Welcome to The Breakthrough with Chris Medellin. Yes, I am changing the name of my podcast, The Chris Medellin Show. It is now going to be called Breakthrough with Chris Medellin. And what does breakthrough mean and why am I changing the name? Well, the reason is breakthrough is about finding your voice and building confidence and believing in yourself to take your business and take yourself to the next level.
And I want to share with you stories from remarkable people who have broken through and have taken it to the next level. But I also want to emphasize people who are in a business that are diverse and people in business who have been through severe adverse situations in life. I started the podcast originally, The Chris Medellin Show during a pandemic, and I really couldn’t think of a really strategic name for it.
So I just named it the Chris Medellin Show. And over the years I’ve worked through 45 interviews and I realized who I wanted to inspire and who I wanted. The audience to be. And in a lot of ways, that audience is you, and it’s also me, but who I was 20 years ago, a young Hispanic guy who had no mentorship.
I was frustrated so many times because I felt alone, and I wish I was not left alone to figure things out on my own. I wish I knew somebody who was ten steps ahead of me and that can help me through all the things that were happening in my life that I didn’t know how to work through. There were times in my life that I felt undervalued, underappreciated, and just stuck in situations that I didn’t know how to work through.
And this podcast is meant to help you find inspiration through the stories of diverse, and people who have been through an adverse situations in their life. And if I could just inspire one person, then my job would be done. I really want to inspire you to break through and help you get to that next level. But what does Breakthrough really mean?
So I had an event this last year and it’s one I started really thinking about the term breakthrough. Now, I had been through these periods in my life where I had broken through certain situations, but I didn’t really understand what it meant to break through. And I did an event this year called Breakthrough, and headlining the event was a gentleman by the name of Todd Duncan.
He’s actually one of the highest-rated podcasts that I’ve done. So if you haven’t checked it out, check it out. His name is Todd Duncan. Now, Todd’s job is to go around the world inspiring people and helping them build trust in their sales process to build more business. And Todd said to me that he loved the name breakthrough of the event because in order to break through, there really has to be a breakdown.
And I started to realize that while I had done this event called Breakthrough, I never really thought about what that meant. If you think about it for a second, and if you have ever broken through a situation in life, you know that period right before you break through that period when it’s just you alone with your thoughts and you’re trying to figure out, what do I need to do to get out of this situation?
And when you start to formulate that plan, it’s about that moment. It’s about the emotions that come through during that moment. Right before you break through. And that’s what I want to give you. I want to give you stories from remarkable people who can tell those back against the wall stories and what happened in their minds and how they had to change their mindset in order to take it to the next level and to break free of those barriers that were holding them back.
I want to help you get unstuck. As I’ve listened to podcast over podcast, over podcast of amazing people. I found that there was a void in the podcast space around this topic, around the topic of being diverse in the workplace, the topic of being diverse and not having the confidence to find your voice in order to break through or being undervalued in the workplace, or having something that’s just there that you can’t seem to shake.
And listening to stories of how other people have done it, there was a void in the podcast space for this topic, and I wanted to be able to be the vehicle to bring these stories to you. I also realized that there was a group of people, an audience, that wanted and needed to hear these stories of inspiration, to know that it’s okay to feel this way and how to change your mindset to breakthrough situations.
Breakthrough is a moment in time where you’re able to win because you took action, you found your confidence, you found your voice, and you did something about it. I have broken through so many times in my life where I’ve either broken free from a bad relationship, I broken through a fitness goal. I broke through a negative mindset. I broke through a toxic situation.
But most importantly, I broke through in business. Let me share with you a story. You know, when I was 25, I had entered the mortgage business for a large corporation, and back then the mortgage business was insane. It was very loosely regulated. Everyone was making tons of money. I mean, there were kids that were 19, 20 years old making 600,000, 700,000.
And I entered this as an assistant vice president, a person with leadership and I was making 50,000 a year. And I tell you that number because I think it’s important to the story. I went in this and I was very happy to make 50,000 because I knew that I was going to be able to create value with a program within the mortgage space.
And I also need you to know that that 50,000, I was the lowest-paid person in the entire organization. My job was to create a process internally to fund home equity loans, create a plan around it, and train loan officers on how to sell that product. So that’s what I did. And the first year we ended up selling a $1 billion of home equity product.
And still, I was making the same 50,000 that I started with. There were people selling this product and were making hundreds of thousands of dollars alone on that product. I was the only one in the entire organization that had a net and exceeded their goals, but yet I was still only making 50,000. And one of the other things that I think is important to note is that I was also the youngest.
I was the only one at the table of leaders that was diverse. A lot of times when I spoke, people ignored what I said and just passed over me. The entire division had missed their target, yet I was the one who had built a business from scratch and sold $1,000,000,000 of it through people by creating a comp plan and teaching people how to find an opportunity with the product.
And we crushed it. So instead, I remember being in these meetings and getting yelled at by our manager, our boss, and I remember him yelling at me one day out of the blue and saying things like, What is your value proposition? And I didn’t understand what he meant by that question, and I didn’t really understand the tone that he was taking and why he was angry, because I felt like I had done everything and exceeded all the goals that I had been at.
And I didn’t know how to answer that question. I didn’t understand. I think I was more embarrassed by the question and the tone that I didn’t even think of anymore. I just was a deer in headlights. And what I realized later are a million things I could have said to that. But I froze. I didn’t have a voice and I didn’t have the confidence.
And I looked around the room and I remember people were kind of chuckling about it. You know, at the time in the mortgage industry, it was bonkers. It was there was so much nonsense going on. Even at the company that I was with. People were getting drunk at work. Everyone was dating each other. There was, you know, I’m sure, fraud happening left and right.
And that was all coming from, you know, the leadership as well. Like the top leadership was kind of participate in all these things. And when I think back to everything that was happening, I can’t help but realize that a lot of this was happening probably because I lacked confidence. I was letting it happen to me and I didn’t have a voice.
So I realized that I needed to prove myself and I needed to find my voice. So in order to do that, I had concocted a plan in my head that I was going to approach the big boss and ask for a raise. Now, I was making 50 grand. I was the lowest-paid person, and my goal in my head is that if I can walk away from this and double that if I can make $100,000, I would be happy.
And so that was my goal. It was doing whatever you can to make $100,000 because that will change your life. So I built the comp plan to make it happen, and I mustered the courage to go and have the conversation with him and I went to his office. And by the way, just keep in mind, he’s my boss’s boss and my boss sits in the office next door.
So I knocked on his door and I said, Hey, do you have a second? He said, Yeah, yeah, come on in. And I stated my case and I laid out my plan. I practice it a million times on the way to work in my head. By the way, I didn’t set up a meeting because I didn’t want him to know.
I wanted to catch him off guard if you will. I wanted to get his real reaction. I wanted to see how he looked at me when I asked that question. And so I caught him off guard and I said, Hey, I met all my goals. I did everything that you asked me to do this last year. I think I’m going to double that number this year.
But I would like to be paid in an appropriate fashion, similar to how other managers in my capacity selling the first mortgage are paid. And he looked at me and then he yelled out, Cindy, who is my boss, sitting next door, and he said, Put Chris on the AVP plan. And she yells back, Okay. That entire conversation was 90 seconds, but that entire conversation changed my entire life.
That year, I ended up making six times more than I was hoping to make. It was life-changing money, and I tell you that not to tell you what I made, but I tell you that because I think it’s important to know that that moment right before I walked into that office, I was ready to debate.
I was prepared for a no. I was scared, but I was confident. And I think in a lot of ways I waited too long to have that conversation. I had no mentorship, but I did believe in myself. I had a breakthrough moment in my career. But remember, I put in the work I proved myself and I believed in myself.
And I had to find my voice. And the lesson I learned through that breakthrough moment is that no one is ever going to tap me on the shoulder and offer me more money. It’s never going to happen. I had to prove myself. I had to have the courage to ask. And right now, listening to this podcast, there is somebody who is deserving.
You have the ability to change the direction of your life, but you have to find your voice and you have to find your confidence and you have to believe in yourself. And that is what this and this entire idea of this podcast is to do. You know, I used to be the only diverse person at the table. I used to be the youngest person at the table.
And through the years I’m not the youngest anymore. And through the years I’m not the only diverse person anymore. But I’m creating change in my industry. I’m creating change in the business that I run because I want to help those that are undervalued, and underappreciated, find the confidence to find your voice and change your life. And I’m inviting you to join me on this journey and listen to the stories from the diverse.
Listen to stories from people who have been through severe adversity. And if I can inspire one person to make a change and a breakthrough, then my job is done. So I invite you to listen. I invite you to subscribe and I invite you to punch that like button. And let’s have some fun on this journey.
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