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Get In Touch With Tony Wechsler
Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories, I am Morris from creategrowprofit.com, and today I’m speaking to Tony Wexler who is a tremendous coach with a very interesting background and he helps people restore their energy passion, and joy. Tony, where are you calling in from today?
Tony: Hi, Morris! I’m in Rochester New York which is basically just across Lake Ontario from Toronto Canada. To give you a good idea where the proximity, I’m originally from Brooklyn New York as a New York City boy but lived in Rochester most of my life so that’s where I am.
Morris: Thank you so much for joining the podcast today. I know you’re a coach too 4and what kind of people do you work with today?
Tony: Well before we begin this journey together, I just want to say that I’m not sure at which points you hear today or that the listeners hear where you might stop and think about how much value you get but as that’s taking place I just want to say that I’m honored to be here and to be on your podcast today. Sharing my story with you so, with that in mind, I’m a coach and I used to be an investigator which is an interesting story in itself. Would you like me to go into that?
Morris: Yes, please. That was one of the reasons why I really wanted you to be on this show.
Tony: Well I’m going to go back a little bit further than that. When I was in high school, I could improvise myself through high school. I didn’t have to be there. I skipped a lot of classes. I wasn’t the best student but I was going to be a DJ that’s what I was going to do. In fact, I worked as a DJ when I was in high school and that was going to be my profession so I really didn’t pay much attention to what I was going to do.
But then I found out that DJs don’t make a lot of money unless you’re the morning drive person or you become like a famous DJ in a high paid market so I decided to do something else. So then I was going to be an attorney but didn’t want to go through all the school for that.
So long story short, I was working in a factory right after high school, right after college and started a career in real estate so you’re going what the heck does that have to do with coaching and work and investigating? Well I ended up I was in my early 20s, I looked like I was about 12 years old at the time and I got this limiting belief that I was not going to be able to convince people to trust someone who looked like a 12-year-old with their most valuable asset.
So I ended up not being as successful as I wanted to be in real estate which is really a mindset thing and that transitioned me into trying to start a business and was undercapitalized that was a marketing company actually, and that didn’t go too well.
And then I ended up in banking and what happened in the banking world, Morris, is that I was really good at this thing called skip tracing. That’s a banking term it basically means finding the people who weren’t paying and getting them to pay and that was what transitioned me to get a job working for the local government as an investigator and I did that for 20 years. I was an investigator.
I also have a private investigator’s license and did that on the side because I’ve always had that entrepreneurial mindset and that’s what I did until 2020 and actually it was like 2019, I was starting to get burned out, which again I talk a lot about burnout and what I do in my coaching. But I was getting burned out in the investigator world and I decided I needed to do something else. Long story short, I found coaching, training and speaking to be the thing that really resonated with me.
So now, I’m out there helping people who are really feeling burned out. They’re feeling like they’re just going through their emotions they’re on that treadmill of life and going nowhere fast and just thinking there’s got to be something more.
Have you ever had that feeling there’s just got to be something more and I help those people to turn their life around. Find the thing that they’re really passionate about and reach out and start doing it and start living what I call a purposely positive life.
Morris: In that transition, so first of all thank you for starting from the beginning. That was an exciting journey that you have and also think I think that really helps you in your coaching to have such a diverse professional background not to mention the investigator side but in that journey, when did you officially start calling yourself a coach or when did you realize that you are a coach?
Tony: Well 2019, I was thinking about doing sales training which is something that I also do right now because I was really good at getting confessions and I could train other investigators. One of the things I love to do, Morris, was I was training other investigators and I was going to like seminars all over the country or actually all over the state of New York and speaking to other investigators and doing train and I love teaching training.
I just thought, “Wow I really love this. I love standing in front of people teaching. Seeing that they learn something and being able to follow their progress and follow their journey.” So that’s kind of like coaching but it’s more of a teaching but I was going to start a sales training because the hardest sale you’ll ever make is the confession because I literally have to take someone in who doesn’t want to tell me what they did and have them tell me what they did and sign a piece of paper admitting to it.
And if you think selling a car insurance, real estate is difficult, try selling confessions. And I could teach other investigators to do some of these tactics that I used and these techniques to really bond with people and to get really deep in those conversations have those deep conversations so I decided I could train sales well.
2020, we all know what happened in 2020. There was this thing called Covid. I don’t even know if we can say that on the air but came around and the world changed. During that time I had plenty of time in the evening because I couldn’t go anywhere. I’d work during the day. I came home. I got into a training program and I learned all about coaching and I found that that was really what I was aligned with. So I started Tony W coaching.
I launched the business in May of 2020 with a goal and you and I, we just did a podcast episode on my podcast talking about goals and how to achieve success and habits and things like that. Well, I set a goal for the end of the year which was a pretty audacious goal. Really I said it was May I said by the end of the year I wanted to leave my investigator job and do this coaching and training stuff full-time. I didn’t quite make it but in February of 2021 which was a couple months after that, I left the job and I have not turned back since.
Morris: Wow just a two months delay. Come on that’s still on time.
Tony: Yeah yeah you have to look at it that way. I didn’t hit the mark but it’s close enough and if I hadn’t set the goal, I would not have made it to February. I probably would have you know been around for another year so that’s I think the importance of setting a goal.
Morris: Yeah you’ve given yourself a deadline and also February is the shortest month so it’s more like one and a half months.
Tony: There you go.
Morris: You mentioned how your 20 years as an investigator helped you in sales but also helped you train others, what is some of the things that you did as an investigator to get the confession out of people?
Tony: Ah good question well, I became really skilled at NLP which is for those who don’t know, that’s neurolinguistic programming and it’s something if you’ve heard of Tony Robbins, that’s one of the things that he started. He would help people to make changes in their lives. To break really bad habits and to make positive changes through neurolinguistic programming and I learned a lot of these NLP techniques and listening techniques and things that people can use in sales to help to really bond with someone.
There’s a thing called like mirroring and pacing where I would mirror someone’s speech. So an example, someone would come in and of course, they’d be really agitated because nobody wants to talk to an investigator especially if they’ve done something wrong or even if they’re a witness for that matter. So they would come in and they would be like you know I can’t believe you I got to talk to you and you know and they would be very agitated.
So what I would do is I would kind of mirror their speech a little bit so I would go well you know I can totally understand why you’d be really upset about this but this isn’t really going to take very long and as we talk and I, would slow down my speech a little bit so as we’re here today let’s just see if we can get to the key parts of the situation and we’ll get through this together and by the end of the conversation, I said you know we’ll get you out of here and I promise if you be fair to me, I’ll be fair to you and that was a question. I if you be if you’ll be fair to me, I’ll definitely be fair to you.
And most people want to be fair so that’s one of those things. I didn’t tell them I was going to be nice to them or good to them. I just told them I was going to be fair to them. And by slowing down my speech pattern, it would in turn calm them down and once they matched my speech, I knew we were in what’s called Rapport. And when you’re in rapport with someone, that’s when a lot of persuasion can take place.
Morris: That is very interesting, so would you say a lot of your success depended on creating that relationship first providing a bonding experience?
Tony: Definitely! Creating a relationship, finding commonality and now again the thing is, you have to get to the that’s right moment. You don’t want them to say you’re right you want them to say that’s right and I’ll explain this a little bit more.
Have you ever had a conversation with either a child or a spouse and they’re telling you what you should do and you just want them to be quiet so you can go on with your evening and you say yes honey that’s right or if you had that happen to you that’s right means that yeah I hear what you say but I don’t really care I just want you to shut up so I can do what I want to do.
So you don’t want them to say that, you want them to say that’s right. And how that works is if you can explain and have that conversation that they’re having in their head and if you can have that and say their words back to them in such a way where they look at you and you and they realize that you understand them you know where they’re coming from and they say that’s right, you know, you’re more than halfway there at that point.
So that would be, you don’t necessarily have to agree with someone, in fact, most of the time you don’t agree but you’re finding what their point of view is. Let me give an example, we’ve got this terrible situation going on in Europe, right now. And I’m sure you’re very familiar with it over there in the Ukraine with Putin going in and Russia and Ukraine they’re at this war.
So let’s say you were having a conversation with someone who was dead set against the war and thought that you know Putin was a bad guy and you know, again what I’m not saying true or not I’m just using this as an example. So if you were able to sit down and explain how he felt how this person felt about that situation even if you didn’t agree with him, then you’re already halfway there. Does that make sense?
Morris: Yeah that makes total sense and I like that you took a sensitive subject or example because that really illustrates the point.
Tony: Right.
Morris: Anyone hearing about this subject, they’re going to have an emotional reaction one way or the other and you’ve just highlighted the important difference. It’s not about agreeing or saying, it’s not about agreeing, it’s about letting them feel I guess or letting them experience that you understand their viewpoint.
Tony: Exactly and if they feel understood then that’s like the most important part. So these people that were doing bad things, they wanted to be understood. Everyone has a basic need. They want to be understood. They don’t care about being liked sometimes but they want to know that you understand them. And again you don’t have to agree with them, so I can take anyone’s point of view and I can try to step back and look at it subjectively and say okay what do they believe, how can I express their point of view and that really helped.
So if you could explain why someone stole money, for example, you say well you know how many children do you have? Well I have two and I go yeah they’re probably you know you probably want to help them as much as you can right I mean because they’re your kids and sometimes working a dead-end job you’re not making that much money so were they any other reason why you may have wanted to take some money?
And a lot of times that would just that would get them talking. So the key thing is to get people talking and in coaching so, I want to relate this back to coaching, and coaching that’s really the key to any breakthrough. It’s not about me talking and me giving them advice now. You know me, Morris I can stand up and I can talk for hours without any problem but it’s not about me, it’s about them.
So I have to learn and this is something that took me a while. I have to learn to shut up and listen to them and have them talk so that I can listen for those key things that will help them to have breakthroughs and again in investigations it was about giving me the breakthrough. But in coaching, it’s about them realizing oh this is what I have to do. Because most of the time, what you have is within yourself, you already know the answer, you just need help bringing that out. Does that make sense?
Morris: Yeah that makes sense, one clarifying question, so it is possible to understand someone and still disagree? Does the other person know that you understand but disagree or is that not a factor?
Tony: It’s once they feel understood that’s usually not a factor. In fact, they probably know that you don’t agree with them, I mean, especially in the law enforcement world you know. When I interview people and they know the other thing is to put yourself in proximity, and again this works in the investigative world, it’s a little more difficult in the world of Zoom.
Because I do most of my coaching over Zoom but when I was sitting at a table, I would never sit directly across from the person I was talking to. I would sit like on so you have it how can I describe this, like L-shaped so they would be on the north side of the table and then I would move over to the West Side so that we were not adversarial.
We were not straight across from one another because when you’re doing that it creates this psychological adversarial effect so this way, I was alongside of them and then the other thing was I would always use like the government as the big bad government or my boss or somebody else is the person who’s trying to get them and I would make myself be more on their side so I would say things like look I just want to get you through this so we can get you out of here you know, my boss wants me to do X Y and Z and to talk to you about this and I really need to do this I know you don’t want to be here again expressing their feelings I know you don’t want to be here but the sooner we go through this, the sooner I can get you out of here. You can go about your day and then I don’t have to deal with this anymore.
So again you’re positioning yourself in a certain way, does that make sense?
Morris: Yeah yeah thank you for another great example, Tony and you already, I mean it’s true even in sales, we hear a lot of those techniques, the mirroring building rapport. With your experience in investigating and sales, what do you see a lot of new coaches do wrong when they have enrollment calls?
Tony: They take too much control of the conversation I think. And then they start getting too pushy and the last thing is they become very much outcome-based. So I think we need to become, see, they’re invested they become invested in the outcome.
They want to make the sale, they want to get the client. They want to sometimes, it’s just that they want to help the client right? So it’s good motivation but they’re invested in the outcome. You have to step back you have to become interested in the outcome but become invested in learning. What can I learn from this conversation today and the other thing that they do and this is something that I had trouble with when I first started out.
I remember, I was working with a coach and I was trying to have that enrollment conversation where I would go from coaching to all of a suddenly pitching my program and they could clearly see the energy shift. It shifted from a coaching mentality where I was there, I was coaching I was in that particular state and then I would shift into this sales state and you have to learn how to not do that.
Because if you shift into a sales state, they’ll pick up that energy. So again if you’re invested in the outcome, that’s what’s going to happen because you’re thinking about, I got to make this sale, I got to get this client, I got to do this. But if you’re interested in the outcome, will this person work with me is this going to be a good fit?
I don’t know for sure but let’s see what happens and if we go through the world and this is something I learned from FBI hostage negotiators. If you read Chris Voss’s book Never Split the Difference, he was an FBI hostage negotiator and it’s a great book by the way, I highly recommend it. So he found and this is something that I find and studies have shown this, if you go into your talks, your enrollment calls just like your investigations just like your hostage negotiation, anything that you do in life, if you go in with a more playful curious, let’s see what happens attitude, you will be 30%, yes I said that 30% more successful in anything you do.
So go into everything in life with a playful curious let’s see what happens attitude and when I say playful, I don’t mean like you know you’re going to tell jokes and you’re gonna you know mock but just have fun with it, let’s see what happens. Curiosity is your superpower. As a coach, you became a coach, you’re probably a curious person person so take advantage of that and make that your superpower.
Morris: What are some of the things that a coach should be most curious about during their enrollment call?
Tony: Good question, Morris. I would say how can I learn something about this person and how can I learn something about this person that they don’t know about themselves. And if you can find something about the person that you’re talking to that maybe they don’t really know about themselves and have them learn something about themselves then they’re going to automatically view you as number one a friend, a confidant and an authority and if you become an authority in their world, then you’re already two-thirds of the way to the sale.
Morris: That’s awesome! How did you get started with your first batch of clients? What did you do, you know you decided now I’m a coach and what did you do then?
Tony: It’s interesting that you asked that because in the beginning, I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that okay I got to start getting clients but I didn’t feel comfortable charging what would be considered normal industry standard coaching rates. Because I was brand new. I didn’t know what I was doing and one of the things that one of my mentors, Eben Pagan, always said was coach every day. Coach every day.
So I would get into that habit of just having conversations and learning how to coach by just coaching the people around me so that basically helped me to number one hone my skills but also to be able to help people and at there might be a point in those conversations where I would say you know you’re working on this goal, I really think I can help you with that. And again that would come out of me being really curious about them and having that curious playful attitude so then I would say in the beginning, I coached a bunch of people for free because that’s just what I wanted to coach.
And then I started out by asking people, I was in a seminar I remember and I reached out to a handful of people in the seminar probably about a dozen people and I said look I’m just starting this coaching business I would love to work with you because when I heard you talk in the seminar and I was being totally honest and genuine I really believe in what you’re doing and I think I could help you and I think what did I say something to the effect of since I’m just starting out I would be willing to work with you for say $200 or $500 over the next 90 days.
And you know, as you know normal coaching packages are anywhere you know 2 to 3,000 in that market and people said yeah sure. So basically, just be willing to ask I think bottom line is to be willing to ask if someone’s willing to work with you and again I started out by lowering my price and then as I got better, I would increase that so that’s kind of how I got started.
Morris: I think it’s really great that you picked the amount that your energy was okay with because that’s something I see quite often too is where you know a new coach feels like oh I should be charging that much or opposite they feel like no I can’t be charging that much. But they they pick a price that doesn’t fit their energy level and from your story, it sounds like you were very aware of where you were at energetically and that’s the price you asked for and that’s why it was a smooth growth transition I feel like.
Tony: Yeah if I had started out at the higher price, you’re exactly right the energy and people will pick that up and that’s the thing that people don’t realize, people will pick up your energy when that energy shifts they’ll know it and if you’re in rapport with them, you’ll feel uncomfortable. Now, when you’re in rapport with someone they start to feel what you feel right so if you’re uncomfortable, they’re going to start feeling uncomfortable and they’re not going to know why and they’re going to think, well, probably because I shouldn’t do this. Does that make sense?
Morris: That’s very interesting rapport going both ways. That’s the first time I hear about that like, I only hear about the positive sides of building rapport but that’s the other side like you’ve built rapport. If you start to feel uncomfortable, they’ll start to feel uncomfortable.
Tony: Yes there’s sometimes you actually need a break rapport but that could be we could have a whole conversation on that when to break rapport. But for the most part, if you’re in rapport and if your energy shifts and if you’re not confident and that’s why confidence and comfort are two really important things to have in any situation whether it comes to negotiating, sales, coaching, everything.
If you think about it and I’ve always said this, I don’t know if you have ever seen The Andy Griffith Show, it’s about, he was a sheriff in a small town of Mayberry in North Carolina and he was the sheriff without a gun. He would walk in and he was just comfortable anywhere and the reason he was a good sheriff is because he was comfortable in any situation.
Have you ever walked into a really expensive store or maybe a car lot where you have cars that you know you can’t afford those cars but you just want to look and the salesman will come up to you and they’ll know instantly if you’re not comfortable there or not? So if you can walk into any situation being comfortable that’s what true confidence is.
Morris: Wow more great examples, Tony. Thank you for being so detailed in your answers. When looking back at how you started your coaching career, would you do something differently now?
Tony: I probably would not worry about investing in a lot of different training programs because see I love learning. I read books and learning is just something that’s it’s just fun for me and one of the things I became addicted to was taking a lot of courses. And again all those courses were great but I really didn’t need them.
It really has to do with taking action you know. You and I have had this discussion before about implementation versus inspiration. There are millions of books on how to get rich, how to lose weight, how to find your ideal partner. Most people read books but they don’t take action and that’s why so learn how to just start taking action even if the action is a little uncomfortable in the beginning.
That’s okay you learn to get comfortable with it but if I would have started taking more actions sooner, I probably would have done well and the other thing is don’t second guess yourself you know make a decision and stick with it the ultimate success formula which I learned from Tony Robbins is to know what you want and decide what you want and then you have to take action and you have to take massive action.
But then you have to realize that you have to monitor your progress because sometimes you have to make a little shift in the action that you’re taking and be willing to make those adjustments along the way.
Morris: Yeah I was on your podcast before we recorded this, right? And you have a lot of insight into action-taking and especially what I like about your approach is that you’re not about brute forcing action, you really care about taking action that’s sustainable long term.
Tony: Yeah yeah because if you’re just going to do something and it’s not going to be sustainable in the long term, then you’re gonna be right back to square one.
Morris: Yeah or sometimes even worse because you blame yourself and you feel guilt and shame.
Tony: Yeah exactly. Exactly.
Morris: Tony where can people first of all listen to your awesome podcast and find you to work with you?
Tony: Well I’ll briefly tell you about the podcast. That is back in 2020 back when the world was falling apart you know we had COVID-19 here in the US, and we had like a presidential election. People hated each other because depending on what you felt about COVID-19, and what you felt about the candidates. People were fighting on social media, there was, it was just not a positive experience and I had this voice in my head, say that there’s got to be more positive content in the world and that’s when I heard that other voice, say yes this is your job to do that.
So I said okay and in 2020 in October I launched, Strive to Thrive The Purposely Positive Podcast, all about bringing positive content into the world. I had no idea what I was doing but I used to be a DJ as I said back in school so I thought I could put those things to use. I launched the podcast, if you just Google it Strive To Thrive The Purposely Positive Podcast, use all those words, you’ll find easily. If you just Google Strive To Thrive, you may not find it but it’s about living life on purpose for a purpose, taking positive action to lead the world in a positive direction.
So we have all kinds of great guests on the show, great interviews. So check out the podcast, I think you’ll really enjoy it. Find a topic, there’s over 200 episodes out there so that said you can find me at tonywcoaching.com. And you can download a free resource, it’s an ebook called Strive to Thrive and it’s all about when you have that wakeup call moment in your life. It’s like when you say, you know I was meant for more I need to do something different. I need to make a change. I’m burned out at what I’m doing. Download that and it’ll help you in the direction of a purposely positive life.
Morris: Perfect! I’ll put those links below the episode and Tony you’re also writing a book right?
Tony: Yes the purposely positive life.
Morris: Is that confidential or is that something we can announce?
Tony: No, that’s something we can announce. It’ll be, well I’m hoping to get it out by Christmas and I just did something and I caught myself when I said the word hope. Now there’s nothing wrong with hope but learn to have energy rather than hoping energy so what I should say is it’s going to be out by Christmas time this year.
Morris: Amazing! You’re welcome to talk. Tony, thank you so much for being here and yeah thanks for sharing your insights into coaching and marketing as a coach on this show.
Tony: Morris, it was a pleasure to be on your podcast and I’m looking forward to our further conversations.
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