The library
Tom’s wisdom
Everything he has learned the hard way, written down and searchable.
Wisdom by Tom Cummins
A lifetime of lessons, passed on
Tom has been through a lot in life, and he has come out of it with an enormous amount of wisdom.
It ranges across finances, sales, building and leading some of the most powerful sales teams in the business, marketing, philanthropy, energy, leadership, hard work, running companies, and finding the right partners. He has taken it as a personal mission to pass that value on to everyone who decides to pay attention. Alongside the daily work of running his companies, he produces a never-ending stream of teaching, and all of it lands here.
We put this library together so it is easy to absorb. It is Tom’s blog, built on the back of his video lessons, and it comes with Tom’s Wisdom GPT: ask it anything, the way you would ask ChatGPT, and it answers from what Tom teaches. Or open a lesson and read it the way he teaches it, in his own words, with the full video right inside the article so you can read it, watch it, or both.
Nothing for sale. Pure value, passed on to you.
Tom’s Wisdom GPT
Ask about anything he has taught
This is Tom’s Wisdom GPT, and you use it the way you use ChatGPT. Ask any question and it answers you in conversation, drawn only from what Tom teaches in his videos, with links to the lessons behind every answer. Typing also filters the shelf below, so you can skip the conversation, go straight to an article, and watch the entire video inside it.
Typing filters the shelf. Press Enter to ask Tom’s Wisdom GPT, which answers only from Tom’s lessons.
Sales & Closing3 min read + watchA reader asked whether to buy lead lists or generate leads on social media. The answer is both, and then the real work starts.
Sales & Closing3 min read + watchSelling is the engine that makes the company run, and you can absolutely train someone to do it. Here is the machine I use.
Sales & Closing5 min read + watchSomebody asked me how you develop an outbound call center. Here is the story of five borrowed booths, forty scripts that went nowhere, and the Friday morning I grabbed the headset myself.
Sales & Closing5 min read + watchSomebody starting off in sales asked me how to get successful at it. There are only three things you control: what you say, how you say it, and how often you say it.- Sales & Closing3 min readSomeone asked for my top three tips for scaling a team. You cannot stop at three, but you can start in the right order.
Sales & Closing3 min read + watchA customer calls in ready to rip your jugular out, and nothing you say gets through. Here is the counterintuitive move I taught my customer service people.- Sales & Closing3 min readA drill from one of my sales floors about the only two things a phone salesperson really has: voice and intention.
Sales & Closing4 min read + watchSomeone wrote to me: I am putting out all this communication, making leads, and getting nowhere. Quantity problem or quality problem, the answer starts in the same place: what you are putting out.
Policy & Systems3 min read + watchEvery position in my companies has a product and a number. Here is how a cup of coffee explains the whole system.
Policy & Systems4 min read + watchEvery day I answer all my emails and handle all my texts, and never a weekend goes by with the decks unclear. That one habit, plus one hard conversation I make myself keep having, is what keeps everything else under control.
Policy & Systems3 min read + watchA viewer asked how I find the motivation and the time to write policy for everything in my company. The answer starts with what every owner is really trying to do: escape and move up.
Policy & Systems3 min read + watchHalf my job is making sure my staff know, in writing, exactly what I want done. Here is the procedure that makes a policy real.
Policy & Systems4 min read + watchPeople think expansion is a statistic on the wall. Here is how it actually gets done, from a brand new sales floor in Italy where I am training raw recruits in a language I do not speak.
Policy & Systems5 min read + watchA broker wrote in and asked what method I use for writing my policies. The honest answer explains the whole engine: everything that must happen in the company, over and over, gets written down.
Policy & Systems4 min read + watchA follower asked how I keep every moment valuable and geared toward progress when I am involved in companies on both sides of the ocean. The honest answer: written orders, one calendar, and a golden rule about who gets my time.- Policy & Systems3 min readWhen I say hard work, this is what I mean: the written list of everything that must happen in your company every single day.
Policy & Systems4 min read + watchSomebody asked which of my businesses I am working on refining right now. All of them, because in every business there are only two dials: quantity and quality.
Financial Wisdom3 min read + watchI never look at the checkbook balance, because the money is already spent. Here is the financial planning I run every seven days, personally and in every company.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchA follower asked me for a financial template. I gave back something better: the weekly habits that separate people who build wealth from people who just make money.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchYour business is in a hole and the hole looks deep. Here is where the attention goes: lock down the outflow, then drive the inflow, week after week, until the hole fills faster than you thought possible.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchIf I had to start over from scratch, I would build two skills: talking to anybody, and reading everybody. The second one is the one that cost me my first company.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchSomebody asked me how what we do at Cummins Worldwide is any different from every other accounting operation out there. Here is the answer, and the story of a client who went from a tax bill in the millions to fully caught up in twelve months.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchI just flew across an ocean on a Gulfstream, and I will not pretend that is cheap. Here is what luxury actually buys, why I would rather charter than own, and the test a reward has to pass before I pay for it.- Financial Wisdom3 min readMake more money now for a better today, and build residual income for an amazing tomorrow. You need both roads, and most people never take the second.
Financial Wisdom5 min read + watchWe started the company because we needed to work and make money. Then one day somebody puts a number on what you built, and you find out the government already has a plan for your estate. The question is whether you have one.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchI have been so broke I had to borrow just to breathe. The way out did not start with more money. It started when I finally confronted the thing.
Financial Wisdom3 min read + watchThe authorities in Italy took my flying limousine, and there is a real chance they keep it. Here is why that does not touch me, and where real security actually lives.
Financial Wisdom4 min read + watchIs it better to work alone or in a group? Point blank: a group, because a group lets you delegate. But it has to be the right group, and the most important person in it is not who you think.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchI made a video about not letting junior people hand you their problems, and the objections poured in: you are the boss, you are supposed to solve them. No. Here is how it actually works.
Leadership & Hiring4 min read + watchI stepped away from my company and put my best man in charge. When I came back and asked for my job back, he said no, and it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to either of us.- Leadership & Hiring3 min readWith opportunities coming at you constantly, how do you decide who to partner with? Two tests: the business, and the person running it.
Leadership & Hiring4 min read + watchSomeone wrote to me on Instagram: how do I lead my team, give them freedom, and still not lose sight of them? That is every owner's problem, and here is how I handle it.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchSomebody asked how I would handle a junior directly. Two rules: no problems without solutions attached, and every order in writing with a due date and someone chasing it.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchThey don't want to, or they don't know how. There are no other reasons, and both of them can be fixed.
Leadership & Hiring4 min read + watchI reward employees the same way I run everything else: with a number. Here is how I decide who gets paid more and who does not.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchPeople ask me for lessons on effective communication, which is funny, because if it is not effective, it is not communication. And the part no one tells you: success comes from talking about the uglies.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchEverywhere I go, people are not just hungry to better themselves. They are starving for it, and sometimes all it takes is one person leaning over and saying, I believe in you.
Leadership & Hiring3 min read + watchThe number one question I get asked: how do you attract and hire hungry, motivated people? Wrong verb. You make the environment where hunger can rise.
Mindset & Story5 min read + watchI have been back to zero more than once in my life. Money was never the security. Here is what the wipeouts taught me, and the two-phase machine I used to build it all back bigger.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchI was twenty-five, single, and living in Southern California, and nobody ever had to drag me to a good time. Here is how I built a business anyway.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchOne of the toughest decisions I ever made meant telling my wife to pack her bags a few months after we moved into the most gorgeous house we had ever lived in. Here is what carried me through it.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchPeople make a deal with themselves on Saturday night: Monday I start the new life. Monday comes and nothing starts. Here is why, and what to do instead.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchWhen two business owners meet, I always ask the same question, and it is not about the product. It is about the people, because that is where the hardest part of this whole life lives.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchSomebody asked how I avoid getting dispersed when too much is coming at me at once. Come on, man, why do you think they call it hard work?
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchHow did my journey start? Up at 5:30, first one in the office, night school until ten, and a rule about Mondays I still keep four decades later.- Mindset & Story3 min readA new hire watched me clean up the office coffee mess and said, you do that because you are the owner. He had it exactly backwards.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchWe all carry a picture of who we would like to be. I quit trying to answer who am I, and went to work on a better question: what can I get done this week, this day, this hour?
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchA mate in the UK asked how I grew up and got my big think mindset, and whether I was always the alpha male at school. The honest answer is no, and the real answer is better.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchSomebody asked me how important training and drilling really are. I just turned 68, and I still practice every day, because that is how the greats stay great.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchA reader asked what daily challenges I faced at the start of my business. Good timing: I am starting a brand new company from scratch right now, so let me show you in real time.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchA musician wrote in asking how to promote positive music when negative messages dominate the airwaves. I am the most unqualified person in the world to write a song, but this is a business problem, and I know how to solve those.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchI do not feel I am better than anyone else. Everything I have, anyone could have. The only person I am ever trying to beat is the guy I was yesterday.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchA man wrote to me the week he filed for bankruptcy and asked how long it took me to feel confident again after losing everything. The honest answer includes the two years I did it to myself.
Mindset & Story5 min read + watchA friend of mine moved into his dream house and called me confused because the big feeling never showed up. Here is why hitting the goal feels flat, and what to do the moment it does.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchEverybody wants the smooth ride, where everything just goes well. I have never found it, and the day a fire marshal gave me twenty-four hours to shut everything down is a good example of why.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchI am a free thinker who never much cared what the world thought of me. Then a partner sat me down and showed me what staying unknown was actually costing.
Mindset & Story4 min read + watchSomebody asked me what challenges I actually appreciate having in my life. Right question: there is no escaping problems, so the only choice you get is which ones you go after.
Mindset & Story3 min read + watchSomebody asked me what the sales trends are this year. I will be crass: get off the gimmicks. There is this thing called hard work.
The library never stops growing
Every new lesson publishes to YouTube first, then takes its place on this shelf as a written article. Subscribe and the library comes to you. If you want it in writing, the letter is monthly.
