Building Trust

That happens to be me there in the blue coat, following my leader.

Follow your leaders’ examples and duplicate what they do until you develop your own style. Every one of us has our own personality, our own feelings, our own way of doing things. We can’t be those people, but we can learn from them until we create our own way of doing things. Follow the example of good leaders.

This is what’s really critical in building your business, and this was something that was very profound for me. Because Mitch said to me, “Gary, you need to get to know the dogs that you’re going to be racing with.”

So they turned the dogs, my new team, loose in this big pen; and I walked in. I walked around calling, “Here, boy; here, boy.” And they just ran around me like, who are you? They never paid one lick of attention to me. And I thought, “Wow, this is really going to be successful. They don’t care who I am.” No matter what I said to them, how I called them, coached them, they wouldn’t come to me.

So I just knelt down in the snow and thought, “Well, I’ll just kneel down in the snow and see what happens.” And the minute I did, the dogs came right up to me.

Folks, here’s a real fundamental secret: get down on the level of your people. Get down on their level, so you’re not intimidating to them, you’re not a threat to them because you’re this big successful Diamond or Gold or Platinum or Silver or Executive; and you know so much more than the new person you’re talking to. Know what their needs are, what they want. If you take an interest in them and show them how much you care about them, they will come to you. That’s what I did with the dogs. What a beautiful lesson it was.

The next thing, develop a relationship of trust. If your people don’t trust you, where do you think it’s going to take you? This is how I felt with my new friends. Look at that dog. He looked up to me like, “Can I really trust to go out in the cold and wilderness with you?” He had to have that trust, and I had to have trust in him, because that team of dogs was going to take me 2,300 miles into the wilderness in Alaska. All kinds of things could happen. You must build trust through developing relationships.