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Today’s show featured an interview with Jeff Giagnocavo, founder of The Big Ticket Life.
Find Jeff on LinkedIn.
JEFF’S TIP: “If I want to get myself amped up, I put myself back in time, and I keep this picture fishing with my grandfather as a little boy, right before the abuse started. Move yourself into that place. Get that mind in that good spot, that positive spot where you were that best person where everything was ahead of you. Then go make that call and I bet you you’ll get the deal and you’ll feel a lot better about getting it.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We got Jeff Giagnocavo on the show. He’s the author of “The Space for Leadership,” and we’re going to be talking about courageous leadership. He’s also the founder and leader of The Big Ticket Life. I want to thank our previous guest, Bob McCarthy, who was on the show talking about the mattress industry. We also did a subset of his show on pickleball. Our friend Bob is a big pickleball player as well. We took a piece of that show out. But if you want to learn how to be successful selling mattresses in the mattress world, we had Bob on the show and it was a great, great show. We’ll put a link there. After the show went live, he got a lot of feedback and said, “Fred, I want to introduce you to my friend Jeff Giagnocavo and he’s going to be a great guest for you as well.” We’re going to go deep into a topic that we don’t always go into.
I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself in a second, but we’re going to be talking about getting past trauma. A lot of listeners know that basically one of our positions on the Sales Game Changers Podcast is about being successful in sales, is about getting past blocks. It’s getting past a hurdle. We’ve done shows on grit, and we’ve done shows on persistence. We talk a lot about the great sales professionals are the one who don’t just put in the extra work, but get past the obstacles. Customer’s not returning your phone call. What do you need to do to get them to return your phone call? Customer doesn’t see value. They keep saying, no, no, no. What’s something you should be doing to get them to say, “Yes, I’ll have the meeting.” What do you do to follow up? Et cetera. Sales success we believe is all about getting past those blocks.
There’s people who have been successful in sales who’ve had to get past bigger blocks, and we call them trauma. We’ve done a couple of shows. I had a show with a guest named Peter King. We talked about getting past trauma. You’re going to tell us your story, and you’re going to tell us about how that got you to create The Big Ticket Life and courageous leadership. For listeners of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, they know that courage is also a big word as well.
To get us started, give us a little bit of your business background. Tell us what you sell, and then let’s get deep into why you wrote the book and into your backstory.
Jeff Giagnocavo: Thanks for having me on. Happy to be here with your audience and listeners. I’m actually a customer of Bob McCarthy’s. I co-own a retail independent mattress store, very successful. We’re looked at in the industry for that experience level of an in-person purchase. That’s what we do. We’ve got this cool thing called the Dream Room. It looks like a high-end hotel suite. You can try a mattress out in there. Don’t do anything you don’t want mom to see, is what we tell people. But read a book, take a nap, watch TV, relax, get to know the product. When we book that room an appointment, it closes at 100%.
I have born out of my retail experience another company called Infotail, where we basically, at this point, that company does information marketing in the furniture mattress space, a couple other niches. Then we manage CRM builds for largely licensing organizations, bring their onboarding on, make sure people get started the right way. That works multinational at this point. Then I have my Big Ticket Life consulting brand. That’s where I’ll run my podcast through and do my leadership work. There, I like to say, let’s get you doing life and business on your terms. For me, that’s been a big part of my life, is I’ve had terms dictated to me, and then I’ve realized, “Okay, I need to go reset and live the life that I want to live.” That’s a little pedigree of me.
Fred Diamond: Before we get into the book, I have to ask you a couple sales questions. Tell us something that our listeners may not know about selling mattresses. You said that you have people lay on the bed, sit in the back room, and that’s 100% closed. Bob gave us some great insights on the manufacturer to the retail channel. Give us some insights that people might not know about the mattress selling industry.
Jeff Giagnocavo: The first thing I would say is we’re not as evil as some in media and other online competition sellers have made us out to be. I had a moment in time with my oldest boy when he was building a digital profile. He was about 13. He comes to me, he’s like, “Dad, do you really rip people off?” That was a big line of mattress stores are greedy, mattress stores rip you off. That was a big line of a direct-to-consumer seller that I won’t name, but it was a big part of their marketing.
I honestly took a lot of personal offense to that. Because like, “No, son, I do not put a roof on your head and food in your belly ripping people off. That is not who I am. It’s not what we do.” We had a couple subsequent trips to the store to show them exactly what we do and how we do it. But for me, we’re not as evil as made out to be. We’re people who sell things because we like helping people. Often for a lot, the mattress is just a catalyst to that. They could just as easily sell tires. They could just as easily sell software. But it’s in an environment they like to be in. They get to see new people, hear new people, help new problems, because there’s a lot of problems around sleep that people have. We’re not as evil, we’re not as scary. We largely, the good ones, we want to help you wake up happy and have a life well lived, because sleep is that third leg of a great healthy life. It’s diet, exercise, and it’s sleep. The good ones help you maximize that third leg of that stool.
Fred Diamond: Why are there so many mattress stores? It seems every mile you have the independents like you, and then you have a couple of the big boys.
Jeff Giagnocavo: Going back 5, 10 years ago, it was worse than it is now, because there was a tremendous amount of merger acquisition. This chain, 300 units was bought by this one with 700. Then that one with 1,100 bought by this one with 3,000, and all kinds of things like that. Where it all starts is, it’s largely a business because the model, you open a new door. Some retailers actually make a little bit of money break even opening a new location. Because they get free floor models, they get some rebates, they get some co-op, there’s incentive to open new units. We’re not building a campus for making medicines and we’re not launching rockets. It’s inventory in four walls. It’s pretty inexpensive to get started and have a nice unit. That’s why you see a lot pop up, because it’s a pretty low barrier of entry as far as dollars go. Now, if you want to have a good experience, you want to treat people right and do the right thing, the barrier of entry becomes higher.
Fred Diamond: I want to get into your book, The Space for Leadership, and your backstory. When I heard it, I said, “I want to get deep into this.” I just want to let our listeners know that we’re going to get deep into some topics that relate to trauma that we typically don’t get to. I’m going to give a little bit of a warning here. If you might feel uncomfortable, please feel free to listen to the next show. But I encourage you to continue listening to Jeff’s story here. The book, The Space for Leadership, how is this book on leadership different?
Jeff Giagnocavo: I tell my personal story. As Fred said, if topics of trauma bother you, maybe change the dial, move on to another show. If topics of sexual abuse bother you, this is what we’re going to get into. I tell my story through that lens of tremendous childhood sexual abuse, violent sexual abuse from the ages of 7 to 12. We lived in Canada when it began, moved to the United States, it followed. Not even 500 miles could separate me from that. This was a family friend. It’s funny, Fred, today I laugh. I chuckle a little bit to myself. I’ve chosen an awful odd life asking people for things. In other words, I have something to offer you and you have the money that I’d like to have.
A pivotal moment in my journey was when I came to my family and shared, “Hey, this abuse happened and I need some help.” I was instead told, “Well, no, that couldn’t have happened because you weren’t old enough to have those physical things happen to you, or you have them happen to you.” That shutdown was so deflating and in such a shift in who I am in those years, those preteen years to young adult years, to be turned away by those that you think should care the most, was just really profound. I didn’t understand at the time, and I’ve come to understand it. I talk a lot about that in the book, about creating space for the people around you that are hurting. If you’re leading people, understand you’ve got to fix this clash between work and home, and you never know what people are going through.
Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in May of 2024. Obviously, we’re “coming out of the pandemic”. I believe the results of the pandemic are going to last for the next 20 years. I have friends who are teachers and they’ve told me about students and how it’s shifted them for years. Forgetting about the millions of deaths, I think that the mental illness challenges that are going to be coming from the pandemic are going to be lingering for scores if not decades.
You mentioned leaders needing to be conscious of what their people are going through. We’ve heard the expression during the pandemic that everyone’s in the same storm but different boats, is one of the expressions. What is the challenge you have for those who lead others? A lot of people who listen to the Sales Game Changers Podcast are sales leaders. Typically, business-to-business or business-to-government. Tech companies, enterprise sales related companies, and they’re leading people. A lot of them who moved into leadership for the first time were promoted in January of 2020. Typically, leaders don’t get a lot of training anyway, but you’ll learn on the job. Well, these people were promoted into leadership and then everybody went home, and you were dealing with your own struggles. What is the challenge that you have for those who lead others?
Jeff Giagnocavo: It’s a challenge that leaders, managers, business owners didn’t sign up for. Creating space for others, acknowledging there’s a clash between work and home, the stuff you do together, that’s not in your operating documents, that’s not in your management agreement. It’s not in any of the paperwork you gave to the bank to get a loan or funding or your private equity partners. But we have to acknowledge, we’re with these people for the lion’s share of their waking time, and there’s likely something that’s impeding their ability to work. If you go back to when people have come to others, maybe not you as their leader, in the past and had that experience like I had as a child, and they get that pushback, they get that brush back, that invalidation, it absolutely frames who they are going forward as they work throughout their career.
There’s another pivotal moment in my life where we’re in my abuser’s home, as I said, family friend. We were gathered, I believe this was a holiday, Christmas thing. It was my family and other family, and then my abuser and his family. He was just pestering his daughter. Nothing untoward, just pestering. But his wife very intentionally said these words, and the lesson is always hear the words, because they always have meaning. His wife said out loud to a room of five other adults, “Is he molesting you?” Looking back, that’s not normal language. Maybe as a leader, always listen to the words, because maybe somebody’s very intentionally saying a word, a phrase, a moment for you to truly hear something else.
Fred Diamond: That’s not a common word for people. Is he bothering you, or something?
Jeff Giagnocavo: Especially in the late ‘80s in a Northern Ontario farming community.
Fred Diamond: Why have you shared such an intimate part of your life’s story? My podcast gets a thousand downloads. The LinkedIn post that we do gets another 2,000 to 10,000 impressions. This is going to be out there. Why have you shared? You’ve been on other podcasts, you have your own. You wrote a book. Why did you decide to share such an intimate part of your life story?
Jeff Giagnocavo: I think there’s something for me to get sharing this story, because every time I do these, I get messages, DMs, comments about helping people and helping them see that their trauma, their pains don’t define them forever. I want to take a pause that I don’t want a trauma way with anybody listening. You could have had an upbringing, Mayberry on Main Street, but mom and dad said that one thing one time to you about that project you worked really hard on, and it’s carried with you this whole time. Like said, “Well, why didn’t you get an A? You got a B. That was an A project. You shouldn’t have got a C. You failed.” You might have had that upbringing, and that was the only thing. I don’t want to weigh that out with you. It’s yours to carry. You’re carrying it. As you say, there’s blocks.
For me, doing this is about my stuff wasn’t as simple as those words, but I share because I want to help others heal. I say often there’s this big gaping wound in my chest, and every time I talk about it, it smooths over and closes and closes and closes. To me, that’s special. To me, that’s my light to shine on this world. You used the boat analogy. I asked a while ago, “Well, why did this happen to me? Why was I in this path?” I’m a person of faith, I asked the question of, “If God does no harm, why did I have harm?” I accept it because I can stand here today and talk about I had these strong shoulders to carry the burden and speak for others, because they need to hear it. To me, that’s what leadership is about. Hard things set at hard times because it can help people.
Fred Diamond: As I’ve mentioned in the opening to the show, at the Institute for Excellence in Sales and the Sales Game Changers Podcast, we talk about blocks. Everything is a block. Customer doesn’t return your phone call, whatever it might be. You were abused as a child. Here you are talking about this. You wrote a book, you have a couple successful businesses. One of my previous guests, Bob McCarthy, said, “You got to get this guy Jeff on the show.” But not everybody who went through the same experience that you went through responded the same way.
I don’t know if you’re willing or interested in talking about that, but we want to put it into context that for people listening, we get people who are not afraid to make phone calls. We talk to salespeople who are fearless about making phone calls. Then we get people who are scared to death to pick up the phone. Then we get people who are fearless in asking for the business. We have a company that records phone calls of salespeople and they’ve done millions of phone calls. I asked the guy who runs the company, after analyzing millions of phone calls, what is the biggest observation you had? He said, “Half the calls people didn’t ask for follow up.” You had this great meeting, and then you didn’t ask, “Hey, can we meet Tuesday to go over pricing?” Or, “Can we get a meeting with the rest of your executive team?” It was probably even more, 50% and more of the calls just ended without any real follow up.
You’re here telling this story, but I know some other people who had the same abuse didn’t get to this particular point. Do you want to talk about that or you want to put that in context?
Jeff Giagnocavo: There’s two young men that committed suicide in this path of destruction. As far as I know, there was only one other, of course, these kinds of secrets in that time. We’re talking mid to late ‘80s, early ‘90s. In that time, these things don’t get talked about. It’s not out there. These are secrets. I was in that path and that could have very well been my life and almost was a few times. I’m not afraid or ashamed to admit that. It’s easy to get low in life, it really is. To the point about why you said some people have a hard time doing the phone work, a hard time going on appointment, a hard time getting up in front of a group and leading a group. There’s a reason for that.
I’m not your counselor, and I’ll say, if you feel you need help, you should get professional help. I’m speaking to you as somebody who’s walking with you in a journey filled with trauma. For me, it was understanding that whatever I get up against isn’t going to be that basement where that abuse happened. Getting a no isn’t that basement. Asking for a sale and hearing rejection, it isn’t that basement. Whatever it is you’ve internalized, actively say to yourself even out loud, “It’s not that thing. It’s not that moment.” Your subconscious is acting like it is, because you’ve internalized it at a very deep level, even cellular to the point it becomes a physical thing. The way to work out of that is to say proudly out loud, and kind of almost love on yourself, like, “I’m not that person. I’m not that victim, and it ain’t that basement.”
Fred Diamond: To put it into sales context, it’s customer says no, “Okay. Customer says no.” What do you need to do to either get the customer to say yes or to better pursue, and I don’t mean to minimize what you went through to use the sales analogy. We’re talking about what you went through in your life in some basement.
Jeff Giagnocavo: No. A third of my book is business focused, so no problem.
Fred Diamond: God forbid anything like this would happen to anyone’s children who are listening to this particular show. But the customer saying no isn’t, “No, I hate you. No, you’re a horrible person.” It’s, “No, we don’t have the budget. No, we don’t have this. No, we don’t have that. No, we didn’t plan for it. No, we use your competitor.” The good salespeople then say to themselves, “Okay, how do I get to yes or how do I better present my case next time so that we get to yes?” Or, “How do I find better prospects that are going to be more willing to say yes?” Or, “What parts of my sales presentation do I need to work on? Do I need to work on my phone skills better? Do I need to work on my Zoom skills better? Do I need to become smarter on the challenges that my industry is facing right now that my competitor knows better than I?”
I’m curious, was there a moment in time where you said, “I’m going to talk about this”? Where you said, “It’s important for me to get this story out there.” I’m just curious where you went from having the abuse happen to you to saying, “You know what? I’m a pretty successful guy. I have a successful business.” I don’t know all your history leading up into the mattress store and some of the other businesses, but do you remember when that transition took place?
Jeff Giagnocavo: About five years ago I really started internally focusing, intentional, focus on letting go, moving past, becoming stronger. Not letting this define my mood, my outbursts, my personality, anger. It was about five years ago. But two and a half years ago, find myself at a leadership conference in Arizona. It just called upon me to be like, “Jeff, the answer to why you’re hurting in all of this is that abuse. You know there’s other people going through it. You’re the guy that likes to say, you stand out front and you take the arrows. You’re the guy who says, you got a strong shoulder, give me your problems, I’ll help you through it. Maybe you need to be the guy to say, I went through this.”
Because other people, especially men, one out of six men, and one out of four women, deal with some form of sexual abuse at some point in their life. It’s that profound. I’m not speaking to a small audience here, but I felt that call, that challenge of if you say you’re this person, be that person. I stood up in a group of about 60, 70 individuals. I said, “I have to share something. Because I feel right now, if I don’t share this about myself, it’s never going to come out.” I just had to get it out. I will tell you, it was transformational in that moment for me and for that room. Four other men came up to me privately, said, “I suffered the same.” Multiple women as well.
Fred Diamond: I’ve been in rooms like that as well. I remember somebody, it was 1987, it was a life transformational program. It was called The Forum, it’s now called The Landmark Forum. A guy stood up, and this was the third day out of three and a half, and he was on edge the whole time. He finally stood up in front of 200 people and said that he was abused. I noticed that there were people who were like, “Oh,” and there were people who you could see started to emotionally respond, either with tears or shivering and whatever it might be.
Over a five-minute conversation with the leader at the time, it dissipated, and the angst that he had in his life about carrying this probably for 20 years, 30 years maybe, I think he was in his 40s, so it would have been 30 years. You could see it peel away and you could see people in the audience started laughing. Not that it’s funny, but I loved your answer before where, “I didn’t lose this sale because I was abused. Why did I lose this sale? Why did I lose this big account? Well, you do know I was abused when I was a child.” “Okay, well, great. Do you want to hold onto that for everything in your life?” Sales professionals as well, it’s like, how do we get past the things that are stopping us? Some of the things are not even as intense as the abuse that you went through.
Jeff, before I ask you for your final thought, what is it that you hope leaders can recognize within themselves after reading your book?
Jeff Giagnocavo: Expand that space around you. Even if you’re the one hurting, even if you’re the one that you’re not at the point where I was a few years ago, but you still have to lead, you can find healing, peace, comfort for your own self by helping others. We know this to be true. That’s why I call it The Space for Leadership. Expand that space around. I talk in the book about how most every epic hero movie where there’s swords and shields involved, it’s almost never the sword cutting somebody down that turns the tide. It’s a shield going up to create space, and it’s a pivotal transitional moment in the story and the arc of things where it all turns good. That’s the space I want you to expand. Bring people in around you. If you have to heal, use that energy to heal yourself. Do it for them. Leadership’s about serving, and so let’s do it. That’s what I challenge in the book.
Fred Diamond: I know you have some bonuses for people who get your book. Do you want to share those?
Jeff Giagnocavo: Yes. You’ve been priming the pump this whole time. You go to thejeffg.com/book and you could get the book there, come back, give me your Amazon number and I’ll get you some really great bonuses on business, on leadership, whole mix of things. I’ll send them right to you.
Fred Diamond: Jeff, I want to thank you for telling this story. I’ll be frank with you, we’ve addressed “trauma” on the Sales Game Changers Podcast before, but no one has ever disclosed some of the personal things that you’ve gone through. I just wanted to acknowledge you for your courage. You mentioned a couple other people who went through a similar fate didn’t have the same type of, whatever the word is to fill in here, to get to where you are at this moment in time to tell the story, to have a successful business.
Again, Bob McCarthy, who was on our show, he’s a great person. When people that we respect recommend other people for the show, it’s definitely a strong sign of admiration and strength. I just want to acknowledge you for what you’ve had to endure, how you’ve endured it, how you’ve gotten past it. I know it’s always with you. I’m sure it comes up from time to time and there are probably triggers. I hope what I just said wasn’t a trigger. But I applaud you for how you’re helping other people realize that what they have in their life is something that they can deal with, they can get past, and they can have success.
We like to ask our guests for a final action step. For the people who just listened to the show or the people who just read the transcript, give us a final action step so they can take their sales or their leadership career to the next level.
Jeff Giagnocavo: As I said, when you hear that objection, for me, I remind myself it’s not the basement. If I want to get myself amped up, I put myself back in time, and I keep this picture fishing with my grandfather as a little boy. There’s me, there’s my grandfather, right before my family moved where we did and the abuse started. Move yourself into that place. Fishing with my grandfather, maybe playing in the backyard with your friends, riding your BMX bike back in the day. Get that mind in that good spot, that positive spot where you were that best person where everything was ahead of you. Then go make that call and I bet you you’ll get the deal and you’ll feel a lot better about getting it.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great bit of advice. I want to thank Jeff G. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo