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For Jade Handy, learning is a state of mind.

And though his Des Moines-based business has been open only four years, the 37-year-old entrepreneur said he has been practicing and implementing his techniques since high school.

“I’ve always had a habit of being able to pick something up and immediately being able to test it out or duplicate it,” Handy said of the foundation of State of Mind Coaching & Learning.

Following his graduation from Storm Lake High School, Handy spent two years working in California before returning home to attend Buena Vista University. By then, he had already begun to pay close attention to what highly effective communicators were doing and how managers were persuading their employees.

Drawing on his own observations and experiences – which he said include making money 25 different ways by the time he was 25 – Handy took his talent for applying what works and what doesn’t and turned it into a full-time gig.

His business, a sole proprietorship that opened in late 2005, is centered on identifying the top performers in an organization and assessing their soft skills and abilities in a group setting, which allows others to learn from their experience.

With a focus on non-verbal communication and best practices, Handy acts more as a facilitator than as a teacher.

“They are actually training each other,” Handy said of the people in his group-training sessions. “That’s where the power of my training comes. I’m bringing stuff to the group, but almost everything that I train is going to come directly from the group.”

He said not only does that give the information that’s uncovered “immediate credibility,” it also allows the top performers to gain a better understanding of what they are doing right.

“Sometimes the top people don’t even understand what they do to persuade others,” Handy said, noting that when he poses the questions, he often gets a deer-in-the-headlights look.

“They can now notice on a daily basis those things that they never were able to notice before – the things that were obvious and elusive,” he said.

But Handy says the greatest value for businesses, organizations and individuals is an opportunity for average performers to grow and improve.

Citing a study by the Sales Executive Council, which states that star performers are nearly 60 percent more productive than core, or average, workers in traditional sales environments, Handy said focusing on the middle makes more sense.

The research shows that a 5 percent positive shift in productivity across the core group yields 70 percent more revenue than a 5 percent shift in the productivity of top performers.

“You’re going have some people that do it really well and some people that don’t,” Handy said, noting that most businesses and organizations tend to focus on just the top-level people. “It makes a lot more sense to focus on the middle people.

“My approach is, you take what the top people are doing, you reverse-engineer what the top people are doing, and then you re-engineer what the other performers are doing so they can get similar results.”

Though those results may vary, Handy said, his method is effective because it allows for the transfer of proven and effective skills.

“Jade’s concepts are extremely easy to understand and implement,” wrote Chris Rasmussen, owner of Storm Lake-based Rasmussen Ford-Mercury Inc., in a 2007 testimonial for State of Mind. “He did not fill us with theory and ‘text book’ communication techniques; he quickly and effectively modeled his presentation based on the information provided by the group.”

In addition to the local sales teams of Infomax Office Systems Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., Handy has worked with coaches, consultants, athletes and individuals across the state.

In 2006 and 2007, Handy said, he worked with the Drake University women’s volleyball team, which was at the time under the supervision of Head Coach Amy Farber Knowles and Athletic Director Sandy Hatfield Clubb.

Three of that club’s four 2006 wins came late in the season, following Handy’s arrival. In 2007, the volleyball team doubled its number of victories from the prior year.

“What’s amazing is the ability of people to learn new things and do extraordinary things in life,” Handy said. “If they can just break out of their patterns of thinking and do something new, it’s absolutely amazing what they can accomplish.”