Amanda Holmes Transcript
Clint Betts
Amanda, thank you so much for coming on the show. You are the CEO of Chet Holmes International. Incredible. You are Amanda Holmes. Tell us how you became the CEO.
Amanda Holmes
It's a little bit different from what many have experienced. But I was a singer-songwriter, and my father had a very successful marketing and sales training company. We've assisted a quarter million businesses worldwide. We've helped over 85 of the Fortune 500. As a three-time singer-songwriter of three albums, my father was then diagnosed with leukemia. And I'm sure it's an experience that many actually sadly go through as I have a client in healthcare; one in every three males today gets diagnosed with cancer, and one in every two females gets diagnosed with cancer.
So my father was diagnosed, and we battled for a year and a half, but in all that time, he never sat me down and said, "Here are all my businesses. Here's what they do. I want you to be the one to pass on the baton." We never had those dialogues, even though he spent 382 nights in the hospital and never once a night alone. So I spent over 100 all-nighters with him there, and then he sadly passed away, and I inherited a couple hundred staff at 24. So, it was a shocking ordeal. And here I am, 12 years later, second generation. In the first year that I stepped in as CEO, I increased our leads by 1,100... I'm so sorry. That is the weather saying that a hurricane is headed my way. I did not anticipate that.
Clint Betts
Amanda is in Tampa for those who are watching this or listening to this. And by the time this will air, the hurricane will already hit. But you've got a Category Three hurricane barreling down on you.
Amanda Holmes
Yes, I have told my phone to be silent, but I guess the national security of a hurricane coming stops that from doing that. So I apologize.
Clint Betts
Don't apologize. Are you kidding? It's a freaking hurricane. How incredible is it that you're still doing this with that happening, and you've made the time? Thank you so much. I mean, that shows your character right there. It's unbelievable.
Amanda Holmes
I appreciate it. Well, anyway, I stepped in as CEO after two years of trying to fill that void. I went through many different C-suites. In my first year, we managed to increase our leads by 1,176%. We doubled coaching clients multiple years consecutively. I've doubled our sales ongoing. I wrote the new edition of Ultimate Sales Machine, which hit the bestseller list 15 years after my father wrote the original. So we have continued on and persevered. And I have to say that it really boiled down to two things. One was I picked up the book that my father's so well known for, Ultimate Sales Machine, and I just read it over and over and over again. I watched his training videos over and over and over again. And so I am a product of our product. I believe in it wholeheartedly. It is why we are still here today.
And then secondly, the whole mental aspect of how to overcome... I am so sorry. Overcoming adversity. Like right now. I was very involved in a nonprofit called Divine Bliss International and they really helped me overcome the mental health pieces of feeling like I'm just a female in a sales training organization, or I'm in my 20s and all of my clientele are baby boomers. So many limiting beliefs that helped me break through. And I really am grateful for that nonprofit for that.
Clint Betts
Well, one, let me offer condolences for the loss of your father. That must've been incredibly difficult. And I can't even imagine having to take over a company at the same time and understand how to run it and build it. And the fact that in your first year doing that, you increased at the number that you said is just unbelievable. So congratulations on that, and condolences. My son just went through treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. He luckily survived that and came out, but cancer is the worst, and it touches all of us. And so condolences for that. I want to talk about what Chet Holmes International does. It does a lot of things, and you mentioned the book, which your father is known for, and now you are known for it as well. But it's all about sales, marketing, and coaching, as I understand it. So give us a sales 101 on what people should be thinking about.
Amanda Holmes
Well, Clint, let me ask you a question. What percentage of businesses do you think make it to a million in annual sales?
Clint Betts
Amanda Holmes
It's actually close. It's 8% today. 10 years ago it was 5%, now we've improved to 8%. So then, from a million to $5, 0.08% of companies make it to $5 million. But then your chances improve from $5 million to $10 million. You jump up to 1.5%, make it to 10 million, and 0.004%, make it to $100 million and beyond. Now, if I ask any CEO, they would say, "Okay, what's the difference between a million to $5, from $5 million to $10?" They say, "If I just tweak my product, if I just have the right service, then I know I can scale." But if we take, for instance, two companies started on the same block in 1967, Joe's Hamburger Joint and McDonald's. Now, fast forward to today. Joe's Hamburger Joint, a mom-and-pop shop, put all their love and adoration into every burger, and they're still one location working nights and weekends. At the same time, McDonald's is the largest grossing hamburger joint in the world. And I can tell you they don't have a superior burger. And I'm a vegetarian, and I know that.
So the difference that it takes to get from a million to $5, from $5 million to $10, from $10 million to $100 million and beyond, are really the skills and those skills can be developed. So mastery isn't about doing 4,000 different things even though our shiny object brain thinks so today; it's actually about honing in and focusing on just a few that, with 4,000 reps, you get to mastery. So, if we can hone in on just those few skill sets that it takes to make those leaps, then we can see that growth. That's what we do: we train on those skills to get to each revenue mark and beyond.
Clint Betts
What are those skill sets? Just at a high level, of course.
Amanda Holmes
Yes. Well, actually, every skill is a chapter from Ultimate Sales Machine. So, a place where we would love to start is time management. So, billionaires have the same 24 hours a day, and why do they get so much more done? So, we have the time management secrets of billionaires. There are just six simple steps that can improve your productivity by 500%, and it only takes 15 minutes to do so. Sounds too good to be true, but we've been training on this for decades now. So it's a system that works. Another one is how you identify quality clients. So we call the Dream 100, which is the fastest, least expensive way to double sales. It's the one strategy that has doubled the sales of more companies than any other. So I can train on that even on this call with us today.
How to get nine times more clients from every move you're already making. That's all-around messaging. Because so often, I mean, 15 years ago, the average company would market on seven different marketing mediums. Today, we're on an average of 15 to 21 different marketing mediums because of all the advances in technology. So what do we do to be able to hone in and focus our message so it actually gets across what we need to get them to take action and make sure that it's saying it on a medium where our ideal clients actually are instead of just spray and praying and hoping for the best. So those are ideas. Hiring sales superstars is another one. Many, many going on from that. If you want, I can list them all off, but I'd rather just focus on a few.
Clint Betts
Yeah, everyone should buy the book. That's the main point. So make sure you buy that. What about how sales are going to change in the age of artificial intelligence? How are you thinking about that?
Amanda Holmes
That is a great question. Well, I think everyone said over and over and over again that those who don't use AI will be left behind. And I'm personally seeing it. So, we have processes where we do data analysis of your clientele to really understand what keeps them up at night. We'll analyze thousands of pieces of data and then boil that down to a simple story that can grab the attention of the audience and compel them to educate them on why they should work with you and nobody else, where you are the logical conclusion. That process used to take us three months if a client was difficult, five months, and six months if they weren't replying. Now, we're able to do that same thing in two weeks because of the use of AI. Now, that's because we're aggregating so much information, but it still takes humans to understand which strategy is actually most beneficial because AI is just aggregating information.
So the quicker that you can set up a whole sales pipeline of information if somebody comes into your world and now you need to automate five emails, those five emails can be written by AI, at least a first version that maybe gets you 60% of the way, in a shocking period of time, in 60 seconds or less. Is it good? That's also questionable. That takes human discernment. But the speed at which we can create content and automate it is just unprecedented. So if you don't have those pieces, then you will get left in the dust. But we still have to think about the human aspect. I have to invent a word to describe it, and maybe you know of a word that describes the AI vernacular. It still comes out like a robot. I read it, and I say, "That just doesn't feel right to me in my bones."
So I take what they have as a structure, caress it, massage it, maybe test it, and continue to refine it. So, we still need to create that human aspect, or all of that content will go to waste. Even before AI, 80% of content that was online was actually hindering the probability of a sale because we were still just being tactical about putting out as much as possible without thinking about the quality. So there's that aspect. But we have a balance of the human piece to discern, qualify, and make sure that AI is helping us with the human parts and just the tactical deployments. But it's, I mean, obviously shocking. I wouldn't be the first to say that.
Clint Betts
Do you think it becomes more important, the human connection piece? As soon we'll all have these same tools and AI automating everything about the process, probably automating your Salesforce or CRM or whatever you're doing, analyzing that. Pretty soon, that's just going to be table stakes, and you're going to be able to do that. So, does the human connection become even more important at that point?
Amanda Holmes
Absolutely. I mean, I've definitely seen it over the last decade when we build out what a marketing and sales go-to-market strategy looks like, we're bringing in way more personal stories than we ever have before. I mean, obviously, with social media. User-generated content is so much more powerful than having something that's flashy, looks nice, and is polished. I mean, we see it with generations. The baby boomer generation trusts the 5:00 PM news more than anything else. The millennial generation will trust a mom blogger over the 5:00 PM news. It's just shocking where our trust is going. We want to trust the human capability. So I 100% agree with you.
Clint Betts
What does a typical day look like for you?
Amanda Holmes
Oh, may I ask a follow-up question of why do you ask that? What is the function for needing that question? Because it's very different a lot. So I'm curious why you ask.
Clint Betts
We have a lot of executives, a lot of leaders, a lot of CEOs who watch this and getting a sense for how leaders organize their day and the fact that no day is typical is actually really interesting.
Amanda Holmes
I love that. Well, for me, I travel a ton, and I'm on-site, doing keynotes very often. But I think it might be beneficial to at least give you a piece of what we do with time management. So, I will not start a day without listing my top six priorities and what I need to accomplish within the day. It either happens the day before or the day of. We recommend not writing more than six because it's very easy to just do a to-do list of 20 different things, and then you feel good checking it off. It's a dopamine hit, but it doesn't affect the actual prioritization of what needs to get accomplished. So with those six, I'll then number them what's most important. Then, I'll actually quantify how much time I need to facilitate getting those tasks done. And then I'll put it into my calendar.
And very often what I love about this process, I'm explaining to you the six-step process to improve your productivity by 500%. It's chapter one. But what I love about this process is... Pardon me. I was sick all last week. Hurricane, sickness, it's been a ton of fun over here. So what I love about the process is once I start weaving in, okay, these three emails need to happen, and it's 45 minutes. Okay, I get this done first. Then, I need two hours to manage the client delivery that we're doing on-site. And then I need another 15 minutes to get this done. When I actually put it into my day, very often at the end of the day, we go and look at our to-do list, and we realize, oh, the things that I needed to get done the most are still not done, and it just weighs on you. Whereas with this process, if I'm putting them, if I'm slotting them all into every moment of my day, I can already see, oh, the three things that I actually really need to get done today, I have not put into my calendar. So, very often, I'll have to re-orchestrate what I'm putting into my calendar and make sure that the most important priorities are done at the right time. And really, being a stickler, we call it pigheaded discipline and determined to make sure that you have them in the right time slots. And then you get much more clear too about when your most productive times are, which is helpful. For me, I'm really great in 90-minute intervals. I'll do 90 minutes, and then I'll take 15 minutes, and I'll pick up my guitar. Usually, it's within arm's distance, but I just got back from a keynote in Ohio. So I'll pick up my guitar, and I'll put into my calendar 15 minutes, and I'll sit down, and I'll just sing.
I'm very big about Sanskrit chants. I believe that they... Well, it's been proven by science that it expands your mental capabilities. So I'll sit down and do 15 minutes of singing, and then I'll go back into another 90-minute sprint. So, by facilitating, you can find those six steps in chapter one, but by actually putting them into your schedule, it helps to better manage the expectations of your day so that by the time you're done with your day, you've accomplished. And there's a whole section about got-a-minute meetings. How often do you get stopped by, "Got a minute? Hey, got a minute? Hey, got a minute?" I could do a whole bit on that. But there's a whole bit on how to be reactive versus proactive or the opposite.
Clint Betts
Yeah. What are these keynotes and things that you do throughout the country? That sounds really cool.
Amanda Holmes
Yeah, I was just in Austin. It was really fascinating. Are you familiar with Dave Asprey?
Clint Betts
That name sounds super familiar.
Amanda Holmes
He was the founder of Bulletproof Coffee.
Clint Betts
Okay. Yeah, I know that.
Amanda Holmes
And then he ended up selling it. Also, he is part owner of 30 different companies all within biohacking. So he invented the term biohacking. He has the largest biohacking conference. So, he wanted to start training biohacking companies. Biohacking as an industry is only 10 years old, and yet it has $28 billion in revenue in the United States. This is pretty impressive, considering the chiropractic industry has been around for 125 years, and it's only $20 billion. So, in 10 years, it's done pretty well for itself. But he wanted to start training biohacking companies on how to grow because they're great at being scientists and doctors, and they have these brilliant inventions that will create huge waves in science. I saw this one guy at the conference who has created a substitute for injecting your arm with a needle. Instead, it just blows CO2 on your finger so that we will never have to use needles again.
I mean, it was just absolutely mind-boggling the kind of things that they have. But they don't understand, pardon me, how to articulate them. So, I came in and trained them for a three-day business biohacking event, where I taught them how to pitch. Where the real prompt was, can you take a cold prospect to take action in less than 60 seconds? And we went from an average in the room of four. I love to quantify everything I do. I love data. So they were at a four, and by the end of the two and a half days, they were at an eight and a half, which was great. So they learn how to pitch, and on day two, they're all pitching amidst each table, and they come up with the top 10. Then, the top 10 narrowed down to the top five. And the top five got to pitch in front of the whole room and a celebrity judge panel.
Clint Betts
Oh, that's very cool. Yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, we need to get you out to do an event for us. That'd be very cool. Let's make sure we make that happen. Amanda, there's a hurricane running down on you. Let's have you back for sure, but I want to make sure that you survive this hurricane and [inaudible 00:18:56] supplies you need. So I'm going to ask the final question, which we ask everyone, and that is, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Amanda Holmes
I would have to say my spiritual teacher, Guruji. She's the founder of the nonprofit Divine Bliss International. Yeah. She saw me at 24 and said, "Yeah, you can take over this company. You can be CEO." And I looked at her like, no way. She kept saying, "Yep, you're going to have to do it." And for two years, I said, "Absolutely not. You are crazy." But she guided me every step of the way on the emotional side, so I'm very grateful for her.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. Amanda, stay safe please. Thank you for everything you do. We'll make sure that we link to your book and everything you do, and I'm sure we'll see you down the road.
Amanda Holmes
Thank you so much, Clint.
Edited for readability.