The Entrepreneur DNA

Eat What You Kill: How to Build a Sales Army & Dominate in Business | Sam Taggart | EP 63

March 17, 2025 37m Episode 63

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Grainger, for the ones who get it done. I found there's very big lack of training.
It's like they'll hire training, or they'll hire people, and then they won't train them, and then they expect them to be great. But when you give people real good scripts, and real good accountability, and work with them, and role play with them, and give them hope and coach them, you know, and actually lead them, then they will perform better.
But I think a lot of people as a business owner, they're so busy doing all the other 50 things when I'm like the most valuable use cases of your time are threefold recruiting top talent. Number two is I'm training that talent.
And number three would be leading from the front, having that wherewithal to delegate some of your $10 an hour tasks and actually go on the field and sell shit. What is up entrepreneur DNA? Welcome back to an incredible episode.
I'm super excited about this episode for one big reason. I have one of the, and arguably, and actually Google has told us, that one of the top salespeople in the country, he is also a best-selling author, and he focuses his time on entrepreneurs on sales, leadership, and recruiting.
I got Sam Taggart here, people. What's up, dude? How you doing, man? Let's go.
It's funny. we have, I lean into four i lean into four basic principles mind body and connections and then it leads to your business that connection piece what we have it's funny that we were just talking off offline right like our mutual friend we've all we've circled each other for years without even really even knowing it i know and it's fun to connect that's why i was like hey it's.
Like somebody texted me. They're like, Hey, can you go to lunch? And I was like, no, but if somebody said, can you be on my podcast? I probably say yes.
And honestly, it'd probably be a deeper, cooler conversation anyway. You know what I mean? So there's no doubt.
It's such a fun way to kind of really talk meaningful conversation without being like, why would I just go to lunch? You know, like there, there's some power in that, but with busy schedules, this makes more sense. Well, for sure.
And I'm in Florida and you're in Utah, right? So, um, dude, let's get into, first of all, I want to talk about your book. Your book is phenomenal.
Um, it's, it's really leans into, you need to go out there and work as a salesperson. And if you're relying on a good economy, I've been preaching this for years in the real estate space, real estate investors specifically, the last 10 years has been amazing.
If you are not doing well in real estate in the last 10 years, then you weren't breathing. Right.
But now that the going has gotten a little more challenging, this leans into your book, right? Eat what you kill, right? Like you got to go work for it. So let's talk a little bit about your book, dude.
Yeah. So it's called Eat What You Kill, Become a Sales Carnivore.
And basically the premise is I felt like the sales world doesn't matter if you're doing software or, you know, every business has sales. But the problem is, is their salespeople, whether they're in person, B2B, B2C, over the phone, Zoom, they're all like I look at the majority of businesses and they have herbivore businesses, meaning as they're very codependent on the marketing, the leads, the funnel.
And many of them have never really fully experienced a 1099 carnivore, eat what you kill, no dependent type of sales culture. And the sucky part is a fish doesn't know it's in water until it's out of water, right? And I come from a culture where I never got a lead.
I knocked door since I was 11 years old. If I wanted something, I knew how to go knock, never got paid a W-2, never got paid a salary, never got paid anything to, I just created wealth.
And I look at the company I was a top rep at, 3,000, 1099, multi-billion, multi-exits, publicly traded, Vivint. They never, you know, none of us would got a lead.
You know what I mean? There was just an army of foot soldiers that went out and knocked and it created, you know, made a billionaire out of the owner. And anyway, long story short, the people in today's economy are just getting more and more soft and they never learned the skill of resilience.
They never learned the skill of a cold call. They never learned the skill of, you know, the pound the stone over and over and over and over again.
And they're lacking those skill sets yet. They're trying to run a business or they're trying to, you know, they're, they're wondering why are my sales guys not doing anything? It's like, cause you give them two appointments on the calendar and then they twiddled their thumbs and that's it.
Like that's it. That's all they'll do.
And once an herbivore kind of always an herbivore. So it's like, how do you shift and change your sales culture internally? And so this is like the Bible for that.
It's got nine sections on from mindset down to body language, down to prospecting, to pitching, to presenting, closing, objection handling. It goes through every concept of the sales cycle for creating more of a carnivore.
Yeah. Yeah.
Listen, you know, funny enough, a lot of people know my story, so I'll keep it short. I graduated UCLA, pretty prominent college, right? Good degree.
Not Asian? That's impressive. University of Caucasians, lost among Asians, baby.
You know it. You know it.
So listen, I've never used it. You know what my first real world job was after college? What? Door knocking.
Business to business door knocking. You may know the company, company called Sidcor.
Have you ever heard of Sidcor? Yeah. I've consulted some of their teams.
Right. So if you've met one of their senior i forgot the rankings now but senior whatever uh matt osborne really real dear friend of mine my first mentor right he took me under his wing and helped me understand it and um you know the reality is i wouldn't trade that for the world because those two years that I did that, I learned so much.
And you talked about it, the mindset, like every morning we had to be in there by 745 and we're going through skill sets and mindsets every day. The top leader would be able to go up there and give an analogy of what life is like and how we can use that analogy in the real world.
I mean, there's just so much that you get from it and being able to hear no a hundred times so you can get one yes a day. That was the model.
I needed to go here. No, 100 times so I could get my one.
Yes. And, uh, unfortunately I caught pneumonia when that, when, you know, when the client moves you to a different state, I went to Boston.
I'm a California boy, Sam, that winter boy door knocking. Come on, man.
It was zero degrees some days, right? I had tights. I had thermals.
I had wool coats. I had wool suits.
You couldn't get this California boy warm enough. Then I caught pneumonia, um, which launched my real estate career.
But I'll tell you, that is incredible, dude. It's just right of passage.
Like I think, you know, I listen, like if you're a parent right now and you don't put your kids into door to door, whether it's in high school or, or, you know, that you don't promote that. I think a lot of parents are like, Oh, you're talking to strangers.
It's dangerous. Or you're the scum of the earth.
You're a salesman. And I'm like, that is what created a financial security or freedom in your inside yeah it gave you confidence that you're like i could go do anything if i could knock doors for two straight years bro i could go do x you know what i mean like if i could do this and i think many people rob the opportunity for that development from a young age and or are too prideful to even step into that yeah it's in this it's crazy because i still can use the four so we were taught i literally say this to my sales team there's four levels of salesmanship right or there's four qualities of a good salesperson you have to use indifference you have to use fear of loss you have to use jones effect and you have to use sense of urgency.
And if you can use all four of those points, this is what I learned. I swear to God, I still to this day talk about it.
An expert salesperson, a Sam Taggart, Justin Colby, we can use all four of those in one sales cycle. You would be able to consider yourself an expert at it because it takes a talk track to be able to go be indifferent, talk about Joan's effect, have a fear of loss and have a sense of urgency, which are totally different things.
A lot of people think that they're the same. They're totally different.
And so, dude, it's incredible to just think about all that kind of stuff. Love that.
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It's been fun to, you know, write a book and kind of put your 20 years of life work into 300 pages and, you know, promote that and see what's on the other side of that. I've written other books.
This is my fourth book, but this one was like, to me, the anthem of like my life's work. So it's exciting to kind of get it out there.
So if you're listening, you go get a copy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or something and, you know, give it to your team. You know, at the end of the day, like if you're an owner and you're a business, like, you know what I mean? I think of Justin is like, I'm training my sales team.
I'm like, if I could give them one book that's like, read this book, this, I promise you, it's like, nobody's going to complain about somebody that's cold DMing, cold calling, going through your old data, willing to go hit the pavement. You know what I mean? Like that is like the golden goose for any sales team.
You know what I mean? Most managers and owners are bitching about, dude, what, like you're not performing or why aren't you selling? And it's like becoming more and more of a lost art. And so it's like, can we reactivate this whole, you know, purest form of selling, which is where I come from.
And you started is like door to door. Like, I mean, it's just people like people still do that.
I'm like, yeah, very much so. It's actually a growing industry.
And, you know, it's just becoming more and more sophisticated. It's incredible.
The you're, you're just talking about it briefly, right? And in the real estate space where I really am, the door-to-door world is such an undervalued asset, right? You're looking for people who need to sell their home. And if you just walk by a home that looks like no one's mowed the lawn in six years and it looks like no one's painted the house in 22 years.
Do you think there's some motivation there? Yeah. So here's what's crazy, Justin.
So I spoke, I don't know if you know Cody Sperber, him and I, we did an event together and anyway, he's got all these wholesalers there and he's telling me about this technology. It's called drive for dollars.
And he goes out and has people take photos and uploads it to the system. And, you know, there's all sorts of these data, you know, for pre foreclosures, distressed property data that people are paying so much money for.
And I'm like, how about like knock for dollars? Like if you're going to drive all the way there and you're going to take a photo and you're there, like walk up. And I promise you this pitch, which is going to sound so terrible is better than your photo and it's hey you want to sell your house and you can get the door slammed and it took you 15 seconds but at the end of the day that was the worst pitch in the world but it was better than your effing photo you sent yeah dude i had their data i did but i'm like now I could teach you the psychology of an amazing pitch to that,

but it was better than no pitch.

And I'm like,

and he's like,

well,

how do I get people to do it?

I'm like,

like what?

You just don't make it an option.

We just talked about the company I worked for,

Sidcor.

There's not an option.

There's no sending DMS for Sidcor.

You don't,

Matt wasn't like,

Hey,

Justin,

here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to train you on how to send DMS. that wasn't the business the only option was to go outside and knock doors all day long you train them by making it the only option right and so now let's let's grab it by the way get this book on amazon um this guy is world class-class.
You do how many events a year?

D to D con. You just had one recently, didn't you? Yeah, we just had around 3,000 people.
I mean, we do about two to three events. Like tomorrow I have a sales manager bootcamp teaching sales managers how to go run their teams for two days.
And then next week I'm in Dallas on a sales boot camp. The next week I'm in Florida on another sales bootcamp.
We host events three, four times a month regularly where I speak or I'll go and actually create an opportunity, whether it's sales, business management or recruitment. And I think, you know, a lot of people always struggle with this formula of like, I don't know how to find any sales guys.
Like, it's just me, right? They're a business owner and they're just like, really, like I spoke at a pressure washing and Christmas lighting convention last week in Florida. And most of these guys, I'm like, raise your hand if you're the sales guy and the business owner.
And like 90% of the room, there's like 300 people. And I'm like, oh, you guys are just it.
You are the effing business. So like congratulations.
And I'm like, well, number one is we got to recruit some people. Yeah.
We got to train and manage those people. And everybody's like, well, I can't afford them.
I don't have the leads or I don't. I'm like, I'm not talking about leads, bro.
I'm talking like, make them go eat what they kill. Yeah.
Everybody's bottling that. Cause if I had more leads, then I could go recruit more people.
And I'm like, well, if you had carnivores, then you don't need leads. See where I'm going at this.
I totally do. So for those entrepreneurs right now, they're like, Sam, I get it.
I get it. I get it.
But how do I motivate them to go do it? What's your answer? That's what I'm teaching tomorrow for two days. It's all about proper sales management.
And so kind of think of it as like threefold. You have competition, which is this free energy.
So it's how you facilitate. So I just launched one for my internal sales team.
I got like 15 guys and we sell coaching, right? And we launched March Madness. So I put them in teams.
We've got like six teams, you know, an SDR, an AE, and an expert all on a team. We create these pods and every day I'm posting the scorecard and I'm saying who's winning, who's losing, what's the prizes, shit talking, calling out, you know, doing a game out of this.
Gamifying it totally. Gamifying is like number one.
Number two is accountability is you got to trim the fat. You got to have clear pips, you know, performance reviews.
You got to have call outs and daily huddles. What are pips just for the person? Performance reviews, basically, like you put them on a performance plan where if they don't hit X, then they're fired.
And I think a lot of people, they keep all this fat around and they have crappy salespeople, but it's called addition by subtraction. When you start to cut the bottom 20 percent, your top 20 percent actually performs better.
Yep. So today I'm firing a guy, you know, sadly, last week I fired a guy and I and it hurt.
Like, obviously I have an emotional heart, but sometimes I start to now be like, good, my team will do better now because they know I'm willing to hang a man to show them that don't be an idiot and suck because you're giving permission to suck to everyone else if you have no accountability. That's where a lot of people in sales cultures, they almost are afraid to call people out.
They're afraid to hold people to quotas and numbers. Like, dude, this is a sales culture.
Does the NBA just let Joe Schmoes in the court? No. No.
And then number three is training. And I think most people, and so we're a sales training company, right? So we have thousands of videos in different categories and different coaches and, you know, we do all sorts of cool stuff.
But like I found there's very big lack of training. It's like they'll hire training or they'll hire people and then they won't train them and then they expect them to be great.
But when you give people real good scripts and real good accountability and work with them and role play with them and give them hope and coach them, you know, and actually lead them, then they will perform better. But I think a lot of people as a business owner, they're so busy doing all the other 50 things when I'm like the most valuable use cases of your time are threefold recruiting top talent.
I'm always recruiting. Number two is I'm training that talent, meaning I'm pouring into those people so they pour into me and that's multiplication.
I think most business owners are like, I'm the only guy that can sell. And I'm like, well, what if you develop 10 of you? Now you just multiplied you.
And number three would be if they, you know, actually sold as a business owner, where most of these business owners, I got off a call yesterday, a guy started a new roofing company, split from his partner. And I'm like, he wanted me to pay, he wanted to pay me on a profit share.
And I looked at this new kid and I'm like, you just started a business 30 days ago, you split up. How many are you going to sell this year? And he's like, what do you mean? I mean, thought of that.
I'm like, you just started a company. You just said your overhead is X.
You have not sold any and you have no sales guys. And you want to hire my sales guys to come and be your interim sales leader and CRO as a transition.
So are you asking my guy to be all the sales? So I said, right now, my question is how many you sell tomorrow? Because you just keep calling it death by business cards where you've spent so much time on the shirts, the hats, all these things of just like, but how many are you selling? And I'm like, you need to hire out and or give your uncle because his uncle's sitting there and he's like, yeah, I might come over with him and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, how about uncle? You do everything but sales and you bro are nine to nine in the field until this thing makes hella money.
And what happens is you start to attract and recruit your people. And, but I need you out there in the field.
And he was like, well, and I was like, then you're probably not, I'm not a good fit for you, bro. Cause this isn't going to work.
This is a recipe for disaster. And so I think that leading from the front, having that wherewithal to delegate some of your $10 an hour tasks and actually go on the field and sell shit.
Yeah. The challenge I think all of us have, right, is what you're talking about.
Even if I'm willing to do it, right, how do I get others to have the same passion, desire, motivation, be inspired to go do it? And there's usually a breaking point. I actually talk about it more in a leadership form, right? And you're the expert in recruiting, leadership, and sales, but the leadership part is tough.
And the reason why is people don't work that muscle out enough, right? They just think they have it just because. And because maybe they're a good manager, but it is not the same thing as being a good leader and i have a sales manager playbook it's like 101 pages and like i think page six is literally managing versus leading yeah and what's hard is and then they're selling most great sales people actually make terrible managers they're not meticulous but The owner of the company is take the sales guy and make him a manager.
It's the craziest shit. Leading a great sales guy could be a good leader.
I was always a really good leader. But if I didn't have an assistant manager, meaning I was the sales manager for many years, and then I was a VP of sales, a big solar company or whatever, And I found if I did not have a sales manager, meaning I was the sales manager for many years.
And then I was a VP of sales, a big solar company or whatever. And I found if I did not have a sales manager, like an assistant manager that did area management, lead management, rep one-on-ones, onboarding, training, I was like the pace setter.
I was the inspirer. I was the leader.
I was the number one, number two guy in the company always. So that if I can do 10 in a day, you could do two.
Come on, let's go. And I said, throw them in my car and I'll ride out to area with them and I'll just fire them up all day and like show them what's up.
And then I'll give them feedback. But for me to actually sit down and have empathy and like work with somebody and have, you know what I mean? That patience.
I'm like, if you don't get it, like, come on, let's go. Next.
Next. And I think that's a detriment.
So it's one, understanding the balance between that, you know, I think of the military drill sergeant, that's a manager, right? And what's weird is I could never be managed like that. That's why I didn't go into the military.
I'd go into hell. Like, it would be like, are you kidding me? You're going to yell at me all day and tell me exactly what to do and say.
And people willingly sign up for this. And I'm like, wait a minute.
They're asking for true accountability, being told what to do. Tell me exactly where to be and where to be.
Like most people, believe it or not, need that. Yeah.
Totally. You are over here as an entrepreneur being like, if that was me, I'd kill myself.
Yet now there's the disconnect of you're not managing your people, meaning daily accountability, monitoring everything they do, tell them exactly where to be and when to do it. You know what I mean? Like exactly the management side, hence why your team is underperforming.
Yeah. Yeah.
That management and leadership is tricky. And then goes down to, I think what you highlighted is really important for most people.
They need to set the pace, right? Like as the owner, you can't be the guy who has his feet on the desk. Now there may be a season that you can get there, but probably not in the first five years of business.
So like the story you just told me about the new roofing company, I'm like, I'm surprised you kept it together so well. well well i was yelling at the guy like i and and and and i'm like you've already paid me for my mastermind like 60 grand and then you just blit up and then you just want to pay me to be like a fractional cro or my team and we do that like we come in and step in and actually give a players as an interim but I'm like, not on a profit deal with just you, dude.

Like, like what, like, what is this? And I was like, you're the doorknocker. He left his dad's company.
So let's just like break this down. He left his dad's company that his dad's company hadn't grown for 20 years.
He's a local roofer out of Houston. And his dad's like, Hey, I want to bring you on as a partner.
He was there for like a year and he wanted to do door knocking. He wanted to implement door knocking.
He wanted to grow this thing. I guess there was friction with him and his dad because it was like, hey, you don't believe in this door knocking thing and I do.
So I'm going to go start my own thing. So now he's a month in and I'm like, you just left your dad's because you believed in this door knocking concept, yet you're now not willing to door knock.
And you asked for a $300 grant and or you're going and raising capital. And you've got an overhead that's already plus 80 grand a month.
And you're in your first month. And I'm over here like, this is a recipe for disaster, bro.
I said, put all of your effing overhead and just go sell your first 10 jobs. Yeah, that's it.
go make money too often owners the business owner thinks they should be in an owner's seat one of the bigger mistakes dude i'll you know be totally open about that is i was running a business at a high level that i felt like i could take a back seat and put my feet up and guess what what happened to my business? Crumbles. Right? Is they were maintaining for a while, but they damn sure weren't growing.
And until you are at a level, like, I mean, I guess the thing I would even tell you, look at the people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, they still are in their business, people. It may look a lot different than when he started Tesla or when he started PayPal or when he started making investments if you're Warren Buffett.
It may look a lot different, but they're in their business. And anyone who is making less than $10 million a year and feels like they shouldn't be in their business at an integral level, I believe is doing it wrong.
They still might be able to make $10 million a year, but look at what you're talking about. You're running a multiple 10 million.
You're running a, what is that? An eight figure business. And you're still in your business, speaking at your events, building your sales team, running your sales meeting.
Like I know your schedule because it took pulling teeth to get you onto the episode, right? Like you're not fucking sitting around on the beach, but that's what it takes. I was there literally training at nine o'clock last night my sales guys like i was literally sitting there with my sales team saying like i know that this guy has a lot of potential he was there i had three sales guys that stayed till 9 p.m and i was like i'll stay as long as they're willing to stay because i don't get that precious time usually during my day to actually like sit with these guys and coach them.
And this guy was like, you know, I know his family, he's not making the money he needs to make. He's got all the energy.
He's willing to work the hours and he's got the, he's got the potential. I just like, but nobody's sitting there working with the guy.
Like, you know how much it meant to him, me trying to fricking lock down this last minute deal that he was Hail Mary in, like, you know, and I'm sitting there like piping him and not trying to take over. You know what I mean? Like, but it's like, that will go a long way for that guy.
And he will be a loyal soldier because I took the time just to have a conversation with the guy. It's, it's incredible when you actually pour into your people genuinely and they'll be with you forever.
Right? There's something I talk about,

like, it's, it's incredible when you actually pour into your people genuinely and they'll be with you forever. Right.
There's, there's something I talk about, like my manager has been with me for 10 years. Like I'm able to retain a lot of people because I pour into them with genuine heart.
And again, this is the breakdown of, of where leadership really goes is because they just say, okay, go out there and make sales. And that's really not what the owner of the company really should be focusing on.
Um, and so that is the next pivot to where our conversation should go, which is, um, you know, when you're talking about sales, what is the best format in your book that you have in your manuals that people should be leading within the sales script everyone worries about scripts do you give a shit about scripts yes until you don't need to that's right and so i think here's a good example so i paid like myron golden a lot of money to coach me on speaking and he comes to my event i do my speech and he's like that was so good because you're naturally so good it's like you're too good with your winging it that it actually made you bad it's a detriment yeah yeah i get it and i was like wow what it kicked the nuts because he's like you're you're natural like you know and you think we get complacent because we have a natural we see the wins right but he if you memorized your entire speech, I promise you you'd get two times, three times the results. And so two years later, I finally humbled out and said, okay, I'll do it.
And I, you know, made over a million dollars that speech. And, you know, so it's like the difference between making 400 grand in a speech and over a million dollars is me memorizing it.
And I was like, you know, and that's one sales pitch. And I only, you know, I don't get as many shots on target as I did when I door knocked.
But it's like if you had a perfect, like so good down to the how do I head nod and when do I head nod and down to when do I pause and ask the right question or when do I make a joke? Like I know when I have to plant a question and when I have to plant joke and when I have to ease it up, I'm going to have to be silent. You know what I mean? Like if you start to like really dial in a process that you could duplicate with your people, they're not going to naturally just know how to go wing that shit.
Like it's the consciously competent. And that's when I started to realize like I was always naturally really, really good.
I was the number one rep of a multi-billion dollar company. But like, I didn't know how to duplicate myself.
And so my guys would get all frustrated and I get frustrated with them because like, I say what you say. I'm like, yeah, I say the same thing you did.
Like, you know, you're like, oh, now let's work hard. Don't be an idiot.
Like, that was my response. But they didn't like that response.
And so I started to have to like, OK, let's build out frameworks and strategies. And I came up with different names like Inception Shovel or Intentional Loop, or, you know, I built frameworks of sales training.
And then I started seeing my rookies sell more than every other rookie team in the country. And I was like, oh, my guys are pound for pound better than everybody because I started to learn how to teach them.
I started to build out scripts and make them, I made a 17 step dance to my sales presentation. And I made them do the dance moves as they said it.
Like, I'm like, it's all 17 steps. And it sounds like a lot, but I'm like, if you memorize it with dancing and a song, then you made me remember it.
And I said, don't have to skip these steps. So then it built into scripts to steps to now you can personalize it because you understand the psychology of why I built the script and why I built the steps the way I did.
Yeah. It's, you know, there's a skill set that most of us have as leaders and it's innate.
And that's the challenge. It is our biggest benefit, but it could be our biggest detriment because of it, because we don't have to, I'm similar to you in a lot of respects.
I'll go up on stage and I can wait for an hour And get a standing ovation And it's great But I didn't have a script to that hour It was kind of the fluid Way I go about what the room needs Right But could I even Myron would probably light me up in a very similar way He'd be like bro what the fuck Like great that was awesome But dude you could have been so much better. Right? And so that is a challenge.

And so I would tell everybody to really harness that if you're a business owner.

Go ahead.

My CRO has this principal and he was the CEO of a $100 million company.

Smart did.

And he- Kind of.

Yeah.

So good recruit, right?

I'm all about recruit smarter people than me.

There you go.

And his philosophy, my philosophy always go recruit A's. He's like,'t want a's he's like it's not scalable it's very hard to go recruit and sustain and build a scalable business on a players he's like i want b's and c's to me i was like i don't want b's and c's but he's like if i can make my system so duplicatable i can go hire way more b's and c's and train them to be i can train a c and a b to just be pretty good and I can make my system so duplicatable, I can go hire way more B's and C's and train them to be, I can train a C and a B to just be pretty good.
And I can make a duplicatable thing versus an A player is going to leave you and go start his own business. He's going to get poached.
He's going to always ask for more and he's going to be hard to manage. He's like, if I just say all you B's and C's are replaceable because I just have a funnel of B's and C's coming in and I know how to duplicate.
He's like, that's a much better business model. And I was like, touche.
Well, and there's a way for them to level up, right? So when you go get the A player, they're leveling up with you. They're going to stick.
You know what I mean? Yeah. That, that creates a stickiness and talk a little bit about stickiness.
I think that the, the only reason why I kind of had to bow out of the door to door is I literally caught pneumonia for four months. I mean, I was, it was just the winner beat me, right? I, the door knocking didn't beat me, the winner beat me, but let's talk about stickiness because I, you know, it's funny.
The people who make the most money in my organizations are the salespeople, but they're also the same people that try to leverage themselves out of being a salesperson. And especially the business owner.
Ironically, in the real estate space, business owners are like, oh, I need two acquisition people and two disposition people. I'm like, so you need two people to negotiate your deal on the front end with the seller.
And then you need two people to negotiate the deal on the back end with the buyers. So all the sales responsibilities out of your hands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I i need to do that that's how i'm going to grow and scale and okay i get leverage but how much are you going to pay yourself because your income right now is directly connected to the fact that you're holding these responsibilities so where's that money gone yeah you know and people people don't realize that so like this retention though people one they don't

actually understand their margins enough to build out a leadership growth path and i tell people like like alex i coached for years right and it's cool he just had an acquisition with his roofing company and they went to 150 million you know what i crushing it. Right.
Yeah. And one of the things

that we, I noticed different when I coach Alex and listens versus most roofing guys is they would pay their reps like a 50, 50% of profit, but there was no margin really for a manager, a regional manager, a vice president. You know what I mean? There is no.
So what happens is you have 5,000 roofing contractors in Dallas alone

because it's owner to rep. And there is no middle level management.
So the second the rep wants to grow and develop, the progress plan is go start your own roofing company. And so they've just create more roofing companies and their competitors.
And so you're never going to grow if that is your model. So if you don't build in and understand that it costs money to pay the salespeople, to pay the sales manager, you know what I mean? And develop that because most people don't understand the economics of their business because they were the commission.
So then they're like, oh, my business functions great when I'm 90% of the sales.

Right.

Because you're funding the business.

But now when you have to fund the manager

and the sales commission

and the marketing spend,

and most of your business were out of mouth

and you didn't have a marketing budget,

now you're really not a business.

Does that make sense?

And you've got to either up your price.

You've got to take,

you know what I mean? So it's understanding the comics to go scale this thing do you know um a good friend of mine dustin kakowski out of dallas roofer that name sounds familiar maybe yeah you might he's incredible he's actually in that same space alex was at with the acquisition so he's like on that he's like dude give me, give me 60 days, bro. Give me Sam.
Like, go get it, go get it, dog. Um, well, listen guys, I think you guys can see by just what we're talking about the level that Sam plays at.
And if you're in sales, by the way, if you're in business, you're in sales, let's just call out what it is. I know a lot of people think salespeople are slimy or whatever you want to call us.
The reality, if you're in business or selling something, right, a service, a product yourself. So get used to that.
One of my friends, Dean Graciosi, who's actually going to be on the next episode, funny enough, he always said something. He said, if you're ashamed of what you're selling, you're always going to be bad at it.
The best salespeople love and are passionate about the thing that they're selling. And if you can align yourself with that, and if you're a business owner listening to this and watching this, then align yourself with Sam.
Go follow him on social media. Go get his book on Amazon.
He's in the top 10 salespeople in the entire United States. You know, he's been coaching thousands and thousands of business owners to grow, scale, develop leadership, recruit in business, but attach yourself to the thing that you enjoy selling because you know it actually provides a value to whoever wants it, right? I don't care if it's cupcakes.
That person that wants cupcakes, you better make good cupcakes because they want the good cupcake, right? So bro, appreciate you coming on man oh it means a lot and thank you for your time and does listening you made it this far so congratulations um go and obviously subscribe if you haven't to his and we hope to see you guys on future episodes and and maybe at some event and we're excited to hang you know maybe yeah you got a couple a couple events coming up don't you don't you have, talk about a couple events as this will come out within some of these event dates. Yeah, so we have a sales bootcamp, usually monthly.
We have a business bootcamp. So if anybody's like trying to grow a direct sales org, you know, we talk recruiting, business strategy, pay, all that stuff.
And they're intimate little bootcamps, 40, 50 business owners in a room, sales manager boot camp. So we do kind of these boot camps or two day just sprints where we just go into the tactical stuff.
Like it's no fluff. They're no David Goggin speech.
It's just like we have these playbooks. Here's the systems in order to implement so that you get results.
And we've done, you know, eight years of those and over thousand plus businesses and 50 different industries that, you know what I mean? So it's just like, we'll see this rinse and repeat. And we're like, we just know how to get people results like quick, you know what I mean? So I'd come hang out.
Come on and where can they find you? Should they just go follow you on Instagram or go to your? Yeah, thedddxperts.com. And then you go to events.
But I'd reach out. You know what I mean? Like schedule a call with one of my experts and they can do like a business audit or they can, you know, work with you on like, okay, my sales team sucks.
What do we need to like give this a facelift? And that's usually when we make the phone calls is like, yeah, our marketing spend is not going as far as it should. You know, I don't even know if my sales guys are good or not.
You know what I mean? Those are the phone calls we always get.

And I'm like, let me get my experts on them and let's figure out how to help you guys.

The D2D expert.

Experts.com.

Yep.

Go to the website, check out Sam,

get his book on Amazon, Eat What You Kill.

This guy is a beast, but he's a sweetheart.

He cares.

He has a bleeding heart.

He wants to help you guys. So I appreciate you coming on here, brother.
And if this helped you guys in sales, make sure you share it with at least two of your friends. So everyone, you know, knows Sam.
Appreciate you guys. We'll see you on the next episode.
Appreciate it, Justin. Welcome to It Takes Energy, presented by Energy Transfer, where we talk all things oil and natural gas.
Oil and gas drive our economy,

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This oil boom helped launch the widespread ease

Thank you. And the Texas oil boom began in 1901, when the Lucas Gusher produced an astonishing geyser that flowed for nine days.
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