From Door Knocking to Multi-Million Exits: David Royce on Focus and Obsession | #Success - Ep. 96

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Speaker 3 This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Speaker 2 What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the show. I'm excited today.

Speaker 2 I've got someone who's a new friend now who came in town into Boise, which is rare having someone come all the way here to talk about their business.

Speaker 2 And I'm excited because a lot of people, obviously, who come into our world are people who are traditionally online marketers, who have grown and scaled businesses that direction.

Speaker 2 And you're someone who has built a business completely different, a different type of business. And you've recently, I think, exited another one of your businesses.

Speaker 2 And I'm excited to hear the story and to talk about it. His name is David Royce, and he is somebody who I'm excited to introduce you guys today.

Speaker 2 So, first off, thanks for coming to Boise and hanging out with me today.

Speaker 3 Yeah, happy to be here.

Speaker 2 All right, so

Speaker 2 we'll get to like the big end stories of, you know, you growing and selling companies, all kind of stuff. But I think I love to know like, where did it start? Did you start as a young kid?

Speaker 2 Were you entrepreneurial or did this happen later in life? When did you kind of bump into the business world?

Speaker 3 Good question. I don't know that it was so much entrepreneurial, but I did, like, I got a job when I was 14 at a pizza parlor.
It was just fairly young.

Speaker 3 I went to work at McDonald's when I was 15, and I did learn a lot from that. So, one, you know, the pizza parlor was like a little local mom and pop shop.

Speaker 3 Not a lot of, you know, best practices or training manuals or or anything like that. But when I got to McDonald's, what was crazy about it is there was a best practice for everything, right?

Speaker 3 The systems are incredible. You don't build like a multi, multi-billion dollar business without great systems.
And so I learned that at a really young age.

Speaker 3 And I'm actually surprised at how often I've gone back and thought, like, what would McDonald's do in this situation?

Speaker 2 When you started McDonald's, do they, because like my, my,

Speaker 2 my lens at McDonald's is watching the founder with whoever played it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like watching that and seeing how they did the systems and all sorts of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 Like, I know with franchise owners, they make them go to like McDonald's school or something first before they

Speaker 2 get to the camera.

Speaker 2 So do they have like a, when you come on, like, what's that onboarding process to teach the systems a new person? Do you remember that? I'm sure that was a long time ago.

Speaker 3 You know, they were like VHS

Speaker 3 that would put in and like you'd watch the training videos and they had little manuals and check off lists to make sure that you went through everything and you actually signed off, that you did everything.

Speaker 3 So it was, it was pretty solid even back then. You know, just not as, you know, it wasn't electronic like today.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's crazy. Okay.
So McDonald's, then where do we go from there?

Speaker 3 Did a lot of construction,

Speaker 3 you know, demolition, painting, worked at a snowboard shop. And then that's, I was in college.
I'm working at a snowboard shop. And somebody pitches me on this idea.

Speaker 3 They said, look, so I went to Sacramento, California. Well, I went to Northern California last summer, made $25,000 selling pest control services door to door.

Speaker 3 And I basically, the only thing I heard was like $25,000 in the summer. I'm like, sweet.
Cause that's like 50 grand today.

Speaker 3 Shows how old I am. But

Speaker 3 so I we drive out to Sacramento for the summertime and I suck. It's sales.
It just happens. I'm not good at it.

Speaker 3 Five days of zeros.

Speaker 2 Do they train you before or is it kind of like here?

Speaker 3 Not much. Good door, go lock on it.
Then there wasn't a lot of training. It was more this wet rag mentality.
You know, throw them against the wall, see what sticks, whoever's left over, great.

Speaker 3 And so there were other guys around me selling one to four sales a day. So it's pretty demoralizing.

Speaker 3 And then that weekend, I'm pretty pretty relentless i'm just like okay i gotta figure this out i already have an apartment um i'm here so i went to a bookstore and i picked up six sales books you know a lot of the like classics like uh you know zig ziggler and tom hopkins brian tracy all those guys and i just said for 90 minutes every day i'm gonna wake up and i'm gonna read and i'm gonna study sales and i did that all summer and then by the end of the summer i was the top rookie in the company at about actually 200 salespeople uh-huh that's amazing what were some of the key insights you learned from Zig and all these guys back then that were like the

Speaker 2 big ahas? You know what I mean? Like when you first time you start getting to a new market, you start learning something, there's always those first niches like, oh my gosh, I had no idea.

Speaker 2 And you try it and it works. And I'm curious if you felt any of those things.

Speaker 3 Totally. You know, so like Zig, for example, is just like a wordsmith.
He was like a poet. The way he said things, you'd be reading it and you're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 I can't believe he said it that way. And so you start to learn like vocabulary is important, but then there's like a whole other level, right?

Speaker 3 Where you start to study body language and you realize that that it isn't just what you say. It's actually pretty easy to write out a script and wordsmith stuff.

Speaker 3 And then once you have that done, then it's like, how do you deliver the message? And you're almost like an actor on the doorstep, you know, trying to present and

Speaker 3 find a way to relate to the other individual.

Speaker 3 It's having that sensory acuity to read body language, to understand what they're really thinking, as opposed to just what they're saying.

Speaker 3 And then to build a relationship of trust with the individual.

Speaker 2 That's really cool. So the first year you did it, you became the top rookie in the business.
Did you,

Speaker 2 like, because you're learning these things, are you showing the other guys or teaching other people, or is it kind of just your top secret?

Speaker 3 Sir, second year,

Speaker 3 second year. So the second year I went back, I was a sales manager.
And I worked for a big $100 million company the first year, and then I worked for a startup the next year.

Speaker 3 They only had one year in business, but they were doing about a million and a half. Like the individual that, my boss, he had worked at Orkin prior for a marketing group.

Speaker 3 And so he was one of the first guys to try to break off from the marketers, the old school marketers, and start his own business. And

Speaker 3 when I got there, there was no sales training manual.

Speaker 3 I just asked him, I said, hey, I brought my friends out. Can I write a training manual for you? And he was like, yeah, that'd be great.
That'd be amazing. And he was very good at sales training, too.

Speaker 3 Like he would work with us and help us. And we started creating training videos.
I wrote out the training manual. And then at the end of the summer, he pitched me.

Speaker 3 He goes, okay, you guys sold twice as much as the other sales team I have. What if I gave you a cut off every sales rep that came out to work for me?

Speaker 3 If you will develop the sales program and you will train and manage everybody

Speaker 3 over the course of however many summers you want to do this. And so it was really great money.

Speaker 3 By the end of my college career, my last summer, which is my fourth summer, I was making 225 grand in three and a half months.

Speaker 3 Have a college. Almost half a million in today's money.
And sales reps, honestly, we have some that make a million dollars a year. It's crazy like how good you can get.

Speaker 3 But that's the beauty of a commissioned job, right? You're incentivized to study up and learn more and become the very, very best. And so many of them, they're almost like athletes.

Speaker 3 They work so hard at it to perfect it, you know, just exactly to that point. And you get real feedback, right? Because if you're actually selling, then you know you're, you're doing well.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's so interesting. I always think about that, like how

Speaker 2 like there's, there's parts of life. I was an athlete growing up and as an athlete, like it forces you to like develop as a human, as a person.

Speaker 2 Other areas of life that you just can coast and flow, but like sales, especially commission-based sales, like if you don't don't figure it out you know just like an athlete like you lose right and same thing there we had um one of our our neighbors down he actually is funny he owned a pest control company sold it recently but his daughter um went to go sell for summer and the first week she made no sales second week no sales and she almost came home and then uh she basically very similar you did she's like i'm gonna figure this out and she starts studying and learning and uh within three months she became the number one salesperson she beat like her older brother who brought who was like who brought her on this thing ended beating him in sales everybody else and it was the coolest thing and it's and and I was just like I was asking her I'm like how did you do that and she's just like I figured I had to like everyone else is doing that I study I had to figure it out and I just look at like again the three and a half month period of time of her going out there and to not having any success to become the number one person it's just so fascinating and so you sink her swim and it develops you you know so fast as a person that's really cool um now were you When you went from company one to company two, were you always selling the same product?

Speaker 2 Or was it, were you doing pest control, cut coat, you know, all the different door-to-doors? What were you focused on?

Speaker 3 Yes, it was, it it was just pest control.

Speaker 2 That was the first time you ever was pest control and you stuck. Yeah, so

Speaker 3 the story goes,

Speaker 3 I was going to apply to investment banks because I was studying finance down at BYU.

Speaker 3 And I went to my boss and I said, I need a really killer letter of recommendation from you because I'm not sure how this pest control thing is going to look. You know, let them know.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm managing 100 college students. You know, we put on X amount of millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 You know, top salesperson in the industry, like top 1% of 1%.

Speaker 3 and he goes what are you doing like you're you're literally gonna go work some for someone else for 80 100 hour weeks and you're the very best at this you should go start your own company and i was like ah no like you know it's less sophisticated like i'm going to new york you know i want to go to invest in bacon he's like well i have news for you i'm selling my business and i'm taking a breather i said okay well how much are you selling for he's like oh it was like 10 million bucks and i'm like hmm okay so i was here three of the four years he was in business.

Speaker 3 He's making 10 million. He only put in this much.

Speaker 3 You know what? Maybe

Speaker 3 I've saved up 300 grand. Maybe, because I was thinking I was going to go to MBA school later.

Speaker 3 Maybe I just go try it.

Speaker 3 And if I don't like it, I can always go back to MBA school. Entrepreneurship looks good to MBA schools as well, especially if you're successful in it.
So I decided to give it a shot.

Speaker 3 And there was multiple advantages I had in it. One, I worked at a really big company.
So I saw what that looked like.

Speaker 3 Then I worked at a small company where you actually get to see a lot more than you normally would, where you're siloed at the bigger companies.

Speaker 3 Three, I had a finance degree, like almost nobody has a finance degree in pest control. And so there were these unique competitive advantages that I had.

Speaker 3 And then I asked my boss, I said, if you could change, if you could improve your model, what are the areas that you would focus on to try to improve? And he gave me a list of about 30 things.

Speaker 3 So I had like my to-do list in terms of where to try to fix the model.

Speaker 3 Went out and did that. I almost bankrupted the company the first year.
We grew so fast.

Speaker 3 And so that was a big idea.

Speaker 2 Sales can keep up with fulfillment? Is that

Speaker 3 the people get away from that? But the problem is you pay the commissions out prior to all the revenue coming in. And so it's a cash flow issue.

Speaker 3 And I'd saved up a certain amount of cash, but I didn't have enough for how well we did it. We thought we might do 4,000 or 5,000 accounts and we did 7,500 accounts, which was unheard of.

Speaker 3 Nobody had done that. And so I just went to my...
sales managers said, hey, like, we did way better. Do you mind if I have a couple of mines, I'll pay 10% interest?

Speaker 3 And they're they're like, yeah, of course, because, you know, I've been in the trenches with them, training them and working with them. And they'd all had incredible summers and done really well.

Speaker 2 So this was, you went, you didn't buy your old boss. You started completely from scratch, all new?

Speaker 3 A little bit. So

Speaker 3 initially, he was going to have me go do my own thing. And I was very nervous.
You know, I'd read the e-myth by Michael Gerber. It's just like the idea of having some systems in place and processes.

Speaker 3 And I had the experience. It was one of the things that made me excited to go do my own thing.
But when he sold his company, he sold it to Terminex.

Speaker 3 And because it had only been in business four years, it didn't have any brand recognition. So they're like, you can keep the name.
We're not going to use that. They just wanted the customer.

Speaker 3 They just really wanted the accounts, you know, with the corresponding technicians to service them. It's just their way of buying revenue.

Speaker 3 About two-thirds of their revenue each year is through acquisitions.

Speaker 3 So I took his name. He had a few training manuals and things in place that I used.
And then I started working on those and developing those and improving them. And then I did it for four years.

Speaker 3 And because of that first year, I realized I might need more capital to grow because I was limited in terms of how much we go so I sold that one I have an NDA but Forbes said I sold it for 13 million and now it's like I had millions of dollars to spend and so we went into four different states the next year then so that the first one was playing with the model and learning it was kind of like a lab and then once I felt like I had a scalable model and kind of that recipe for success with best practices training manuals all that it's like all right let's see if we can go into multiple states and scale and so we ended up in nine states with that second business.

Speaker 3 And then Terminix came and knocking again and said,

Speaker 2 I know they buy most of the pest control companies. My friend, that's who we sold his to, but do they not give you like a non-compete or anything?

Speaker 2 They're just like, go build another one and we'll buy it too. How does that work?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so the way that worked is we did have non-compete the first time. And they said, you can't go back in the same geographic locations.

Speaker 3 But the second time I sold, I worked a deal where I said, if you want the business, we have to be able to go back in that area. We'll have the customer list.
We won't knock on those doors.

Speaker 3 We know where they are. We actually set up a software system that allowed us to know exactly which doors we were not allowed to knock.

Speaker 3 And we had like a three-year non-compete or whatever with them.

Speaker 3 Interesting.

Speaker 3 So the second one,

Speaker 3 then we have tens of millions of dollars, you know, to go build another one. So now we can go national.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we went into a couple thousand cities with that business. And what was really cool is

Speaker 3 I didn't get that motivated from pest control. And Silicon Valley was starting to pick up again

Speaker 3 in the early 2010s. It was starting to do well.
And companies like Google and Facebook and

Speaker 3 Zappos,

Speaker 3 they were trying to attract the hardest talent to attract in the country, right? Because they're trying to get software developers. And there's only so many of them.

Speaker 3 And so their facilities were just amazing.

Speaker 3 They have these incredible core values. They were doing all these crazy retreats.
And there's just all these amenities.

Speaker 3 And I thought, why don't I sprinkle a little bit of that, take that, and apply it to pest control? No one's ever done it before.

Speaker 3 It seems probably odd at first, but you know, we put in an NCAA basketball court, we had a golf simulator, we had like a movie room and you know, ping pong foosball, pool tables, all that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 And then we started doing like all these crazy retreats annually for all of our top managers,

Speaker 3 you know, to set goals. And, you know, we're jumping off cliffs, we're doing skydiving, you know, we're swimming with sharks.
Because you have all these young guys.

Speaker 2 Like I want to be part of that, all the young, hungry guys

Speaker 3 with team on that. It's almost like a little bit like a fraternity.
You know, BOU and all those schools, most of them, they don't allow fraternities. And it's just like, it's a way to attach

Speaker 3 yourself to a successful kind of wolf pack, per se.

Speaker 3 And it's just a lot of fun. Like, I love being around college students.
Like, even today, it's just like the energy and the excitement of life, right? Like, the world is their oyster.

Speaker 3 They're going to go conquer the world.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, so we did that and then

Speaker 3 sold that one.

Speaker 3 And now it's like, you know, we got nine digits or whatever to be able to, you know, apply. And And

Speaker 3 yeah, at that point, I was, I was getting a little bored.

Speaker 3 Like, I know how to do this playbook. I've replicated this, you know, for a dozen years.
And

Speaker 3 how many times have you sold now? That was the third time.

Speaker 3 And so the fourth time, I ended up putting in my right-hand guy, Bess, into that position as CEO. And he was CEO for the rest.
And then I was just founder and chairman.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I could just focus on strategy and hiring key executives and the things that I was really passionate about. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then that one sold too? Yeah. So that one we just sold last year.
Okay. And And I'm officially out.

Speaker 2 You officially retired? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, at least from the pest control industry. I'm sure I'm going to go do something else.

Speaker 3 I just told myself I'm going to take a year off and then just I'm starting to go through an exploratory phase where I have friends, you know, hundreds of entrepreneurial friends and just like, hey, what do you think about this idea?

Speaker 3 What about this? You know, can you brainstorm with me? And it's been really fun. It's been fun not to have anything to do and just take the time to think about things.

Speaker 3 A lot of times when you're, you know, building a business, it's just like everything's go, go, go.

Speaker 2 You don't have any extra time just think yeah for sure okay i want to pull i want to go back to your story now and pull some things out very specific to the entrepreneurs of my world who would be listening to this um so the first one i'll talk about is you mentioned kind of twice once through your work with mcdonald's and then number two with the e-myth like both of those are very much like the systems books right and i think uh traditionally what i've found is with the entrepreneurs of my world they're uh really good They're driven, they're hungry, and they're really, really bad at systems for sure.

Speaker 2 So, like, they've heard about it. it, they know they need to do them, but they're not great at them.
I know that's my biggest struggle.

Speaker 2 Like I have to have really good operations people around me because I'm really bad at that. But

Speaker 2 how do you look at that when you're building a company, building a new team, that kind of stuff, so they can start thinking through why that's so important and actually how to

Speaker 2 actually do it? Because nowadays it's not a VHS tape they're going to do. How do you actually build the system that people will then use long-term?

Speaker 3 You know, I think there's a few problems in terms of why individuals aren't good at it. One, it's not very fun, right? To sit down and have to write out a manual and think about the process.

Speaker 3 And it's probably the first time most people have ever had to do that. Now you can go online, you know, and find courses about how to do it, which is great.

Speaker 3 I wish I had started in today's time, right? What an amazing time to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 But the reality is, is most entrepreneurs are like mom and pops. Like they probably have a single location somewhere or a single business.

Speaker 3 And they're so caught up in the day-to-day that they're focusing in the business as opposed to on the business, right?

Speaker 3 And really, if you want to have something you can scale, the secret to scaling is, or at least the way that you know you have a scalable business, leave for 30 days on a vacation.

Speaker 3 And if you can come back and your business is still there and it's operating just as well or almost as well, you've got something you can scale. And so that's the trick.

Speaker 3 It's how do you get all that down in training manuals, job descriptions?

Speaker 3 And then you've got really great people. You know, you've got some other people where you can kind of replicate yourself.
And you start to learn over time.

Speaker 3 That was my second business was how do I replicate myself because I can't, I couldn't be in every location anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree. It's interesting in the E-Myth.

Speaker 2 I remember I read it at the beginning of my journey and one of the things he talked about is like so many people start their business because they have a job doing something and then they think they're smarter than the boss.

Speaker 2 And he's like, and he said they have an entrepreneurial seizure and they start this own business and then like said, because they're better at making cakes than the cake place they used to work at, they think that's the business.

Speaker 2 They're focusing on these cakes and they're in the business, like you said. And the big secret of the emit, as you know, is like stepping out and like making the cakes isn't the thing, right? Right.

Speaker 2 It's the systems and like entrepreneurship is about taking a step back and like creating the actual business, not the cake, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that system, right? That's that's what's critical. Like what Gerber talks about is, um, like, for example, franchises, right? They give you the system.

Speaker 3 All the manuals are there, your KPIs, you know, the metrics you got to measure, the financials and what they should look like. You literally have a blueprint of how to do it.
And

Speaker 3 if you flip, you well 80 of franchises are successful you know if in five years the average business though that isn't a franchise 80 go out of business

Speaker 3 yeah the odds are completely flipped and so if you really like as an entrepreneur i think some people think we're we want to jump out of a plane without a parachute that's not it at all i hate risk so i will do everything i can to mitigate it um and then you know you pilot different ideas but you fail small and fail fast.

Speaker 3 And so, yeah, like mitigate your risk. Like go get experience in an industry.
But then if you're,

Speaker 3 you know, if you're, once you're in the entrepreneurship phase, you know, if you want to scale,

Speaker 3 map it out so other people can follow it.

Speaker 2 That's really cool.

Speaker 3 Most, most people, I think, are,

Speaker 3 they have a manager mentality versus an operator mentality. The operator is thinking about the business and how to scale it, whereas a manager is like in it in the day-to-day.

Speaker 3 And it feels really good, right, to just be busy all the time. You can get lots of dopamine hits that way.
But I think the big secret is time management.

Speaker 3 You know, it's not the big things that hold us back, it's the small things because we think that that's productive, but it's not.

Speaker 3 So if you divide up your time into A's, B's, and C's, A is something that's really important, but it's not urgent. A B is somewhat urgent, somewhat important.

Speaker 3 And then a C is, it's urgent, but it's not important at all. So that might be like a C might be paying bills.
You got to do it, right? And it's urgent because you don't want to get behind.

Speaker 3 But it's not important that you do it. So you can set things up on autopay.
You can have, you can pay somebody else to do it for you.

Speaker 3 A B, it might be human resources, right? Like hiring people. You want to hire really great people, but it is something you can teach other people to do over time.

Speaker 3 You need to learn it first really well, but then create your processes and teach how to do it. You have videos.

Speaker 3 A's. A is like strategy.

Speaker 3 It could be creating a new service line, a new product, increasing productivity, increasing your profitability. That's what really moves the needle.
That's what's important. But it's not urgent.

Speaker 3 And so most people focus on the B's and C's instead.

Speaker 2 They focus on the urgent, not on the most important. Right.
Yeah. It's like every day you go in the office and there's a fire happening somewhere.

Speaker 3 Exactly. It's like, I'll put out the fire, put out the fire.
And not all fires are created equal. Like if something's really burning a bonfire, then you may have to go handle it.

Speaker 3 But if it's small, it's like you can train most other people to handle that.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I had my men, my first mentor was named Dan Kennedy, and he,

Speaker 2 I remember one time he was telling me that he was, came into the office and he was working on this, whatever the project was, and his assistant kept trying to bug him, like,

Speaker 2 you know, like, there's emergency, emergency, emergency.

Speaker 2 And he finally opened the door and he's like, he's like, unless we're bleeding money, like, this is more, like, what I'm doing here is way more important, I promise.

Speaker 2 I'm like, and he's like, are we bleeding money? She's like, no, it's like, okay, I'll come back to you later.

Speaker 2 And he went back, like, this is way more higher leverage than, you know, whatever the thing is. And if I'm bleeding money, like, it's going to be okay.

Speaker 2 And that was kind of his, you know, his, his test on what he's got to do right now versus focusing on the most important stuff.

Speaker 3 Smart. You know.

Speaker 2 Next thing, we talked about this off camera a little bit, but

Speaker 2 you kind of mentioned it a little bit, but

Speaker 2 I remember I read this book. Man, this was, I had built a business up and it kind of collapsed and fallen, man, probably 16, 17 years ago now.

Speaker 2 And I remember it was Christmas time and I bought the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Shea. And I hadn't heard about that book.
I haven't heard someone mention that book in like 15 years.

Speaker 2 And you mentioned it off camera. But I remember for me, it was, it was, um, it was really cool because I remember reading the book and he talked about his ups and his downs.

Speaker 2 And like, one time he's got the, this, you know, truck full of shoes and it tips over and he loses $10 million in inventory, like all this stuff.

Speaker 2 And it's like, make me feel better about my own business. But then the lessons he talked about with culture and everything.
And

Speaker 2 I'd love to hear kind of your introduction to that and him and that world. And then all the things you were able to pull back into your business.

Speaker 2 You mentioned a couple of them, but just so people could understand like that lesson, which I think sounds like it was so important for you that I think a lot of people don't ever think about.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I found it at a critical time. So we're scaling the second company and we're starting to become more corporate, right?

Speaker 3 Like before the first company, I could be there and it was more of a family feel. I could know everybody's names.
I could know what their ambitions were within the company.

Speaker 3 You know, we'd have fun together. And it was we got in the other companies, like I just couldn't be there all the time.

Speaker 3 So I started to ask the question, well, how do you maintain that same family feel that we had with the first one?

Speaker 3 And I almost went back to graduate school to go get an executive MBA at Wharton just to figure this out the answer. Yeah.
And so Tony saved me a lot of money, actually.

Speaker 3 My brother gave me the book and said, I think you'd be interested in this book. And

Speaker 3 the story goes, Tony had his first company, I think it was called LinkedIn Exchange, but he built this business and it had 10, 15, 20 employees. They knew everybody really well.

Speaker 3 But as they started to scale and they were scaling rapidly, it was a tech company, they just started hiring anybody. And they didn't have core values.

Speaker 3 It was just kind of like, bring anybody on that you can get to help grow the thing. And they ended up selling it for 250 million, but he hated going to work at that point.

Speaker 3 He just didn't like it anymore.

Speaker 3 He's like, I don't know who i work with i don't even really like we don't share common values and so for zapos when he did that one he said look i'm going to create core values that everybody has to follow and we're actually going to hire for these core values and if they don't fit

Speaker 3 we'll move them along and after training we'll even pay people uh i think i can't remember it's three thousand dollars or whatever just to leave yeah to quit it's like if you're not into this just quit because it saved them more money you know having to have people come in and then it hurts the business right of people who are leaving constantly

Speaker 3 He briefly quit.

Speaker 2 It's so funny.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so his core values and he was so open and generous.

Speaker 3 You know, unfortunately, he's not with us anymore, but he, you could go, you could fly into Zappos and they would do tours every hour where you could walk around and see

Speaker 3 all the customer service people wave to you and they kind of teach you some of the secrets. And then he created this three-day training program like for executives.

Speaker 3 If you wanted to go in, you could learn the majority of their secrets sauce. He'd literally tell you whatever you wanted to know.
And I remember I sat down with him. I was telling you this earlier.

Speaker 3 And I was just talking with him. And I'm like, okay, I love that you do this, but you got to tell me why because you're giving away your competitive advantage.

Speaker 3 And he's like, oh, well, I just think the world would be a better place if everybody operated this way. And for me, I'm like, okay, I'm selfish.

Speaker 3 Like, I got to start finding ways to give back and be more open and share. And so it's like one of the reasons why I do podcasts.
Like, I really enjoy giving back.

Speaker 3 You know, if I can inspire even just one person, I feel good about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's really cool.

Speaker 2 I'm curious, like, in

Speaker 2 the other business you did, what were other, I mean, I think about with my business, because ClickFrones grew from a handful of us to 400-plus employees, mostly remote too. And so it's harder.

Speaker 2 I've always tried to think how we can incorporate, have you seen people do it with virtual teams or how they do it?

Speaker 2 And I'm sure it's a lot easier in person, but I'm just curious if you ever thought about that or seen anybody that's successfully done a good job of it.

Speaker 3 You know, I haven't seen it in pest control sales, but I have seen seen it in solar. Yeah, so like during the pandemic, you know, nobody could sell.

Speaker 3 And so the idea was like, even when we were going to door-to-door, we just said, okay, you have to stand 10 feet back. You have to be wearing a mask.
It was really awkward in the beginning.

Speaker 3 I can run back.

Speaker 3 But what's funny about the pandemic is so many people were home. And so it was actually easy, and people enjoyed somebody at the door.
As people are like, hey, I'm busy, I don't have time.

Speaker 3 It's like, oh, I'll talk to you. I haven't seen someone for like a week.
It's great.

Speaker 3 But yeah, in solar, I've seen that.

Speaker 3 It works then. And I think a lot of people have transitioned to sales online.

Speaker 3 Whether it's easier, I think sales conversions have probably gone down a little bit because it's a little bit harder to read somebody when they're in just a box versus like in person.

Speaker 3 But I also think work-life balance, it's really helped out there.

Speaker 3 I mean, I know so many friends, whether they're in finance or whatever else, they don't have to travel everywhere when there's a meeting. Now, most of us are comfortable video conferencing.

Speaker 3 you know, might do a first meeting in person, but after that, just do it online. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So Quinn and my team, I heard him ask you, I don't know if he's still in here, but he asked you a question earlier. I thought it was really fascinating.

Speaker 2 So in our world, one of the biggest buzzes right now is just AI and how it's killing people's jobs and how it does all these kind of things.

Speaker 2 And curious your take, because even they're talking about AI, you know, the robots are going to take over construction and, you know, all the things. And do you ever see a time where sales,

Speaker 2 I mean, maybe not phone sales, but door-to-door sales, things like that, or have like can be done by AI? Or do you think that's not going to have an AI robot knock on the door someday?

Speaker 3 That's a hard

Speaker 3 One of the biggest secrets to sales is body language. It's like being able to interpret and understand it.
And so I'm sure you can almost do anything with AI at some point.

Speaker 3 But will someone feel comfortable enough talking to a robot and the robot understanding how to sell? Like you could program it perfectly.

Speaker 3 I know exactly how to program it to have it sell the most.

Speaker 3 But we'll see. You know, if we get to the point.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's your next venture is creating the door-to-door sales team army, army robots.

Speaker 3 I think if you can create a

Speaker 3 a companion robot then it will probably be ready right like they talk about that and i'm like hmm i'm not sure if it's really possible but it just resolves concerns for you what was i think the there was a dune remake and there was a female robot in that one and i'm like whoa that's a crazy idea how interesting the world's getting weird somebody is like that it is indeed yeah um the other thing i thought was interesting we were talking offline or you know before we started recording um again so many of our people in my world are

Speaker 2 starting online businesses or have online businesses, but a lot of them are trying to figure things out and they're struggling to start a business.

Speaker 2 And you were talking about, you know, obviously your business isn't this internet marketing thing. It's a traditional business.
And I'd love to.

Speaker 3 We did digital marketing, but we had that side too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But the, yeah, like,

Speaker 3 just

Speaker 2 what's your landscape for people? Like, instead of, instead of, you know, trying to build a business completely online, like working and getting offline businesses, they can, they can run instead.

Speaker 3 Offline or online?

Speaker 2 Offline businesses.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so there is this,

Speaker 3 there's this, a lot of people are retiring, right? They call it the silver tsunami. And there was an article written in the Wall Street Journal this past year called The Stealthy Wealthy.

Speaker 3 And what it said was that 43%

Speaker 3 of people that make $2.3 million a year or more, so that's your top 0.1%, not just your top 1%, these are 0.1%ers.

Speaker 3 They own boring blue-collar businesses. And so almost half of all businesses are this way.
And typically most don't have a college degree, you know, and certainly not an MBA.

Speaker 3 And so there's massive opportunities there because with this, you know, all the baby boomers, they're retiring. There's a huge opportunity to go buy businesses, right?

Speaker 3 That oftentimes their kids don't want them because they're unsexy, you know, but many of them, they already have a business business model that's worked out.

Speaker 3 They've got a really healthy profit margin.

Speaker 3 And it's like you can literally just go in and maybe sell or finance them and then take over and maybe even start rolling them up or learn what they know, bring a few tricks that you know from online and make the business, you know, double the business or whatever, and then start

Speaker 3 rolling them up or starting new locations based on what you've learned. So I think there's a massive opportunity in this.
You know, we were joking about

Speaker 3 the laundry mats, right? It's like

Speaker 3 like a 35 mark like profit margin and like i think 95 of them are successful when they start up but you know if you ask most people i think a lot of people are just like no there's no money in that no way yeah

Speaker 2 if there was you're like why would they want to sell it if there's if if they're killing it but i think a lot of like you said a lot of them are aging out and exactly and other people don't want it and it's like there's this asset here that's cranking out money that you can pick up and right and take over there's probably not enough buyers yeah hence why a lot of them are willing to sell or finance Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. So I'm curious for you now that you've done the types of businesses you've done.

Speaker 2 You know, and there's two lenses. One's like you've got, you know, you sold the business, you got the money, you're going to start, you know, what's your next thing?

Speaker 2 But even more so, like for other people who are at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey, where do you, where do you, like, for your kids or for other people, like, where would you focus them on looking for opportunities?

Speaker 3 You know, so if I was starting out, I would start to look like I would, you know, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 You can go and chat GPT and figure out all the stats for every business, what the profit margins are, like a lot of how-tos do it and how to do it.

Speaker 3 It's incredible. What an amazing time to be an entrepreneur.
But I would start to learn, like, how do you identify an opportunity?

Speaker 3 I think it was Seneca that said, you know, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. So go prepare.

Speaker 3 Start setting different types of businesses.

Speaker 3 And it doesn't matter whether it's blue collar or tech or whatever it might be, but learn which models have healthy margins, which ones maybe have recurring revenue models, you know, that are more durable.

Speaker 3 And then I would say go get experience, you know, and see if it's something that interests you. Can you be obsessive about it? And can you be any good at it?

Speaker 3 You know, if I went into pest control right off the bat,

Speaker 3 I may not have been very good at sales or understood it or had that skill set that would have said, okay, you have a competitive advantage in this. Yeah, you probably should go do that.

Speaker 3 because you will be able to run circles around some of these other companies utilizing your method. And you can probably

Speaker 3 learn other marketing methods too. And then you can learn the operations and get really good at that.
So it's kind of taking that same

Speaker 3 desire to be excellent and obsession and then applying it to different areas of the business. So it's kind of a step-by-step process.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's cool. Do you have kids that are entrepreneurial yet?

Speaker 3 I've got a 13 and a 10 and a half year old.

Speaker 2 Still too young for that.

Speaker 3 Still pretty young. I keep, you know, like I've had them read, was it Robert Key of Soccer's Rich Kid Smart Kid book?

Speaker 3 It's a good place to start. We play like some Monopoly from time to time, but you try to start teaching them in different ways to think a little bit differently.

Speaker 3 I've talked to them about investments, and honestly, I don't know how much they really care about it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's weird.
I've seen it with my kids. I've got five, and it's like interesting because some

Speaker 2 have the entrepreneurial itch, and some just don't.

Speaker 2 If you try, they're just like, you know, and it's like, it's always weird for me.

Speaker 3 I'm like, man, I feel like I could give you so much if you just wanted.

Speaker 2 And some just don't care.

Speaker 3 So you never know. I always joke that the DNA pool is vast, right? And there's all different types of personalities.

Speaker 3 And I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't had children on my own, but they really do come out like they're a great person.

Speaker 3 And then it's like, yeah, you can nurture too, but there's only, it only goes so far. Like they've got to figure out what they're going to be passionate about.

Speaker 3 And not everybody has to be an or an entrepreneur. They can be entrepreneurs or they can be artists or do whatever they want to do.
It's more, can they be obsessive?

Speaker 2 about they want to do and really can they just find happiness yeah that's the biggest thing i think is if they help them find happiness we've got twins so we had two that came out exact same time and it's just like and those are the two most different humans in my world.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm like, you guys have been every experienced exactly the same, same teacher, same, you know, like,

Speaker 2 and yeah, so it's, you never know. And again, one's more the artist side, one's more analytical, and they're so different.
And I think my advice to them has been very similar.

Speaker 2 It's like, find the thing that makes you the most happy and become obsessed with it. Otherwise.

Speaker 2 You know, I think that's why I love entrepreneurship because that's the thing that made me excited and made me happy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
So my next question is actually is about happiness. I know one of my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins, he talks about there's the

Speaker 2 science of achievement, which is a very step-by-step formulaic. And then he talks about, but the other is the art of fulfillment.
And he also says that

Speaker 2 success without without fulfillment is ultimate failure.

Speaker 2 So I'm curious as you've gone through this journey and you've obviously had a lot of successes and it's very scientific, but then art, you know, fulfillment's art. It's different.

Speaker 2 It's not like a step-by-step process.

Speaker 3 How have you and your family and everyone, how have you guys found fulfillment in the process of building this big empire yeah i think that's critical um so one like tony talks about like you've got to always be growing and like what is it like the six uh keys to happiness or whatever um

Speaker 3 and if you're not growing you're dying in my opinion that's what made me excited and ultimately why i decided to sell it's just like i've I've done this so many times. I'm not learning anything new.

Speaker 3 And it would be probably in the better, better hands of somebody else. And like, it is enough at this point.
And the thing you learn is it's never enough right like if you're wise like um

Speaker 3 the the person that was in charge of the entrepreneurial program at my alma mater uh his name is scott peterson and we're you know sitting there talking about entrepreneurship and how to improve the program and he goes around he says hey just to open the meeting do we mind if we go around and ask everybody what their number is

Speaker 3 And everyone's like, oh, that's a little awkward. And they're like, all right.
And some of these guys have built like billion-dollar companies. I was like, all right, go ahead.

Speaker 3 And they're like, I don't know, this. Like people were kind of hesitant.
And then anyways, we get back to him and he goes, you're all wrong.

Speaker 3 The right answer is just a little more.

Speaker 3 And I thought about it. I'm like, yeah, it's so true because as entrepreneurs, we just kick the goalpost back every time we achieve something.

Speaker 3 And so it's not about like creating a unicorn, you know, or whatever that destination, whatever that number is somebody thinks is going to make them happy, because surprisingly, it doesn't.

Speaker 3 But it's the journey that you're, it's it's the discipline, it's the learning, it's the character you develop that's, you know, the reward, like the real reward.

Speaker 3 And, you know, it's, it's certainly nice to have great vacations and

Speaker 3 be able to pay for your kids' school and all that too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all those other things.

Speaker 2 As you were building, was it hard to find balance with the other parts of your life?

Speaker 2 Oh, totally.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, no problem.

Speaker 2 How did you juggle it all?

Speaker 3 So, you know, my wife and I, we got married young. We were college sweethearts.
And she wanted to go to law school. And I, when I was initially was going to do invest in baking,

Speaker 3 and then went on to pest control.

Speaker 3 But we had these conversations, you know, as we're about to graduate, and I said, you know, we're both going to work these crazy hours, but we want to help each other achieve each other's dreams.

Speaker 3 And she was on board with it. If I had a different spouse who was not into work or passionate about that sort of thing, it would have been really hard.

Speaker 3 And so I think finding the right partner that aligns with you or taking time before you get married to do that is critical.

Speaker 3 And, you know, she worked in law school. She was doing 78 hour weeks.
When she graduated, she worked at a securities fraud litigation firm for 78 hour weeks.

Speaker 3 And so we literally didn't see each other other than like between 10 and 11 each night. And then like Saturday evenings, we'd go out to a restaurant and celebrate.

Speaker 3 And then Sundays were like our day to actually be together all day.

Speaker 3 So from a time perspective, we waited 10 and a half years to have kids. That probably would have been the sacrifice.
But looking back, I loved working 16-hour days.

Speaker 3 It was so much fun because you just, you feel like this animal of productivity and you're getting dopamine hits all along and you almost feel like invincible, right?

Speaker 3 You're constantly learning, you know, if you're building and scaling.

Speaker 3 And then once we had kids, your priorities just change. And that's not a bad thing.
It's just times and seasons, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 The idea of work-life balance, I think, is really hard as an entrepreneur. But initially, you grind, grind, grind when you're new, right? You have a startup.

Speaker 3 And then you start having kids or you have experience under your belt. You don't have to work as hard.

Speaker 3 You can start to scale back the hours and like find a little bit more of that balance and enjoy your life.

Speaker 3 Hopefully you set yourself up enough and then you're not taking on too many new challenges that just, you know, crush the relationship because it's like you're there to master the money.

Speaker 3 The money is not there to control you.

Speaker 3 And I have friends where, you know, they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars or billions and they,

Speaker 3 you know, they don't see their kids much. And it's hard.
It's like, I know that you're super excited about it, but make sure your kids are excited about it too.

Speaker 3 Because I grew up and my dad was gone five days a week traveling all the time. Just didn't see him.

Speaker 2 It's hard.

Speaker 2 And they go so fast.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we've got, again, I have five kids and we have three that have left, you know, they've moved out to college or whatever in the last year and a half.

Speaker 2 And it's just like went from five kids to two in our home. And it's like,

Speaker 3 man, that went fast.

Speaker 2 You blink and then, and yeah, it's crazy. So

Speaker 2 you're retired, taking some time off, doing stuff. Do you know what your next plans are? Are you building something something new?

Speaker 2 Are you investing in things? Like, what's kind of your next step?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I say I'm unsabbatical

Speaker 3 because the idea to say retired just seems silly.

Speaker 3 But I was 47 when I sold. So

Speaker 3 yeah,

Speaker 3 what I've learned, I said, I'm going to take a year off. I'm going to be super intentional about what's next.

Speaker 3 Because I have seen some of my other friends where they sold their business and then they're sitting around for six months and they're just dying, right? It's like eating them alive. I got to get out.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 they will admit that they took the next thing too quickly, you know, just jumped into it to be into it. To get

Speaker 2 or get busy again.

Speaker 3 Yes, exactly. Because our minds, like a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we're so used to the fast pace.

Speaker 3 And it's like our minds need something to lock in and then almost slow us down so that we can be comfortable and be focused and, you know, excited about whatever we're doing.

Speaker 3 So, and I've read a few books too, same thing. They're like, take six to 12 months just off and just cool down, you know, think about what you really want to do.
And so I've done that.

Speaker 3 And now I'm I'm in my exploratory phase where I'm just like kind of noodling on different ideas. Like people will bring me different things.
And it's been really, really fun.

Speaker 3 But I think the next thing is probably more creative or philanthropic for me. It's less about going out.

Speaker 3 Even though I have a ton of knowledge about scaling, you know, maybe a blue collar business or something,

Speaker 3 I've done that. I've been there.
And I know what the hours that it takes to go start up again and go do it all over again. And I'm like, you know what? I've got a lot in the bank.
I'm good.

Speaker 3 I don't have to like risk my family all over again just to be that type of entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Essentially, I was thinking about that when we sell our companies, like what would be the,

Speaker 2 because yeah, you go crazy sitting around for too long, but like

Speaker 2 whatever you put your impact in, it's got to be something that you care enough about to, to do, because you're not doing it for money the second time.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it doesn't have to be about money.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it's a differently, it's a different, I think also, like, I don't know about you, but like,

Speaker 2 I think when people build a company from that lens, like a lot of times it becomes a better company. It's not out of desperation or out of, you know,

Speaker 2 I had a lot of startups in the first half of my career that were just desperation, putting out things, trying to sell them.

Speaker 2 And then we had this little gap of space where like things were good.

Speaker 2 And like from that, that area of creativity is where we built ClickFunnels, which became our, you know, our company did a billion dollars in sales.

Speaker 2 It was like, was that, but it was, it was like, there was that gap of like, okay, we can, what should we create versus like, we got to, you know, and I think

Speaker 2 it'd be, yeah, I'm not in that spot again now where I can just take a break and like think through it, but that sounds like it'd be really, it'd really be interesting.

Speaker 3 I think people, they really need that time. I've seen a lot of CEOs where once they get to a certain size, they'll have their own office, like away from headquarters, which is ultimately what I did.

Speaker 3 But even if they're right there next to the headquarters,

Speaker 3 they take maybe three hours of their own time where it's totally quiet and they can focus on them and thinking about different ideas.

Speaker 3 Because if you're so caught up in the day-to-day, it's just like fire after fire keeps coming up, or people keep walking into your office. It's almost like you need that time to really just

Speaker 3 have a break, think about things and let it come to you.

Speaker 3 I think you get better ideas, kind of like you're saying, whereas in the beginning, it's like, we got to make this thing survive where it's go, go, go. It's like your adrenaline's always going.

Speaker 3 And we can get addicted to that adrenaline. So it's dangerous for people who are kind of in the scale mode.

Speaker 2 I think most entrepreneurs have a very addictive personality. It's like either you can be an entrepreneur or you become a gambler or a drug addict or something.

Speaker 2 It's like, there's the safer version, but also it's like we get addicted to the, to the pain, I think sometimes.

Speaker 3 Could have gone both ways there, right?

Speaker 3 And a lot of times people do. That's like the,

Speaker 3 unfortunately.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So interesting.

Speaker 2 That's cool.

Speaker 2 I'm curious.

Speaker 2 I always think about this when I meet people. It's like...

Speaker 2 you know, baseball cards, you get them back in days, like shows you the stats of what each person is and you could build a team and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 Like, what would be, I think, for you, like, the things that you think are your most unique, like your unique super talents that you figured out along this journey that

Speaker 2 you think that unique ability that you have versus other people, right?

Speaker 2 Because I think, again, in most companies, most founders I meet, each of them, like for me, it's like my unique ability is sales funnels.

Speaker 2 That's how we grew our company versus someone else could have gotten my company. They would have grown it through some completely different method.
You know, they would have to build a sales team.

Speaker 2 They would have built that way versus the way. And so I'm curious for you, like, what do you think your unique ability is in your companies that gave you the ability to scale and grow the way you did?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so

Speaker 3 I would say focus. It's like obsession.
I have this ability, it's almost like the, you know, the police German shepherds where they grab on to something and they just won't let go.

Speaker 3 My mind's like that. And so if it's initially it was sales, right? And then it was sales management and then it was training manuals.

Speaker 3 And then it became operations and entrepreneurship in general, scaling the business.

Speaker 3 And then digital marketing and other things that we started getting passionate about, bringing in executives and figuring out how to go even bigger.

Speaker 3 And so, I think the number one, if you said, what is the number one skill that you need to be successful? I'd say it's that.

Speaker 3 Because a lot of times, it's almost like the way you do anything is the way you do everything. We can put that focus on whatever it is and go, go, go.

Speaker 3 Or we can strategize and figure out: if I'm not that good at it, how do I find the right person to come in and fill that void so that we can be great at that one thing?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 3 I explained it.

Speaker 3 It It doesn't sound that sexy or that amazing, but I don't know. It's actually simple in my mind.
Because even if even if you,

Speaker 3 let's say your IQ is higher, right? If I'm working 16 hours a day and you're working eight, because I'm just constantly thinking about it, like you can't really catch up to me.

Speaker 3 Like if I was only working 10, probably 12,

Speaker 3 you know, if I'm fully engaged and obsessed. And that's that other thing, you know, I learned this actually from Tony Robbins too.

Speaker 3 Talks about goal setting and the importance of, you know, like for example maybe you're putting your goals on your mirror in a place where you constantly see them and maybe looking at them reading them in the morning reading them at night so that they get into your brain and then there's this thing that I learned from it it's called the reticular activating system right where now that you've identified what it is your brain the reticular activating system it's like on your radar and it will start to look for things along the way that says well here's how you achieve that and here's where it is we take in so much data right through our eyes each day that there's no way to focus on everything.

Speaker 3 And so you actually have to tell it in order to manifest it.

Speaker 3 It makes me think of when I first got a truck in college, when I got like this beater truck or whatever, and

Speaker 3 it was a white Ford Ranger. And

Speaker 3 when I went to the dealership, I actually didn't have that in my mind. I didn't know what car I was going to get.

Speaker 3 But I got the truck and then suddenly as I'm driving around, I noticed these white trucks everywhere. I'm like, I had no idea this was such a popular.
You bought the trendy car.

Speaker 3 But it's because I bought it that it now was in my head and I was seeing it everywhere. So it's kind of that same principle.

Speaker 2 So you're focusing on the thing,

Speaker 2 you just get all the answers and ideas and insights are coming in that you wouldn't normally see.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Your brain will start looking for ways to achieve and move towards whatever that is. And so super critical.
Like I thought this was cheesy. You know, I love Tony Robbins.

Speaker 3 Some of his stuff, I think, is cheesy. But other stuff, like, it's so true and it works so well.

Speaker 3 My last year in sales, I had a really big sales goal. I was going to try to sell a thousand accounts.
The average sales trip in our industry probably does 100.

Speaker 3 Our average was around 175 for our company. And I'm driving out to Houston, Texas for the summer.
And my dad, on the way, he said, hey, I have these old cassette tapes.

Speaker 3 And, you know, we were in CDs at that point, but I still had a cassette player. And he's like, I have these old Tony Robbins things.
Do you think he keeps on? I'm like, oh, I'll

Speaker 3 power probably. Personal power.
Yeah. 30 days.

Speaker 3 And I listened to him for 22 hours, whatever it was, driving all the way to Houston. And I was obsessed.
I'm like, wow, this is so good.

Speaker 3 And then throughout that summer, I would listen to it from time to time, but I almost doubled my sales.

Speaker 3 And like, other than just working really, really hard and like focusing on my goals because of that.

Speaker 3 I can't really blame it on anything else or, you know, say it was because of this. So works.

Speaker 2 That's cool. You say a thousand sales are like yourself or that your team?

Speaker 3 myself yeah

Speaker 3 how do you knock a thousand doors in summer let alone sell a thousand uh we we knock the average sales rep knocks about 15 000 a day or i'm sorry a summer and so as you get closer knock about 60 000 doors over four summers that is insane man yeah do you ever miss that you ever want to go back and knock again you know i'll say this when you're when you're good at something you can take pride in it you can enjoy it you know it's not just because of the time but there there was always it there's always always something been in the back of my head it's like how many could you do now yeah knowing what you know having written all these manuals and perfected them and there's probably it's like i want to go back out there that would be such imagine a fun of like a not a promo something like just like a a cool thing to do where you make an announcement you know put it up on youtube or something and actually go i remember i don't know if you know uh robert allen back in the day but he that's when he blew up his real estate career was he's like

Speaker 2 any city in the country drop me off within 40 you know 48 hours i'll have a house that i bought no money down whatever and everyone picked it out the newspapers and that became the story, which then became the book, which then became a billion-dollar empire.

Speaker 2 But how cool would that be if you did something like that and just throw me in any city, give me some pest controls, and we're going.

Speaker 3 It'd be fun to do a TV show. It's like, what product can you sell? It's like, all right, we're going to try this.
And then you got to figure it out. I'll get a workout.

Speaker 2 Door door sells people and give them random products to go sell door to door.

Speaker 3 No, seriously. Or just like just showing people.
I really love teaching people how to do things.

Speaker 3 It's very fulfilling. Like to give somebody a skill set,

Speaker 3 so that they can live a great life. It's really cool.
And so there is part of me that, you know, maybe 12 years ago, it's just how old this idea is. But I thought, what if you created a TV channel?

Speaker 3 So too old. But now it would just be a production company.
But you create shows, you know, like Shark Tank or I guess The Apprentice was popular back then or whatever else. But

Speaker 3 teaching people through entertainment, kind of the concept of edutainment, I love that because it's like, I want education to be the great equalizer in our country.

Speaker 3 Maybe somebody didn't grow up with the same role models in their home, or they grew up in a single family home, and like their mom's always working or whatever else.

Speaker 3 And it's like, just didn't have that. But if they have a TV in the home, or a computer or, you know, or a smartphone, they can get access to it.

Speaker 3 And that'd be super cool to, you know, find things that are exciting. It's crazy how long Shark Take's been on TV.

Speaker 2 It's still around.

Speaker 3 I never thought that would be on for so long.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. One of the few good entrepreneurials, it's interesting like how few make it that long.
So it's kind of, it's cool to see.

Speaker 3 Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 2 um all right we're wrapping getting close to the end i'm curious a couple more things i'm a book nerd you probably don't know this about me but i collect old books and manuscripts i think i've bought 18 or 19 000 books in the last three or four years but i'm curious uh for you what are the biggest books have the biggest impact on you either in your business your life your relationships like what are the ones that you've read that had the most meaning for you yeah so i will say delivering happiness was probably the one key book that I read but I was just it it changed the way I did business.

Speaker 3 And then, you know there's there's other really great books like you know Jim Collins has a lot of solid ones like I love built to last it's kind of that same idea of how are you gonna build it so that you can scale it

Speaker 3 teaches you know culture and like really he talks about like companies are like cults you know the really good ones it's like you're in or you're out and everybody subscribes to a certain philosophy and you know they charge together one i read recently is by will gadara uh it's called unreasonable hospitality it feels like delivering happiness 2.0.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it's this famous restaurant manager and the levels he went to to be the number one restaurant in the world or whatever.

Speaker 3 And I don't know how scalable that is. It's crazy what they had all their servers and chefs do,

Speaker 3 but really, really fun one. And then for body language, there's some really great

Speaker 3 books out there. Nobody's ever written a book on body language and how it relates to sales.
I probably should do it. That should be the thing.

Speaker 3 It could be a thing.

Speaker 3 Most of the books are written about like how to get in a relationship through body language.

Speaker 3 But politicians, attorneys, the FBI, CIA, they know body language six away till Sunday and they train it. They teach it.
But there's one book by Alan Pease called The Definitive Book of Body Language.

Speaker 3 And then there's another one. It's called What Everybody is Saying.
And I forget the author, but he's a former FBI negotiator.

Speaker 3 and they just they go through every little detail of every little movement in your face your body and what that means so it'd be amazing in a courtroom to be able to read oh yeah you know or when you're taking depositions

Speaker 2 yeah everyone right interesting so like when you were doing door approaches obviously you mentioned that earlier like how do you

Speaker 2 are you trying to affect your own body language to change the hydrogen or are you more so looking at them and trying to figure out both both sides yeah and it's hard that's why you you literally want to have a script like of what you're saying And that's the easy part.

Speaker 3 So you can go you can wordsmith it. We literally get everybody here's the exact script.
You know, you can rip off this a little bit, but like this is solid.

Speaker 3 If you memorize this, then you can focus on what's really important, which is like your body language and your paraverbal communication. You know, like it's what you hear.

Speaker 3 So body language would be everything from eye contact to smiling to head nods, you know, to the way you're sitting with the other person, mirroring, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 And then paraverbals, the speed of your voice, you know, the volume, volume uh the pitch do you pause to add emphasis all of those sorts of things that make a massive difference and the way i first figured it out was

Speaker 3 some of my friends my first year they would say okay someone gives me this objection what is your rebuttal

Speaker 3 and i would say oh well yeah i just say this and this and i would literally say it how i said it and they're like no i say the exact same words what what is different and i said you know, I think it's the way you're saying it.

Speaker 3 It's how you say it, not just what you say. And so we started working on that a little bit, but it really is with my second year where I started going, okay, I'm fully committed to this.

Speaker 3 I'm going to read up on this and learn it and teach it.

Speaker 3 And with sales reps, one of the ways we train them, and I've never heard of this in any other industry, but we,

Speaker 3 so we, every day we have a sales trainer meeting, and there's usually teams of like 15 individuals, and the sales manager will say all right who wants to go like who had a really bad day yesterday or who had a killer day yesterday and say all right let's go up and they would do their approach our door approach is only like two to three minutes and then like to actually fill out paperwork and complete the sale you know maybe it's like eight or nine minutes ten minutes max and so we could record you know a role play and then we had a big screen TV in every office we're like all right let's put it up put up on the screen and then we tell everybody okay if you see something negative or positive tell me pause and then you tell us what you're seeing.

Speaker 3 And it was a great way, like unless you see what you're doing, it's really hard to understand like what you're good at and what you're not good at.

Speaker 3 So think of it like, you know, watching a football game, you know, like after the game, you know, you're a coach and you're trying to study what the team's doing well and where, you know, where their weak spots are so that you can, you know, you know, win the next game or beat them or whatever.

Speaker 3 So it's the exact same thing. And man, it was so helpful.
It's like a sales rep,

Speaker 3 maybe they're normally, you know, doing doing two or three a day but they have a zero day and they're like it doesn't make any sense what am i doing and you get them up and they start they keep looking down like not confidently or they're frowning because they're like stressed and it's like hey look you're stressed like just smile like relax and then you know they'll go sell seven the next day and it's like it all works out yeah so it's we're very um helpful with each other the mentality was not everything for myself, you know, because the territory was never strapped.

Speaker 3 There's always enough area for everybody to knock. And it's like, if we all help each other, we're all better off as a whole.

Speaker 2 That's cool. I don't know if you've ever been to Tommy Mellow's office, but he does the garage door stuff.
And it's really cool. I had a chance to be in there.

Speaker 2 And when someone joins his company, because he's nationwide now, but they have to fly and they have to live in Arizona for like a month.

Speaker 2 And then in his office, he has like 10 garage door or garages set up with like different things and gadgets. Smart.
And then they do role plays.

Speaker 2 And so like the guys that come up and notice like, oh, the thing in the garage, like, oh, so you got kids, you know whatever it is and they and they're role playing like those things then they said tonality facials all kind of and it makes them do it for a month before and then they fly back to where they're gonna live and then they're allowed to go sell I'm like that's so

Speaker 2 so cool like most people again like you talked about when you first got started like all right go knock on some doors here's a script maybe versus like really the training of that and getting like better and better better because it's like people are not as you know knock on the same doors but that percentage doubles like you make twice as much money for the same amount of effort and it's shifting those little things you know or other times they'll give you stuff and it's all technical.

Speaker 3 Like it's no sales know-how, you know, or how to persuade or like how to close.

Speaker 2 Here's all the details about our offer. Like what?

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's like most customers, they don't want to hear that.
They don't, it's like, just give me like three key points and close me. Will my bugs be dead? Cool.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 So I don't know exactly what chemical it is or, you know, like how much.

Speaker 2 When kids get sick with the chemicals you're giving me, okay, cool.

Speaker 3 Don't tell me the scientific name of the bug. I don't care.
It's almost confusing to them and it's a turn off.

Speaker 3 So it's, it's learning to speak in people's language, what they need to hear hear to get them to say yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is it universal for most people or is it shift? Like, is it that what you're trying to figure out when they're talking to people or is it more universal?

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know, some people are more analytical and others are just very simple. Like, yeah, I don't really care about that.

Speaker 3 One of the things I developed, I called it the rack system. So resolve, ace, close.
So if somebody has a doubt, you resolve that doubt. and then you lay down an ace.

Speaker 3 So usually I'd have four other things I could mention that I didn't mention originally. And so I'd usually start off with three.
It's kind of simple. It's three points.

Speaker 3 It's usually enough to convince somebody. But you know, some people are more difficult or they have doubts about different things.

Speaker 3 And so you resolve it, you lay down something new, and then you close again. But the key is make sure you have a different close.
If you say the exact same close, it almost

Speaker 3 reminds them of what you already said and they already said no, so mix it up a little bit.

Speaker 3 And if they have it, and then also make sure you have multiple rebuttals to the same objection because they may not buy the idea the first time it might be yeah but i still had this issue or i don't think this is that it's like well here's what some of my other customers have found give them a different rebuttal a different ace it's because like you're laying down more and you're helping them forget about the rebuttal and then closing a different way and it's like you know

Speaker 2 little by little the more you lay down eventually it's like okay you got me like i'll give you a shot i'll try it out yeah that's really cool man so exciting well it's been awesome having you here it's so cool hearing about your business and what you've done and I'm, I'm nervous because

Speaker 2 you don't have a huge social profile. People are going to listen to them, like, we want to follow you and learn more from you and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But so, like, is there anywhere for us to send people or where to go or how to plug in to see what your next things you're going to be doing in the future?

Speaker 3 I was just telling me, oh, I'll go to LinkedIn. It's funny.
Like, I, I, and I know podcasters hate to hear this, but like, I got off social media entirely. I just feel like I'm happy or not.

Speaker 3 I'm okay being like private and living my life differently. Um,

Speaker 3 but yeah, I go through LinkedIn. And at some point, like, I'll, I'll probably, you know, get back on and like

Speaker 3 figure out what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 You get that book written. You're going to have to.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they're going to

Speaker 2 force you back on Instagram.

Speaker 3 No. Totally.

Speaker 2 Okay. So LinkedIn.
And yeah, anyway, I'm grateful for you coming and serving our people and sharing. I think

Speaker 2 so many cool lessons for people to learn and to think about. So I appreciate you being here and sharing.
And everyone, go check them out on LinkedIn and go get to know him better.

Speaker 3 So happy help. Awesome.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 This next one's for all you CarMax shoppers who just want to buy a car your way.

Speaker 1 Wanna check some cars out in person?

Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 Wanna look some more from your house. Okay.

Speaker 3 Wanna pretend you know about engines?

Speaker 2 Nah, I'll just chat with CarMax online instead.

Speaker 3 Wanna get pre-qualified from your couch. Woo! Wanna get that car?

Speaker 3 You wanna do it your way.

Speaker 3 Wanna drive?

Speaker 2 CarMex.