Ep398: Lois Koffi – Never Give Up Even When Disappointed

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive the following five free benefits first, you get my risk reduction checklist I created from the lessons I've learned from all of my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all a Stotz Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community to get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally you get my curated list of my favorite of all 409 Top 10. So fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz and I am here featured guests lowest Kofi lows. Are you ready to rock I am ready to rock and roll. All right, well, I want to introduce you to the audience. And you know, I I am so intrigued about your story. And part of why I wanted you on here is just to you know, tell us a little bit about what you've done. So let me introduce you to the audience. Those Kofi is a professional speaker, sales trainer, coach and Iron Man at triathlete who has coached 1000s of people in business and healthy lifestyles. For the last 22 years. She pivoted like many in 2020 without having an email list, or podcast or tribe online, having focused on face to face sales for over 20 years. listeners, I know there's plenty of us out there that have been in that situation and may be in that situation right now. Now, she went from zero sales online to five figures a month in less than six months. With something that I'm going to ask her about permission based lead generation online. And now she coaches, coaches affiliate marketers and speakers hire her to do the same, pivoting in six months guaranteed to live their best life. She's now is at multiple five figures a month in nine months of starting at Ground Zero online. She loves affiliate marketing as well as really passionate about sharing her story and resources through her top 20. podcasts. Healthy, Wealthy and Wise you can go check it out, just type Healthy, Wealthy and Wise into your browser. And you'll find it or come to the show notes. Lowe's, take a minute and filet for the tidbits about your life.

Lois Koffi 02:43
Oh my gosh, do we have enough time? I'm just super excited to be here. You know, you said I'm a sales trainer and are a sales coach. And ultimately, I'm really passionate about sales. Which is weird because a lot of people be like, Oh, no, no, I'm not a salesperson. I don't want to be sold. So I don't want to sell and all that kind of stuff. So I've been told I could sell ice to an Eskimo and I just found it fails a service. And I found it at a very young age that I love that face to face, belly to belly connection that that heart connection to that brings people together. And so right out of college, not surprisingly, I got into real estate. I went to college for broadcast journalism, and I thought I was gonna be a roving reporter for ESPN. And then told I was gonna have to probably sleep my way to the top for that to happen. And I was like, Huh, that's not what I learned in college. So maybe I won't do this.

Andrew Stotz 03:37
Yeah, I don't sleep all that much. Talking about crazy to say something like that.

Lois Koffi 03:44
So anyway, so I've sold in multiple industries, real estate happened to be the first and I learned a lot of phenomenal lead generation tactics. I hired a coach I had a mentor was always coachable as an athlete, becoming an Iron Man. And just love love sales. So that's how I am in a very, very short window. Because I could probably tell a lot more how I got to be come a sales trainer here at 43 years of age.

Andrew Stotz 04:13
And what can you just explain to me what is permission based lead generation? What does that mean? Well, I'm in for a cup of coffee, by the way for anybody who's looking anybody wants

Lois Koffi 04:23
when I got my cup so um, so it's kind of cool because it's, it's actually bittersweet. When I say this, because when I pivoted last year, I didn't realize what I had been doing my whole life is what Seth Godin talked about in his book, permission based marketing. So go check out his book, and he wrote the book, tribes and all that kind of stuff. And I always had a big list. I always had a lot of relationships, a lot of connections. This is before the Facebook and LinkedIn right? I always had a database of relationships, you know, a goldmine And so I would always ask people permission if I could stay in touch with them, right? I always ask people permission if I could send them things in the mail things for, you know, getting mailing addresses. This is way back, way back before the pandemic had and I was like, caught like a deer in the headlights and realize, oh my gosh, how am I gonna? How am I gonna sell in this new normal, I don't even have a website, right? I kind of freaked out. And the bittersweet part of the story is, it was actually my brother's death. That helped wake me up to what permission based messaging and sales online, at the core of it is what gets me out of bed every morning, and my brother died, actually in February. And it was just just before the pandemic, he was 49 drop dead. We didn't see it coming. And I remember that we, you know, here I am in the midst of grieving. And this guy just kept messaging me on Facebook. And he was just basically spamming me without permission. He didn't even ask, how are you? How's your family? He just said, Hey, watch this video. And you'd appreciate this. Here's a financial service and industry and he wouldn't stop messaging me. And I, of course, I'm sitting here like crying. And just wanting to, you know, give him a few thoughts. Maybe not, you know, positive might have been a few f bombs or things of that nature. But I couldn't do it. Because I was just, I was so you know, hurting, and he wouldn't stop for like, the next three days as I was traveling to my brother's funeral. Um, I was just, I had to block him. And I was like, I don't ever want to be like that. And then a month later, pandemic hits, and all of a sudden, I'm like, Oh, no, I don't know how to sell. But then I realized, wait a minute. Yes, I do. I'm just going to use the principles I knew offline, which was relationships first, ask permission before you send stuff in the mail, ask permission, you know, is okay, if I stay in touch with you? Is it okay? If I insert, you know, whatever your relationship trust and rapport building sales process is. And so I remember that, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something different. I want to create a movement, because then when the pandemic hit, oh, by the way, then my mom died. Oh, I had more loss. And it just fired me up even more, and realizing I saw a huge uptick. When my brother died, no pandemic, pandemic, everybody in their brother was messaging and the scarcity sales, pushy, spammy, like, I'm going to add you to my email list without your permission, whether you like it or not, because I don't know what else to do. And so I used my grief and my pain, and my anger should be like, I don't, I don't that no, that's not cool. How can I, you know, do something different? And so I built a list through permission base. So I went from zero to 5000. People, all with asking permission and creating value first asking how is your family? Oh, by the way, cuz everybody's going through stuff right now. Right? Even now, this is what 15 months later, people are still experiencing death loss, job loss, you know, grief of whatever, because life is not the way it used to be, right? So you want to first check in and say, how are you? How's your family? How's your work? You know, you might want to know if they just lost their job, right? All of these things. And then you have a conversation just like you and I did actually on LinkedIn. That's how we met, right? And we saw an opportunity to have a conversation. And here we are. So I really have a passion for sharing that message to people so that they just just be a human and treat people with respect. And then get their permission before you add them to your Facebook group, or email list or your tribe or whatever it is, is your thing that you're using to sell. It's really about service and meeting people where they're at and finding a need, that potentially you could fill and having that relationship build authentically, organically and not that used car sales approach. Like I said earlier, I believe sales and service is the highest paid profession on the planet. It's an opportunity to serve people and help people instead of being that used car salesman and changing that paradigm. So obviously, that guy who messaged me and all the people that were messaging, they just didn't have the proper training. And so here I am wanting to create a movement of permission based sales.

Andrew Stotz 09:53
It's inspiring for me because, yeah, I think it's the fear that everybody has They don't want to be that guy. Nobody wants to be that guy. But sometimes it's a little bit like stock market. You know, I've worked in the stock market all my life. And a young lady that I was a student of mine in university, she got a good job making good money. And then she just, she started investing, and she was losing her money left and right. And she just thought, I thought, that's what you do. And I thought, This is what you do. And I thought everybody was making money. And I thought I'd just go do all this. And I just thought, now actually, the successful people are doing something very different. And you've just kind of highlighted that. And, you know, it resonates with me, and I know that resonates with the audience. And for the audience out there, you know, you got to sell, we got to sell our products and services. But don't feel like you got to sell in a way. That's, that's like that guy. And I think those here really can give us that and that permission for permission based the generations talked about, and you know, I'm impressed by it. But don't take my word for it. Just go to podcasts, healthy and wealthy and wise, he's already got 155 reviews, and they're almost all five stars. So again, don't take it from me, you got a lot of fans out there. So that's exciting. But now something even more exciting. Now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Lois Koffi 11:30
Yeah, yeah. So I knew we were gonna get to that part. So I skipped that huge chunk of my real estate journey, right. So I got into real estate at 21. I quickly got to multiple six figures. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be a millionaire by the time I'm 30. And so I built a real estate sales team, again, thinking for the future. I started a mortgage company with the French, and didn't put a lot of thought that actually know that I think back at it, I was like, Oh, she's my friend, I like your let's do this. It's got to be big, you know, everybody in their brother was getting in the mortgage industry at that point, right. So this was around 2005. Just to give perspective, so I had been in real estate for five years was crushing it. And I, you know, had a real estate investments, you know, we were doing fix and flips. We were doing all of these things. So we put all of our eggs in the real estate industry basket. So you can see where this is going. Instead of being a millionaire. By the time I was 30. I literally no joke. I mean, I couldn't write a story like this. Um, I got my car repossessed the day before my 30th birthday, which Oh, by the way, was the last true possession in my name, because by the way, my cell phone had been turned off. Verizon likes to get their bills on time. I don't know why, but they do. And so they turn off my cell phone. I think I only have a landline actually, at that time, because I was living with a friend and I couldn't afford $19 a month, I was beyond bankrupt. I actually had, everything had been, you know, bank accounts cleaned out. So I didn't have a bank account. I was going through this journey. Uh, you know, my credit was destroyed, which destroyed my self worth and my identity. So I was going through all this trauma, depression set in suicidal thoughts. You know, I had anxiety attacks so bad, I thought a kid was jumping on my bed. I didn't have kids at the time. It was by body. You know, I was just crippled by fear, shame, you know, guilt and pay my bills. You know, my business partner skip town. Everything was course was personally guaranteed in my name. So all the creditors came after me. And one of our tenants actually of our property, it was like living the movie, The Big Short, if you saw that, one of our, you know, tenants, of course, they were kicked out of our home that we had investment property, and they took me to court and everything it was it was just like one thing. After another, I had to, you know, get rid of my dream home, I was building my million dollar dream home. Last that had three foreclosures on top of that, and you know, just had nothing left to my name. And here I am. Turning 30 with a very different outcome than what I had anticipated. You know, the previous remember

Andrew Stotz 14:13
kind of the day that was like the worst day where it kind of all just felt like it was all coming in on you.

Lois Koffi 14:21
Oh, gosh, there's probably at least five. But no, it was when I got the call. What happened was, I didn't tell this part. I was. I was with a friend. And we just got back from a retreat. You know, we were trying to figure ourselves out. We were doing a spiritual retreat. And she drove because my car had broke down. So my car was at the shop. And the guy called me. This was, you know, before it got officially repossessed. And he's like, hey, yeah, this is the bill. And I was like, Yeah, don't have the money. He's like, Oh, well, then you got to tow it. If you're Not gonna let us fix it. And I think it was only 50 bucks, maybe 75 for the toe, which is actually really reasonable. They didn't even have that. And so I told him, I was like, I don't even have that. And he basically said, Wow, you're pathetic. I'm not. And then a week later, you know, I presume they took it from the car. dealer, I was just, you know, so ashamed. And so feeling alone. I mean, I had, you know, you find out who your friends are. When that happens, totally. My family thought I was crazy, because I wasn't paying my bills. And you know, I was talking bankruptcy, which is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to them. And then, my friends, all of them were mostly I should say, most were in real estate, the business partners, they were freaking out, and, you know, kind of left me holding the bag, and my other business partners and friends and colleagues were like, Lois, what's going on? Because I was like, at the beginning of the end, you know, this was 2006. And most people say it was the recession of 2008. And I'm like, I'm no, pretty sure it was 2006 and 2007 2008. For those of us who were surfing, you know, futons cars and floors of our friend's home, so I wasn't on the beach, or the bench, but I was that close. Wow, I think it was that guy. That car mechanic said, Oh, my gosh, you're pathetic. a total stranger. Yeah, yeah. And I bought into that. And I was, I was, I was pretty depressed for quite some.

Andrew Stotz 16:41
So how would you describe the lessons that you learn from this?

Lois Koffi 16:46
Well, you know, at that time, I did have some hope. Right? I did believe that the silver lining was up, maybe I'm not supposed to be in real estate anymore. Because my true passion was sales training. Yep. And speaking. And so I did start sharing my story. I did find a mentor, who said, Lois, this is your opportunity. And this guy had worked for Tony Robbins. And and and of course, Tony had worked for Jim Rohn. And Jim Rohn. Said, I listened to his audios all the time, especially during that time, he said, discipline, your disappointments.

17:27
I had a few

Lois Koffi 17:29
discipline. But I realized, you know, maybe there's another, you know, opportunity here for me. So that's when I started really working on myself. I gained a lot of empathy and compassion for other people. Because I have never had bad credit. I had never been homeless, I had never considered bankruptcy, I realized I had a lot of judgments about that. And I realized also, anything could happen like that, that book, bad things happen to good people. So I needed that to happen for me, not to me, for me, so that I could understand and be prepared for life. And so discipline, your disappointments, and then I added to Jim Rohn, and never give up, you know, what could I gain from that experience? What can I bring forth? In my hearing now to help a lot of people? And it was like, Yeah, don't give up hope. Just what can I learn from this lesson. And now, like, I when the pandemic hit last year, I was like, pandemic proof, more or less. So I was like, you know, I prepared me for where I'm at now. And all the people that I serve, they're going through some semblance of that, thankfully, not all of what I went through. But I felt like now I can really get people's pain. It really empathize. And that's what sales is to right. It's

Andrew Stotz 18:57
about that missing person sending you those blasts, you know, there's just hitting you with something there was no, you actually needed empathy at that moment. You know, and he wasn't able to provide it. Wow. There's a few things maybe I'll share that I take away from your story. I've written down a bunch of stuff. You know, the first thing that I just want to talk about from a financial aspect is supply and demand. When demand rises, prices rise. And when a government for instance, provides a huge amount of funding to people for let's say housing, let's say education, whatever it is, when they provide access and low cost. It's going to cause a flood of people going in and buying stuff and that buying is going to push up prices. And that's part of huge part of what happened in the 2008 crisis or in your case starting in 2006 and And we're seeing that happening now also in the housing market in the sense that people have access to almost free money. I mean, nowhere around the world could you borrow money at like 3% and have a fixed payment for the next 30 years. It just doesn't exist in the rest of the world. And where does that go? It goes, of course, to the US government, because banks sell it to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So just be very aware about that. I think the other thing I want to take away from this, too, is that having been a financial analyst, all my career looking at 1000s of companies, I can tell you, the number one risk that a company has is that, because if you do not have debt, which many companies operate without debt, if you do not have debt, nobody can really shut you down. But banks can shut you down, if you have debt. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have debt, but just understand the risks to debt. I've operated a coffee factory in Thailand with my best friend for 25 years, and we basically haven't had much debt, we didn't grow the way that you know, as fast as we could have if we had more debt. But nobody can. Even in the pandemic, when our revenues collapsed, nobody can shut us down. So that's the second thing, I just want to also talk about self worth and shame. Those are two words that you had talked about. And I think that, you know, I really appreciate the fact that you are open to share that because I know many of the listeners are feeling low self worth. And they are feeling shame right now. For what they're going through. They maybe lost their job, they've made mistakes, they're not able to provide for their family, they're struggling. And I think the first thing is that you've been open to share that. And I want the listeners to, you know, think about someone that you trust, and go and talk with them. And tell them your pain or your shame or your frustration. And at least you know, follow Lois is example of being willing to be open. And finally, the last thing is Episode 371. I interviewed a guy named Robert paler, and Robert paler was pale, paralyzed from an acts of rugby acts accident when he was in university. And it's taken me years to get the ability to move again, which he has, and you can follow him on Instagram, and look for the episode 371. But what he said at the end of the interview was that that paralyzed being paralyzed that accident, I wouldn't change it. It's made me a much better person, and much more meaningful person. And that's what you are telling us that your hardship made you better. So I really thought there's a lot I took away with anything you would add to that.

Lois Koffi 22:46
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think it's, it was such an opportunity for me to learn. Like I did interview a guy on my podcast today, too. And he's made hundreds of millions. And he's lost multiple times. He's done both. And he said he learned more from the losses. But again, it was because he chose he made a conscious choice to say, Hmm, I might want to learn something here and not repeat that. So even though I went through, and he gave great advice, like I did, I saw a therapist, I found I had my high five, back then these were people that I said, if I call, you need to pick up the phone, right? High five, and those are my high five. And to be honest with you, I still do that to this day, I call people five people a day to just say, I love you, or how are you? I'm here for you know, business. And like yesterday, I one of those happened to be a guy who had said he told me he had tried to kill himself. But you know, just a few weeks back, you know, so there's always an opportunity to to give back, you know, so those people gave to me. Now I'm giving back. So when in doubt, reach out. There's always someone with a bigger problem, a bigger boat. You've probably heard that phrase before. No, but there's always someone that can connect with you and just listen and be a sounding board. And so I have a huge heart for mental illness and suicide. I've lost several friends to suicide, and I still get it. And that's why part of why my podcast is called healthy and wealthy and wise is just because there's so much beauty in life that it's easy to focus on the pain and the trauma and the shame and the guilt and trust me I was probably still talking to my therapist last year a little bit about that. You know, because it comes back at times right part of the journey. And so just being real and honest and transparent with people. You know what though this past year by the more I shared my story and some of it was still from the recession, but even what I went through last year with my brother dying and my mom dying People were just drawn to me and said, Louis, thank you for being real. Thank you for being authentic. And that reminded me I was like, Oh my gosh, a lot of times we want to wear a mask that hole, fake it till you make it crap. And people don't want that anymore. They just want you to be real. So if you're not feeling it that day, you can just say, Hey, guys, I'm I'm, I'm hurting or, you know, whatever, there's, you know, I released a lot of that shame A long time ago, thankfully, don't because I went through a lot of shame, and recognize that it wasn't serving me. In fact, I manifested an autoimmune disease in my throat, because I was afraid to speak and share my truth. And so that's a whole nother layer of, you know, if you don't release that stuff, and learn from it, and let it go and surrender it. It can manifest and disease and it's not worth it. As me

Andrew Stotz 25:56
as my house, as my counselor said to me many years ago, resentment rots the container it's in. And, yeah, lots of great lessons. And this podcast is all about being real, and sharing our worst investment and learning from it and connecting. And I know, I feel a deeper connection to you. And I know my audience does, too. So based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Lois Koffi 26:32
centuary intuition more, trust your gut. And that that actually takes a skill, a habit of nurturing it, but but listen to yourself. A lot of times when I created that, that experience, because I do believe we create our own experiences, right? I could have blamed my friends, my business partners, right. But there was something that I brought to the table to create that. And there were times where my intuition said, Hmm, is this a good partner to partner with? You know, I didn't take time to just sit. I was too busy up here. I was too excited by the money by the possibilities instead of just sitting with it, trusting myself instead of, you know, seeking everybody else's answers, that even though like the guy you said on your episode, that would not change a thing, I would not change a thing. Because Oh, by the way, I ended up meeting my husband, the love of my life. When I was homeless, I could have never met him had I not gone through that. So it was perfect. And factory of my life.

27:49
Ever. Go ahead.

Lois Koffi 27:51
I was gonna say however, it did teach me to slow down. Ask yourself, is this really in my best interest? Is this the right partner the right thing, the right, whatever. And if I you know, if I can add like a part two to that is, is if you do seek counsel from other people, just make sure they are exactly the right person for that to quality. Yeah, thank you.

Andrew Stotz 28:18
So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Lois Koffi 28:24
I'm so excited for so part of my plan for the next 12 months is I'm having the manifest and monetize summit. And so I'll probably have to within the next 12 months, but the goal is to continue this permission based message and movement. And I want to have at least 10,000 people attend that and listen to my 20 plus speakers. And of course, they're going to hear a lot about my story and about permission based messaging and marketing and manifesting through your truth and service and permission based sales. So it's all around that. But really, through that through getting those 10,000 people to come through and hear all this inspiration to bring positivity to the world to really create a massive movements that'll help more people be healthy and wealthy and wise.

Andrew Stotz 29:18
Well, I think that's exciting. And I know for the listeners out there, web, all the links in the show notes so that you can connect also just go to healthy and wealthy and wise podcasts. And that's an n not n and

Lois Koffi 29:33
between the domain was taken already. So I had I had I had I had, you know,

Andrew Stotz 29:38
there you have it. And also, as you get the details of the summit, you know, I hope I can get that and I'll share that in the show notes but also in my email so that people are up to date about it because I know I would like to go there too. So listeners there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you mine Listening, reduce risk and increase return in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com. And I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude those, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a starts Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Lois Koffi 30:28
I'm going to go back to discipline your disappointments and never give up because you matter. You have greatness inside of you. You're You're still breathing, you're here there's there's something that you need to share and speak your truth. And it does require disciplining, your disappointments and never giving up.

Andrew Stotz 30:47
And for those people who love your message, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Lois Koffi 30:53
Yeah, there's a couple of things, if they want to go to Lois cofi.com. That's first last name. com. However, now that I'm alumni, this is so exciting. I was a college professor for a while. It's another whole fun story that came out of the homeless period, actually. But I have a course. That's all about permission sales. I'll give the link and the promo code. It's a $497 course I'll give it to your audience only for free so they can understand better. It's a five day slash one hour day five hour course in total to help them generate 100 leads in five days using the permission based method that I created last year in this new normal as a result of my experience,

Andrew Stotz 31:42
you know, that feeling when you like you just feel a wave of feeling, you know, when someone does something, that's how I just felt, and I really appreciate that. And I know, for the listeners, I'll have that in the show notes. Click that link. It's right. They'll be right there in the show notes and take advantage of this opportunity that Lois has given us and we appreciate it and that's a wrap on another great story to help you crate grow and protect your well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.