Best of SBS – Interview with Hardcore Closer, Ryan Stewman

Greetings everybody and welcome to the very first episode of the Small Business show here in 2020. I'm Dave Hamilton. Shannon Jean and I are off this week, sort of, except that we've both dug in and found each a favorite episode from the past several years of doing the show that we wanted to share with you that has some perspective. Last week, Shannon shared an interview with Rick Stewart of Listo Pencil Corp. And so you can go listen to that one great interview this week. It was pretty quick for me to make the decision to share an interview we did with a guy named Ryan Stuman. He calls himself the hardcore closer. We did this interview back in 2017, two and a half years ago. Ryan was had just, I think he had just put his book out and so was on a bit of a PR tour for that, but really had the pleasure of chatting with him for about a half hour. He is someone that focuses on business and motivation and self improvement. And most importantly, although it doesn't really come up in the, in the, specifically in the interview, you'll hear that there is an air of self awareness going on in there and he wants to help everyone get to the point where he has gotten and beyond. And he truly, truly focuses on this. After this interview, I started following Ryan on social media and Facebook and part of some of his Facebook groups. And he really does just focus on helping people and kind of cutting through all the excuses. He, since this interview has really started pushing against what he calls the force of average, which is something I love. We got to get Ryan back on to explore some of those topics. But the ones that we did explore is he says a couple times, you know, in the interview, I'm dedicated to creating millionaires. I treat these clients like their family. And he was so proud two and a half years ago. I'm sure this number has gone up tenfold or exponentially. In fact, since then, he says, I have helped so far. Ten people hit six figures in a month. And there are some interesting things that, that he really talks about how advertising has been the thing that helped to propel him and how important it is to get help faster. So I hope you enjoy this interview. I also hope that you Enjoy linode@linode.com SBS if you need a server for your business, for anything that you're doing, really, Linode is the place to go. Because what Linode understands is that speed matters. And it matters very specifically in terms of how fast your disks are. If you've got slow disks, your server's going to be slow. No matter how fast the CPU is. But a lot of times you just don't need a fast cpu. You just need to be able to read and write data quickly. That's the thing that slows you down. Well, not at Linode, because 100% of their servers, even the ones that you can get starting at just five bucks a month, feature native SSD storage and are connected to their 40 gigabit network. SSDs are the things that we've got in all our laptops and our phones now that make reading and writing data happen super, super fast. You get to pick from any of their 10 worldwide data centers. You can deploy and maintain your infrastructure easily losing using Linode's new cloud manager. Their user interface means that if you don't want to, you don't ever have to go to the command line of your server. You could, but you don't have to. And that's the key. They make it super easy to set things up. You want a WordPress site, boom. They've just got it. Want a VPN, boom. You want a Minecraft server? Sure. Boom. Good to go. You never have to touch a command line. You don't have to know anything about how servers work. They take care of that. You take care of running your business and it's all good. So make sure you visit lino.com sps because that's where you're going to get a $20 credit so that you can get that $5 a month server free for four months. That's pretty good. Linode.comsbs Our thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. And this is the Small business show episode 256 for January 1, 2020. Motivation is, is the foundation of success. We talk a lot about motivation on this show. And our guest today is someone who is so enthusiastic and motivated that he's found a way to infuse that into others while teaching valuable business skills from hardcore. Closer.com it is my esteemed pleasure to welcome Ryan Stuman to the show today. Thank you so much for joining us. Ryan, welcome.

Hey, what's up, David and Shannon. I'm glad to be on here. I see you guys. Episode number one, two, three. That's easy enough to remember, right?

Yeah, man.

Appreciate you guys keeping it simple for me at least. It's probably like 1,436,912 or something.

We'll get there.

Yeah, yeah, we're getting there. You come back on on that episode. All right.

Yes. Yep, that'll be the one.

The number in the books. So I mean, I, you know, you are a natural born talker. And so that's going to make this really fun today. But we're going to try and guide this conversation. We'll see how successful we are. Your current business is effectively training salespeople and other motivated entrepreneurs, but really salespeople, because at some level we're all salespeople. How to use social media to their benefit. But that's not always what you've done. Talk to us a little bit about hardcore closer and what you do and how that got started.

Well, I've never had a salary job in my life. I've never been able to take a paid vacation or personal day off that I still receive money for. Hell, I don't even know guys that I've ever had health insurance through any anywhere that I've worked. Right.

Yeah.

And I've just always been a sales guy and I did mortgages. Well, I started off selling car washes. And you know, at the car wash there'd be like a thousand cars on a Saturday get washed. And so it gave me a thousand opportunities to talk somebody from $5 to $10 on a car wash. Right, yeah. Of course, as a young man I gained a lot of experience because that's a lot of face to face selling. And I did that for six years, you know, and so we're washing on average about 8,000 cars a month. And so. And I'm talking almost all of them because I'm working seven days a week and. Cause that's the only way you can make 600 bucks a week back then selling car washes, you know, as a young man. So. But somebody came in there and noticed that I was a hard worker and that I always tried to sell this lady stuff and she offered me a job in the mortgage industry and I figured it had to pay better in car washes. And at least if it was in the ac, I was already winning. Right?

Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Because you're down in Texas, right? Yeah, yeah.

And so within about three weeks of working there, I have made almost seven grand. And that's life changing money for, you know, it's life changing money for a lot of people, but especially for me at 21 years old when I was used to making, you know, five, six hundred, eight hundred dollars in a week if I was lucky. And then all of a sudden, three weeks later I'm pulling, you know, I think it was like 6800 bucks or something like that from a mortgage That I closed, and I was hooked. You know, the next month, I turned around, I made another, like, 14 or $15,000. And, you know, within about six months, I was running a satellite office. You know, it was a branch, but it wasn't like I had a bunch of employees or anything. It was just basically me and a couple homeboys that were cranking out mortgages and got to where I was doing so much business in the mortgage world. I bought, like, a nice home, one of the nicest homes in the city that I lived in at the time. And the police and stuff thought I was selling drugs, man. And they kicked in my door. They didn't come and ask me any questions like you see in csi. They didn't call me and say, we'd like to talk to you down here at the station. They kicked in my door like I was John Wayne Gacy or something like that with mask and all this stuff. Well, the thing was, I wasn't even home. Fellas, like, they kicked in my door looking for drugs in a house that I had worked honestly for, and they threw flash bombs in my house. I wasn't even home. So great detective work there, gentlemen. But I showed back up at the home, and they ended up arresting me for a gun. So there's no drugs in the house. There wasn't even sandwich bags. The furthest thing from a drug dealer was I was a banker, you know, and drug dealers don't make banker money. No, no, I'm pretty sure no drug dealers lived in my neighborhood. Right. It was all, like, bankers and financial advisors and stuff like that. Just like me. And so that kind of, you know, they arrested me for possession of an illegal firearm, and they ended up giving me 15 months in federal prison. So I literally went from washing cars to making. You know, I made $770,000 in 2005 to get the throne in federal prison for some stuff that I really didn't even do, you know what I mean? And so did 15 months in there, got out, got back into the mortgage industry. And, you know, at this time, the mortgage. When I went into prison in 2007, I got out in 2008. The mortgage industry had collapsed, you know, like, the bottom was falling out of the mortgage.

That was a bad time to be in the mortgage industry. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Well, I didn't have a choice because I got out of prison, and there wasn't some dude with snakeskin boots and a briefcase full of money telling me, thank you for doing time. Like you see in the hal Hollywood movies. Like, there was a Greyhound bus to the halfway house. And once I got out of the halfway house, I talked the CEO of the biggest bank in Texas into giving me a job, even though I had a felony. And within about 90 days, I was their top producer. And even in the worst times, in 2009, when things were falling apart, I still did 183 loans. Banks would leave. I'd be like, hey, can I have your clients? Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, why not? Somebody's got to take care of them.

Yep.

And. And I didn't have a choice. I didn't know any other trades to go work in. Well, in 2010, Dodd Frank got passed. Obama signed it into law. And in part of that was, if you had a felon, a felony within the last seven years, you couldn't work in the mortgage industry. And that ended my career.

And just like that.

Just like that, man. Like, one month, we're like, oh, you think this is going to pass? The next month, it's like, dude, we can't give you a job anymore. We love you. Thank you for making us a bunch of money.

But you got to go.

Oh, you got to go. Yeah.

Wow.

And, you know, people offer me, like, backhanded deals, like, hey, man, we can pay you under the table. I'm like, no way, dude. Because the first time something goes wrong, you're like, the felon with the gun charge made me do it, you know, like, no, that.

That's. That's. That's wisdom right there. That. That. That taught you to walk away from that, man. That's. Yeah.

And it sounds like, you know, it. They might have done you a favor, pushed you into hardcore closer. And the success you've had with that as well.

Well. And so I went to go ask one of the realtors that I did business with for a job, and he didn't know I was asking him for a job. He didn't know the whole story. So I was going to, like, unveil what had happened and everything, you know, and before I could ask him for a job, he's like, dude, you should just start your own business and be. You should teach other loan officers how to do what you do. He's like, you're the best I've ever seen at it. You should show other loan officers how to do this. They need your help, man. And I was like, I don't think anybody's going to pay me to learn from me. I'm not much of a teacher. You know, I got, like, a GED in the eighth grade. So I don't think that that's like really up my alley. And he's like, man, you're not giving yourself credit. And he gave me these DVDs that he bought from some seminar for like eight grand. And my friend, he's a cheap bastard. And so the fact that he had spent $8,000 on something was like mind boggling to me. Let alone disc. And I'm like, what are these? The disc that can contain the cryptic codes in the Terminator movie or something like, what in the world? Eight grand for some DVDs. And so I watched them and they taught me how to build funnels and websites. But this was in 2010, so the word wasn't funnel and lead pages and click funnels. None of that stuff existed yet. You had to actually code WordPress and stuff like that. Like kids these days got it so easy, you know.

Dude, dude, you're preaching to the choir on that. I know, Yeah, I built my own content management system back in 1999 because WordPress didn't exist.

That's right.

Yep.

And yeah, WordPress was cutting edge back in 2010, you know. And so I made a little product, I followed the continuity blueprint DVDs that I got and made a little product, made a little bit of money. And what I didn't know was there was a second part of Dodd Frank that changed some of the rules. So this whole system that I was teaching was now like against the rules. And so, dude, I had to go through chargebacks and like misunderstandings because I wasn't in the industry anymore. And dude, it was a nightmare. I lost almost that I had again. And that was when I actually went and sold cars. Now she's my ex wife, but at the time my wife got pregnant. So everything happens in threes. So I end up selling cars and stuff like that. Well, while I was selling cars, there's a lot of downtime. And so I started just practicing this Internet marketing on the clock. And one day, and I was the top producer selling cars every month. But one day I had, I had figured out everything that I need to know and I left the car business. I started hardcore Closer. Like two weeks later I registered the domain and started teaching loan officers personally how to, you know, close more loans and market through social media. And then it expanded to real estate agents. And then, you know, if you flash forward seven years now or five years that I've been doing this now, you know, I write for Forbes, I have five best selling books. We do, you know, millions upon millions of dollars in sales. We're close to doing a million dollars a month in sales. We're like right on the tail of, of that. And, and all that's come from literally getting out of prison with like $25 in my pocket.

Wow, that's a great story, man. And a, you know, huge part of overcoming. Talk about overcoming adversity. Yeah, it's fantastic. That's, that's killer.

You know, there's a lot of pivots in that story. You know, the being good at mortgages pivot, going to prison, getting out pivot, going to work for a bank, losing license pivot. You know what I mean? Go wash cars or go sell cars. Like, I've had to pivot a lot, but I don't have a family that I'm close with or that I even talk to and they don't have money, even if that was an option anyway. And so it's not like I've ever had any safety nets. So I've always just had to rely on my sales skills and ability to get to work and make things happen quick. And once I made the decision to go all in on myself, you know, I'd like to tell you this, like, hey, we got rich overnight, but for three of the last five years, I grind 24 hours a day. You know, now I've got a good team and we make enough money to where we got all that in play. But, you know, I don't have any business partners or JVs or bank loans. I'm completely debt free other than my mortgage and the lease on the vehicle I drive. So I don't have any kind of debts or owe anybody money. So I've literally bootstrapped this thing, cash and self funded for the last five years.

Yeah, and those pivots, those pivots, man. The fact that you were able to just do it without getting. I mean, I'm sure there were some moments of darkness, but they didn't last very long where you just felt sorry for yourself. Well, okay, time to do something different. I got to make it happen. I got to hustle and I got to go, you know, I got to get to work. So. That's impressive, man.

The momentum that to me, you know, listening to that and reading about your, you know, your story is that you kept that momentum going, which I think is critical and just grinding it out, man. It's a secret that so many people miss that, you know, there is no epiphany. It's just keep working, keep hustling and trying something new.

Yeah. You know, there's a book by Daymond John, you know, the people Shark, and it's called the Power of Broke. And if you get a chance, get it on audible. The guy Sway from MTV is the narrator. It's awesome. He's got such a silky smooth, like, baritone voice, and so. But he talks about the power of broke, you know, like right now I still feel that power of broke because I'm always hungry. But when I came out of prison, the reason why I made things happen is because I didn't have a choice. You know, I was broken. So that was the power that compelled me is like, hey, you need to do this or you're not going to be able to eat and have a place to live next month. And nobody's going to help you and nobody's going to feel sorry for you because you put yourself in this situation. Whether it was, you know, the cops made a mistake or not, here you are, you know what I mean?

And yeah, it doesn't matter, right? You could feel sorry for yourself, but it doesn't change the fact that there it is. It doesn't matter. You got to fix it. Yep, that's it.

You know, and that. That. That power of broke allows you to make some really bold moves, because when you don't have anything to lose, you can take some really big risks because you're really not risking anything, you know?

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

You can't go below zero. Well, I mean, you can if you. If you screw up your debt, but even then, you take a bankruptcy and you move on. You know, it's not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, paint down.

Yeah, you got it.

You know, as I look through all the stuff on Hardcore Closer Ryan, it seems to me like, I mean, you're clearly dedicated to your own success, but the thing that comes across to me is how dedicated you are to others success. I mean, everything you do, you couldn't do what you do if you didn't actually care about the people that you were serving. And all of your clients, you really seem to stay focused on them. And is that just innate to you or how does that work for you? What's the mindset every day as you kind of go out and do this stuff?

Well, you know, when you get in an airplane and they go through that redundant crap about buckling a safety belt and where everything is and all that, they tell you make sure that in the event of emergency, put your mask on first before you help somebody else. And so that's basically what I've done, I've put my mask on first and I've got where I'm at. And so now it's my job to make sure others get their mask on properly. And what I'm focused on is helping other people become millionaires. You know, I worked in this business for four and a half years before I cracked my first seven figures in 12 months. And I've done a lot of drugs over the years, guys, but I'm telling you, that was a highlight. Nothing ever before, you know, and that's like some top of the world stuff. When you can finally say, you know, hey, I cracked seven figures in a year, that's like some, you know, that's like some big nut stuff. And so I know that feeling. And I've now I've got, you know, entrepreneurs and loan officers and real estate agents and small business owners that I'm helping become that same thing. I've helped so far. Ten people hit six figures in a month. And so, like, my goal is to create these 10 people now that I've got them there. My goal is to create, you know, some of them will be a million dollars on a W2 at the end of the year. But I'm dedicated to creating millionaires, you know, and I know the feeling. I know that millionaires create influence, and I know there's a tremendous amount of momentum once somebody makes it to that level. And you can influence elections, you can influence laws, you can influence the government, you can influence the local market, you can change the real estate, you can influence the stock market. And so I want people that I know to be wealthy. And, you know, I don't, like I said, I don't really have a family. So I treat these clients and stuff like their family. There was one that, you know, stayed over here last night. He drove in from Houston to spend an hour with me and we ended up having a good time. I told him, hey, man, just crash upstairs in our guest bedroom. And just like as if he was family. And, you know, that's really how I feel. I want to lift these other people up so they experience that same euphoric feeling as me. And. And I believe that if I can help more people become millionaires, then maybe we can help more people make the right decisions. Right? Because right now there's a very small population that has the money, but they're all really old and they're not going to be around for much longer. We know their descendants that didn't work with it. They're going to do dumb shit for us, we just want to be there with our hands out to collect it from them.

That's true. Yeah, that's right.

It is true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There needs to be more and more people entering the system that are eager and skilled at making money. So, yeah, that's it, man. Your enthusiasm and your dedication, it's infectious. I like it. It's great. I'm curious. You teach people how to all kinds of things, and one of the things you teach people is how to market. I'm curious what you do. What are the top couple of things that you do to market your business these days? What are some of those things that maybe people can pick up on?

Well, you know, as far as, like, I guess, like, if you're looking for something that's a buzz thing right now. I advertise heavily. I've been running ads on Facebook since 2013, and, you know, we still advertise really heavily on Facebook. Price spend right now, not probably up for this. Last week spent 5,100 bucks. That's pretty average for us in a week. And we run a lot of traffic on YouTube as well. So a lot of business owners are scared to advertise because they've got some guy that walked off the streets or cold called them or whatever and tried to sell them SEO or whatever the case, or some kind of advertising gimmick that didn't work. And so a lot of small business owners really get afraid of that advertising. But like I said, when I started and I lost all my money, I started back up $25 a day. I made a few sales. The next day I could spend $30 a day, made a few more sales, and I worked my way up to like said, now some months we'll spend 40 or $50,000. We usually spend between 15 and $20,000 just on Facebook, and then probably another five to 10 on YouTube every month. But advertising has been the thing that's propelled me. It's gotten me in front of the people that have been able to make a decision whether they like me and want to follow me and buy my stuff or not. And then it's pushed away enough people that don't want to do that, which is okay, too. That's part of advertising.

Sure.

And, you know, I've ran on Facebook, I'm looking right here. I've ran 1100 ads on Facebook so far. Like I said, since 2013. So I've had a whole lot of practice. And out of 1100 different ads, you can imagine how many times that I failed on there, but I've also stayed consistent and consistently test everything. And I just want to stay in front of people. I know that if I just stay in front of the crowd enough, there's going to be somebody out there who will take me up on my offer. Like for Facebook, for example, if you run an ad and you put it in front of 50,000 people, surely 10 or 15 of them are going to buy your stuff, you know?

Yeah.

And I think the thing that is that power of numbers, right. You got to push it out there enough to where you get, you know, may seem like small, but those 15, 20 people could change your life. You know, bring. Bring you that business. And do you manage those Facebook ads yourself or you have a member of your team that does it for you now?

So it's. We double team it. I used to do them all myself, and now our audience is too big for me to keep up with them. So basically what I do is I boost the blog post to gain the attention. It's like, hey, here's a blog post on how to sell stuff, right?

Sure.

Then when people go to the website, obviously we have retargeting pixels in there. And then I have a dude that does our retargeting campaigns that's like super hyper dynamic, depending on where they clicked and how much they read. And he does it through YouTube, Google and Facebook. So, like, the retargeting pixels are going throughout the whole Internet, basically. We follow them everywhere. And so they. The guy that I outsource it to, he's on my team, but he's an independent contractor. He handles all of our retargeting. And then I handle the top of Funnel, I guess you would say.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. As somebody who owns an advertising sales business, this has been my favorite segment of the show. So there you go. You just legitimized this because there are people that are afraid to advertise. They've been burned, or it's the easiest money to pull out, out of your budget when you need to make a cut because it seems like it's not doing anything for you. But in reality, if you're not in front of people, they have no idea who you are. So, yeah, man.

Well, you have to learn your market. Because with me, in the beginning, it was tough because I didn't understand I'm running ads and nobody's buying like that. I thought they should get a few sales, but nowhere near what I was expecting. And what happens is, now that I've been doing this for so long, I realized that if. If you guys just heard of me today and saw a blog post in your newsfeed on Facebook, you're gonna follow me for three to six months before you reach out and decide that, like, hey, this guy's legit and can maybe help me out. I'm not the type of person that you're just like, oh, hardcore closer. I'm give that dude my money. That's like, not really how it works with me. And so I understand that the ads I'm running today are putting money in my pocket six months from now. Man, that's important.

Man, that's good. That's why you're successful. You know, you see the long game of it. Yeah, for sure. You're not, you know, that most things and certainly your product isn't, you know, supermarket checkout line, impulse buys. Somebody needs to be informed and buy it, you know, intentionally. And that's smart, man. That's smart.

And we make them jump through a lot of hoops so that we know they're serious when it. When it comes time to get in contact with them.

That's cool. So I got a question for you. So, you know, I'm up on your site and I see, you know, you offer this, you know, your. Your free book, get guys in to opt in, that kind of thing. Tell us about the process of writing the book. Your first one that you're putting up there for free. Did you have somebody help you with that or did you just start sitting down and just start clicking away at the keys? What was the process for that?

So now I've got five, believe it or not, and the first one is a book called Hardcore Closers. It's like basically my biography. I've lived a crazy life, guys, and it's like my biography. And I actually wrote it. It's like 100 and something thousand words, and I actually typed it out over the course of about nine months. I dedicated an hour to writing and being working in the book every day. And, you know, some days that book was really painful to write because I had to write some really rough memories, you know what I mean? Prison and things like that. And so not every day did I get a lot of production done on it, but I set aside an hour a day to work on that book, and I knocked it out in nine months. And what was cool is I started dating my. She's now my wife, but I started dating Amy, my wife, about the time I started writing that book. And so I would. After I wrote a chapter, I would hand it over to her to see what she thought about it. So like, literally, she was my life became an open book to her. So like, as we were dating, she's like literally reading my life story in a book. And which is cool because it like fast tracked us getting to know each other.

Sure, yeah. Yeah. No secrets.

That's right.

Yep.

Yep. And so, you know, I've written five now. I have a pretty good system. I write every day. So I write either a blog post for forbes or for hardcorecloser.com or one of the other publications I syndicate for. I write a bunch of social media posts and sales pages and emails and all that stuff because I think in order to be a good salesperson in the modern area, you gotta learn how to sell via copy. That's the way people are reading text more than they're meeting face to face and stuff like that. And they'll read a blog post before they watch a video. That's just how it comes. So the reason why I say that is I think writing is really important. So I'm probably going to knock out another book this year. I've already gotten one done this year. I'll probably knock another one out towards the end of the year. And that's my thing is I want to write two books every year so that when it is time for me to go, I leave a legacy and a library.

There you go.

Nice. That's cool.

Hey, as our listeners know, we're big fans of mistakes here on the show because they teach us so much. And you alluded to that in your, your Facebook discussion. Do you have a favorite mistake or one that you like to share?

Well, you know, dude, I am a prolific mistake maker.

That's why you're here, man.

So I don't, you know, I don't know. You know, I know Sheryl Crow has favorite mistake that might date me a little bit.

There you go. That's right, man.

Yeah. We should play that song for this segment, right? Do you have a favorite mistake and then have a little Cheryl Crow mixed in there? You know, the thing with me is I don't really have a favorite mistake, but I learned like those pivots, you know what I mean? There were some mistakes that I made along the way that I could have corrected. But here's the thing. For me, I feel like life, the universe, the creator, God, whatever you want to call him. I feel like I was put here for a reason and I had to go through all the things that I went through. So I didn't share it all with you, but, I mean, I've been adopted and dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Prison. Prison. First time in ninth when I was 19, then again when I was 27. Been divorced three times at this point. And I mean, I have just made a shit ton of mistakes, guys. But I had to go through all those to gain the experience to be the change in disruption that I am in the industry now, because I'm okay with it. It doesn't make me embarrassed to share these stories with you or tell you about the mistakes that I made. I'm not prideful about them, but I'm also not embarrassed about them. But. But I'm one of the only people that have made this tremendous amount of mistakes. So that in my inbox every day and the people that opt into our blogs and all this stuff, people say, hey, I came through really rough beginnings. I was adopted, I was in trouble, I went to jail, and now I'm successful and I can't tell anybody about it. And thank God that there's here for you, because I've been wanting to tell this to somebody for years. Then I get to help that person oftentimes go on to lead change in their industry, in their area, in the geographical location that they live in. And, you know, that's a huge thing for me. And so I'm really, you know, focused on obviously helping these people and everything else. But I feel like I was put through all that hell so that I could be the guy that has the experience, so that when you come to me, you know, you're getting it straight and you know that it's somebody who's actually survived all this stuff. So you really have no excuse. You know, like, somebody can say, well, you know, I'm behind on my rent. It's like, dude, I never been behind on my rent in my life, and I had to go from the halfway house to get in an apartment. Like, what's your excuse? You know, it's just a matter of people's mindset. And I think that's why people are attracted to me, because they're like, you know what? I need to put my excuses in a bag and go see Brian.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is. I really appreciate you spending your time with us today. Do you have. Before we. Before we sign off, is there anything else you want to share? Obviously, I want to have you tell people, People, you know, where to find you, even though you've already done that many times as I expected. But. But is there anything else you Want.

To share before we.

Before we sign off here?

Not unless you guys have something that, you know, you. More question you'd like to ask me or anything, man. I'm open. Or we can end it. That's up to you guys.

Sure.

You call the shots. Boss, I got.

I got one last question and I don't. I don't even. We usually ask everybody this. I have no idea how you're going to answer this or even if you could, but I'll ask it anyway. If you could go back to when you were first getting started to give yourself one piece of critical advice, what would it be?

Get help faster. I waited too damn long to hire people. I looked at hiring people. I'd always been a one man wolf pack. You know, like, I went to prison, didn't join a gang. You know what I mean? I got out. I didn't have a big mortgage team. You know, even when I told you I had the mortgage branch, it was, it was just me and my homie. And so like, I've always been like this lone wolf person. So, you know, I built this whole business for the first three years with Just Me. It wasn't until 2015 that I hired my first salesperson. And. Which is ludicrous. Cause like, you go to the haircut person and their hair looks like crap. That's me. It's like, I'm the sales trainer. I got no salespeople.

Right. And you could train somebody to make you money. That's right.

You got it.

Exactly. And then I did, you know, and now I have three salespeople and, you know, payroll just this week alone was. I put it in earlier today. It was 50 grand for them. So they're making a killing. And. But it took me, you know, forever to drop my ego to where I could let other people give me a hand because I'm like a, you know, do it myself type. So if I could go back, I would say, hey, man, why don't you let somebody help you for once?

Yeah, I think it's the kind of the bootstrapper's dilemma. You know, I'm hearing you talk about, you know, no debt. I don't have this. I don't have any partners. And I've done, you know, similar things along the way. But it oftentimes you do need to, you know, start up. Just like you got your advertising things going. You got to bring on people to, you know, help you exponentially. So it's cool. But we've enjoyed your story, man, and I love it. And tell us how everybody can find and learn more about your business and Hardcore Closer.

Well, that's it. Just go over to hardcore closer.com and there's a couple books that you can pick up up for free there. There's 800 blog posts, another 400 different videos and pages and podcasts and book reviews and anything you can think of. It's the, the in my personal very biased opinions, the single greatest resource for salespeople on the planet.

As it should be. That's why you create it. That's right, man.

That's right.

So good, folks, thanks. Thank you very much, Ryan. Folks, folks, visit hardcore closer.com if you want to learn more about them. And if you have any questions for us, of course, visit our small business support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook. Keep living that charmed life, everybody. Thanks again, Ryan. This is great.

Take care.