Dan Jourdan is an entrepreneur who has risen up in the ranks from owning a sandwich shop to becoming a business broker to now training sales professionals.

Show Notes:

4:52 – Dan Jourdan love sales

6:25 – What is your secret for bridging the GAP? 3 Mantras. Say thank you the first thing when you wake up in the morning.

8:23 – What does courage mean to you and how do you reach it? Is what I’m doing now, getting me closer to or further from my goals?

9:59 – What is your definition of attitude? Being in control. Your attitude comes from you. It’s a magic pill and bullet. Mean people in New Jersey

12:21 – Dad was the first attitude coach. War torn France. Jews in the holocaust. Perspective.

16:07 – Sales Energizer. Consistency is important. Wake up early.

18:10 – What’s the biggest attitude or sales mistake of people in general. People exaggerate what they can do in the future rather what is possible in the daily short term. Evil exists in the white spaces.

20:34 – The greatest sale ever made. The wife. Repeat and referral. Believing in the value of your product

23:52 – What was the worst business decision you ever made or the biggest sale you ever lost. Losing a million dollars twice. Laziness.

26:41 – Love adversity. Maintain the marriage. Total honesty. If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. When you provide enough values, you create a void in the universe and then it fills in.

31:55 – How did you get through the greatest loss in your life, the death of your father?

36:28 – Back from break and knowledge through the decades. What is the attitude lesson of a newborn baby? Purity. Totally at one with your physical body. Time is a man-made construct.

39:43 – Attitude lesson at the age of 10. Miss Morgan was teach at the time and she was hot. Was going to take work to beat dyslexia. 

47:11 – Attitude lesson at the age of 20. A moment of clarity. Seeing God.

50:48 – Attitude lesson at the age of 30.

52:27 – Attitude lesson at the age of 40. If I die today I would have lived twice the life that I expected

54:28 – Attitude lesson at the age of 50.

57:04 – Final message of hope. Every day is another opportunity for change. Everybody is in sales. Have gratitude, have courage, and be kind to each other.

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Dan Jourdan

Dan, tell me this. What advice can you give our people in both of those areas? What’s your secret getting from who you were at 21 to who you are now? How did you bridge the gap?

I was thrown into it as most people were, but I realized I was always looking to become a certain person. I followed people that had certain values that I appreciated. There are three main values that my family and I have written on our wall. It’s our big thing that we do. One is gratitude. The next is courage and the next is kindness. We are grateful, courageous, and kind and things get rolling from there. That’s the person that I wanted to be. When you know where you want to be, you figure out a way to get there.

That’s what it is. I love it. Those are three good mantras for everybody tuning in to step back and say, “How grateful am I?”

That’s my thing. The first thing to do when you wake up in the morning, if somebody is looking for a specific habit to get them on the right path, try to say thank you when you wake up in the morning, Not to anyone or to anything but the act of saying thank you puts you in a spirit of gratefulness. If you’re human, you’re tuning into this, and you say thank you, you’re going to ask yourself, “Thankful for what? What am I saying thank you to?” You then find yourself looking for reasons to be grateful. It changes your whole day.

Let’s delve into the courage end of things. What does courage mean to you? Is courage, in fact, an attitude, and how do you teach or reach courage?

Step one, as in everything, is you need to want it. You ask yourself that question. Zig Ziglar said it best. “Is what I’m doing now getting me closer to or further from my goals?” That question, “Is what I’m doing now exhibiting courageousness or something other than courageousness?” I always think that anything other than courageousness is an obstacle. It’s a brick wall between you and wherever you’re trying to go. Being courageous to get the know, ask a question, walk in unannounced, love, hurt, and risk.

That’s where life is. I give speeches and presentations in front of people. It’s a big risk for the people hiring me because I tell them, “I’ll tell you what the outcome is. People are going to leave this audience. They’re going to feel better about themselves. They’re going to be better employees and I love you for hiring me. How do we get there? I have no idea what I’m going to say. That’s your risk.”

Obviously, you customize stuff, but I’m sure you have some patterns. You go in more of an impromptu type of thing when you’re speaking.

I’m the ad-lib speaker. I have a million stories. I’m terribly dyslexic, so I remember things in stories. If you said cobwebs, I’m going to come up with a story about cobwebs. Now I’m challenging myself.

Let me ask you this. What is your definition of attitude?

I have the perfect definition for it. It’s control. It’s the only time you’re in control. Everything else happens to you. Your attitude comes from you. It’s a magic pill. It’s a magic bullet because you can control people with your attitude. I live in Atlanta now, but I’m from New Jersey. People are mean in New Jersey. Not because they want to be mean, it’s just they have to be. I went home for my 30-year high school reunion. I saw a guy, Robert Bucksbaum. I haven’t seen him in 30 years. Here’s Robert Bucksbaum and he goes, “Deej, come over here. Do you know who was asking about you?” I said, “Who?” He said, “No one.”

People are mean in New Jersey. I used to play this game there. If I’m walking down the street and I see somebody, I smile at them and like you, you smile back. Not because you wanted to, but it’s the law. I forced you to smile. When I did that, I win. I get a point. I never lost in New Jersey. I came here to Atlanta. The first day I’m here, I’m walking down the street. Somebody is walking to me and they say, “How are you doing?” I lost the first time because they beat me to it. I said, “I got to move here.” That’s what happened. With your attitude, you are in control. With that control, you can affect the lives of others. Quite frankly, that’s your charge in life.

Talk to me. Who was your first attitude coach?

My dad, of course.

What was his name and what did he teach you?

My father is from Paris. I’ll tell the story if you want to go there. My dad, who lived in war-torn France in Nazi-occupied France, was Jewish. When he was thirteen, he lost his dad in the Holocaust in Auschwitz. This is where he’s coming from. He came to America and my dad never had a bad day. I mean, not one bad day. One day I was in my bedroom and I was upset about something at school.

Something had happened and I was probably 13 or 14 at that time or something like that. I was blowing something out of proportion. He said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I’m having a bad day,” and I went to tell him. He had never done this before. He never told me stories about anything before. He goes, “Bad day, huh? Let me ask you this. Have you ever walked out on the street one day and you had your friends come up to you and they said, ‘They got your dad?’ You go and find out that he was taken right off the street. Out of nowhere, he was taken right off the street and put in a camp. From that camp, they were going to put them on a train and take them to a concentration camp. You go to the camp hoping that you’re going to see him, but you never see him again for the rest of your life.”

“You did see a guard and the guard was wearing the family ring that he never took off his finger. Tell me about your day. Are you having a bad day?” Put everything in perspective. He said with his little French Jewish accent, “Danny, in this country, on your worst day, they don’t throw babies in the air and catch them on pitchforks.” I’m melting. I’m a mess. He totally put things in perspective. Every day, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of the world around you. Every day, you have to cleanse. I go through a cleansing thing in my mind. I almost imagine putting an oxygen helmet on a deep-sea diver would use. I turn on the oxygen, and in here is the only fresh air, and out there is all the poison. I breathe in the fresh air and it puts everything back in perspective. I learned that from my dad too.

Your dad’s legacy lives through the show. Certainly, we talk about the unprecedented times and all that. The worst day in America is hardly compared to what your father went through. That’s a great story. It’s an important story to tell and it’s an important story for our GAPers to hear. When they wake up, their perspective changes. When you wake up and you open your LinkedIn and Dan’s LinkedIn post, you’re like Rocket at 6:30 in the morning. It’s early. Is it the same time every morning that you do your Sales Energizer Tip Of The Day?

I realize that in terms of sales, I’m a fan of consistency. Consistency outweighs skill all day long. I’m a pretty obsessive-compulsive person, so I’m consistently doing it. It’s why people think that I’m a drinker or I do drugs. I’ve never tried drugs, not because I’m a goodie two shoes. It’s just that I know I’d love it. It would be crazy, but I can’t do it. I wake up early and I like to be productive all day. I’ll wake up at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning and I’m in the office at 5:15 or 5:30. From 5:15 to 5:30, I do my stuff until about 8:00.

At 8:00, people start coming in and then we can start the day. By the time people are getting going, I’m in my full stride. One of the harmful things that can happen with one’s attitude is when you’re always catching up or running a little bit late. You’re always fighting to do and you’re never doing your best. It eats at you on the inside. There are some easy wins that you can do to help yourself take advantage of everybody else messing up. One of the easiest wins is to wake up early.

That would indicate that you go to bed early, too.

9:00. I don’t fall asleep. I collapse. I give 100% and I collapse. I’m exhausted. I fall asleep in about two seconds.

Dan, you talk to a lot of people and you’re in front of a lot of people. 1) What’s the biggest attitude mistake of the people or the public in general, which maybe you’ve hit on? 2) I believe everybody is in sales. I don’t care who you are and what your profession is. You’re always selling. What’s the biggest mistake people are making in sales now or in their attitude?

People exaggerate what they can do long-term and minimize what they can do now. They never be able to do all that stuff now, but if I stay on this path, I’ll get it in a long time. They set their goals all messed up. People need to set daily goals and activities to change their mindset into thinking instead of all the different things they have to do. There are two categories of things. There are money-making activities and non-money-making activities. I’m talking directly to salespeople right now because money is an important thing. Everything is an activity. Sleeping is an activity. It’s not a money-making activity unless you could do something like Amazon Live.

With that in mind and by taking your calendar and studying it, you could see where you’re being busy, where you’re doing busy work, and where you need to improve. The number one thing a salesperson needs to do to improve their attitude is to get rid of that white space. Put something in there. You could put thinking time in there or what have you, but you want to find the devil. You have a couple of days with no appointments. You start questioning all your life’s decisions. You start beating yourself up or thinking thoughts about yourself that you would never impart upon somebody else. That’s where evil exists in the white spaces. Control that calendar.

A great title for a book, The Devil in the White Space. Check that dot-com. We’ll see. That’s so powerful and so good. Tell me about the greatest sale you ever made.

I came to Atlanta to visit a friend. He takes me to a party and meets some girl. Blonde hair, Southern accent, and that bakes pies. I’m thinking, “This place is great.” I went back home, moved here two weeks later, and asked the girl to go out with me and she said, “No.” I was like, “What? I moved here.” She’s like, “I have a boyfriend. What are you going to do with it?” I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Let me see what I can do.” I had an event to go to, and the next week, I called her up again. She says, “No.” I said, “All right. I’ll talk to you next week.” I kept calling her. It was 26 times and on the 27th week, six months, she finally agreed to go out with me.

I had great tickets to a Brave game at Fulton County. We went out and had a great time. I got a ball from Doc Gooden. I still have the ball. It was funny. I ran up and called my dad and told him about it and that girl. Decades later, I was still married with two great kids. It worked out well. I asked her early on, and I said, “Why did you finally agree to go out with me?” We were married and all this stuff. She said, “I figured if you were willing to work this hard to get me, you’d be willing to work equally as hard to keep me.” By the way, she hasn’t baked a pie since. That was by far my best sale. I have to earn that sale every day.

That’s called repeat and referral business on a daily basis.

My dad gave me some advice on that too. He said, “Danny, in this country, when you get married, if you expect 50/50, you get divorced. You give 90% and hope you get 10% back.” To his credit, he said the same thing to her. It seemed to work out. That’s how sales is and that’s how business is. That’s what I want to do. If you give me $10, I’m giving you $90 back in value. That’s how good I believe my product is. If you have the cure for cancer, you’re like, “I got a cure for cancer.” “I’m not interested. “Are you out of your mind? I got the cure for cancer.” If you believe that your product is that valuable, you’re not taking money from them. You’re giving them. That mindset and attitude shift changes the whole equation. As our friend says, “People hate to be sold, but they love to buy.”

The great Jeffrey Gitomer. I want to know the worst business decision you ever made or the worst sale that you ever lost.

Every entrepreneur has a story like this. This isn’t something special. I’ve lost $1 million twice. My problem is my wife always says, “Why do we always have to start from zero?” I make those decisions, but those are business entrepreneurs, investment things, whatever. The biggest sale that I lost is totally my fault. By the way, that’s how I handle mistakes. “It’s totally my fault. Let’s move on.” I don’t waste any time on the why. People talk about, “Don’t worry about it. Worry about your why.” I couldn’t care less about the why. The why is done. I worry about what. If people would know what they want or if you ask people, “What do you want?” half of them don’t know. Ninety percent of people don’t know. If you don’t know what it is, you’ll never get there.

Worry about the what. We’ll figure out the why later. I know your why. You want to help people. You want to build your own statute. In sale, I’m Mr. Tangent, but I’ll always come back. It was a subsidiary of AT&T and I had a staffing company at that time. I had been working on them for two years and the lady loved me. She’s like, “We got a contract. I can’t do it.” We were a smaller company. They were with a bigger company. She goes, “I might be able to work it in, but we’re coming up to a new contract.”

Finally, out of the blue, she called me up and she goes, “Now is the time. Give me a proposal.” With an email, she sent that to me. I sent it to my assistant, Ginger. I said, “Ginger, put together a proposal. We’re finally got a shot at this. Let’s make it look good. This is a big account. Let’s see if we can make it happen.” She sent me the proposal back. I read through it and it was very good then I forwarded the email with all those remaining emails on it with my correspondence with Ginger and the lady got it. She’s like, “No.” I blew it because I forwarded instead of making a new email. Laziness.

Lack of attention to detail. Great sales tip. Be careful when you forward.

That was a $ 250,000-a-year account.

Let’s talk about Love Adversity’s number seven on the Attitude Boosters. You mentioned that you lost $1 million twice. We have GAPers. We have people who have lost jobs, who’ve lost family due to COVID, and who have lost their money. Talk to me about your perspective on loss, how you came back from it, and what the formula was. You lose $1 million. You got to restructure, rethink, and create some strategies. What do you tell our people who are dealing with loss right now, and how did you come back from it?

You’re always still coming back, but the first thing is to take care of what you still have. When we were going through those trying times, step one was to maintain a marriage. I was like, “I got to take care of this home thing.” In America, another one of my dad’s things, “Danny, in this country, you can make 1,000 business mistakes. America will always give you a second chance. You make 1 or 2 bad personal mistakes and you pay for them for the rest of your life. Marry the right woman. Remember what you have. You got to take care of your family.” That’s step one. Step one is come home in total honesty. I call my wife. I was like, “I did it again.” It’s a tough thing. She said, “What are you talking about?” “We’re on the hook for that piece of property there. It’s $400,000.”

It was a real estate deal.

It was in 2008. You know what happened. I co-signed for somebody and then he ran off. You know the story. That was taken care of. Now I’m now on a level playing field. All I ever hope to do is to start from zero. In this day and age, you could whistle right past zero. You could fall $1 million below zero. I don’t care. Get me to zero, and now I can put my feet somewhere I can go. My mindset is always, “If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding. There’s no in-between. You’re never all set.” It’s Tony Robbins. The day you say to yourself, “I want to get all set,” you’re automatically putting a limit on yourself on where you could go. That’s never the goal.

The goal is to continually excel and grow in the spirit of abundance and productivity. If that’s the mindset, you’re never stopped and stuck. You’re not against the wall. With that mindset, you’re always in motion. I’ll call them vibrations without sounding too metaphysical. The energy, called the Sales Energizer, that you put out with a simple idea has to go somewhere. Once those hopes, dreams, and vibrations put you on a different plane, eventually, it all comes back. It’s always motion. This is what happens. When you provide enough real value, the type of value, like doing daily videos for people, inspiring people, and motivating people, which has to be done daily because it’s like brushing your teeth.

The effects of it don’t last. You got to keep on doing it. When you provide enough value, you create a void in the universe as a whole in the universe. Because the universe always has to be even, it fills in. It happens. If I give you value, Glenn Bill, and I have zero expectations that I’m going to get anything back from you, I have as much expectation that you are going to repay me. As I see Godzilla walking down the street, it will not happen, but I have a full expectation, 100%, that the universe will pay me back in multitudes.

It’s all about motion. I’m talking about my dad so much that you got me started. He only had a sixth-grade education. He didn’t give me much advice, but the stuff that he gave me, I always remembered. One of them was this, “Danny, in this country, you could work or worry. You can’t do both.” It’s all motion.

We’ve all lost our parents. The loss of your father probably is the biggest loss ever in your life, but how did you get through that? There are people that are tuning into us now who’ve had as influential relationships with their parents or grandparents. Do you remember that time? Can you take yourself back to that time and how did you get through it? What was your thought or attitude when that all occurred?

I guess everybody has a special relationship. He was crazy, don’t get me wrong. My mom and dad got divorced, probably for good reason. By the way, in this book, I have a whole section in the back about Papaism.

That is Sales Proverbs: Sales Wisdom of the Ages. Make sure you guys get it. I’m sure you can get it on Amazon. There’s a whole bunch of them.

What are you going to do about it? That was another one. My first business was a Deli, DJ’s Country Deli. I took the college money that my parents had saved, but I was mad because they got divorced, so I said, “Screw you, guys.” I took the money, bought a butcher shop, and turned it into a deli. I had it for seven years. Finally, I sold it. I was 25 years old and I sold it for $170,000. It was more money than I had ever seen. It’s crazy. I took all that money and I put it in an investment account. My proudest moment is that money, I didn’t take any of it. I paid for my father’s retirement for the rest of his life.

That was my thing. He lived with us for a while and then in a nursing home. With my dad, nothing was left unsaid. When he finally did pass, I was on stage giving a presentation. There were 300 people there and my son, Matthew, who was maybe thirteen. He ran up on stage and gave me the phone. I said, “Dad, you’re giving up. What’s going on here?” He was being depressed or whatever he was. He was losing his mind.

In one of his lucid moments, it was still the most rational thing. He said, “Danny, I’ve got a daughter. She’s married and has two kids. I got a son. You’re married and got two kids. Everyone is healthy. What am I doing here?” That was Papa. He was a crazy dude. How do you overcome it? Hopefully, in the end, you are living your life to the point that it’s the natural occurrence of things and then you move on and honor the person who died by living a good life.

You’ve certainly done that on our show. It’s great. Maybe you’re going, “What the hell? I ended up with an episode about my dad.” I can tell you this, everybody that tunes into the show has a dad. Not everybody that tunes into the show is a dad. This has definitely been a unique interview. It’s been fantastic. You’ve been dropping bombs. You have been giving so much of yourself, your heart, and your mind that there are lessons to be taken from this episode. I hope that our GAPers have enjoyed the great Dan Jourdan.

Dan Jourdan is the author of Sales Proverbs: Wisdom of the Ages. He is one of the best sales trainers and sales speakers that there are in America. He’s on stages everywhere. His website is DanJourdan.com. He has a live show on Amazon called The Pitch Man. If you need an attitude boost, an energy boost, a sales technique income boost, or just a boost, this is a guy that you want to follow. You can reach him at Dan@DanJourdan.com. Dan, welcome back. It’s time. We’re going to walk through your life and do Knowledge Through The Decades. Are you ready to go?

I’m mildly nervous and that’s good. I love that little feeling to get right before when you’re sitting in the chair waiting for you to walk up on stage when you forget everything.

It’s something. I always say it’s as close to playing football as I could ever get to. Here’s what we’re going to do. This is fun. This is highly edited. If you screw it up, we’ll cut it. Don’t worry. There’s no pressure.

They don’t call me one take Jourdan for nothing.

This is my brother from another mother. This is my Jewish brother. Dan, I don’t know if you remember being born, but if you did remember being born, what is the attitude lesson of a newborn baby?

Talk about purity. The attitude is totally at one with your physical body. Wake up when you’re done sleeping. Go to sleep when you’re done waking. Eat when you’re hungry. Kids don’t overeat. You got to be grown up to do that stuff. They’re perfect. You’re perfect at that time. To get back that, imagine if you only ate when you were hungry.

That’s attitude booster number nine, eat right and exercise. When we mean eat right, how many times have people said, and I’ve done this, “I’m not even hungry,” then they put down a pound of macaroni and bacon?

I know. It’s because it’s 6:00 or 7:00 or it’s whenever you eat. Time is a man-made construct. We don’t have time for this. I got good stuff, but that was the other part of the show.

Go ahead. You can tell me. It’s fine. We’re good.

Time is a man-made construct. Your body doesn’t know it’s Tuesday. Your body doesn’t know it’s Wednesday and you got to have a potluck dinner at church. It doesn’t know that stuff. The universe doesn’t know that. You’re making that. You’re putting those limitations, barriers or margins in your life. You can create whichever ones you want. It’s your attitude. You can decide I’m going to eat when I’m hungry. You’ll find out that all of a sudden, you’re not hungry when everybody else is eating.

Dan, what I want you to do is walk back. You’re in 3rd or 4th grade in New Jersey. I’d love to know who your teacher was to give her a shout-out if you remember. What was your attitude lesson when you were ten and what was going on in your life? What did it teach you being ten?

Ms. Morgan and she was hot. In third grade, specifically, I remember the horror and the fear because we would read, and everybody would read a paragraph. We were learning how to read from a book out loud. I would see all the paragraphs that everybody was reading and try to get mine and practice it ahead of time before it came up to me. I realized I was terribly dyslexic. Everything is upside down, spinning, backwards, and crazy. To take it from the page to my brain and then out my mouth was a devastating process. I thought everybody was like that. I thought it was difficult and I had to work at it.

It was third grade and Ms. Morgan got married. She two-timed me and she got married and changed her name. I realized that it was going to take work to get this out. I remember my first joke in class. It was in third grade. It was some bathroom joke or whatever it was. I remember I got a laugh from the whole class. Until this day, I remember how it felt to have that laugh.

Every speaker’s dream. The room roared. I want to rabbit hole this dyslexia thing. You’re the first person on our show that’s had this, it’s prevalent. It’s out there. There are parents that are dealing with learning-disabled kids. They didn’t do anything for me except beat me up, throw me in a closet, and the nuns would hit my hands. They thought that would cure ADD and learning disabilities. It didn’t, but it did get my attention. Talk to me or if you can talk to the parents or the people out there about what you went through, how you fixed it, and who helped you through it. If you ended up having a kid like that, what’s the best thing you can do to help a kid with dyslexia?

By the way, this is the best show I’ve ever been on. That’s a great question. That was awesome. I’ll answer it because my son, too, was terribly like me, even worse than me. I could share exactly what I did, how I dealt with Matthew, and what option everybody can take. In sixth grade, I was in bed with Matthew at 4:30 in the morning because that’s when his brain works. We’re doing homework and reading at 4:00 in the morning. We’re reading the book and “and” and “the” are the same word. I go, “Can you not see that?” He says, “Yes.” He sees a different word. It was so frustrating.

It’s heartbreaking. You could tell he is trying and he’s fake yawning and all this stuff to stop doing it. Finally, he looks at me with resolute in his eyes. He stares right at me and says, “Daddy, I’d give you twelve years. I am not going to college.” He said this in sixth grade. I said, “Good. What are you going to do?” It was one of my dad’s lines again. “That’s fine. What are you going to do about it?” He says, “I’m going to start a business.” Pretty soon after that, we had this terrible storm in the neighborhood. Trees down, carpet out on the streets, and people milling about one of those fun things.

We’re walking around the neighborhood and Matthew looks at me. He says, “Daddy, I bet they pay us $100 to take that to the dump.” The next thing I know, the punk is knocking on their door. I get a load of carpet in the back of my truck. He earned $100. I’m like, “What?” We’re driving to the dump. I watched his brain and smoke coming out of his ears. He was building a business. He came home and he made flyers. I’m following him like a goofball in the truck. He’s knocking on doors. On his first day out, he’s picking up lawnmowers on the side of your house, a couch, and an old chair. The first day he was out here, he earned $250.

I said, “Matthew, this is crazy.” He looks at me and he says, “Daddy, you don’t understand.” I’m like, “All right, boy.” He’s eleven and I said, “Enlighten me.” He says, “Daddy, you think these people are giving me their old chairs, couches, and lawnmowers because they want to get rid of their chairs, couches, and lawnmowers?” I said, “Duh. That’s what they’re doing.” He says, “No, daddy. They’re giving me these things because it makes them feel good to do business with an eleven-year-old.” That little bastard. While he can’t tell the difference between “and” and “the,” at that age and your kids at that age know their value. They know their gift to the world. It takes school to beat it out of them.

Isn’t that the truth? To bring that question to a close, it sounds like get them busy. Identify, appreciate, encourage, and trust that the vibrations of the world maybe can tell them and that they can hear those vibrations, “This is what I’m meant to do. Not to freaking stand up and read a damn paragraph of a book.”

Go towards that which you are naturally good at. He had a wonderful little girlfriend and she wanted to be a lawyer. She was trying to convince Matthew to go to college. I’m going to be a lawyer. Matthew looked at her and he said, “I want you to go and become a lawyer and become a good one. That way, when you come back, I can hire you.”

By the way, he got the scholarship here in Georgia. They have a HOPE Scholarship. He did go to college. He went for one day, and then he went through the administration office and he called me up. It was the funniest phone call. He called me up and he said, “Daddy, you knew I was going to quit eventually. Why don’t we do it now and save the money?”

Let’s move on from the ten-year-old Dan Jourdan. Let’s go to age twenty. I don’t know if that’s when you bought your sub shop or whatever, but where were you at 20 and what was the attitude lesson from 20?

You’re hitting the right ages. I bought my deli when I was eighteen. When I was 22, my friends were coming home from college and I was like, “I think I missed something because I didn’t go to college. Tell me all stories.” I went and did something that I had always wanted to do. I set the store up with a manager and I took off. I went hitchhiking across the country with the idea of finding myself. I took no money. The idea was to get jobs all along the way and meet as many people as possible. It turned out to be eight months.

I was gone for eight months living on the side of the road, doing what I had to do, and staying at the hospital getting jobs. I learned from that experience sales lessons that I still use now. It was a time when I was the most alive. I’ve had several life-changing moments, but I’ll tell you about one. I was in Texas and it is big. On some days, I wanted to walk because I wanted to find myself. I eventually got picked up by a guy one day in Texas. He stopped the car, looked at me, and goes, “Son, the only reason why I’m picking you up is because I saw you on this same road this morning while I was going to work.”

It was eight hours later and I was still on the same road. I was there in Texas and I was walking. I had a backpack and all that stuff. Sometimes, you wanted to think. I was doing that, and all of a sudden, I hit a virtual wall. I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t move. I felt there was a pin. I haven’t thought about this in years. A pin on the top of my head. It was pinning me to the ground through my body. I broke down in tears. I didn’t know what was happening. I was stuck. There was a moment of clarity that everything made sense. I saw it all. If the world ended, all the total conveniences and everyone was gone, the Deej was going to be fine. I think I saw God that day.

What was the moment of clarity? Are there words to describe it or was it this feeling or a blessing?

It was fresh air. It was lacking of any obstacles. There was no fear, no anxiety, no insecurity. There was no need to be right, need to be wrong, or need to be rich. There was no need. It was just you are part of the whole thing.

That take right there. Make sure we excerpt that one. It is quite possibly one of the best attitude lessons our people could get. That’s great. Now all of a sudden, you’re becoming a man and you’re 30 years old. Talk to me about where you were at 30. Were you married? Were you having your kids? What was going on at 30? What was the attitude lesson that you took from 30?

You heard the story about my wife. I was 30 when I got married. That was the year. I had taken the lesson from my parents. She’s saying, “When are we going to get married? What’s going on?” I wasn’t going to marry her because I wasn’t going to get divorced. I thought, “I went through that. I am not getting divorced.” I know I’m annoying.

It’s cute and funny at the beginning. You got all this stuff going on, but then you think it’s going to end, but it doesn’t end. I wouldn’t get married until she hated me. You saw me at my worst and you hated me. One day, that happened and she’s like, “You’re so annoying.” I then said, “Do you still want to get married to me?” By 30, I had come into my own. I knew what I wanted. I wanted a good woman and a few kids. At that point, I wasn’t a dad yet, but I sure wanted to be one.

I can tell how proud you were talking about your son and that you’re an awesome dad. Let’s go to 40. That’s almost when you met Glenn Bill at the Gitomer thing. You were maybe mid-40. What do you remember? Do you remember having your 40th birthday party? What was going on in your life and what was the attitude lesson?

I don’t remember the 40th birthday party. At that point, you’re in the game. You got young kids and all that stuff. You’re flying to see. I remember the big fear was that I would die before my kids would remember me. That was a fear. I wanted to get both kids to age seven. When Sophie was born in 2000, that would’ve been about 40. My attitude at that point was somewhat relaxing. I had done my job there.

I remember my wife and I would have date nights, so we would have date nights. My in-laws lived very close by. Funny story about my in-laws. They got divorced when my wife was two and they both had separate marriages. Their spouses died and they’ve been together now. They got back together. I remember telling my wife, “If I were to die today, I would’ve had twice the life that I had expected.” I started my journey of gratefulness. I think about that.

Now, 50. You’re double nickels. You remember you started this fifth decade where I am too. When you look back at 50, where were you then? What was your attitude? What was your thought process when you hit that big 50 number?

At 50, I was coming off the second big loss. I remember the excitement. I’ve always wanted to be 50. I loved that age. I love to be able to say, “I’m 50.” I like 55 now too. It’s a cool age. The 50 number got to a point where more people were calling me sir. I liked that. I have gray hair now, but I started getting a little then. The good thing about getting some gray hair is that you can tell women that they’re pretty without them thinking you’re hitting on them.

You like to do that. You like to make people feel good. I remember when I was a stockbroker early on. We would always be looking for clients that were between 50 and 55. Kids were about to move on to college. Their life-changing was happening. They are probably earning more money than they’d ever earned before. I remember thinking, “I’m in a good swing right now.” That feeling hasn’t left.

It’s the old sweet spot. This has been one of the more entertaining through the decades, Dan. That was awesome. We appreciate you being here, giving your heart and your mind, taking us from the purity of a baby, taking us to 10 where you wanted to work, to 20 where you felt alive and found yourself, to 30 when you gained clarity, to 40 when you began to relax and start your path towards gratitude, and 50 where you hit your sweet spot and maybe it’s all coming together for you. I hope that our GAPers enjoyed Dan. He gave us a lot of lessons. His father gave us a lot of lessons. This is a fantastic episode to share with people you love because there’s a lot of love that was communicated in this show. Dan, you knocked it out of the park.

I will bring my best for you.

You are the man. Here’s what I’d love you to do. Talk directly to our audience. Talk to that person that’s had a financial reversal, a personal reversal, an employment reversal, or a sales reversal. What’s the message from the Deej that they can take as we close our show?

Every day is another chance. I love the business of sales. The reason is it’s one of the few things where you could start with nothing and make something. You find somebody who needs something and you find someone who has something. You put them together and you’ve created something. For those of you who think you’re not a salesperson, you’re probably married. I want you to think about that. It’s not a small thing. You convinced another person or you attracted another person to say to themselves, “Not only am I going to spend the rest of my life with you, but I’m going to forsake everybody else on the planet.” There are 7.5 billion people and they decided you are the one. You figured out the way what to do to attract and continually offer value and be the one for them to stay with. Everybody is in sales.

Make sure that you deliver the love and be about the love. His three words, which I thought were great, be gracious, have gratitude, and have courage. Most of all, let’s be kind to each other. Dan Jourdan, thank you for being so kind to our GAPer. It was great to be with you and God bless. Thank you. I will see you later and stay positive.

Important Links

• Dan Jourdan
• The Devil’s in the White Space
• Sales Proverbs: Sales Wisdom of the Ages
• The Pitchman
• Dan@DanJourdan.com
• https://LinkTr.ee/GetAttitudePodcast
• Glenn@GlennBill.com
• http://www.JasonAaron.pro/
• https://Megaphone.fm/AdChoices