrepreneur, you're a leader, you've got this gift that God's given you to help and serve people. Let's not hide that thing away. Let's be bold. I think we need to ask the bold, courageous, curious next question. And I also know that emotion is really contagious. And so, Matt, if you show up on a sales call and you're scared, nervous, et cetera, you're experiencing a lot of self doubt, the other person's going to feel some of that. We all know emotion is contagious because we watch a movie and we feel the emotion of the characters in the movie. It's not even a person real in front of us. It's a replay of something that's already happened. But if we come in with that fear, that anxiety, that nervousness, that self doubt, our prospect is going to feel that. And it doesn't create a good buying atmosphere. It hijacks their opportunity to learn and grow and get what they need. Whereas if we show up with confidence and peace and love and ease, they're going to feel a lot more of that as well. It's going to make it a lot easier for the right people to say.

Matt Fagioli [00:23:57]:

Yes, well, what I love about you and Barry and people that do it the right way is that you can be bold and confident, and that isn't arrogant, pushy, or overbearing, none of those things. And I think that a lot of people don't understand that there's two different sides of that coin that are both very both sides of that coin say, Stay on the phone. One of them is the right way and one of them is the wrong way, but neither one of those sides says bail or back off. The other thing that you said that I wanted to key on is think and grow rich, which I have devoured many, many times over, because I think that, right or wrong, I felt for a long time as a christian that anything in the realm of money, anything that wasn't, like, straight up the middle scripture was like, I should just ignore all of that. And now I don't think that way. I think everything has value if you shine the light of scripture on it and go like, what are the parts of this that are right? Or how can I use everything that's in that book within the context of selling ethically and following my faith and thinking about how I can serve the person on the other end, the phone the best and all of that? There's actually a good bit in that book that I had missed the first couple of times I read it, about how people have used those principles to there's one example of a US senator and other great successes that have nothing to do with making a gajillion dollars. It was just the power of those principles and the mind that God gave us to use our piece of it that we all kind of seem to want to just set on the shelf and go, oh no, I'm a Christian now. I can't think that way.

Justin Janowski  [00:26:03]:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that there are a lot of occasions where as Christians with good intentions, we want to be thoughtful about what we consume. Very important, very valuable idea. And yet so many of us are just consuming ad nauseam social media opinions from people every time we have a moment where we could take a break and we could think or we could pray or we could process ourselves, we're just filling our head with what other people think on social media. So there's a little tangent, but we're pretty distracted. We might need a little bit more presence, a little more time with God, a little bit more time with our own thoughts. That said, I think it's relevant, it's healthy for us to be discerning in who and what we allow to influence us, which books we read, which people we listen to, what movies we watch. I think it's relevant. And I know that some Christians are probably taking that lesson that discernment a little too far, and they're closing themselves off to things that could support them, that could help them have a more empowering life, that can help them provide greater leadership, that could help them be better parents, be better spouses, be better business leaders, serve people at a higher level. I mean, simple things like meditation, because meditation has roots in other religions. So many Christians close themselves off to the idea of meditation or yoga or something like that, when all it really is is breathing and stretching and being still and getting space away from technology and all the distractions. And Jesus walked off. Into the woods all the time to sit and meditate and just spend time with God, breathe and be still.

Matt Fagioli [00:27:46]:

I might not have used that word, but it's super the same. So glad you used that example because I feel exactly the same way. It's like, why not take advantage of the best parts of what everybody is talking about and put Jesus in the middle of that, shine that light on and go like, well, which parts of these am I going to handle and which parts am I not? In a previous conversation, you and I were talking about this person or that person and I was like, well, that guy's not my cup of tea. That doesn't mean that everything the guy says is wrong. Like 80% of what he says I agree with or whatever. And so there's value in all of those pieces.

Justin Janowski  [00:28:32]:

I regularly read a book or listen to a speaker and think not everything they say is for me, but a lot of it is or some of it is. And those pieces are valuable to me.

Matt Fagioli [00:28:44]:

Yeah, everyone is valuable and it's just that filter. I want to chime on that tangent, that social media tangent too, because I found myself really guilty of just too much like Instagram and whatever and all that random voices. Even though I've done a pretty good job of curating my thought of curating my social to, where the stuff that's in my feed is mostly really good stuff that I actually if I read something, if I'm following somebody, and I read something that's like, unless I really dig that person, I'm not going to follow them anymore to try to clean that up. But anyway, recently I've been on this crazy schedule where I'm trying to finish my books. I'm waking up at super early in the morning, 03:00 in the morning to write because that's what works for me. But anyway, the last week or two since I started doing that, I've noticed that I get up and my brain's like literally like quick prayer book. I'm in this weird news cycle. Well, there's no social in that cycle. And I've actually noticed I'm like, oh, there's no junk in my brain in the morning where sometimes there would be. Anyway. So I just wanted to share because I'm glad you brought that up.

Justin Janowski  [00:30:15]:

Yeah, it's interesting. I never know what's going to come out of my mouth when we're having a conversation like this. I think we've covered a lot of interesting bases and topics and you and I know this, but the listeners don't know. I didn't know we were going to record the podcast day. In fact, last week we had a call, we were going to record a podcast. That was my expectation coming in. Instead we just talked. We just caught up and got to know each other a little bit better. And this week I thought we were just going to catch up and get to know each other. And then we had an opening conversation. The first minute, you're like, you know what? Let's click record. Let's do this podcast thing. And so you're right. It's just a really organic, really authentic conversation, and it's cool to see what God brings through conversation when we're with good people.

Matt Fagioli [00:30:56]:

Yeah, dude, it was so good. Thanks so much, man, for being here. Thanks to everybody for checking out the Certain Success podcast. And if you dug today's episode, please follow and like and get on Apple podcasts and drop a review for Certain Success and see you back here.

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