There are times that the one blocking your path to progress and success is no other than yourself, and the only way to get through is battling your inner enemies head on. Jay Maymi joins Bill Caskey in this episode to impart a lesson on doing so and doing it effectively. Jay discusses the importance of having the proper mindset in order not to become a product and a victim of your environment. Understanding that everyone is made the same, he iterates the defining factors that separate you from others. Jay also shares the strategies and techniques he’s developed to give you that edge against your inner enemies.
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Jay Maymi Gives You a Lesson In Battling the Inner Enemies
I am glad to be with you now. I think you’re going to enjoy my special guest. His name is Jay Maymi. He’s written many books on selling. He reached out to me here. He hosts a radio show in Northern Texas on a Dallas radio station and talks about business. He’s an entrepreneur and talks a lot. He’s written a book about the mindset of selling. We love that topic. He goes a little bit in a different direction, a little bit deeper in some areas than we have. I thought you’d like to know some of his perspectives. Here’s my interview with Jay Maymi.
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Jay Maymi is our guest now. I call him Mr. Eclectic. He does a lot of things like entrepreneur, actor, author and radio host. Who knows what else he will tell us he does? Jay speaks to us from North Texas. He is the host of that radio show on 570 AM KLIF in Dallas. Jay, welcome to the show.
I appreciate you having me.
You reached out to me here so I thought, “Here’s a guy who’s done a lot of things in his life and has written several books.” Your story is fascinating. Can you give us a rundown on who the heck Jay Maymi is?
Jay Maymi is a body double. I do have a twin whose name is Joe Maymi. We are adopted twins from a Hispanic household. My parents came here from Puerto Rico in the 1960s. They settled in Spanish Harlem, a place called El Barrio in New York, which is where I’m originally from. My parents had decided to adopt after my mother not being able to bear children after three attempts. The story goes. They went down to the agency. This was back in the ’60s. You could just show up and say, “I want somebody,” and they’ll give you somebody.
They got a BOGO deal, a Buy One, Get One. They went home. Needless to say, it’s economically challenging enough to raise one child, let alone two, in those days. My mom had to stay home and stop working at the factory. My father had to pick up a fourth part-time job in order to make ends meet. It was economically very challenging for us. I grew up in meager means, just enough to put food on the table and clothes on our bag. I didn’t have all the fancy stuff that kids had.
It was a rough neighborhood where you could easily find ways to get into trouble if you wanted to make money the wrong way. Me and my brother decided if we wanted to have a new pair of sneakers and all the cool things that kids had, we had to go out and figure out a way to make money on our own doing the right way. We started up a ‘picking up bottles and cans’ business for a nickel when we were thirteen years old. That started in me an entrepreneurial development where now it’s flourished and continues to flourish in many expressions.
You came up in not the best of worlds in terms of economics. A lot of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s had decent housing and enough to put food on the table. As you said, “My parents never dressed me in anything but hand-me-downs and rags.” There was something glorious about that because when we look around and say, “I guess if it’s going to be, it’s going to be up to me to do something.” Tell us a little bit about the attitude that that upbringing might have given you.
The reality is that you can either become a victim of your environment, your environment will shape you and your destiny, or you could certainly decide, “This is not who I am. I will not become a product of the environment. I’m going to bend the will of the universe.” I decided to do the latter. For me, I look back on my life now, I think about those challenging times as a blessing. That developed in me a character of determination, hard work, grinding and recognizing that everything that I’ve been able to accumulate is a blessing. I’m very appreciative of it. I take nothing for granted. My story, so far, is still developing. I still have a lot more to go and things to do, but now it becomes a testimony. The greatest thing someone could walk away with when they exit this existence and dimension is to be able to have someone say, “That guy left us a positive role modeling of how to thrive even in difficult situations.”
We’re going to shift to sales now since I know you’ve written several books about sales, sales psychology and some devotional books. I’d like to get into a little bit of that because most of my audience are either VPs of sales, presidents, sales managers, sales professionals, anybody who acquires customers or builds and grows accounts are in my audience. When we started talking about the psychology, I was struck by it because I don’t think enough people are talking about it. We talk about the psychology of the buyer a lot. We don’t talk much about the psychology of the seller. If you could give us a few minutes on how you hopped on that topic and then we’ll dive a little deeper into some of the strategies?
Battling Inner Enemies: You can either become a victim of your environment or decide that you will not become a product of it and that you’re going to bend the will of the universe.
It’s interesting, I have written a handful of books on psychology of selling, subliminal sales techniques, prospecting, closing, and a number of different areas in sales that I think a lot of novice sales professionals struggle with. At a certain point, as I was speaking with a number of different individuals, even in my own organization, which I’ve trained and hired financial representatives, I realized, “After a while, you can provide enough training, techniques, tactical stuff and product training as much as someone could utilize, but why is it that that person who was probably over-trained still struggles, doesn’t excel, their performance never reaches any peak, and they’re trafficking at that novice level? You have those who don’t need much, but they soar.”
There’s got to be more than training and motivation. I realized, “What’s happening behind the scenes?” I started to dig back into my academic degrees of Psychology, Behavioral Sciences and Social Work. I said, “There is something that has to be going on behind the scenes.” I didn’t have to go very far than my own life. I said, “Let me see what’s going on in my head. Why do I struggle? Why do I have starts and stops at times?” I realized that I was dealing with a lot of head trash and inner struggles, what I call invisible enemies, that I had to deal with. I had to face them in order to realize, “These stumbling blocks are going to stop me from moving forward, regardless of how much more training I have personally.”
I wrote this book called Battling Invisible Enemies: Facing Your Inner Struggles Head On for myself. I had to talk to myself about, “What’s going on here, Jay? What’s the deal? Why do you get up in the morning and you’re in the battle already, you haven’t step one foot on the floor yet, and you’re swinging?” It took some time and I wrote this book. As I wrapped it up, I gave a copy to my brother who was a sales manager in New York for a big real estate company. He said, “Jay, you nailed it. Don’t keep this to yourself. Let’s get it out to some folks.” Of course, my wife helped me publish my material. We got it out there. Every person who’s read it whether in sales or not, they could have a job that requires a better performance of them. They’ve all said, “This has met us exactly where we were at. We’re struggling with these invisible enemies.” It’s become my bestseller by far because it’s dealing where people are. In ’21 after a year of ’20, a book like this is needed more now than ever.
I’ve devoted a lot of episodes and my posts online to the mental health of sales and sales management functions. A lot of companies still did well in 2020. They’re looking decent in 2021, but to me, there’s an underwriting churn that’s happening because of all the stuff that’s happened. A little uncertainty and the ground beneath their feet has been shaken a little bit. I would anticipate your book being even a bigger seller in 2021. You didn’t say you were reluctant to publish it, but you had some thoughts about, “Is this going to be accepted? Is this what the world wants?” Of course it is, but tell me about some of that resistance.
I understand entertainment. I’ve been in the entertainment world. If you are going to be asked to speak in front of a group, especially in a peak performance setting, top-sales professionals in a format where there’s a lot of inspiration and motivation, the last thing they want the speaker to talk about is the guy who is struggling with depression, discouragement, doubt, anxiety, and stress. These aren’t sexy topics. No one walks out of there fired up. This is one of those books where the person who will read it probably won’t let anyone know that they’re reading it. You are not going to find a guy in the office reading this before morning before he makes his calls. It’s one of this under-the-radar, on-the-ground books.
It’s like what we used to do with Playboy magazine. We would hide it somewhere. That’s what your readers would do.
We know it’s there. We’ll go back to get it, but don’t let anyone see us reading it.
We laugh but I know high achievers, $500,000 and $1 million people who still struggle with this stuff. It has very little to do with financial success. E.E. Cummings said, “Be kind to people because you never know what battle they’re fighting inside.” I’ve seen people who are million-dollar earners fight huge battles inside. Sometimes it’s impostor syndrome, out of their comfort zone, or they don’t feel deserving. We all have battles.
There’s no question about it, we’re humans. One of the things that I talk a lot about in my talks and my videos when I get a chance to get on stage, I’m a very real person. I don’t speak in Pollyanna. I’m not highfalutin in a way that I have to be so impressive that you lose your sense of humanity. I tell folks, “Whether you realize it or not, we’re formed with the same organics and chemicals. We breathe the same air. We have the same bone structure. We have the same infrastructure. We have the same brain in terms of a left hemisphere and right hemisphere. We’re the same.”
What separates us is usually our environment, but not even that much because if you looked at my environment, you would say, “That guy has got a future that is probably going to end up somewhere behind bars or in the corner office with a green outfit and the broom.” It’s not about your environment. It’s about what you make and the experiences that those decisions bring forth. A lot of bad decisions and experiences is going to foster what I call the downward spiral. I wrote about that in the book, “The downward spiral is where you get caught into the spiral of worry. It leads to stress, anxiety and fear. Now, you’re on your way down to doubt, disbelief, discouragement, and depression.” It can happen to anybody in a split moment.
It’s a cycle that can take you down quickly unless you are practicing some serious self-reflection or self-awareness mindfulness or whatever you want to call it. We are so busy and reluctant to spend any time with ourselves. As you said, you had a lot of one-on-one talks with yourself when you were going through some of this, and this is what came from it. Something came from it that’s going to help a lot of people.
The most ambitious people have the greatest battles. The folks who are at $2 million, $3 million or $5 million a year of production or income, higher or greater, got there because they’re highly ambitious and highly-driven people. It’s almost like a double-edged sword. The higher your ambition and the more you’re driven, the chances are the greater the battle because you’re always striving for that next best version of yourself. Internally, even though you’ve done well, you still struggle with, “Am I good enough to get there?” It’s because you’re ambitious and driven. The person who has nothing going on are not motivated. They’re living what I call a quiet life of desperation or a quiet life of settling. They aren’t going to battle much with enemies or struggles because they’ve got nothing that’s driving them. There are some more driven ones with a greater battle there.
Let’s get into a little bit of psychoanalyzing a salesperson or chief executive no matter what. Give me a couple of things that you think people struggle with in the context of what we talked about. It could be something specific or general. What do you see people struggle with? Let’s talk about some solutions.
Battling Inner Enemies: If you’re going to speak in a peak performance setting where there’s a lot of inspiration and motivation, the last thing they want to hear is the guy struggling with depression or discouragement.
Let me give you a very real example. My brother, I mentioned him earlier, is a successful real estate manager for a decent-sized firm in New York. He had his sales meetings on Thursday mornings. Often enough, he’ll call me the day before and he says, “Do you got anything I could share? Do you got a joke? Do you got something that I could open up my meeting with or a tip?” I always give him something, whatever I’ve got. At his first meeting of the year, he asked me for ideas and what he could introduce. The conversation evolved into him questioning and doubting whether or not his sales force sees the value that he brings them week-to-week. He questioned whether the value is perceived by his sales force or if he, himself, seen as a valuable person. It was either, “Is the content valuable? Or is he valuable to them?”
That’s a very real reflection that a lot of sales leaders face and feel. They don’t want to admit it, but I think there’s a lot of that.
You’re correct. I was at a meeting, and the gentleman of that company, very successful in financial services, was echoing the same thing. He’s got a sizable sales force. I said to my brother, “One of the things to recognize is that not everybody is going to appreciate you or your efforts. That’s the world that we live in. That’s the world of sales management. It’s the way that it is, but they have to respect, if nothing else, your time. Do they understand the time that you put into preparing? Do they value it? Do they respect it? What kind of return do you think you can get from them if they did? If they valued, understood and respected the time that you put in, forget about the content and you, the time and the effort. If you have them or you can help them, understand that whether or not it’s the content they find valuable or they find you valuable, at least respect the time. That helped him feel better. He was at a place where he started to feel doubtful and that helped him get through a little bit about the stumbling block.
That’s good because self-doubt creeps in. Self-doubt and fear can come visit your mind but don’t let them take up residency. Sometimes they do and we don’t even know it. We start to doubt everything we do, whether it’s a podcast, sales call or building our business plan, “Is this enough? It sounds like a lot. I don’t know if I can do that.” Self-doubt enslaves us sometimes and we don’t even know it.
It’s disempowering. By the way, if you carry self-doubt on your face, other people will see it. I used to tell one of my young directors of our company, “Do you believe in what you’re saying?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “Will you tell your face?” It was like, “I don’t believe what you’re saying.”
We all think we’re clever enough to hide it but we don’t. Give me another struggle. You talked about the context of a sales manager but the thing about the mental and emotional sides of achievement that you find people struggle with. I want to ask you a question about potential and how we help people get to their potential. What’s another one?
Let me give you something that’s close to your answer. I think you’ll see why I say that. I put out a video called The Struggle. This is what the entrepreneurs, professionals, sales pros and even directors struggle with. I did a tongue-in-cheek and said, “The struggle of EDD.” Most people in that video, when I put the acronym EDD, they figured out, “That’s erectile dysfunction.” When I opened up the video I said, “It’s not what you think. I’m not talking about that struggle. That’s not the struggle.” I said, “EDD is Entrepreneurial Delusion Disorder.” Every salesperson, sales manager struggles, and entrepreneur struggles with. It’s where you deceive yourself to thinking that you’re doing all you can. You get into this place that you are convincing no one else but yourself. You’re doing all you can. You’re performing at your best. You’re giving it all you’ve got. You’re fully committed. You’re fully in. There’s nothing else you need to learn. You’re good. All is well. That’s delusional.
One of the things that I always talk to people about is, “Let’s address this EDD and see if you’re struggling with it because the symptoms if I’m looking at them, you’ve got EDD. Your numbers don’t reflect how confident you are about your performance. You don’t show up to any training. That means you think you know it all. You’re not willing to learn more so that means you’ve got an issue with pride. Those are all symptoms of EDD.” There’s a whole talk I gave on that, which was funny. It addresses what I think hurts more organizations, which is having too much people run around with EDD. It certainly hurts the individual themselves unless it’s pointed out, just like any disease.
We all get defensive. As a trainer and somebody goes into companies, business-to-business sales teams and works with them, the first question I always ask is, “What’s not working? Where can it be better? What’s working maybe 50% but not working all the way?” Sometimes it’s a struggle for people to come up with it because we live inside our own soul all day long. We don’t see ourselves the way others see us. All we know are the positive things and there’s always room for growth. There’s always something you could be doing even slightly better. I’m not talking about working an extra four hours a day. I’m talking about slight variations in language, technique, and strategy. I love that EDD. We all have it. Jay, how can people get your book and follow you online? If you have a social media presence, tell us how we can follow you.
A number of ways. You could visit my website, which is TheJayMaymi.com. You could also look at my show website, TheJayMaymiTalkShow.com. I’m on YouTube, google The Jay Maymi. You can find my training YouTube channel, which is Survive to Thrive. I have tons of videos on there on prospecting and mindset. I also have my Facebook page at The Jay Maymi.
If people go to TheJayMaymi.com, they can find all the other channels from there, correct?
All my goodies would be on there.
Jay, it’s been a pleasure to get to know you. I hope this will be valuable for you. We’re going to get it out here. I think this topic is extremely relevant all the time, but especially right now. I appreciate you spending time talking to us.
I appreciate you inviting me. I hope it helps someone.
Thanks, Jay.
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About Jay Maymi
There is an advantage to growing up in a humble setting with meager means. The reality of your circumstances can either pummel you into mediocrity or extract from you a burning desire to excel and rise above. My story is one of the latter. For the last three decades my hunger to rise above has yielded an impressive array of accomplishments. From multiple successful businesses to bodybuilding championships, radio, TV, stage, and print work to authoring 5 books; from an entire Sales and Personal Development series to speaking in front of many diverse audiences on different topics; all have uniquely qualified me to offer valuable knowledge, instruction, inspiration, and impact to those seeking to develop a higher and greater expression of themselves. Whether you are visiting my site for personal development, sales training, performance mentoring, or simply to be inspired, I welcome you and am thankful you have decided to take a look.
I am Doug Brown, CEO of Business Success Factors. I started working for my families business at the age of three, since that time I have started and built over 35 companies. I have three college degrees, and I am America’s number one expert in revenue expansion and sales optimization. During college at Berklee College, Northeastern University, and Salem State University, I supported myself by selling music equipment to colleges, universities, corporations, and some of the world’s biggest bands such as Aerosmith, Boston, Billy Joel, The Eagles, Extreme and others. I served 12 years in the US Army, during which I was awarded the battalion’s most distinguished soldier award graduating 2nd in my class and was then enrolled at the Massachusetts Military Academy.