Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:00.956)
Hello and welcome to Leaders and Their Stories, turning experience into influencers. And this podcast, Top Technical Leaders, will share their journeys, insights and time game-changing lessons. Each episode explores challenges, innovations and leadership moments that shape their careers and help, excuse me, equips you with strategies to elevate your influence. And tonight we're here with Joseph Rocky Jr. He's going to talk about how to get people to want to tell you the truth.

And believe me, that can be hard and Joe's gonna give you some ways to get around that. Joe, take it away.

Joe Rockey (00:30.776)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rockey (00:38.604)
Yeah. So, I mean, the reason it's hard literally goes back to your reptilian brain, to your brainstem. Because if you think about this from your own perspective, which is really true for everyone else, is that you probably have at most seven people you will share anything with without any type of thought or hesitation. Society calls those best friends. One. Okay. Well, see, hence the at most. So.

Richard Lowe (01:01.571)
One. For me.

Joe Rockey (01:07.382)
The reality is, that every other person in the world, you were putting a filter through to keep them from coming in to basically use you. That is the primary reason it's a survival instinct we all have. We're not going to let someone in to hurt us and hurt us is a very broad thing when our subconscious is concerned. So what we all have is a natural pushing away barrier process.

Some of the easiest times to think about this is go onto any dating site and see how people push away or anyone going through that. It's very common.

Richard Lowe (01:45.328)
I think the dating site analogy is very apt in this case. I'm sure most of our listeners have at least tried it or viewed it at some point and you run into exactly this phenomenon.

Joe Rockey (01:57.654)
Yeah, it's because it's human nature. We're all built to give people a process that we have to go through and push them away. And when you actually dive into the science of what's going on here, it all comes back to the traumas in which we received in our life, whether they be major or massive to yourself, they are always massive. Trauma is one of these things that is not relatively shared. Not like when you look at the car crash,

versus the car crash in Manhattan versus those can be relatively compared statistically. Internally, your trauma is your trauma and that is what it is.

Richard Lowe (02:37.766)
Yeah, I know what you mean. I've had, I've had people who've experienced extreme trauma and I'm looking at like, why is that traumatic? I don't really get it, but they're going through, through hell and.

Joe Rockey (02:48.91)
And you've actually nailed upon part of the major reason why is that while there are many, it's a spectrum. So there's many different ways you, you go through the recovery of trauma. Basically from the outside people coming at you, there's three major categories. There is people blamed you for whatever problem you caused. People try to instantly fix the problem for you or people ignored you because of the problem.

Richard Lowe (03:16.626)
Of course, we're ignoring trauma like people in combat and things like that in this case.

Joe Rockey (03:21.314)
Well, this is all types of trauma. mean, the type of trauma that we're talking about, the way in which people try to help it with you, starting when you were very young through any major event, has one of those types of things. like I said, it's a spectrum. So there's different ways in which people can help you or respond to you is the more appropriate word. And as a result, each person has a different preference for both what they

don't want in terms of response coming to them and what they do want. Said another way, there is no universality of it.

Richard Lowe (03:59.26)
And I'll give you an example. when I have my previous jobs or any job, anything rather, I do not like receiving criticism directed at me. Now criticism about something I've written or about something I've made that's different because that's not me. But if you start criticizing me. And I think a lot of people have that thing I'm, I'm going to react and probably not the way you want me to.

Joe Rockey (04:08.632)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rockey (04:25.71)
And you nailed it on the head and there's some players right now and any professional sport, if you scream at them directly, they'll go out and they'll bury the three pointer right before halftime. so it's a different personality type. And like I said, it's a preference thing. So as a result, we all know those things that we either hate or love about that process. And since this is a subconscious process that happens, it doesn't go through the logical sectors of your brain.

Which means when you see it in someone else, you just get that feeling of, I don't want to deal with them. I don't want that. go, your guard extra comes up. You can't really describe why, but you had that feeling. just know we shouldn't be around that person. And the reason you get that is because regardless of what your own personal traumas were, you have emotional scars all over you and what other people, cause everyone can do this.

is they can pick up cues as far as what are the emotional scars you're coming. So what people are instinctually doing when they're having an interaction with you is whether they realize it or not, they are looking for, do you have my triggers and red flags that I want to avoid? So the easiest way to get people to want to tell you the truth is to not get in their repulsion process. Cause as soon as you start kicking someone out of your life mentally,

Richard Lowe (05:42.268)
Right, right.

Joe Rockey (05:53.528)
They're gone and it's hell and a half to fight back through that. But if you just don't get put into that current, that's going to take you out to see just by bypassing that you can enter into someone's space of how to become, well, I'm not seeing a reason to push you away. So I will start to open up to you. And that's a process to go through. How do you remove your own scars? But that's one of the things I teach people.

Richard Lowe (06:18.546)
Right. Well, and I see you have the book Casino Salesmaster behind you. Did you go over these concepts in your book?

Joe Rockey (06:25.57)
Yeah, I mean, this is probably the core of why it works. I mean, if you think about it, there's not a whole lot that every culture in this world agrees upon, but they do agree that casinos are built to take your money. That's why they exist. Yeah. So if you can go into a place that is literally rigged against you, they have made a mathematical advantage.

Richard Lowe (06:43.25)
Pretty obvious.

Joe Rockey (06:53.238)
And you can get those people to want to see you succeed, AKA pay you for being there. That's a completely different world of relationship and sales. And then you're right. That's exactly what's in the book. So while I'm able to introduce the concept here, the exercise regimen in which you need to go through to remove the scars from you. That's like I said, a big part of what the book is.

Richard Lowe (07:15.376)
Nice. Now you went through all the trouble of writing a book. I'm sure that was a laborious process. took a while and books always do.

Joe Rockey (07:21.996)
Yeah, say the least.

Richard Lowe (07:24.55)
But you had a reason for doing it. And what was that? You wanted to brand yourself and make yourself known better in your community for your business or whatever.

Joe Rockey (07:34.446)
Well, that was certainly part of it. A bigger part of it was, is that I knew I had this superpower that is really not out there in the sales world. know, any of the major sales companies out there you can think of just to name a couple, Ziegler, Dale Carnegie, Sandler, they all will teach you the structure of how to do a sale. They use different terminology, but they all basically teach you the same playlist of how to do it.

Richard Lowe (08:03.986)
Right.

Joe Rockey (08:04.108)
And while there is no universal sales script, because there's no universal relationship script, they have that part down. This is the skeleton. Like if you want to go from New York to Miami, you got to drive South. Like this far as a basic starting point. Now there's more efficient ways and less efficient ways, et cetera. But what the sales systems did not have is they did not have that answer of how can I get someone to want to see me succeed? And the reason for that is this science I'm laying out for you.

Richard Lowe (08:29.948)
Right.

Joe Rockey (08:34.134)
less than 2 % of the people actually know it, let alone are able to teach it. So that's why we go out of our way. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book because I do fundamentally believe and know in my soul that sales will heal the world. That's the fundamental interaction that will fix everything. So it's only if you sell correctly though, and you're not like the used car salesman that's just using people to get their commission, which by the way,

Is the entire, I use the dating analogy earlier about why you repel people that might be the only stronger revulsion people have other than salespeople. and since I'm not making a book about serial dating, cause that's not my world. went with sales.

Richard Lowe (09:11.666)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Lowe (09:20.274)
Well, that makes sense. And that makes sense. And I'm sure that book has helped you. And if you didn't have a book versus now that you have a book, I'm sure you see the difference. Because I see, I'm in networking groups with you and things, and I actually see references occasionally and bring it up. And a book lets you do that.

Joe Rockey (09:37.508)
yeah. It's one of these things like literally it's over my shoulder right now because of the backdrop I built, but it's one of those things that for me, at least it obviously it's a conversation starter. I wrote the title to be casino master for that purpose to be a conversation starter, but it also is, it's a staple of, knowledge and proof. Cause how else can you show how good you are at something and have it be relatable to someone else?

You know, when you, when you show that you're an international best seller, that's an accomplishment. That's a feat. That's something hard. And in most cases, it's something most people have never tried. So therefore you're automatically a rarefied air, just like if you run a marathon, most people will never try to do that. You're wow. That's like super successful. So that's one of the main reasons I did that as well, from the selfish standpoint of what was I going to get out of

Richard Lowe (10:05.436)
Right.

Richard Lowe (10:23.698)
I think just.

Richard Lowe (10:28.578)
Right. And I think that the international bestseller part is a good part, but that's not really necessary for most books. You don't need to be a bestseller to use a book for, you know, a lot of my clients use them for speaking engagements and things.

Joe Rockey (10:43.707)
to that point, you're exactly right. I hire people for my own speaking engagements. I don't care if they're a best seller or not. I care that they have proof and evidence that they're not basically just only have an hour worth of content and they can fly in, do their spiel and fly out. The book shows that.

Richard Lowe (10:59.698)
And that's a key point. The book proves to a certain extent as much as you can in a book that this person has the expertise, the credibility, the stories, the experience, whatever to do what you need done.

Joe Rockey (11:13.806)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, from my own speaking career, before I started launching my own events, that was certainly something I was running into was, well, how can you show us that, that you've done this? Well, I have a laundry list of client testimonies and all that. Well, that's cool and great, but where's the book that actually shows it, you know, that we actually could follow along with. And I was constantly getting that, that push back. And again, it's one of the reasons I wrote it. was again, a laundry list of things that having the book has helped with.

the one thing I do have to say that I was misled with from my publisher at the time, which I don't think would have stopped me from doing it, knowing what I got now, but the book in and of itself is a proxy to revenue. It in and of itself is not a revenue, a true massive revenue generator.

Richard Lowe (12:04.727)
that's what I tell all my clients. You're not going to make money directly from the book. You're to make money by using the book. You have to use it. It's like a hammer. It's not going to do any good sitting in a drawer.

Joe Rockey (12:10.848)
Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Rockey (12:15.948)
Yeah. And immediately it took me, it took me a minute or two to realize how you use this toll. And I wish I would have had someone to be able to teach me an earlier in life without wasting a year or so with it. But now that I got it a little bit, it is massive power.

Richard Lowe (12:21.031)
course.

Richard Lowe (12:29.924)
And that's the first thing we start off with the client is what are going to use this for? And we get there, but to change the subject slightly, you've talked a lot about the psychology of the sales technique and so forth and why people, these various things happen. How could say a cybersecurity person who say, you know, a mid-level executive use these techniques to get ahead in their careers?

Joe Rockey (12:56.77)
Well, sure. So one of the big parts that you'll see, especially explicitly in what I teach is you need to be able to get to two things from an intellectual standpoint, you need to get to how is this a win-win for everyone? So if I'm going to present a proposal to you, what is the win-win that you guys get out of it? And very clearly what's the win I get out of it? Because so many deals die.

If you only focus on one side or the other. So if you're only focusing on what, what the prospect's going to get, but it's very unclear what the salesperson gets their suspicion that comes up. It's like, why are you doing this again? Like, like you, all those red flags about, I about to be used? Is this fake comes up? And likewise, if it's only about what you, as the salesperson is going to get out of this, the ball never starts moving. So the intellectual part one is make it a win win.

Richard Lowe (13:32.252)
Right.

Richard Lowe (13:45.682)
Right.

Joe Rockey (13:51.698)
and what you need to do, which is the harder part is how do you get to what the true problem is in that other side's party? Because one of the, the lies that we learned over the last 20 years of sales that has become ubiquitous throughout sales is that features and benefits move products. And the reason that lie exists is because Amazon and eBay sell on features and benefits. That's how they started. It's how they continue to do it.

But the reality is, is that was only because people were trying to run away from used car salesmen. It's not because that's how people buy, they were avoiding a negative. When people buy, they want someone who can get in, they can be open with and tell the true reason that they want to make this purchase and have that intellectual conversation. They might not ever consciously know that's the reason, but that is the truth. So how you get to talk to someone and get that inner soul, but why it's personally relevant.

that person across from you. So if you're as, as a mid-level manager, trying to get up two ladders and you've got to go through an intermediary, say you got to go through your regional VP before you get to the CEO, you have to be able to get to that regional VP, why it matters to them that they are going to let this conversation happen. And that is a incredibly deep relationship skill that you have to do that again.

training we can teach you to do it like butter, but for most people it's unnatural. How do I go in a work setting that is going out of its way to avoid personal conversations to find out why you personally would care about me making this proposal? And that's true for any B2B sale, but especially for the internal politics.

Richard Lowe (15:36.327)
light.

Richard Lowe (15:40.498)
Well, let's say you're a cybersecurity person and you're trying to sell something that'll prevent breaches, you know, like people getting credit card data. So you go to your boss and you say, we need to spend $5 million on this product to help do that. You start listing all the benefits and features and things. Your boss rolls his eyes and says, no, because you haven't found out what's important to the business. And that's obviously going to be what's important to the boss, hopefully, if he's a good boss. So what you need to do, what I'm hearing is you need to find out what's important to your boss.

Joe Rockey (16:10.158)
Yeah. Cause that assumption is wrong. A lot. The real reason that, that people move forward. Sure. The business is part of it. Um, but for that boss's standpoint, it could be that this is not a relevant problem on his to-do list, but going through and trying to get the funding for $5 million would be a giant problem for him. So why not going to do it? This is a complete non-starter.

But if you can get it to find out what's going on with them, the deep downs of, know, realistically, what happens to you of this whole thing? If we lose all of our credit card data, what happens to you? And quite frankly, if you don't get a real relevant answer there, the guy will never do it. But if you can get to, this is what happens to me. Well, professionally, I probably never get promoted again. Well, what does that mean for the rest of your life? that, you know,

You can go all the way down the road of does that mean you don't live in the city you want in the house you want, et cetera. You, the point is you're building a personal relationship and connecting with them. That might mean at the end of the day, you're not able to put your kids into the school you want to put them to, or whatever the case might be. We're not talking about social, the, the, the security sale anymore. We're talking about why in his soul, he can't let this problem exist. And that's, that's the process you go through.

Richard Lowe (17:32.08)
and set.

Joe Rockey (17:35.298)
when you're getting into the actual ocean of emotions of the person who's making the purchase.

Richard Lowe (17:38.876)
Right.

Now sometimes that's complicated because you're talking to your boss but you're actually selling to his boss's boss's boss. So you have to understand the whole chain, I would imagine.

Joe Rockey (17:47.342)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rockey (17:51.18)
Yeah. And you don't need to know the answer at the end. You need to know for the step you're at. And again, this is applicable to business to business or internal, you know, you might not be entering in another business you're trying to sell to with the true decision maker. They probably have a gatekeeper build on before it, maybe several layers, but it's all about why should this person care and give you the time of day rather than just putting it into the funnel.

That is the just submitted online. Someone will get back to you approach, which so many people accept as the business to business solution. Like even today on my LinkedIn, I saw three different people trying to sell how to write a better business proposal. That is not how you win this game. You win the game by not having to do the proposal and talking to the person about what actually matters to them. It's a completely different way of doing it. And this is why my system works. One of many examples.

Richard Lowe (18:32.978)
Yeah. Right, right.

Richard Lowe (18:47.408)
It makes sense. It makes sense. Well, we've learned a lot today from the psychology of how to actually make the sale, whether the sale is selling your boss on funding your project or whether the sale is selling a product like a car or whether, interesting enough, you're in the dating circuit.

Joe Rockey (19:04.558)
It also applies to getting your 13 year old to actually tell you where they're going at night to get your three year old to want to brush his teeth. These are relationship skills that transfer every part of your world and enhances everything. Again, I bring up sales because people like revenue, but every single form of your relationships will improve once you adopt it.

Richard Lowe (19:09.756)
Bye.

Richard Lowe (19:26.364)
And the thing I find most interesting is you wrote it up in a book that you're now selling to people to help them out, which also helps you build your business bigger. Cause I, like I said earlier, I know in networking events and other places where I've seen you, you're using that book as a tool. and you've probably made back dozens of times more than you spent on it indirectly. And that's very important to understand is.

your book is a tool, it's a marketing tool. First of it's got a lot of content that you can then split up and use all over the place. I mean, my clients have gotten Ted Talks, speeches, speaking engagements, all kinds of things from their book. most of them are real pleased with the, when they use it, they're very pleased with the results and they recognize it. Well, this is fascinating. Any concluding words, is there one thing that you would like to tell our listeners that they go away with?

Joe Rockey (20:20.618)
You already have the ability to, to fix all of the things I talked about psychologically today and fix my, not even the right word, how to build upon them and how to use your own psychology for you. just need to practice and train at it. And like I said, it's one thing that, that just like any other practice, you focus on specific elements. So like when a football team does practice, they focus on how to hand the ball off, how to catch the ball.

Richard Lowe (20:44.882)
you

Joe Rockey (20:49.29)
It's not necessarily running the complete game every time, but it's doing the practice and the drills and guess what? They get better as a result. The same thing is true with this. Most of the, most of us, you have never learned how to do a relationship correctly before from a scientific level, going through the training and exercises, radically changes that world. You can do it on a self-guided tour. That's what the book was built for its casino sales master, or we can do it together in our coaching course, which is at casino sales master.

dot win, that's casino sales master dot win, because it's a casino, I gotta put that win part in.

Richard Lowe (21:25.212)
Well, you just answered my next question, how to get hold of you. And I'm sure you just go to that site and it's all there. Well, thank you for appearing on this podcast. Appreciate it. This has been Richard Lowe. I am the writing king and the ghost writing guru. And you can find me at the writingking.com or at ghostwriting.guru. And feel free to watch this video, give it to friends, whatever. Cause I think that just getting that casino sales master book and reading it is going to help you immensely.

The concepts from what I've read in it, the concepts are applicable to everyday life, like you said, and I'm kind of excited that we're exposing other people to it. So again, thank you for appearing and have a great day.

Joe Rockey (22:08.43)
Thank you for having me.