WHY Not Wednesday with Larry Levine

There's a certain kind of coach who believes what we believe.

Who leads people to greatness, who gets people unstuck, who unlocks all of your passion. A coach who helps people discover what drives them to tap into their superpowers. Then knowing your why is the first step.

To untap potential.

To focus.

To breakthroughs.

A coach who's looking for a better way.

Are you that coach?

Hello, everybody, and welcome to why Not Wednesday. What a great week it has been. I have been on the phone with so many incredible people. Larry, you were on the phone with me last night with a bunch of incredible people. So let me introduce Larry Levine to you guys. He is the author of Selling from the Heart, in case you couldn't tell by the book behind him. And that's what I've been talking about for the last two weeks. He's also the co host, along with Daryl Ivey of the Selling from the Heart podcast. So welcome to the show, Larry Levy.

Oh, Dan Dominguez. I'm so. This is cool. I've been looking forward to this for a while now.

I've been looking forward to talking to you. You know, we, we met and we had had a couple of phone calls. We got to know each other a little better. We met through our good friend Hugh Hornsby, who, who introduced us. And, you know, it's been so much fun getting to know your circle. I've. I spent some time now with, with. With Liz Wendling. I've spent some time with.

I love Liz.

Yeah, Liz is amazing. I've spent some time with. With Scott Shilling. You know, Jim, you've got a great network of people that, that you hang out with, Larry. So I'm just proud to be in the circle.

I just saw Jackie Joy pop in and do a little whoop, whoop.

There she is. Whoop, whoop. She's one of the people that I met through. Through Larry Levine. So, Larry, thank you so much for all those great introductions, all those great people I've had the opportunity to meet through you. So we're going to talk today about your book, because your book is, you know, I mentioned it, I posted about it, other than Bob Berg's Go Giver. It really spoke to me as somebody who's been selling my entire life. I started selling when I was in seventh grade, Larry. I had to sell yearbook ads for my. For my school. And I knew I was going to be a salesman when they said, look, if you can get three ads, you get your name in gold on the front of your yearbook. I sold 23 ads, and I just got everybody between my. My house and the school, every business in between their bot and ad. So somebody who's been doing this for a long time, I truly appreciated what you had to say in the book. So we're going to get into that, but we're going to start this like we start every. Every show. We're going to go over your why operating system, because almost everybody that's here. Brandon Eastman. Good to see you. I was just on his show.

Nice.

Brandon, what's going on, man? You have got to meet Brandon Eastman. Larry. But. But let me say this. Your why is contribute. So what that tells me is that you believe in contributing to the success of others, making a difference, being part of causes that are bigger than yourself. You're selling from the heart is a cause that's bigger than you. You're pushing that out. You use your money, your connections, your power to push other people forward. You like helping people. Does that sound like you?

Absolutely. And. And what's. And you already know this, but I have my Y operating system. It's in front of me. I started every day. It's on my LinkedIn profile. I live it, I walk it, I breathe it. I had no. I. You know, literally, I had no idea when all this was coming to the forefront, right? That if you. I always tell people I'm on a lot of podcasts. I said, listen, right? If. If you would have asked me seven, eight, nine years ago if you could fast forward to insert date, right? Date, year. We'll just call it today, right? Let's call it today's date. July 27th. Can you imagine all of this happening? I'd say, heck, no. No way. Absolutely no way. But you know what? Sometimes life turns you in different directions, and you just got to roll with it.

We'd call it. You can't connect the dots going forward, right? You can't predict that you would be here, so seven years ago now. But you can look back and see.

How you got here, Abs, you know? Absolutely. And, you know, it's been interesting. I will tell you this. The last seven and a half years of my life, I've learned more about myself in the last seven years, seven and a half years, than I did in my 20s, my 30s, and my 40s combined.

Well, we're, you know, I think in our 20s, 30s, and 40s, we know everything, right? And so once we hit that 50 mark, we start looking back and seeing, oh, my gosh, there's so much I could have learned. But you know, you're absolutely right. So let's talk. Let's look at your how, because this is a great how that you have the how of clarify, which means to you, clarity is very important. You like to make things very clear and understandable. And you like, when you communicate, you want to make sure you're clearly understood. And when you're listening to other people, you want to make sure you understand. So you ask questions. Probably ask more questions than your colleagues like, but you want to make sure you ask the right questions. I like to think of you as your superpowers. You think of the questions that other people aren't even thinking about. You ask the questions that other people don't even think about. You're detail oriented. And your book is such a great example of it because there's so much clarity in it in terms of, here's what you need to do. There is no. There is no doubt what you need to do in order to be successful and sell from the heart.

No. Well, well, thanks for sharing. So a little backstory on this. Yeah, I think I. I think it'll bring everyone who's watching or listening to really understand the why and the how behind all of this. And I gotta take. I just have to take everyone on a quick journey. See, I grew up with a highly relational mother, and I grew up with a rocket scientist for a father.

Right.

My dad was an aeronautical engineer, rocket scientist for United States Air Force. Just a complete propeller head.

Yeah.

So. And I hated everything about school. Could not. I was not book smart at all. I was relationally smart, and I was street smart. I was not book smart.

Right.

And the reason why I bring this up is I remember in school I'd always ask my father, you know, hey, I got. I need some help on my homework and things like that. And he would explain it in such a way that it would just. I would be more confused than I was before. And I go, come on, dad, just break things down to the simple. Just give it to me in simple, plain English.

Did you say, can you make it clear and understandable?

Well, I'm being polite because I said in a bunch of other different words that I cannot use on this show. But the reason why I'm saying this is.

I believe in my heart we overcomplicate sales, we overcomplicate communication, and we have to break things down to the simple. And if you can't deliver it in the simple format means you just possibly you don't understand it well enough. And that's the way I'VE always approached it. That's the way I approach writing, selling from the heart and delivering. The message today is I want to be able to deliver it concisely, clearly, and with conviction.

And you do. You do a great job of that. I mean, if those of you who follow me on LinkedIn, you've seen I've probably posted three or four times in the last couple of weeks, just stuff that I found in your book. I was on vacation, Larry.

I saw the pictures, by the way. Thank you.

Your book was in the hot tub with me. My daughter came out, said, dad, what are you doing? I said, I'm finished. I want to finish up this book. Because I'm interviewing, Larry, and I got so much out of it. I've been sharing it with everybody that I can. I want to recognize a few people that have commented. T.J. davidson joins us every week. Watson Jordan is one of our coaches. He's in North Carolina. He's great. Kristen Brundage, Woodbury. That's probably one of your connections there, Larry.

I recognize the name. Hey, Kristen.

Yeah.

Kayla. I love Kayla.

Kayla Perlove. And like I said, Brandon Eastman, you've got to connect with. Hey, he called us great humans. You got to connect with him. It's going to be a great conversation. Of course it is. Lynn Everard's one of our coaches out of. Out of.

We just connected. Yeah.

Lynn is an author also, so you're gonna. You're gonna enjoy getting to know him. Jennifer Chapman, she's got the exact same yos as you. So we spoke this morning. I said, you got to just tune in. I know.

I just saw her in chat. I just saw what you said.

Yeah. So let's see. Raymond. Raymond Kemp is here. He's one of our coaches. He's out of Oklahoma. He is a retired Nate Fleet, Master chief of the Navy, and he is an incredible being. I think it's someone else you want to meet up with. Danica's here. Oh, my goodness. Brian Smith. Hey, Fellow author of yours, Larry.

Hey, really, really quick. Brian, I owe you an apology. I just found Brian's InMail message in my LinkedIn message. So, Brian, my apologies. So sometimes if you all send me a message in LinkedIn, it's like I live in Southern California. So my LinkedIn, my LinkedIn box looks like the intersection of the 101 and the 405. And if you all don't know the 101 and the 405, you got to look it up. It's the busiest freeway intersection.

Yeah.

So that's what my. That's what my LinkedIn message center looks like.

Well, that's because you're so. That's because you're so popular. But let me tell you, Brian Smith wrote a book called the I in Team. So it resonated with me so much because when I was leading sales teams, I always talked about the importance of having an eye right there. Everybody says there's no I in team. And I would say, you know what? There isn't a winner. So you want to be a winner, you got to have an eye. And Brian took an entirely different level importance of the person, the individual, in creating successful teams. So, man, we got a lot of people. You're. You're a popular draw. I'm so glad that you're here, Larry. And let's. Let's finish up your yos. We haven't even finished that eight minutes in your. What is trust? Which means that for you, trust is very important. You. You want to be someone that people can count on. You go out of your way to do the things that you say you're going to do. If Larry says he's going to do it, consider it done. If not, he, you're. And the same goes for people you work with, right? Don't violate Larry's trust.

No. Jackie Joy and I know she's watching. She knows that. So.

Yeah, so. So how does that all feel together? You know, when we put it together and you said, you've got it in front of you, so it must have resonated with you.

No, it. It did. To the point where I printed it out. It's on one of my monitors. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to recraft my LinkedIn profile. And I say. And I. And I say this for a reason, because when somebody lands on my profile, I want to get. I want them to get to know me right away.

Right?

And what my why is and how I do things and what. And you know, and so forth. So if y' all go to my LinkedIn profile, you'll see this right up front. The very first thing that I say on my LinkedIn profile is how may be of service to you and even more so of value to you. And then I get right into my why operating system. So somebody has a clear idea of what I bring to the table and how to interact with me.

Oh, man. And isn't that so clear? Here's the other thing. So. So as a matter of fact, Jennifer and I were talking about that when you communicate from Your Y operating system. You let people know who you are. Basically, hey, look, if you want to work with Larry, you're going to get a guy that cares about helping you. He cares about clarity. He's going to make things clear and easily understood. And you can trust him if that's what you're looking for. Work with Larry. That's what you're going to get from him. And that's where he's at his best. When he's contributing, he's making things clear and he's building trust. That's when Larry is enjoying work or whatever it is he's doing, whether he's volunteering, working out with his kids, if he's doing something that's contributing to the success of others, that's building clarity and building trust, man, Larry's going to be happy. So. And I saw that all throughout your book. It's amazing. I did this with Brian. When I read Brian's book, I went through his yos and I saw it in everything that he did, he did his why is make sense. But let's talk about the book a little bit. You know, I'm going to throw some stuff out there. Talk about the, the sales community. How you make your clients feel unlocks the door to monumental sales growth.

Growth.

You published that article recently?

Just last week, matter of fact.

Yeah. So tell me, tell me what that means because we, we're all about how you make people feel.

So. And, and again, I go back to having a highly relational mom and growing up in a very rel, you know, environment is I was never the smartest. So I'm gonna go back. I spent my whole entire career in one sales channel. I sold copiers right in, in the most non sexiest channel. Right? I mean I sold copiers, I sold things that broke and I did it all in the LA marketplace, one of the largest markets in the United States. But here's what I keyed in on really early on is I was never the smartest person out there.

Never.

In fact, I sold copiers my whole life. Still don't even know how they work, don't care how they work. The point behind this was, and I don't know how I was taught this again I go back to I believe we're products of our environment. And I'm not bringing psychology into this or anything like that. It's just I believe that how we were raised plays a part in our older lives and how we carry ourselves. So keeping that in the, you know, in the back of our minds right now is When I was in front of people, I'm all about how you connect and how you relate and how somebody feels. So in the back of my mind, if I was sitting in front of you, Dan, I would say to myself, the more comfortable that I can make Dan feel about me, the more comfortable Dan soon becomes. And when that happens, Dan starts sharing things with me he's not going to share with other people. Right. Keying on that for a moment is if I. And. And this is all because think about this. And. And this is sales centric. For a moment is we got to understand perceptions, reality. And I keyed in on this a long time ago. All the negative perceptions of salespeople. And the reason why I knew this is because I wasn't afraid to ask. I would ask people. I would ask my clients. I would ask people in, you know, initial meetings, Walk me through what you think of salespeople. And I would just start jotting notes down, and I. I keep them. I keep a little notepad, and I just did something really interesting. I just did the complete opposite. So they gave me all the negatives. I just flipped those to positives, and I just flipped it on its head. But the reason why I bring this up is in the first five to 10 minutes, is really critical for salespeople to understand. That's where everything's winding in somebody's head. Are you trustworthy? Can I open up to you? Are you somebody worthy of having a conversation with? All these things were running through my head because they're running through that other person's head. So I said, hey, listen, man, if I can connect with Dan in a way that no one's connecting with them, and I can make Dan feel special, and I can make Dan feel comfortable, magic's gonna happen really fast. Yeah. And when I can make Dan feel comfortable, he's going to start opening up. He's going to go, holy smokes, what's going on right now. He may not say it up front to me, but I can guarantee you it's going on in Dan's head. What happens next is gold, because you start to get comfortable. You start sharing things about yourself and your business you're not sharing with other people. It's those things that's gonna. We're gonna work on together to help you do better business. And that's just how I carry myself.

Love that. Thank you. So, you know, and I think it's. It's really important you say a couple of things there, and I know you're. You're. You're you're, you're, you're being modest. You know, you're, you're a smart guy. You may not have shown it in the traditional ways that everybody else does, but you don't put together a book like the one you did without having some smarts in you. And that looked, that sounded like it came from your voice. That wasn't a ghostwriter. I wanted to mention Brian because he says he loves the clarity. So he's a make sense, clarify, contribute. So he shares clarify and contribute with you. Right? So of course he loves the clarity. When your how is clarify. It's how you do everything. So you're always looking for clarity. So kudos to you for connecting with Brian on, on the clarity there. Let me ask you this because there's another thing you say in your book that I think is really important. There's a difference between a sales rep and a sales professional.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

So what, what, what if you, if you had to say list three things that are different.

So, so first of all, let me just. Before I get into those three things, because you're proud to remind me again, so is this, I've always said this. Sales professionals do the things that sales reps find excuses for. Keying on that, right? Sales professionals have a no excuse mindset. Sales reps are full of excuses and they always point fingers and they're never at themselves, it's always at other people. And so I believe sales professionals do three things better than sales reps. There's a lot of things sales professionals do, but we don't have enough time to really dive, dive into it. But to me, sales professionals plan, they prepare and they practice. They hold themselves accountable to those three things and it's non negotiable. And that's just how I carried myself in sales. And I had dysfunctional sales managers, I was on dysfunctional sales teams. Inconsistent planning, inconsistent practice. But guess what? If you want to be the best at what you do, you got to hold yourself accountable. And I just made sure every day I planned, I prepared and I practiced every single day and I made it non negotiable. These are those, I mean they're. Call it little things. But you know, you know what, it's what I held myself accountable to. And if salespeople can just hold themselves accountable to a plan, prepare and practice every single day, they will see results. But the problem is they want short term, they just want, they want the silver bullet and they want the tactic and they want the tip to get them to quota or over exceed quota without doing any of the work. Yeah.

And it's not, you know, and it's not. And those are simple things. And I love that you put it into three P's. Plan, prepare, practice. Watson says, plan, prepare, practice for the win. He always puts an FTW in my comments every week. And the first time I saw it.

Exactly. That's the first thing that ran through my head. It's so funny. It's like sales is just full of acronyms and it's. Right. So now I just learned another one.

Plan, prepare, practice for, for the win. But you know what? When we look at people who are highly accomplished, when we. And the simple thing to do is look at athletes, you know, Gary, Gary Sanchez, our founder and CEO at Y Institute, talks about, look, Jerry Rice every morning before everybody but anybody ever got to the practice field. He was there early and what he was doing was fundamentals, footwork, stuff that, you know, the other guys were like, you're, you're a Hall of Fame receiver. What are you doing? He was practicing the fundamentals. That's what Kobe Bryant did. He would come to practice early and shoot free throws in layups, left handed layups, right handed layups, all the stuff that everybody else thought, oh my gosh, the guy can dunk from the free throw line. Why is he doing that? Yeah, no, I think that's what you're talking about. It's a commitment to excellence and doing it every day.

No, so. So you bring up a really great point. I want to, I want to peel this thing back if we can for a second. Yeah. Yes. And I write about in selling from the heart and I push the button on this. And it's not to disrespect any sales leader or any salesperson out there who's listening or watching this. And I want to put an emphasis on this is, listen, if you want to get paid top dollar and you want to get paid what professional athletes get paid, then do the work professional athletes do.

Yes. You mentioned in the book.

And, and let's zero in on this for a moment. Is.

Money motivates us. It may not be the root cause of everything, but just, you know, we do things because we need to earn a living. And, and I totally get that. But. But here's where I'm going to push on this. Salespeople and sales leaders, if you're watching this, watch any of your professional sports teams, watch any coach, they hold their sales team accountable to practice, plan, prepare. They got to watch game films, they got to do this Day in and day out. What prevents salespeople and sales leaders from doing this every single day? And that's what I'm going to push on. Y' all can think about that for a little bit, But I hold myself accountable to this. And I know there's people that are in this string who have witnessed this. And I'm not saying this to be braggadocious or pat myself on the back. It's the way I choose to carry myself. I have high degrees of accountability. If you want to succeed in sales, you got to be willing to do the things that nobody's doing. And quite frankly, in sales, there's very few people that plan, prepare, and practice and hold themselves accountable to do the things every single day.

Yes, I love. And that's consistency, right? Consistency drives results. It's not. You don't have to get it perfect. You just have to do it well.

It. Because it becomes repetitious. And in selling from the heart, I write something and it's. It's to poke the bear a little bit. But I said salespeople are consistently inconsistent. Yes, they'll do things for a little bit, have a little bit of success. They rest on the laurels. They go back to doing what they're doing before then 60 days later, sales funnel looks horrible. So they do a couple things to put some things in a funnel. And they're consistently inconsistent. And they rely. They just. They just keep riding this roller coaster of like that. And they wonder. And they wonder why the results are the way they're at.

So you want to get off the roller coaster. You've got it. You've got to. If you're not. If you haven't got the book, by the way, Larry on his website will send you a autographed copy. All you got to pay for is shipping. Did you get one to Lynn to lanaire in. In New Zealand. I know I connected you to her.

I have not yet. So she's gonna.

She's gonna come to your website, and I want to make sure she gets. You got. I think it is a little bit more expensive to go. All you gotta do is pay shipping and Larry will send you an autographed copy. And. And I've got mine right here. So what I'm. I'm so excited to share it with people. Here's something else that I, I. That you wrote. I posted about it, I think this morning. You say you either write something. You know, Ben Franklin. You use that quote. Either you write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. That is so good. Tell me what you mean by that.

Well, here's the thing is, I had to learn how to write. I really learned. I had to learn how to write. And, you know, there's. There's so many people who want to mock salespeople and, you know, hang out on social media for five minutes, and you'll see people badgering salespeople to death. Yep. Salespeople can write. Yeah, we can write. The reason why we can't write is the same reason why people struggle to prospect, because they haven't practiced it on a consistent basis. Right. Just think about this. We have. I mean, your ability to write. You have so many things to write about as salespeople. All your encounters, all your experiences, all your conversations.

Yes.

All I've done is for the last six and a half years, I consistently write, and I consistently write about my encounters, my experiences, things I think about, conversations I've engaged in, podcast guests and all that. I keep a notebook sitting at my desk right here of things.

Yep.

And I just jot it down, and they formulate the things that I write about. Yeah. There's so many things to write about. And salespeople go, well, I have nothing to write about. And I'll call BS on that, because you got all kinds of things to write about. If you want to elevate your career and get noticed out there, start writing about your encounters and the conversations you have and the questions you're asked.

So now I've got more homework, so I. I pride myself on consistently posting, but I'm not writing a lot, so I. I've got a chapter coming up in. In Voices for Leadership, Volume two, which I know you wrote.

Oh, yeah, with Brian.

Yeah, with Brian. So I'm gonna be writing for that. I've got to get that written. But I like that challenge of writing every day and just keeping an idea book and. And keeping that going, because you send out some great stuff on email, by the way, if you get the book Larry, you can get on Larry's mailing list, and you get a daily tip from Larry, which is. Is it daily or weekly?

I'm trying to remember it's daily. So. So just a couple things I want to. I want to touch on this, and it's all about consistency. And if you. And. And for anyone who's watching or listening to this, if you want to build a community and you want to build a tribe, then consistently deliver the goods. And what I mean by this is I've had really good coaches and mentors step into my Life. And I believe people step into your life at the right time for the right reasons. And it's usually you don't ask, it just happens. And about seven years ago, I'm just going to give it. Can I give a shout out to somebody?

Absolutely.

So seven years ago, Keenan stepped into my life. It's his last name, his first name's Jim, but he's horrified if you ever call him Jim, goes by Keenan. And he wrote the book Not Taught. And he wrote the book Gap Selling.

Yes.

And, and what I do, and I still do it to this day, is every great book I've read. I will reach out to the author. I'll connect with them, I'll try to. If I can't connect them on LinkedIn, I'll send them an email. Hey, you wrote a great book. This is what it's meant to me. Well, that happened seven years ago when I read Not Taught. There's a story behind this, I'm going to condense it, but it'll bring about this writing. And I reached out and I connected to Keenan and I said, hey, you wrote a really great book. This is what it meant to me. Totally up to you, but I'd like to personally connect with you and just say, thank you for writing a great book.

Yes.

And two weeks later, we had a 45 minute phone conversation. I walked into it, no expectations, nothing. And he shared with me, what do you want to do? It was Selling from the Heart. Wasn't even selling from the heart. And I shared with him my dreams and my vision and what I want to do. And he goes, I'm going to tell you something right now. I'm going to give you some advice that was given to me a while ago. Learn how to write and consistently write. And if you can consistently write, you will build an audience. Consistently write to build an audience. And I said, I'm going to do this. And by the way, people, this was, this was the middle of December 2015. We're going on almost seven years ago. I, look, I, I told Keenan, I said, I will make a commitment to you that I will start writing. And he goes, don't make it to me, make it to yourself.

Yeah.

I said, fine, I will make a commitment that I will write every single week. I've written an article every single week since that conversation. It helped me become a better writer, it built my community, it launched Selling from the Heart. It helped me write my book. And then not only do I write weekly, but the daily doses that come out, if you all subscribe to it. Oh yeah, I write those every single day.

They're not recopies of anything. Every single day is something new. Why am I saying this is. Salespeople have the power to write things.

Yes.

It goes back to you got to have self discipline, you got to bring habits to the forefront, you got to bring consistency and you got to hold yourself accountable. And these are the things that very few are doing. But if you want to elevate your career, you got to be willing to do the things that nobody's doing.

Absolutely. And that's not easy. What you're talking about doing can't be easy. But you do it consistently, it becomes a habit and then you probably can't miss a day. Right. It's kind of like there's certain things that I do every day and if I don't do those things, my day doesn't feel complete.

I tell you, I tell you what, there is times that I didn't feel like writing. There was times it took me six hours to write a thousand word article. But I powered through it. I've been on vacations and I've just sat myself in a corner and I've written. Right, right. It's just, it's just me. It's just, it's. My personality is when I commit to doing something, I make the commitment to myself and I feel like I'm letting myself down if I stop.

This is so good that, that is such great. I want to do something, Larry. And you know what? I think we're just going to have to have you back for part two of this interview because I got a page of questions that we're not going to get to because your answers have been so good. But I wanted to give you an update. Linare Johnston has already ordered her book in New Zealand, so she's waiting for her autographed copy. I want to let you know Raymond Kemp, you know, amazing keynote speaker. He's got the book ordered and Watson, Jordan.

Oh, thank you. This is awesome. Thank you so much.

And then Lynn Everard is saying, hey, look, he's an author coach. If you need help writing, give Lynn a call. He can, he can help you get started on that. You know, Love that. And then we got, we hear from Brian Smith, over 1,000 composition books in our archives. Writing creates opportunity and advantages that are priceless. And, and Brian is one that just shares his gift with the world.

So, but, but I, but I, but I will tell you this. Writing to write is one thing, but writing to make a difference is another thing. Think about that one.

Oh yeah. Yes. And then I mean I think you, you did a fantastic job of writing to make a difference. You saw the problem. You, you, you faced it. I mean you, you, you. I will tell you, when I was leading a salesforce at Baxter, if I was hiring somebody and they had copier sales in their background, it was a no brainer. I want that person. There is no, I don't think there's a tougher sale in the world. Those people know how to sell.

It's. I walked through a dog eat dog industry. I mean I saw things that would and I don't have much hair on the top of my head anymore, but I walked through things would literally make your hair curl. But I will tell you this. I poured my heart and soul into my book is you know, when you decide to read the book or if you've read the book, this is me to a T. It's how I carried myself. It's I believe how salespeople. If you want to be called a sales professional, if you want to raise the game, you got to carry yourself in a different manner. You got to be able to do the inner work. And I'll tell you this, the last seven and a half years has been a freaking journey journey like none other. Again, I share this with you. I've learned more about myself in seven and a half years than I have in the last 30 plus years. Why? Because I've been willing to do the work and go down places that were scary. But I sure the heck learned a lot.

Yes. Oh, Lynn Everard is, looks like he's gonna have somebody go help him. So way to go man. I love, I love connecting people. So I think we've got. Raymond Camp is going to reach out to Lynn about writing. But let's, let's finish with a couple of questions that I just have to ask you about this one. How important you know, because a lot of, you know, a lot of sales reps out there are, are worried about closing the deal, getting the deal done, but then they forget. You talk about in the book about the importance of staying in contact with your, with your clients because the next time you talk to them doesn't can't be when you need another deal, right when the contract runs out, you need to renew. If they haven't heard from you for two years, how likely is it that they're going to renew?

Okay, so, so I, I keyed in on this. I zeroed in on this really early on in my career. I saw sales people again. Do things that were just crazy, insane. Just to get what I call ink on paper. Right, Right. Just to get somebody to sign an order. And then the minute they sign the order, about a week later, they've forgotten because they're onto their next conquest. The only time they'd go back and see their customer if there was an issue or they had an opportunity to try to sell them something, I go, man, that's just no way to carry your life. So I keyed in on something really important. And I'm not here to say there's certain parts of the sales process with somebody that's more important than the others, but I keyed in on two areas. The way people opened that very first meeting was mission critical. Yes. And the way they carried themselves after the sale was mission critical. And I keyed in on the. I'll use the phrase love them and leave them.

Yes.

Right. They're a king and a queen. Right. That salesperson will act like a king or a queen until they sign the deal and then they turn into a frog afterwards. And. But I key, I share this for one simple reason is I'm all about memories and experiences. I believe that's what sales people are selling. Forget your fine products, your fine solutions, your fine company that you work for, you all work for great companies, got great products. It's up to you to create memories and experiences.

Yeah.

So the more I created those, I flipped those into my first meetings. Follow along with me for a second is I would share with somebody, hey, if at a certain point in time you feel I'm the right fit and we can mutually agree to agree. This is what you can expect me to bring to you and your company. This is the experience that you're gonna get. And quite frankly, if you don't believe me now, okay, now everyone, I'm dating myself on this one because you just gotta follow along. And I would say if you don't believe me, here's a list right now. Here's a list of my clients. Just randomly pick one. I will give you their phone number. Yeah. And they will share exactly what I just said. Guess what happened? No one ever called me out on it. Yeah. For one simple reason. It's. I believed in myself and my messaging at high self worth. And I was confident. I delivered it with conviction and I was concise and I was right to the point. I said, this is what you can expect. And I just changed the whole paradigm of that very first conversation. I said, this is what you can expect if we agree to agree. And I'm the right fit. Here's what you can expect afterwards.

Right.

And what they expect afterwards is the stuff they were never receiving from another company.

Well, guess what else you did, though? You were authentic. I mean, it came from an authentic place. It's hard. I'm not going to call you out if I, if it's authentic. If you're trying to fake that, I'm going to probably pick up, grab that sheet and start making some, some, some phone calls, right?

Well, absolutely. And people pick up on this really fast. And we all know there's five senses. We all know what those five senses are. But I keyed in on this a long time ago. There's a six sense, and that six sense I can't scientifically prove or anything like that, but that sixth sense that everybody has is BS. Yeah. And they will. The BS meters are an all time high. The BS meters were there in the 80s when I started selling. They were there in the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s. They're alive and well today. Yeah. But I will tell you this. How you carry yourself and how you deliver your message and how you lean into people, your tonality, how you look them in the eye, the passion, the excitement you have in your voice, how you carry yourself, people pick up on that in two seconds. Absolutely.

That. We're gonna, we're gonna. That's, that's it. You know, we're at the half hour, actually a little bit over. And I like to keep it to half an hour. But what I'm gonna do, Larry, is I'm gonna have you back. I've got a couple of our friends coming on. Hugh Hornsby's been on, is gonna be on in a couple of weeks. I gotta have Jackie Joy on soon too, so. But I'm just gonna have a part two with you. So what would you say to someone right now? You know, we've got, you know, a lot of our coaches. You know, I'm. Turn this around. Those of you that are still listening, what would you say to Larry about adding the why to the work that he does with his clients? And I bet you're gonna get some comments on that. But Larry, what would you say to someone? It made a big difference. You keep it in front of your desk. What would you say to someone who's thinking of adding this process to the work that they're doing, helping their clients understand their why, how.

And what I, I would say this is, don't put it off any longer. Go down the journey, uncover your why. Uncover why you do what you do, how you do it, and what's the root cause behind this. Here's. Here's why I'm saying this, and here's why it's so important. I'm all about congruency. Yeah, I'm all about congruency. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who talk the talk. I question the walk, and they talk about. And they. And again, I'm not here to disrespect anybody, but they talk about how important your why is. They talk about how important your purpose is and so forth. Right. It's great to talk about it in front of a camera so you can put it out there in social media land for everyone to watch. Yes, but are you living that lifestyle? All I would ask people to do, go down the journey, uncover your why, live by it, be congruent with it, uncover what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and then ask yourself this. Will I commit to doing this? Will I commit to doing the journey? And then I'll leave that up to you. But I do know this. If you look at yourself in the mirror and say it, guess what? The mirror doesn't lie. The mirror doesn't lie. Only the person who's looking into the mirror lies. And that's how I would leave that.

I love that. You know what? I'm going to end on that. What do you say we end on that note, Larry?

Why not?