Episode 236 – One Color, One Major Result with David Bassitt

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson 1:07
Hello, and welcome back Brittany Anderson here with a incredible guest today who I’m about to introduce you to today I’ve got with me David Bassett, who is an author, a speaker, a coach, a sales and business consultant. He trains sales organizations and sales professionals to tap into the power of orange to grow their business and clientele. You heard me right, the power of orange David’s sales efforts have consistently exceeded expectations resulting in hundreds of millions raised by him and his sales teams. David success is built on relationship building skills that have significant impact on sales and personal and professional growth. He’s a sought after speaker, presenter and trainer who enjoys sharing his proven strategies and practical tips to other sales professionals. David believes strongly that anyone with the right mindset can accomplish far more than they thought possible. David, welcome to the show.

David Bassitt 2:05
Thanks, Brittany.

Brittany Anderson 2:06
Well, it is a great pleasure to have you. And I know I went through kind of the fancy bio behind the scenes. But can you share a little bit more of your background with our audience?

David Bassitt 2:14
Yeah, happy to do that, BB. And thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. Absolutely. Interestingly enough, an individual Jr. Rockefeller made some very, very interesting points. And so I’d like to just share these with you before he began, he made the statement that your starting point in your life doesn’t dictate where you’re going to end up. It’s all about the actions you take and the choices you make along the way. And let’s not forget the importance of influence and power. Simply having privilege or education isn’t enough. We need to harness our knowledge and use it to make a difference in the world. So let’s go out there and make things happen. Because we have the power to create our own destiny. I’ve been very, very fortunate to have 50 years of success. My My career has been very, very colorful, and I’d like to just take three minutes to run you through. So it gives you a little background on the subject we’re going to be talking about today. When I started in my sales career I was six years old working with in my father’s store, he sold men’s apparel, women’s apparel, and as a six year old I started selling cookies. And after that for the next 20 years I sold just about everything you could think of that was in a department store, graduated with a master’s degree in business and then eventually taught at the University of Minnesota and the business school again teaching sales and marketing. My first job out of school was with Honeywell was in the engineering world a very very technical subject to say the least moved on to a company by the name of Butler manufacturing company in developed all their markets for their tank trailers all over the world. After that, I moved to advanced machine company and I trained salespeople on how to sell maintenance equipment and vacuum cleaners little bit different than cookies. But the process was the same again, I rejoined Honeywell, and then I was selling mainframe computers that were selling for over a million dollars. So we’ve gone from a cookie to a million dollar sale. I was then asked to join dicho Petroleum Corporation and I sold oil and gas drilling program through stockbrokers. And I covered the whole United States through with dicho Petroleum Corporation. And then I had an opportunity to join a company by the name of Carnegie capital out of Cleveland, Ohio, and I represented Frank Cappiello of Wall Street Wait, and what was probably interesting about that particular opportunity is I learned how the human brain turned over and when I was there, I actually ran into an individual that showed me with an eight and a half and 11 piece of paper. I can take a multibillion dollar company and tell you exactly where the strengths and weaknesses of those people are. And I continued to use that to this day. I then joined Piper trust and I helped build it truss company, again, working with stockbrokers. After that for two to three years, I was a financial planner for US Bank. And then I moved to another company called ei selling real estate investment program. And finally, I sell settled with a company called inland real estate out of Chicago, Illinois. And I was the managing director for the Midwest selling real estate investment trust. And so that gives you a little background, where I’m coming from in terms of all the opportunities I’ve had over the years and selling different types of cookies, dresses, shoes, tank trailers, you name it, that’s really the only thing that I truly know that helped Brittany

Brittany Anderson 5:38
Yes. And wow, what a breath of experience. And I like the whole movement from cookies to the million dollar deals. That’s a that’s a big deal. So there was something interesting when we were going through your bio, and it had to do with this color, Orange. So how did the color orange become part of your story?

David Bassitt 6:00
Well, my son, at 35 years of age, died of cancer. And he died of non Hodgkins lymphoma. And when he died, he had an orange boat that was in the front of his house. And my wife said, what are we going to do with that orange boat. So when he died, I was traveling the United States, speaking all over the country, and I was out at the airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I went out and I purchased an orange tarp, I was sitting down, getting ready to catch a plane, and a woman came up to me and she wanted to buy Muy Thai. And I thought I was just so unusual. I’ve never had any woman come up to approach me, and especially to buy Muy Thai. Well, I went to Salt Lake City. The next thing, two more ladies, same thing. And I thought there’s something to this. And after that, I started promoting orange, the color orange throughout the United States, because I had the opportunity to speak all over the United States on the subject matter. And all of a sudden, it started opening up doors, and I became famous for the color orange in all 50 states. And that happened because of the death of my son when he was 37 years of age. And I’ve been doing it for almost the last 20 years now.

Brittany Anderson 7:12
Wow. You know, David, one of the things that we often talk about in our teachings, and the podcast here is really figuring out in life, how some of the really, really tough stuff, how it can serve us versus being something that happened to us. So what I think is so interesting about your story, and what you’ve done is that you’ve incorporated the color orange into kind of everything that you do. So can you touch on because of your strong background in sales. Why is color so important in sale?

David Bassitt 7:46
Well, first of all, the color stands out, and it stands out where people were actually going to approach you. And that sparks a conversation immediately I’m amazed is as I travel around how many people love the color orange, and it allows you to start a conversation. And the unique part about it is the other person is coming up to you, you’re not going up to that person to start the conversation. They address it with you. And all of a sudden it becomes very friendly very quickly. And it’s it opens up the door very nicely. And then it’s up to you to decide if you want to go through the door. Because every person you’re going to come in contact with you don’t know if you want to continue the conversation, or you want to end the conversation. But I can tell you and I’d like to use a lot of different examples. Just in the last I’d say 24 hours, what has actually happened to me and the process the use, and I’ve had people actually watch actually watch to see what happens. And they just shake their head. And I probably could give you 15 to 20 different examples. And it doesn’t have to be just sales, it could be your personal life. I’m very shocked when I see the feedback that comes back to me and I’ll share some of the stories with you. I just got one last night that just amaze me, but it happens every 60 minutes. And secondly, every day is an orange day and all you have to do is walk out the door, use the process and you will have more people come into your life than you would ever imagine.

Brittany Anderson 9:32
You know, I want to ask though, you know, obviously you have such a personal tie to the color orange and you have you know, a beautiful story of how you’ve made such a tragedy into something that has been really powerful in your life. So David, why is orange the best color truly when it comes to the attention grab and everything like that?

David Bassitt 9:53
Well, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve studied colors for a long time and if we would have had this Conversation 15 years ago, you would have found probably, if you did an interview with people 92% of the American public would have liked blue. That was a very, very popular color. Second color at that particular point in time was green. And then a good color, a good color, but not the best color. Now I had this illustration, Saturday, and I met a friend at Starbucks is matter of fact, if I go to get a cup of coffee, and I go into Starbucks, I will meet somebody new, not that I’m trying to do it. But it just happens naturally. And I was at Starbucks, I was with a friend. And he says, I want to show you something. And he pulled out his, his his, his phone, and he says, you get one second to look at each pet picture. And the first picture I looked at, and there was his daughter who was getting married, and she had a black dress and on and then her fiance was right there with a black suit. And I could see that was black. Then he grabbed the phone and showed me the second photo, in the second photo on his daughter had an orange dress on and I thought oh my goodness, how could I not forget that she was very, very pretty. That dress turned out and I asked him I said, Did you tell your daughter to wear that dress? He said I certainly didn’t. It was all on her own. And everybody commented how beautifully she looked because she had that orange on. So there’s a lot and I have people all over the country asked me good illustration, I got a call from state of Georgia. And in the state of Georgia University of Georgia, everything is red. And he said I can’t use orange because everything is red. So we started going through the colors. And so for this in that particular case, we ended up with purple. But on a general basis, Orange is going to make something happen, you are going to connect and if you go through the colors around in the background on the color orange, you’ll see why it attracts so easily, Brittany

Brittany Anderson 12:10
Yeah, you know, so I guess my next question would be so I think about the woman in the orange dress that you referenced, and just the different things that you talked about with your tie. So how could others utilize the color orange in their life to help them create a certain level of impact that they want? Like, is it clothes shoes, pens, like what’s effective?

David Bassitt 12:34
Well, I’ve gotten a number of story, Legacy every day is that orange and orange day, one example that comes to mind. There was a lady in Stillwater, Minnesota, and she was selling juice plant plus, which is a supplement to make you feel better. And we were having a conversation and she said, you know, she said I’d like to meet more people so I could sell more products. And I said, Well, it’s very, very simple. And she said, Well, what do you do? And I said, Well, number one, number one, the first place to go. And you can implement any of these little ideas. But the first place was to get an orange walk, and then to get an orange blouse and then to get a pair of orange shoes. And then you’ve got to get out and get away from the computer, get away from your office, get away from your house and go out where just people can visualize you. She called back and she said I’m amazed more people coming up to me and saying how nice I looked, started a conversation. Well, she had a sales force, she had a sales force, she went out and got my book went out and gave it to each one of her individuals that worked for so they could sell more of juice plus, and she said I never would have guessed something so simple could generate so much activity. That’s just one case that comes to mind. When I was at Starbucks on Saturday, and my friend showed me the dress of his daughter, I had to go to another room. And as I’m passing to another room, two other ladies, two other ladies stopped me in my tracks and said, Gosh, you just sort of made a beautiful color here. He said, You’re so coordinated and everything. And it was the same process all over again. One individual happened to be in marketing from Boston Scientific. The other one happened to be in finance and then I never said a word. And the one woman said well, you know, I just got a divorce. I didn’t ask her know if she was married or not. She just volunteered the information. And the point is the point is people will volunteer the information. Matter of fact, yesterday I was taking a walk in the Plymouth center wagon for about a mile walking around the track. Another lady came up same process. I went to stop and leave. She actually followed me phoned me to talk to me and all of a sudden she she just volunteers and I asked her the question and One of the magic questions and I will tell you that that I asked people and it opens up doors faster than anything you’ll ever see in your life. If a person is eight years old, 10 years old, or 100 years old, I asked him this question. And this generates more activity than I’ve ever seen. I asked the question, Are you retired? And the reason I asked that question, are you retired, a 15 year old or an 18 year old or 20 year old, they will laugh, they will laugh. And the first thing I would also say, in the sales world, whatever you’re working with whoever you’re working with, you’ve got to get that individual to smile or laugh before you begin anything. And so if they’re older, you might say, Well, what’s going to happen if they’re 60 or 70 years of age? Well, there’s only two options. I’m retired or I’m not retired. Well, once that comes up, the next natural question is, well, what do you do? Or what did you do? Conversation is starting Well, one day, again, I was taking a walk. And as I was taking a walk, I run into an individual, and he and his girlfriend with him and a dog. And I said, Are you retired? And he said, Dave, you know, I’m not retired, you know, I sell finger clips on the Internet at $50. And he started laughing Case in point and laughing. Well, all of a sudden, here’s this woman next to him next to him. And I thought, gosh, I’ve got to say something to her. So I said, Are you retired? She said, No, I asked her who she worked for. She told me and I said, Well, what do you do there? And she said, I’m President, and I thought I never would have ever guessed, as President. But this was the part that blew my mind. I said, How many people do you have responsibility for? She said, not including the employees a little over 20,000? I’ll tell you, I don’t meet too many people that have responsibility for 20,000. But again, that process, it continues to happen over and over and over.

Brittany Anderson 17:06
You know, I think that what’s so interesting about this, and I have to bring up your book, because you brought it up briefly. And I think it’s a really, I think it’s an opportune time to talk about it. So you know, one thing I think that’s interesting is you have so many stories around you know, how this color orange has impacted your life, how open conversations created opportunity. One of the things that I felt found really interesting was about the incorporation in handwritten notes. So can you talk a little bit there about how that might help somebody to stand out and catch attention in a crowded market space,

David Bassitt 17:44
it’s, it’s probably the most single thing that I’ve ever discovered. In the reason I covered my background with you. There was one company that I didn’t cover in there. And that is that I had a short period of time for about one year that I wanted to work for a multimillionaire to see why is a person so wealthy, and my responsibility was every 30 minutes working with this individual, I had to ask for $50,000. And after I would ask for $50,000, I would write a note to these people thanking them for their time. But what was really interesting, I didn’t use a normal pen like everybody else would use, I used a very, very special pen. Well, one day, the president of the company said, let’s go out and meet these people. So we went out to meet these people. And what amazed me was, every person that we went out to meet, went to their file drawer, and pulled out the letter that I had said, and they kept the letters, they didn’t throw them away, they pulled them out. I thought, Gosh, how interesting. So all of a sudden, at that particular point in time, that was probably 10 years ago. So I took that idea, and then came out with the orange note where you would use an orange envelope, orange stationery orange stamp. And I’ll give you a couple of stories here, one from just yesterday and one, let’s say a year ago, but one day I want to have in wanting to communicate with the president of a multibillion dollar company. So I went out and I got an eight and a half by 11, orange envelope, orange stationery, orange stamp, send it through the mail, and all of a sudden I call to talk to him and he said, I got the information. And he said, I knew it was you and I said well, how would you know it was me. He says everything that comes through to me is all in white. Yours was in an orange and I know you’ve worked here before and I’ve heard you talk about orange. I knew that was you. Well, yesterday I was taking a walk again ran into an individual wanting to talk about orange and what was interesting about this Individual was he ran a company that specialized in finding the finest doctors in the state of Minnesota for their patient. He went out and got the book, he read the, it’s chapter eight, on writing notes. And he says to me, my wife and I are following exactly what you said in the book in the first place. The first place, the first place we started was to write a note to our daughter, and I thought, wow, that’s not an adult, that’s a daughter. And then all of a sudden, I realized bout a year ago, I was working with a financial planner. And he’s based out the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and he had a client in Wisconsin, and he was talking to the client and the client, for some odd reason said that his son had been come was a Cub Scout became a Boy Scout, and wasn’t going to continue to become an Eagle Scout. So the financial planner went back, wrote a note, not to the father, an orange note to the son. But a month later, the father calls back and said, that was one of the greatest thing that ever happened to my son. And consequently, he became an Eagle Scout in the story, Brittany into story.

Brittany Anderson 21:14
Oh, you know, I think so many great examples here, David. And I think for our audience tuning in, you know, really thinking about, okay, I bought into this color, orange, and I’ve seen the stories of the, the impact, and you know, the different things that that are happening as a result of this, I mean, standing out to a billion dollar plus company, that’s pretty amazing. So if somebody is, let’s say, they’re either brand new to business or to sales, and they’re, you know, trying to build up their book of business and our audience in particular, as advisors, and you know, no matter what we’re in the relationship business, and in turn, we’re in the sales business to because we want to help more people and get more reach. So how can you know somebody who’s really trying to grow incorporate the orange concepts to really speed up the process of filling their pipeline?

David Bassitt 22:06
Well, what’s really interesting is, every time I have an opportunity to talk to someone one on one, and they ask that question, the first thing I’ll say is, the more orange you have that’s on you, the more activity you’re going to have. So for example, I wear an orange, an orange hat all the time, all the time, I wear an orange, watch, I wear an orange jacket, I wear orange shoes. And so my response would be start slow, and see what happens. And the more you add, the more you add, the more activity you’re going to have. If if you and I get this a lot, especially on the notes, if something’s new, there’s, there’s always the comment, well, I haven’t done this before. So I’ll say we’ll test it, just test it. And so let me tell you a story. About five years ago, I reported to a woman that was president of the company, and very, very delightful lady, and she had heard me talk about orange and her name was Brenda. And I said, Brenda, I want you to just test this. And I want you to write a note to just one of your neighbors. Just write a note your I said, you’re very good at writing notes. I said, write a note to your neighbor, and then tell me what happened. So she wrote a note to her neighbor. And a couple of weeks later, she called me in to tell me what happened, the neighbor came over to the door, knocked on the door and started crying just because she had taken the time to write her an orange note crying on her doorstep. And the I’ve got people around the country that will write five to 700 now and see it’s the process when you get into the note, first of all, on the note, you never want more than three items on the note. And the other thing I would encourage you, especially if you’re writing a note, you don’t want to say the same things that other people like if I met you, I wouldn’t say it was really a pleasure to meet you. Because everybody’s gonna say that what I would say was, which is what you said to me made an impact in my life. Now that gets attention that gets attention and what I’m really driving that in stay away from the generic and concentrate on the personal side. Yeah, but amaze me when she said the woman was crying on her doorstep. It’s matter of fact, I just got this end came in last night about six o’clock and it got in front of me and it said, I really enjoyed your book and found it quite inspiring so many terrific reminders and tips for life in general. I pass it along to my sister and her husband who I’m sure will get a lot out of it. But it’s this next paragraph that got my attention by coincidence. I inherited my mom’s car a few years ago. She named it pumpka It’s bright orange, and I’ve never been quite comfortable with how am I Watch it stands out after reading your book, I’ve started to see it more as a gift to be celebrated rather than an embarrassment. Thank you that just came in last night.

Brittany Anderson 25:10
Very cool ,what and what a fun What a fun story and turning something like you said, like she  said, embarrassment to something she’s proud of. And I think that there’s so much magic in what you’re teaching. So David will obviously make sure that we include the link to your book, which I highly recommend anybody tuning in, goes and buys, picks up a copy. It’s called orange one color major result. David, before I asked my final question, if somebody wants to incorporate more of the color orange understanding that they can’t maybe draw on your years and years of experience, what’s the starting point? And how can they you know, engage deeper in this?

David Bassitt 25:55
Well, again, I’m going to emphasize that you’ve got to get out, okay. I’ve talked to a number of people and they hear the story, but they’re not getting out, you’ve got to get out. I mean, that’s, that’s crucial, number one. Number two, you want to start implementing it on a very, very gradual basis, and a very easy way. And one final story. I work with a lot of doctors and I’ve got a doctor in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s one of the top prostate doctors in the world. And I happened to have prostate cancer. And I went in to see him and I went in, and I gave him an orange wad. I gave him an orange one. And he wears that watch every day. Well, the reason I tell you that story, I called him up one day. And he said, he said, You think you’re real cute, don’t you? And I said, Well, what do you mean, he says, You come in, and you give me an orange one, I think about you every day, and I got all these other patients coming in, and you call and you know, I’m gonna take care call, I thought, holy cow. All I did was give him an orange watch or an orange watch. And he wears that every day, every day. And that’s all and he’s a doctor. He’s a doctor. So it doesn’t have to be a lot. It can be just a little, just a little.

Brittany Anderson 27:10
I think that is so wonderful. And it really ties into really my final question. And I think you could just expand a little bit on what you just talked about. But if you could leave our audience, our listeners and again, we serve a wide group of wealth planners, financial advisors, if you could leave them with one final piece of advice, what would that be?

David Bassitt 27:32
How can I meet? How can I make a very meaningful financial impact in your life? That’s a very powerful statement. And most people don’t ask it.

Brittany Anderson 27:41
That is so true, and so good. So David, thank you so much for spending your time with us today and sharing your insights on the color orange. Again, I highly recommend any of our listeners hop on Amazon, we’ll put the link in the show notes. But go grab your copy. It’s called orange one color major result. David, thank you for your time today. Thanks, Fred. Me, so that rounds out today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We’re gonna catch you right back here next week. Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don’t keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimate advisor podcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community and we look forward to a continued relationship