Episode 184: Reversible Decisions | Ray Higdon on Walking Away

Guest: Ray Higdon, founder of Higdon Group, helping sales reps stop chasing and start closing with confidence.

Episode Summary

Ray Higdon had built a multimillion dollar sales training business, hit every financial goal he'd set, and still felt like something was missing. In November 2022, a decision he couldn't fully explain cost him a multimillion dollar contract and reshaped how he runs his business and his life. This episode is for the entrepreneur who already knows something needs to change and is still weighing every possible reason to wait.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Success without the feeling: Hitting every financial goal doesn't automatically resolve the internal disconnect that made you chase the goal in the first place.
• Reversible versus irreversible decisions: Most of what we're afraid to decide is reversible. What's actually irreversible is years spent in regret over the decision we didn't make.
• The real risk is staying put: If you already know you don't like where you are, the safer-feeling choice to wait is often the riskier one.
• Releasing instead of adding: Ray's biggest business shift came from dropping eight to ten projects and clients that no longer fit, not from taking on something new.
• Idols in the heart: Learning to tell the difference between true direction and emotion or desire, by noticing the specific areas where judgment tends to get clouded.

Guest Bio and Links

Ray Higdon is the founder of Higdon Group. He helps sales reps stop chasing and start closing with confidence. Since 2018, he's helped students generate over 300,000 new customers by improving posture, conversations, and follow-up, without pressure or burnout.

Instagram: @rayhigdon (https://www.instagram.com/rayhigdon/)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rayhigdonpage
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@saleswithrayhigdon
Website: https://higdongroup.com/

Full Transcript

Dawn: Welcome back to the Self-Trust Solution podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Ledet, the Self-Trust coach, and today I am joined by Ray Higdon. Ray is a sales trainer and coach who helps sales professionals stop chasing and start closing with confidence. Since 2018, he's helped our students generate over 300,000 new customers by improving posture, conversations, and follow up, without pressure or burnout.

But what we're really diving into today, what I'm most interested in, is a different kind of turning point. In November 2022, Ray made a decision that completely changed how he showed up in his life and business. One that cost him a multimillion dollar contract and challenged the expectations of his audience and even those closest to him.

What I'm excited for you to hear is what it looks like to trust yourself when the direction you feel called to take doesn't make sense, and doesn't come with guarantees. Ray, I'm so glad you're here.

Ray Higdon: Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Dawn: Yes. So take us to before November of 2022, before this shift that we're gonna share and talk about, how would you describe how you were operating in your life and business then?

Ray Higdon: Yeah, so there's really two pieces that I think are relevant, from 2009 to 2019. The business had grown every single year, and I went from foreclosure, losing it all in real estate, to tens of millions of dollars. So by 2019, from the look of it, I am winning on every single level, right?

I've got an amazing family, money in the bank. I'm speaking on all these different stages, and I'd achieved so many of the financial goals that I'd put out there. But I didn't feel any different about myself. I thought, if I did this, I'll feel better, or if I do this, then I'll be worthy. I didn't know exactly what I thought money, success, would do for me, but it wasn't doing that.

So the second piece is, starting in 2020, I went on a very different journey of, maybe I need healing. I grew up in a very abusive home. So I tried different therapies. I tried hypnosis. I did two years of one to three hours a day of meditation. All of that stuff helped, but it wasn't the answer.

And then in November of 2022, through an interesting series of things, I found the Lord. I didn't grow up in the church or anything like that, so this was very foreign to me. And that's really what changed everything.

Dawn: So from the outside, everything looked like success. Everything looked exactly like what you had been working to build. But inside, what would you describe that feeling as, if you could, that disconnect?

Ray Higdon: There was an interview, after 2022, that I really resonated with, and I feel like he said it perfectly. There was an NFL player on 60 Minutes, and he had just won his third Super Bowl. The interviewer says, "Man, you gotta be feeling on top of the world, you gotta be so fired up and excited for life." And he said, "Most days I wonder, is this all there is? I feel like something's missing." And the interviewer, kind of surprised, said, "Well, what do you think it is?" He goes, "I wish I knew." And that NFL player was Tom Brady. I just felt like something was missing, and I didn't know what it was.

Dawn: Well, and you had exhausted a lot of avenues trying to fill that missing.

Ray Higdon: That's right.

Dawn: So you've told us that what really happened was finding the Lord. Take us to that moment. I believe you said it was November 14th.

Ray Higdon: That's right, that's right. Actually happened to you... Yeah. So my wife had spoken at an event, maybe a month, month and a half earlier. She had spoken at a women's event in Nashville, and she came back home and said, "Hey, I met someone you should talk to." And I'm like, okay. He happened to be the MC of this women's event, and he lives in Miami. I live in Naples, Florida. I didn't know him, he didn't know me, but we scheduled a Zoom call.

So I get on with him, and the first words out of his mouth are, "I see a big vision for you and God." I'm like, okay. I figured he was raising money, I was very cynical, skeptical. I don't know you, buddy. I didn't grow up in the church, I didn't know anything about anything. So I just thought that's kind of a crazy thing to start off with. We talked for like an hour and it really didn't make sense, but it felt true.

The next day, my wife and I go to a networking meeting here in Naples, and I see this guy, I've met him before, but I didn't remember his name, didn't know what he did or anything. We walk into this networking function, and he turns, and as soon as he sees me, he says, "I see a big vision for you in God." I'm like, oh, that's weird, he doesn't know that other guy, that's verbatim, this is strange. And he goes, "We need to pray." This guy is a former Marine Corps corrections officer, six foot five, giant of a man, and he's a pastor.

So he puts his big bear paws on me and we start praying, or he starts praying, I don't start praying. He starts praying, and I start crying. I start weeping and shaking. I don't know what is going on, and we're in the middle of this networking function. There's like 200 people around us, seated, we're standing, he's six foot five, and the only thing I remember him saying, and he's yelling, he says, "You're gonna face a fork in the road and you gotta choose God." He's just yelling, and after what seems like ten minutes, twenty minutes to me, it just felt like forever, I get out of the prayer clutch and I'm thinking, this is embarrassing, right, 'cause there's hundreds of people around and they're right within, I could smack 'em, we're literally in the middle. We get out of this prayer clutch. No one said a word. No one saw anything.

So I'm looking around, like no one batted an eye at the grown man weeping and shaking, and the guy bellowing his face off. So we go downstairs and I ask my wife, "Man, did that just happen?" And she goes, "Oh, it happened." I'm like, "But no one saw anything." And she goes, "I have no idea." So we're really confused. I wrestled with it for a couple weeks, and then on November 14th, 2022, I invited the original guy from Miami, he brought a guy from church, and that's when we accepted the Lord.

Dawn: What an amazing story. So what was your faith like, or not like, before that?

Ray Higdon: I was very new age. I was very much, we are the manifester, and if it's gonna be, it's up to me, and it's all about your subconscious. Not that I don't think any of that stuff is valid, I think a lot of it is valid, but the biggest difference was me not being the source, and God being the source. And I think that's the biggest distinction. It's weird to go back and think, how did I think? I believed in a higher power, I just didn't know what that looked like. Is it the universe, is it, whatever. So I was more new age.

Dawn: Got it. And you said the next morning you woke up and you knew you weren't the same person.

Ray Higdon: When you do one to three hours a day of meditation for two years, you really get to know your body. I learned that if I got up at 1am, that's when your melatonin's the highest, and it would produce the most powerful meditations. So I would get up and do a ninety minute meditation at 1am and go back to bed. It was wild. That next morning I swing my feet over, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I'm like, what the heck. I'm looking at my hands, I'm looking at the sunrise, and I am not the same person.

I don't know anything, born anew, born again, I don't know any of these things, 'cause I don't know anything. I had this overwhelming nudge to pray, but I don't know how to pray, so I just got on my knees and said, "God, tell me what to do. If you want me to shut the business down, tell me what to do, I'll be obedient." And I very strongly got, go live. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to go live. That was not Ray's idea. I did not want to go live. I'd been a public speaker, a keynote speaker, for 20 years. I'd never said the word God, ever, from stage or with clients or anything. So I wrestled with it for several hours, and eventually I go live. It's called "My Apology to God." That gets 50,000 views the first day. And that kind of kicked off a whole stream of interesting things that happened.

Dawn: Something comes to mind when you share that about how you just knew you were different, that scripture line that says something like, scales fell from his eyes.

Ray Higdon: Yeah, exactly, like I'm looking at my hands and I'm looking at the sunrise and it's different colors, it's like 4K. I'm like, this is so wild, I felt like I was on a trip or something.

Dawn: So you mentioned that some of what you felt led to do, like going live, didn't make logical sense. Maybe even your wife questioned some of it. What did that tension feel like in real time, where you're both like, what is this?

Ray Higdon: I'm trying to remember where she was, I think she was out of the house at that point, so we didn't discuss that in the moment. There were times where we had major clashes, and probably the biggest time was October of 2023. We go on a Holy Land tour of Israel, I get baptized in the Sea of Galilee, we're touring all these amazing sites, Capernaum and Nazareth, just awesome. And we were there when October 7th happened, when the war broke out, when the music festival was attacked, all that started.

So we went from gift shops and buying souvenirs and taking selfies to the bomb shelter, four times. Here we are in Jerusalem, and we were in the bomb shelter four different times, and she is freaking out. She bought six different flights, they all got canceled. Literally the toughest week of our fifteen year marriage, by far. And I'm praying, I'm telling her it's gonna be okay, she's not listening, she's freaking out. And we have one last fight, we actually make it to the airplane to get out, our original thing. So we were there five days after October 7th happened. It was just sheer terror and sheer fear, fight or flight for five days straight.

We get on the plane, we have one last fight on the actual plane, and I think to myself, and this is the first time I've ever thought this, are we even gonna be together when we land. And that's when God showed me, I thought he was working on her, he was actually working on me, because one of my wounds was not being heard as a kid. And I'm trying to tell her in prayer, "we're gonna be okay," she ain't listening. So that wound kept coming up, of me not being listened to as a kid. And when I realized that, we've never been closer. I got out, she was actually sitting in front of me, we were in first class, and I got out, kissed her and hugged her, they're like, go back to your seat. It was awesome. And we've been so much closer ever since.

Dawn: Okay. So tell us a little bit about these moments where you're wondering if you're going crazy. How do you navigate the space between doubt and conviction, between calling and uncertainty?

Ray Higdon: It's interesting, 'cause your podcast is called Self-Trust, and that absolutely is part of it. It absolutely is, because for me, I have to trust that I am hearing him in prayer. So for me, hearing in prayer isn't that I hear some external voice. I don't hear James Earl Jones or Clint Eastwood or some booming voice. It's different for people. Some people see images and visions or dreams, my wife gets dreams all the time that kind of instruct her on what to do. I don't typically get that. For me, it's my own internal voice, but it's words I wouldn't use.

One of the most prominent times I got it, I was very frustrated. When I accepted Christ, I thought everything would get better. Actually, everything got worse. My life fell to pieces. I lost multimillion dollar contracts, big money clients, I went through the wringer. And I remember, this was probably, maybe eight or nine months in, maybe a year in, I'm so frustrated, my oldest son isn't talking to me, I've lost all kinds of money, all kinds of investments, and I get in prayer and I'm just frustrated. I'm like, "God, what is going on?" And I get, in my own internal voice, "I had to keep breaking you so you would keep searching and find the need to love yourself."

Now, I don't know what that means, those are not my words, I would not come up with those words. Where did they come from? So I'm like, what does that even mean? It took about two weeks, but what was revealed to me was, I had a program that I ran every night. I would analyze that day and locate one thing to beat myself up about, either something I did or something I didn't do, every night. I would lay down to bed and just calculate, okay, what did I do wrong today, or what did I not do. I would find it, beat myself up, then go to bed. How unhealthy. I was a bully to myself, there was a part of me that hated myself. That was revealed to me. I've since broken that off. I don't do any of that kind of stuff anymore.

So that's the kind of stuff, I've had all kinds of wild adventures that my wife just shakes her head at. But yeah, it's trusting, okay, am I actually hearing from the Lord, am I actually being guided, or am I just nuts. I've got lots of those stories.

Dawn: So tell us a little bit about that multimillion dollar contract that you lost. What was that experience like?

Ray Higdon: I had just spoken at an event in Calgary, there were 2,000 people there. The organizers of that event loved it, they loved what I taught, they thought it was awesome. They're like, okay, we're gonna put you as the head coach over our entire sales team. They have a humongous sales team, a global team, and that was going to be multiple millions of dollars. I invited them to my event, and my event that year was Faith Over Fear, my very first Faith Over Fear Business Summit. I had John Maxwell there, several other pretty big names. It was very faith forward, very faith heavy, faith strong. And they were not about that. They literally left in the middle of the event and cut off everything. That was one of probably ten different clients, high paying clients, that I lost.

What I've learned, because in the beginning I was so on fire, is I'm much less faith forward and more value forward now. And then sometimes I earn the right and they want to know about my faith, and I share it. So it's definitely been a learning process for me.

Dawn: What helped you continue forward through those moments of real loss, real resistance?

Ray Higdon: Pro God's promises. There's a lot of, I ask a lot of questions in prayer, I go on prayer walks and ask questions. If you look at the story of David, right, he knew Goliath couldn't kill him because he'd already been told he would be king. He wasn't yet king, so he couldn't have been killed. He walked in the promise. So in asking, in prayer, "Lord, what do you have planned for me," that gave me the strength to move past any circumstance. I've had lots of them, lawsuits, loss, investments go up in smoke. But I've also had good things, things that showed up unexpectedly, companies hire me out of the blue that are billion dollar companies that had never hired me before. So I've had the good, but it's just clinging to the promises of what I've gotten in prayer, and I keep moving forward.

Dawn: Yeah, it's trusting God and being led, and self-trust, that you're hearing.

Ray Higdon: And self-trust. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I learned through my own journey, it started with faith, knowledge of my faith, knowing it, believing it, but not really owning it and living it. And the self-trust piece came from a true acknowledgement of, I have been operating and succeeding without any of it. And what I've found through that walk of growing in my faith and in self-trust is, it's the same conversation.

Dawn: Yeah. If you let it be. We can't trust what we don't know, and if we're not knowing and believing that not only is God good, but he's good for you specifically, good to you.

Ray Higdon: Yes, and for those of us in these kinds of positions, he's good through us as well.

Dawn: Amen. I think there are a lot of people that love God but don't have any idea how much he loves them.

Ray Higdon: Yeah, and a lot of times that comes from father wounds. I didn't have the greatest relationship with my dad, and I projected how I thought about my dad toward God. I thought he was mean, uncaring, I'd never be good enough, he'd never be proud of me. And that's just not accurate.

Dawn: It's so true. We shrink him and make him mirror people in our lives.

Ray Higdon: Well said. It's so true and it makes such a big difference. It's so hard, I wrote a book called Trust, Surrender, Obey, and it's hard to trust someone you don't know. Surrender feels really dangerous and scary unless you know the person you're trusting has you so completely. And obedience feels like capture, it feels like imprisonment, until you realize who you're surrendering to. And when you do, then it's freedom. It's pure freedom.

Dawn: I love that this work is being found out in the world through avenues of business and goals and making a mark and impact in the world, because they're so tied together. If we let it, it becomes mission instead of just work.

Ray Higdon: Sonship versus servanthood. Daughtership versus servanthood. It's not like, okay boss, I'll do it, you know, he's God the father, not the Godfather. So it's, oh, you're asking me to do something, I'm honored, I want to represent you, thank you for choosing me. I feel honored.

Dawn: Wow, it's such a perspective shift, from when we think that we're being forced through things, instead of cared for through things, guided through. You mentioned that early on emotions and desires could get mixed in. How did you begin to distinguish between those, what you felt was true direction, and maybe just emotion and desire?

Ray Higdon: That has been a very major learning. There's a verse I found that just blew me away, it's Ezekiel 14:4, and it says, "Those who come to me with idols in their heart, I'll respond to them according to the idols in their heart." And where I would consistently find out later that I got wrong answers in prayer was around three areas. Number one, food, because growing up, every night I would go to bed dreaming about eating, 'cause I was starving, I wasn't in the greatest household. Number two, money. I actually wrote a book, and the first chapter is, "Money was my master, but only when I was broke." I've been broke twice, and it just controlled my emotions and everything. So I had three idols in my heart: food, so when I would pray about, should I eat this, I'd get a yes and I'd eat the burrito, and that was more Ray, that wasn't God. And money, I would make mistakes, invest in things I wasn't supposed to invest in.

And the third was my wife. When I started dating my wife, eighteen or nineteen years ago, we've been married for fifteen, but when I started dating her, it was when I'd lost everything, I was in foreclosure, dead broke, she used to pay my utility bills. So "don't let wife down" was honestly my number one marching priority. When times got tough and I knew I was letting her down, that was very hard. So I prayed for God to take the food and the money part away.

But the wife came in a very interesting way. We were having an argument about money, but this time it was different. I mean, we've argued about money a bunch of times, but this time it was different. I prayed afterwards, and I'm like, man, what, that was different, it went better than it's ever gone, and I feel like I stood up better than I ever have. And in prayer I got, "I had to get you to trust me more than you were worried about letting her down." I'm like, whoa. 'Cause I realized I had the priority wrong, I had "don't let her down" over "trust God" somewhere. So he helped me with that. And it's interesting, because it's not like, well now I'm okay letting her down, screw it. No, actually we are closer than ever before and everything's better.

So with God, some people with big goals are worried about surrendering, because they're like, I've got big things I want to do. Well, his ways are higher than our ways, and when we surrender to him, he knitted us together, he knows exactly what will lift our heart, what will give us purpose, what will give us joy. If I surrender to my wife, she'll do the best she can, but there's pieces of me she may not know or understand, the adventurous side or whatever, she would do the best she could. But if you surrender to him, then you know it's gonna be amazing, because his ways are higher.

Dawn: Well, and it's that idea, that's why trust has to be in it, because we assume when we think of surrender that it means we don't get what we want. And the truth is, that's not always the case. It could be better than anything, if we allow it, it's gonna be better than we can even think of.

Ray Higdon: That's right. But we're assuming it's gonna be terrible, and it's not what we want, like you're gonna be Mother Theresa, just poor.

Dawn: Exactly. And what I love about what you said, about it doesn't mean now you want to let her down, right, you just don't have to think about it, because it becomes the expression of the trust in God and discerning his place.

Ray Higdon: Well said. We're always trying to fix the expression, the symptom, instead of the root. And what you've done there is now found the root.

Dawn: Well said. So you said something powerful, that now you love every minute of your career, which wasn't the case before. So tell us what's different, about you, about your work, how you work.

Ray Higdon: It's probably now been a year, maybe. I'm always looking for good questions to ask in prayer, and I heard someone say, ask God, what is he wanting to do, what is he wanting to create for you in your business. I'm like, ooh, that's a good question. So I prayed, "God, what do you want to create for me in my business?" And the word "freedom" came up. At the time I did not feel free. I had a lot of clients that were, ugh, either they weren't implementing what I was telling them, or they were unorganized, just not doing the things right. So I did not feel free.

Fast forward to July 1st last year, I log in in the morning and my YouTube account is shut down. I had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that YouTube, we had two different reality shows on there, so many professionally edited videos, and we had some backups, but not everything. So I'm looking at the page and it says, do you want to appeal? And I pray, "am I appealing this?" No, okay. Alright, you're starting new and you're gonna focus on sales. And I'm like, huh, I taught sales in one way, shape or form for twenty years, but I also taught marketing and branding and this and that and mindset. So I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna trust. I start a brand new channel, all on sales. And those clients that I really didn't enjoy didn't renew, new clients came in, and those clients were awesome.

Now, it took maybe four, five months, but I remember one day I wake up and I look at my calendar, and every single thing on my calendar I'm looking forward to. I've never had that in my entire life. So I love what I do, I'm mainly training sales teams and helping people make more sales, and I just love it. I barely have to prepare, I just show up and they ask questions and I answer them, and they pay, great, they renew all the time. It's just been awesome.

Dawn: I hope what a lot of people take away from that is that when things shift, it's because of releasing something, surrendering, if you will, not adding a bunch of new things on, and not clinging to what already is.

Ray Higdon: Oh, I've dropped so many projects, probably eight to ten in the last year, year and a half, and all of them I thought was gonna go badly. It all went super smooth, all of it. It was like, I feel so much freer. I know we hold so tight to some things.

Dawn: I always say part of it is that whole adage, when a lot of us are growing up, you had to finish what you started. You started on a sports team, you had to finish it. We carry that into our lives and our businesses. I'm gonna just keep doing this until I'm done doing it, and it's not working, why are you doing that?

Ray Higdon: Well, and biblically, God says to Moses, he goes, "What's in your hand? Throw it down." I just feel like that's an instruction for us, hey, maybe we're not supposed to hold onto these things. I had a really powerful image at a silent retreat once. I am carrying this really heavy backpack, and I'm walking up this hill with Jesus, and he asked me for the backpack. And when Jesus asks me for something, I gave it to him, and I'm thinking, okay, he's gonna carry it. He did not, he just put it down. He was like, this does not need to be carried. It was never meant to be.

Dawn: That's awesome. So maybe there was a point for something that you're carrying that you were supposed to carry, but maybe it was never meant to be carried, and just know that now is the moment that you can set it down and it's okay. Here's your permission right here, Ray and I are giving it to you.

Ray Higdon: That's right, that's right.

Dawn: So for someone listening who may not use the same language, but knows they're being pulled in a direction that doesn't make logical sense, how would you describe what it means to trust that?

Ray Higdon: I've had a lot of moments like that. I heard this said by, I think it was Steven Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO guy. He said there's two types of decisions, right, there's irreversible and there's reversible. And too often we take a very reversible thing and think it's irreversible. You leaving a job is very reversible, you can go get another job, you can take your resume and find another job. What's actually irreversible is regret. What's irreversible is not making the leap, and taking ten years doing something you hate.

I learned this very early on. I was working at a Winn-Dixie when I was like 18, maybe. I hung around a very bad crowd in high school, and I'm looking for advice, 'cause I want to get away from that, I don't want to do that stuff anymore. So I go to the store manager, who I think was like 32 at the time, and I said, "Hey, you've been here a long time, right?" He goes, "Oh yeah, I've been here 12 years." I'm like, "Oh wow, you must love it." He goes, "I hate it." I'm like, "Why, what do you mean, what are you doing?" And he goes, "At this point I'm making enough money that I couldn't make the same thing anywhere else."

And I am thinking, whoa. And that stuck with me my entire life. Anytime I was in a career that I started to hate, I'm like, I gotta get out of here now. Crazy thing about that story, so I was 18, let's see, 22 years later, okay, my wife and I are featured in a newspaper article here locally, and a guy reaches out to me and says, "Hey, I don't know if you remember me or not, but I was your store manager at Winn-Dixie." And I'm like, yeah, 'cause I've actually shared that story a million times. I'm like, oh no, I wonder if he's heard it. And he said, "Yeah, I saw your article, congratulations, can you do lunch, I'd love to talk." And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So we do lunch. He's still at Winn-Dixie. He still hates it. And that just stuck with me.

So that's irreversible, for you to spend 34 years minimum at a job you hate. I don't think God puts you on here to toil at a job you can't stand. So trust is, is the decision reversible, that's question number one, and it most likely is. Question number two is, is it gonna grow me, is this gonna be adventurous, am I gonna grow in some way, shape, or form. Those are, I think, the two most important questions.

Dawn: And what does it look like, will I love it if this works, that's a great question too. Because there's, what's the, is the juice worth the squeeze, right? Is, if I go and this is successful and awesome, will I enjoy it, or do I even know?

Ray Higdon: You might not know.

Dawn: Yeah. And so, but if you know you don't like where you are, then the biggest risk is staying put. And stop trying to predict the future too much. Right, like, am I gonna love it, is it a possible, you won't know until you do it.

Ray Higdon: That's true.

Dawn: So it's, is it worth trying, sometimes. Sometimes it's important for you to learn that you don't love it.

Ray Higdon: Exactly, because you would never know that otherwise. How would you know? You're gonna wonder, and you're gonna stay at Winn-Dixie for too long.

Dawn: That's right. And please also don't ask yourself anything about comfort, 'cause it's all gonna be uncomfortable.

Ray Higdon: That's right. Anything you haven't done is uncomfortable. So is staying where you are, by the way, if you don't like it, also very uncomfortable.

Dawn: So tell us a little bit about what you're focused on now in your work.

Ray Higdon: I train a lot of sales teams. Sometimes it's real estate, insurance, financial planners, sometimes it's network marketers, direct sales, I have a deep background in that industry. Usually I'm looking at their scripts, their follow ups, their ads, their funnels, and just helping them make more sales. I need to do a better job of wording it, so I started off by saying, since 2018 I've generated over 300,000, it's, since 2018, I've helped our students generate 300,000 new clients, new customers. So we just, I love tracking, I love helping people make more sales, so that's primarily what I'm doing nowadays.

Dawn: But you do help people make money, and help other people.

Ray Higdon: Yes, yes, help people help more people. I think there's millions of people out there that have a product or service they believe in that would be helpful, but they just don't know how to sell it. So that's where I can come in, look at what you're trying to sell, and help you sell more of that thing that's going to benefit humanity, benefit the people you're supposed to benefit.

Dawn: We are built for service, all of us, in one way, whatever that mission looks like for you, whether it is through marketing, sales, any kind of way, we are all built for service. So tell us where people can connect with you, learn more about you.

Ray Higdon: I post a lot of fun stuff on our Instagram channel, it's just @rayhigdon. If you're wanting to improve sales, we post a lot of content on our new YouTube channel, at higdongroup.com/channel, we post videos literally all the time, for free, so you can check that out. We specialize in helping people that want to sell more without being pushy or annoying or chasing or bugging. What I've found is people that say "I don't wanna be pushy" often end up being pushy, because they don't have the skills needed to not be pushy, or they're silent, they don't talk to anybody and they never sell anything. So learn the skills, because you probably have a great product or service, you just need to help more people with it, and to do that, you do need skills.

Dawn: Well, we'll have all of those links so that you can connect with Ray in our show notes. This conversation is such a powerful example of what it looks like to trust yourself, to trust God, even when the path doesn't make sense, and even when it comes with a real cost. And I think what stands out most is that self-trust isn't about certainty. It's not about knowing exactly what's gonna happen. It's not even about understanding the path, often. Sometimes it's just choosing to move forward with conviction. So thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.

Ray Higdon: Thanks for having me.

Dawn: If today's conversation turned something in you, I want you to take one next step. Before you close this episode, go take the Self-Trust Identity Map, because before strategy, before motivation, before effort, you need to know where your identity is operating from, because that is what determines everything that follows. It's free, it takes three minutes, and it will give you a precise read on where you're operating from right now and exactly where to focus next. The link is in the show notes, and we'll see you next time. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming. These stories are just getting started. Bye.

Ready to know where your identity is actually operating from right now?

Take the free Self-Trust Identity Map. It takes three minutes and gives you a precise read on exactly where to focus next.
https://www.theselftrustcoach.com/identity-assessment-page

Want to go deeper? The Floor: Your Build is available now. Self-paced, structured, and built around the same framework.
https://www.theselftrustcoach.com/the-floor-your-build