Radical Transparency | Closers.io COO, Sivana Brewer (Podcast 220)

Under radical transparency, you have to have healthy conflict. So healthy conflict is just like we encourage people to argue, let's get it out and talk about it. And it's kind of like with family. You know, your family may piss you off so much, but the next day you're going to hug them and you're still going to love them because they're family.

Our guest today is a COO alliance member and the CEO of Closers IO, Sivana Brewer. Sivana runs the operational teams for both remote Closing academy and sales team accelerator at their company closers IO. She dropped out of college at 19, spent her time reading 100 business books in a year while going full steam into the business building skill sets online. Sivana quickly honed in on sales. In 2020, Cole Gordon hired her to help build the sales recruiting department, which now places over 100 plus sales reps per month into seven to nine figure online coaching and agency offers for clients like Tony Robbins, Todd Brown, Agora Financial and others. Stevana now leads all recruiting operations and event teams in the company. Loves spending her time hunting for vintage fashion, swing dancing and doing anything that sounds fun. Sivana is known around the team as the most random lady ever. Sivana dreams to someday win the show Survivor and become a world champion barrel racer. That is random. That's amazing. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you. I'm super excited.

Did you really read 100 books in a year?

I did. And you know what's crazy is I had never fully read one book before that. Like, I was a spark notes kind of student, so I never read really any books fully. And then I watched Tai Lopez's video on, you know, everyone gives him a hard time about it, but his, you know, I read a book a day thing and I'm like, if I'm dropping out of college, I have to find some way to educate myself, so I might as well just read books because it's working for this guy. And then I ended up meeting him when I was at 30 books in and like went on his Snapchat about reading books. And then once, once I was 30 books in and I told Tai Lopez's audience that I was reading 100, I was like, I have to finish. And I did. I think I hit like 102.

Good for you. It's amazing. Any favorites?

Yeah, the book that I gift the most often is the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. That book is great. And then I think for, you know, I have a lot of my network is a younger crowd and the Book that I would gift for them most often is Millionaire Success Habits by Dean Graziosi. It's just like a really good entry book for people.

I think that's really cool. How do you learn now? What do you do to grow as a leader now?

I mean, the amount of the things that I've learned in the last two years with this company of just actually being in the weeds is probably 10 times higher than every year before doing any amount of studying I could have ever done. But outside of that, I mean, Layla and Alex Hermosi, I think their content is absolutely incredible. I watched Leila's stuff probably every video at least five times and then still read a lot of books, audiobooks. And I just ask a lot of questions to the other execs in the company. I ask a lot of questions.

What's your Colby profile? Have you done your Colby a profile?

I'm a 4, 5, 8 3, I think.

Oh, interesting. So you're more of a quick start than a real fact finder. So you do ask a lot of questions, but you're not wired that way. You are wired more entrepreneurially.

Yeah, I'm actually a higher quick start than Cole, the owner.

Interesting. And why do you think it is that you ask questions then?

So actually the company that I met Cole at the. One of the things that they would say, so we met in a sales team at this other company and one of the things that they drilled into my mind was when I go to that meeting, if I'm not on pace to hit my numbers, and I don't know why that's a problem, and if I go into that meeting and I'm not on track to hit my numbers and I don't have any questions for people that are better than me, then like, what the heck am I doing? And so that was such a big learning lesson for me that if you're around people that are farther ahead than you are, if you're not asking questions, you're just an idiot, basically. So that is something that I really carried into my relationship with Cole. Every single time I have a one on one call with him, we have a weekly one on one, I make sure that I have at least one question, even if I feel like I don't really have any big problem that I need his help with or things I want his suggestions on.

Sure.

Farther ahead than me in a lot of areas. And if I don't come with questions, then in my opinion, I shouldn't even be on his team. So that's kind of My philosophy, I.

Guess it's kind of like that adage of if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so it's funny that you actually mentioned Tai Lopez. I had that same feeling about Tai when I first saw him online as this kind of super douchey, you know, hey, here's me and my Ferrari or me and my Lambo, and I'm out in my garage with my bookshelf, and I'm like, really? Like, you're such a poser. And then I saw him speak at a conference and sat and listened to him for about a half hour with a flip chart, running numbers and talking. And I'm like, holy. And he wasn't selling anything. There was no back of stage offer at all. He was just explaining marketing and cost per acquisition and lifetime value and the cash flow cycle. I'm just like, dude, you're really, really, really, really, really smart. And his point was, look, I'm spending all this money on marketing. I need to understand. This gave me a whole new respect for him. Strangely, he ended up reaching out about three months after that and asked for one of my books to be in mentor box. So one of my book. My book. Yeah, I think it was my. I don't. And now I don't remember if it was Vivid Vision or Free pr. I think it was Vivid Vision. Anyway, it was pretty cool to be asked by that. Now I got to go back and figure out which book was in there. That's embarrassing. So how did you guys land the kind of. Some of the marquee clients that you have? I know you've mentioned Tony Robbins and you, Dean Graziosi and I guess Russell Brunson are all kind of part of that one program together. So I'm sure that's one company. How did you go about landing them and some of the other clients that you've landed?

That's a good question. I think one of the things that I respect Cole for the most is the amount that he invests into other people. I've never seen anything like it. The amount of content he consumes and the people that he invests in is unlike any other person I've ever met. And so early on, I mean, he was just every single, like, anytime there was something he didn't know or he wanted to get better at or someone he wanted to meet, he just pays them. And even if there's not something like crucial that he's wanting to learn, if he wants to get in Contact with that person. He's just going to pay them for their time just to get into their circle. And so he did that with a lot of different people. I know that, you know, Todd Herman is this person. Personal mentor. Todd, obviously is connected to a ton of people. Man, I can't. I'm like, kind of blanking. But he's got so many coaches and he's had so many that I think that just kind of allows him into different circles, masterminds. I mean, being in war room opens up a lot of opportunities, and it's just kind of been like a really fast ripple effect for him, and he just crushes it for all of our clients. So I just.

That pays off, too.

Yeah. Kind of spread.

You do have to put yourself in the room to be around luck, like, to luck. You know, what is it? You're good to be lucky and lucky to be good. I think you have to put yourself in that room to allow yourself to meet some of those people and then, you know, be okay with just going up and asking them questions. What's interesting is I think every successful person has been helped by someone else as well. Right. So we're kind of hardwired as humans to help the next person that asks us for help. So it's a bit of a living in abundance. Bit of a what goes around comes around. I like that you kind of. You recognize that as well. Tell me about some of the questions that you go into your one on ones with Cole with. Can you give me an example of what one of those or a couple questions might be that you would ask in a one on one?

Yeah. I mean, they range from more practical business stuff that I'm struggling with and then philosophies like my. My one on one. This week, I actually had one major question, and that was basically, I'm doing a lot for my age, and I hear that all the time, like, oh, you're so far for your age. And, you know, I hear that a lot. But internally, I've never felt that way. Like, I have felt behind since I was 14, 15, when I really started getting into this stuff. And I went to Russ. Russ the artist and went to his show on Friday with 27 of my friends, got a party bus, and it was the first time I've done something really fun in quite a while. And it brought back all this inspiration and excitement. And I'm like, man, there's so many things I want to do in my life, and maybe I want to be a superstar as well and not just do business. I want to compete nationally in Bell racing. I want to win Survivor, the TV show. There's all these things I want to do and I feel like I'm not doing them or I'm not doing enough. And so going into that one on one, I just asked him what's happening. How do you feel like, are there other things that you want to do outside of business? Because all I see is you're just dead set on business and like I don't even know what else you're excited about. And like, am I putting too much pressure on myself? I shouldn't be looking at this. So sometimes I go into things with questions like that and then other times it's very specific leadership problems. Like, here's the challenge I'm having. This is what I've done. This is what, like we have a rule in our company that we always come with an I intend to, which is huge. So this is the problem. I intend to do this. What are your thoughts Kind of thing.

That's cool.

Those are the two sides.

I love the I intend to. I was just speaking with somebody earlier on a coaching call and he said he doesn't want his employees to be problem spotters. He wants them to be problem solvers as well. And. And I love that you can actually I love the I intend to as kind of like a mantra or a saying that's kind of part of the closers IO way. Right. What's the agenda for your one on one meetings? How do they typically run?

Okay, I love that you just asked me this question. So before there was no agenda, like at all? No agenda. Just come in like what do you need from me? Kind of thing. And sometimes we just get chat about like my health stuff or family or whatever and then otherwise, you know, ask like business stuff. And I started feeling like with my one on ones with my team, they weren't as effective as they could be. So I went and started playing around with different like one on one docs that they have to complete 24 hours in advance and then send to me and then I review it and then we go into that call and go through it together. So I tested that with my team starting about 4 or 5 months ago. Totally changed my one on ones. So with them it's a little bit different. Now with Cole I was like, I'm doing this because I want to get more out of my one on one. So I'm sending you a document, you need to review it and then we'll go into it and on our One on one document. We go over projections and numbers, where we're at for the month. I go over what I'm excited about going into next week, what I'm working on, the biggest things that I got done since our last one on one. Because one of our core values is getting and staying in sync. And the bigger we get, the harder I have found it to stay in sync, specifically with Cole and with the other execs. Really easy with my team. But with cross departments, that's kind of where breakdown can happen a little bit easier. So we're trying to do more of like what's working, what are we working on and just sharing more. So we're in the loop. So I go over that, the biggest problems and then what I intend to do about them. That way I can just tell him exactly what my plan is and he can just tell me if he thinks I'm on the right track or not. And then what else? It's anything that you need from me as a leader and then any other like thoughts or questions and do you.

Ask, do you ask the same of him? Like what you need from him as a, as a CEO.

Like, what do I need from Cole? He's really good at asking for feedback on our one on one calls. No specifically, but he does ask, like just last week he said, yo, do you have any feedback for me?

I would flip them a little bit and I'll explain why in that I think the CEO and the CEO are very much the yin and yang of the company, where they're very much the partners, they're very much the sidekicks, you're very much the counterpart. So as much as it's valuable to find out what he needs from you, you also need to be able to share what you need from him because you're kind of at that same. Yes, you report to him, but it's a very different dynamic than any of his other direct reports. And it's not the same dynamic as you and your direct reports. You very much are that yin and yang to like a husband and wife might be in a traditional relationship, right? Yes. The husband might still have great relationships with the kids and the aunts and uncles, but the husband and wife are kind of sacrosanct. And it's very similar to the CEO COO relationship, I think is just having that kind of very tied yin and yang relationship.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We're thinking about. I didn't want this to strip into a coaching relationship, but I can't ever help.

No, I'm all about it.

So tell me a little bit about Leila Hormozi. Layla and Alex both came to the culture event that I ran a few years ago. We had an offline event at the Royal Palms, and we had a bunch of CEOs and COOs from all over North America come in, and I was really super impressed with both of them. What is it that you like about Layla? Because she's often not the one who's in the media. It's often Alex who's in the media. And Layla's ridiculously strong. What is it that you are learning from and trying to kind of sponge off of her?

Well, I think she knows her audience better than 99% of influencers on YouTube, to be honest, because every single time that I watch one of her videos, even if the title doesn't speak to me, I start watching it, and it feels like she made that video just for me. And I read a lot of her comments from her audience, and everyone feels that way. Like, she's really good at that. She's not worried about reaching everybody or getting famous, at least from what I can tell. She just really wants to help people and the content that she gives. I mean, I want to hire her to be my personal coach. I know she's not taking on coaching clients, but Layla eventually, like, you know, I want to work with you, but she. I feel like I owe her tens of thousands of dollars just from the free videos I've watched on YouTube. The thing that I really like about her is this whole. I've never been, like, one of those fluffy. I guess that's how I describe it. Like, the fluffy female coos or like the fluffy business. Like, I don't follow any female entrepreneur accounts. Like, that just has never been something that's been appealing to me. No, like, hard feelings that that's what you're into. But for me, I just don't care about it. And so when she started putting out content about, like, it doesn't matter if you're a woman. Like you. Why. Why do you have the need to say I'm a female COO or a female CEO? Like, you're just a COO or you're a CEO. Like, it doesn't really matter. And I really appreciate that about her. And kind of like. And some of that is kind of controversial, too, right now. You know, I think people like to have their, you know, kind of sometimes like to be in the minority, and she's kind of being a little bit controversial, and she's just bold, and I Appreciate that about her.

All right, so we understand you and a little bit of your learning and kind of where you're growing as a leader. Walk us through a little bit more about what Closers IO does. So who are you as a company? What do you guys really focus on?

Yeah. So our mission is to produce and empower world class salespeople and we do three things through that. So we do done for you recruiting. So we place sales reps, we train sales reps as well. So that's the second thing we do is we do a lot of training. Like the amount of group coaching calls we have for sales reps is unlike any other program. So not only do we get you reps, but after they're on your team, we continually train them. And then the third thing that we do, which is the thing that we don't market because it's not sexy and no one would click on this ad, is the management and the leadership consulting. That is really important for whoever's leading the sales team because you can get an A player on your team but if you don't know how to lead them or set them up for success, they're going to leave and they're going to go somewhere where they do get that. You may find like the diamond in the rough. The.001% of salesperson that can be on their own solo island for a couple years. But most, most people want to be a part of something cool. They want leadership, they want to feel cared for, appreciated. So how to do that while also doing that in a sustainable way. Like some people think that they should pay 30% commissions. That may work right now but as you scale those margins aren't going to hold up anymore. And so it's a lot of those simple things around management and structure that we also teach on.

Yeah. And are you, so you're kind of teaching it and you're also running the recruiting as well. Right. Are you actually, are you hiring entire teams for them and coaching those teams and kind of helping build out their sales teams internally or are you teaching them how to do it and then sending them a few salespeople and saying good luck. What's the model?

Well, it kind of depends. So we have clients that come in that are at 20, 30k a month and they're on the calls all day long and they, they just need to get off calls. So they're, they need to hire their very first sales rep and get off the calls. That way they can scale, you know, hire their first couple reps. So we do that and then we have clients like, you know, Tony's team, where they have I don't know how many reps, but dozens and dozens of reps and a lot of leads, like more leads than they know what to do with and with them. We just started recruiting for them a few months ago. It's going really well. But then like, their main problem wasn't recruiting. I don't know exactly what Cole's been working on with them, but more leadership and overall, like, you know, actual performance based. So it kind of depends on what people come in for. Some people just need to get a couple salespeople on. Some people already have this giant team and they just want the performance to improve.

Okay, I like it. I like the fact that you're figuring this out for them as well. Where do you struggle with your clients, with the client's expectations, with the, you know, with the output the client's looking for. Where do you traditionally struggle there? How do you and how do you work around that?

I think expectations is a really big thing, especially around sales, because it's really easy. I mean, even I used to have my theories about salespeople. And especially the smaller clients, when they come in, sometimes they think that they can just, if they're paying for. Done for your recruiting, they're going to get this beast right out of the gate. Well, this is a quote that Mitchell, he's our CRO, he always says is sales reps are like pretty girls at the bar. They have options. Right. So someone that's a killer is not going to come work for you if you're just starting out your sales team. Right. Like if you're wanting a commission only rep that's going to close, you know, $100,000 in revenue right out of the gate, you're not going to find them because that same person is going to go close for us or someone like us, where they can actually make money like that. So I think that can be some of the expectations that can be off depending on the level that they're in. It's usually, you know, people when they're first starting out, what, you know, how to think about sales and what do salespeople actually want and what do they need? I think that's where it can be off.

Yeah. Agreed. How about you and Cole? How do you stay in alignment and how have you decided how to split your roles? Like if you're running, you know, part of the organization is COO and Cole's running part of the organization as CEO, how do you guys stay aligned first on vision and plan. I think part of that's your one on one meetings. And then how have you decided to split up roles? How have you kind of looked at dividing and conquering?

Well, this is something that Cole recently taught me. I don't know what book. It may have been like organizational physics or something, but there's four different types of energy needed to grow and build a business. You have stabilizing energy, which is what it sounds like, stabilizing, making sure things are good, fixing processes. And then we have production, which is the producer role, creating content, bringing in more leads, closing sales. Then you have unifying energy, which is bringing people together, making sure culturally people are taken care of, people are happy. And then you have innovation. So innovative energy. And this really helps me kind of think about how rules are broken up. And so Cole is definitely more on the production side. And being the CEO and bringing the vision and building the business and pushing, I typically find that I fall more into the unifying energy and the stabilizing. Like, that's kind of my role. And so using those energy fields, it kind of helps me when, like, there's a new project coming. Like, what type of energy is needed for me. And everyone can be every single energy. Like, there have been times when I need to be in that production mode, but other times, like, I need to be more stabilizing or I need to be more unifying for the team. And we've really found, like, what our natural strengths are too, in that. So I naturally am more unifying. So the things that I think about, I do think about the people on our team more. I think about culture, I think about how people are happy and work, life, balance and being a little bit more like, you know, toning things on that side. Whereas Cole's like, let's just hit 100 million. Let's go.

Drive, drive, drive.

Yeah. Drive, drive, drive. And we do have a really good balance. And what I love and appreciate about Cole and for CEOs, I think is really important is not to make people on your team feel like those different things are bad. Right? So I've experienced that before where, like, this type of energy isn't welcomed here, but in many cases it should be. Maybe it can be, like, maybe it can be pivoted or changed a little bit so it fits whatever you're working on a little bit better. But Cole has always allowed me to step in that, and that still makes sense for the business, right? Like, if I just all day long was putting together team building events for everybody, like, that's not going to be productive. So you got to find kind of the middle ground there. But he's super welcoming of those things and understands that they're needed, even if it's not coming from him.

How many employees were in the company when you started and how many are there now? It's been two years. You've been there how many now? How many were there?

There was one when I started and technically there was two, but it was like a part time assistant and she quit like a week after I came on. So one, I think. And then now we have, I think we had over 80 people on our last team meeting last week.

Yeah. So when you go from two employees to 80 employees in two years, it's not even the same kind of company. And you know, you are young, you know, you said that, you know, and you, and you don't want to be positioned that way and you don't want to kind of be painted that way, but. And you're clearly good at what you do. Where have you learned how to grow an 80 person company in two years? And what did you do to do it to make it happen?

Geez, that's a hard question.

There's a lot there, right? Yeah.

Okay, let's break it down. The first question was, how did I do it or how did I learn to do it?

How did you learn to do it first? And then what were some of the things that you did to get there? Like if you had to give us the top three things you did to kind of get the company to the 80 people and being successful and still scaling, what were they?

Well, so in learning, I mean, I don't know, Cameron, I just kind of went for it. I don't know. I remember the first person that I had to hire. I just kept telling Cole, I'm tapped, like I'm working 80 hours a week. I don't know what else I can do. He's like, you just need to hire someone. I'm like, hire somebody? I don't know how to hire anybody. But before that, I remember watching like all these YouTube videos, reading hiring books. Before I hired my first person, I just went ham on like that one topic. And you can learn a lot. When you go just dialed into one thing, you learn a lot really quickly. So I think just through every new challenge that I go through, I just ask questions around that thing to Cole because he usually has done it. And I look at videos on YouTube and then something I've had to get really good at though, which I wasn't good at in the beginning is this concept of weighted believability, which is, how close is this person actually to your circumstance that they deserve to be able to give you feedback that you listen to? So as an example, Cole was telling a story about he was at dinner with this millionaire, and Cole was telling him some problems or some challenges we're working through, and this billionaire gave him advice. And Cole thought about it, and he's like, this actually doesn't. I don't think that this really is the best thing for our company. So it can be easy to think, oh, because this guy's a billionaire and 100 steps beyond us, that we should listen to his advice. But no one knows our situation or our company or our industry better than Cole does. And so you have to kind of take into consideration the weighted believability of that. So in the beginning, I didn't really understand that concept, so I kind of struggled. And I would just do anything that if they were farther ahead than me and they gave me this advice, I would listen to it. Whereas now I've really learned to have a filter on everyone's advice. And, like, people, you should have the same filter for everybody talking to you. And same for me, like, everyone should have that filter. Same with my parents. Like, even in my, like, my family relationships, I've been learning this because my mom might give me advice that is very true for her and her experience. Like, it is true. But for me, it may not be that relevant based on my circumstance. So I think it's a lot of diving in, going for it, and learning how to filter information. And then, okay, you're going to have to repeat the second part.

What specifically did you do to grow? Like, what if there were two or three things that you, as a company have done or that you've done to make sure that you got to here? What were they like? I think back to my earliest days at 1-800-got junk in the first two or three weeks, I raised our prices by 40%. I told Brian we had to build something more than a business and slightly less than a religion. We had to build a cult, and we had to really drive free PR because we had no money for marketing. So that was the flywheel. Those would have been the three things. Were there anything like that that you simplistically go back to and say, like, yeah, those were critical?

I think reputation more than anything. At the beginning, Cole was just, I mean, dead set on protecting that. And I had been in other companies, multiple other companies where that wasn't the precedence and it was, you know, if you have a difficult client, you maybe can't, well, you know, dust off my hands and let's refund the client and move on. Whereas it is just a rule with my team now, we do not off board or refund clients. And so we have done every single thing possible to get them the result. Even the most difficult clients, even the clients that are a pain in the rear end that everyone wants to get rid of, we will do everything in our power to get them the result. And even when you do, sometimes those most difficult clients still won't be happy. You can do a million things for them. Part of the thing, people come to us for recruiting. We may do all this other stuff, fix all their other processes, train their current reps, everything else could improve. But if they struggle with the recruiting and that's what they initially came in for, they're still going to be pissed if you don't get the result. So I just think that that has been a really big thing, is we've protected that at all costs. Because a lot of companies, when they scale as fast as we have, and I've been at companies like this, you scale really fast, but you suffer the client results, you know, or you have these companies that have amazing client results, but they stay at a hundred K a month and it's because they don't know how to scale without the fear of losing that result because they don't know how to, you know, break systems. And like order comes after chaos, not the other way around. But a lot of people try to like sit in this mode of creating the systems and thinking about everything that they need to do before just scaling. But a lot of times, like you don't know how to fix the results, how to fix the system until you push it. So I think that was probably the biggest thing. And then also hiring top talent from the beginning, like Cole did it, I still don't know. I mean, I've asked this question like ten times, always thinking he'll give me a different answer. I'm like, how did you get so many great people on when you were nothing like Cole was not? Like, no one really knew what Cole in the beginning, but he brought in amazing talent that now I think out of the less than the first 10 people, four of those are on the exec or three of those are on the exec team. So I think that's a gift that Cole has.

What does he say?

He believes in people. That was huge for me. My confidence when I Came to Cole was shot. I actually selfishly took the job with Cole because I just. I was in the worst time of my life in all areas, and I just wanted some stability. And I remember telling him, after three weeks, I think I'm going to be here for five plus years. Just based off of the way that he was thinking about things. I knew he was going to build something incredible. But one of the things that he said to me that really shifted everything for me was anytime he would give me feedback, I thought he was going to fire me in the beginning because that's what I had experienced, that another company I was at was always this threat of being fired, the whole team. And so you're constantly feeling like you're on eggshells. And so every time he gave me feedback, I would just get this anxiety in my body. And I called him one day, and I'm like, I just need to tell you what's going on. I feel like you're going to fire me. And every single time you give me feedback, I get anxious. I feel sick for the rest of the day. I'm constantly in a state of anxiety. I have no confidence. And I shared with him some of the stuff from the last company, and he was like, I hear you on all of that one. I think you should go get some therapy. Probably true. And I did, and that was helpful. But he told me, he said, I honestly just think you need to win again. He's like, I don't think there's really anything other than that. You just need to win again. And I believe in you, and you can do it. And there's a reason why I brought you in, and I know that you'll win here. And something about that just clicked for me. And it went from me just wanting to have some stability in my life at that time with the paycheck to, yeah, like, I'm going to win again. I'm going to do whatever it takes. If not for Cole and the company, for me. It's kind of embarrassing to share that it was that selfish, but it was. And then when my life started getting better and my confidence built up, then my focus shifted to, holy cow, like, we're building something amazing here, and our clients are doing really well. And now it is like, nothing. It is nothing to do with me. But in the beginning, it was. And so I think with hiring top talent, a few of my best hires are people that other people in the team didn't think we should hire. And they were the ones that were 50, 50 shots, because they were depressed or they had been burned and they were jaded by the industry or by past people. And I just could relate to them because that's how I was. And those are now some of my best hires are those people that they just needed a few months of really good leadership and to be believed in, that they could do it and they would be respected and cared for. You just have to give them the time, the right vehicle and the right leadership to really step into that again. I feel a little off, like rabbit trail, but that's something I'm really passionate about, to be honest.

No, that's great. That's exactly what I was looking for. You nailed that part. That was great. I want to go back to something you said about the reading because you kind of skipped over it really fast. And I want people to really hear what you said. And it was something to the effect of you read the books tied to what you're actually working on. And I think the danger of the reading a book a day, reading the book a week is it's great. It builds a base, it builds lots of stuff. But during the day to day, when you're running a company, which you weren't back then, but if you were running a company today, reading a book a day or a book a week, it can be very random stuff that can take you off track. But if you're reading books, listening to podcasts, watching, you know, whatever, watching videos on YouTube, and it's about the projects you're working on this month or this quarter, that can be really powerful. And I think you've actually innately started to do that, which is where your growth is going to continue, too. I want to ask a question about coal you clearly have, which I believe the CEO's job is to make the CEO iconic, right? To make the CEO look good. You definitely have Cole up on a pedestal. You think he's amazing and he's wonderful. And I was the same with Brian at when he figured out Chunk. I'd go through brick walls for him. But it's been two years. I mean, there's gotta be a couple days that Cole's pissed you off or let you down or upset you? Like, it's impossible that he's that good. No one, we're human, right? How do you keep him there when there are the normal adversities or the arguments or the stress? How do you get him back to that space that is the healthy space that we need to have him in when we're CEOs as well?

I know I brought up core values a couple times in this episode, but that, I would say is why we've been able to keep our relationship so strong, is we always go back to our core values, and one of them is radical transparency. Under radical transparency, you have to have healthy conflict. So healthy conflict is just like. We encourage people to argue in our company. When people have different opinions, they start shutting down. I'm like, nope. Core value. Let's go. Let's hear it. What do you want to say? Let's get it out and talk about it. And it's kind of like with family. Your family may piss you off so much, but the next day you're gonna hug them and you're still gonna love them because they're family. And so that's really kind of the energy I feel between me and Cole is one. When he pisses me off, I will sleep on it. I have a rule now that after 5pm I do not bring up problems or things I'm mad at. Because it's called. What's it called? Hungry, angry, tired, and lonely. If you're any of those things. Yeah, Pulse. Yeah, exactly. And so after 5 o', clock, we don't talk about it, but the next day, I'll just call and be like, yo, this is how I'm feeling. He actually taught me this methodology. It's really simple. I think this is how I'm feeling, and this is what it makes me think. So you can get away from, like, a lot of the accusatory kind of vibe that the other person will feel if you use that. So, hey, so this happened. It made me feel kind of hurt and a little bit upset and frustrated with you, and it made me think that you don't trust me or whatever the case is. And so, you know, has really been helpful. Yeah, we just. We talk everything out. Like, everything that's been awkward. I call him about if he's upset with me, he calls me out on it. And I mean, that's it. We just talk about.

Do you teach that simple system that. That when you. This is how it makes me feel. Do you teach that to your team, to your employees? Yeah, it's. It's core. It's a core foundational way to actually deal with conflict and have the healthy conflict. And Pat Lencioni and the five dysfunctions of a team. Right. Talks about the absence of trust, the fear of conflict, as kind of foundational parts of the. The five dysfunctions that if you can work through those, it's really powerful. All right. I want to Go back to the. Well, you're almost there. Anyway, I was going to say I want to go back to the 22 year old, but Jesus, you're practically. Are you 22? How old are you?

24.

24. I want to go back to the 18 year old you. You're just getting started in your business career, then you're just kind of go after your first job. Like, what advice would you give yourself, you know, as the younger you or when you're older, you know, what advice are you giving to yourself right now as the younger you that you're really listening to?

If I were to talk to my younger self, I would tell her to just enjoy the process because I know you and you're going to get where you want to go. Like there's no amount of effort or intensity that you could additionally bring that you don't already have. But what you aren't going to have right now is the ability to just appreciate and enjoy and have fun along the way. Because you think that those two things don't go hand in hand. Because I used to really think that in order to be successful I had to be stressed because that's kind of what had been modeled to me from other leaders. And then even certain things in my upbringing. I always saw the most successful people in my life were constantly stressed. You have to have stress, high levels of stress, and cancel out the fun stuff in order to be successful. So that's what I would tell my younger self if I was my younger self. Talking to me now, I don't know. That's a hard one. I think I would remind myself how much people's mentorship for free meant to me back then and for me to do more of that now. Because I remember when I was 18, when I dropped out of college, I read the books. But also the second thing I did was I volunteered at conferences because I was so broke that the only way I could go to them was to volunteer. But I actually think it was everyone should do it because you meet all the speakers that you want to meet anyways. You meet everyone putting on the event. So at 18, I was sitting in the room with billionaires in the green room, giving them water and having conversations and their advice to me and pouring into me. And some of them, like kept, I'm still in contact with them today meant so much to me and that was a magical season in my life. And so I think now it's so easy for me to feel really busy and like I don't have as much time to like, get on a call with my brother's friend who wants to start a business. And like, they're very early on and I'm like, ah, I got five minutes for you. So I think just being more gracious with my time and giving back despite the craziness, that maybe I feel would be like an important lesson to remind myself of.

Yeah, I think, I think that's an amazing rap because that's the golden thread as to how we met. We didn't say it, but you and I met because around eight years ago, I was cold. Called repeatedly and emailed repeatedly and LinkedIn messages repeatedly by Connor Blakely, who at the time was 15 and a half years old and wanted me to mentor him. And I finally did a Skype call because Zoom didn't exist back then. And I made his mom and dad wave to me to prove that his parents knew that he was on a call with at that time, like a 47 year old guy. Because I was like, this is awkward, dude. And I started mentoring Connor Blakely, who became a super, super successful young person. And that's how you and I met was he introduced us. So, yeah, I think we have to balance that out though. I can't have every 15 year old calling me because I got to have my time for myself and my, my fiance and my kids and my business too. But so on. Sivana Brewer, the CEO for Closers IO, thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.

Yeah, this was awesome. Thanks so much, Gary.

Appreciate it.

The challenge is because we've, like I said, we've got customers from like 197 countries. So, like, where do we start? I think what we'll probably end up doing, like, we love the online model because we can reach so many people and because it's quite convenient and obviously, like the outlay of having to run venues and all this kind of thing for our model, like, you know, it's comfortable to run it online, but obviously we've got to see what the market dictates. Like, what I suspect will happen is we'll probably end up planning. We definitely want to do some in person events, but we want to try and run that off the back of our community. Just wanting to connect and get together.