My WFH setup + business updates

It is a rainy Saturday. I'm about to lock in, but I wanted to show you guys some of the new office stuff that I got and why I got it. Because, you know, if you're a salesperson, you're on Zoom, you're on Google Meets, the visual component is huge. Shout out to my guy Zion in the community. He's got a few of these and he crushes it for a YouTube coaching offer. And he has basically like a YouTuber setup and it gets him Every interview that he wants. His close rate is insane. He makes like $15,000, $20,000 a month working part-time hours. And I think he's good at sales for sure, but the perception of him when he gets on camera is otherworldly. He smokes me, by the way. So I wanted to show you guys really quick the setup that I'm rocking with. Before I do this, uh, please subscribe. If you guys have never seen, and it's quite messy, I'm gonna break down kind of like the lighting, the audio, just all the, all the setup, right? My office here Has like a— that's not helping very much. It's a square room, but it has like this corner that's kind of not a corner. So that's where my desk goes. First things first, that light, that light, that's really all you need. I'm gonna be honest with you, to get the job done. But then there's a little bit more we can do. And this is the stuff that like when someone sees your Loom video before, like they wanna book a call with you because they want their company to be represented in the way that you are representing yourself. Sales experience almost becomes an afterthought if the presentation is so freaking good. So what I would do here, if you guys notice, I have this window, right? The window does shoot off a lot of light. So I actually use that as my fill light. So 45 degrees from you is supposed to be a key light. That is supposed to be the big light, which, um, by the way, this is why I'm showing this to you because I'm about to Step it up a notch. I usually use the one on this side as the key light, and it is a, a whiter light, and it's, it's gotten the job done, but I want to step it up a notch. So you're supposed to have one that's about 45 degrees bright, kind of looking down a little bit, and then the other 45 degrees is not as bright. It's supposed to help like minimize the shadows on the other side of your face. What I'm experimenting with now, and if I actually You know, kind of sit like this, you might see it, is a little backlight. So what I'm gonna do, hold on, there's some science here. This light, I don't know the exact science behind it, but the bigger the light source, the more natural and less sharp it looks. So check this out. I just turned this light on. I don't have the other one on, but I do have the window open. I mean, it's honestly not so bad. This camera, the camera lens helps a lot. Now if I turn this one on, A little bit more fuller, and then having the light behind helps as well. Honestly, isn't too bad, but sometimes, like if I turn this up, it doesn't look all that great. So the big softbox, it's gonna help soften it a bit, but there's something about having the light in the back. So I actually just, it's not on right now. Well, one of them is. So check this out. I've got this Philips Hue light back here. And that's cool. But then I got this light too, and this is supposed to be like an accent. The idea is that kind of shows in the background. So my normal camera setup is gonna be a little bit further back than this, but you can actually kind of see that the light, it's not all that gray. It's cast— it sometimes casts a shadow back here, but you can kind of see like the light behind. Now I'm actually gonna take one of these little lights that's on the desk. And by the way, these are Amazon lights. Those are Amazon lights. You can get 'em pretty cheap. And I'm gonna put one of those behind me on this side, not in the frame, so that my— I pop more off the background. Already like this, I just have these 2 cheap like $20 Amazon lights. This is gonna get you top percentile. What you guys probably don't have, 'cause I didn't have it, most people don't have it, is a good camera and a good lens. And so I've got an older Sony A6100 here. The camera is not all that crazy, But the lens that I have— and by the way, so I have a second monitor. The wires are kind of a mess and it's all attached to this pole right here. The camera has an arm. I can swing it around this. The lights are attached to the desk. So check this out. Here's the aftermath of that. That could be better. For those of you guys that don't know standing desks, there's a lot of wires and stuff here. And to be able to have this go up and down with everything staying connected takes a little bit of work. I actually don't use the standing desk part all that often because I'm outside like running and walking a lot. One other thing that can like really, really help your perception on calls is this, and it's not even because of the audio quality. Sure, the audio quality is a, is a plus, but like if you have a nice mic and it's positioned correctly with a good boom arm, it just gives off the perception that like this person is a professional. But the most important thing, if you can do one thing, make sure you have some good lights. And I would say get a, get like a 4K webcam off of Amazon. That's what I had before. And now I have like a whole, you know, camera equipment kind of area. $100 4K webcam. I promise it's gonna make a difference. There is nothing worse than getting on an interview, sending Loom videos from some old laptop and looking like you're calling from like some like prison computer. If you're gonna invest your time and energy into trying to break into this space, invest. Like, go work your job, save up another $300, buy a 4K webcam, buy 2 lights, buy like this little lamp down here. You don't usually see that in, in the video, but like that was $27 or $40, not that much. These posters back here, up to you. I feel like with posters you have more to lose than to gain if you do it wrong, if it looks cheap. It just kind of comes down to effort, you guys. Make sure your camera— like, this isn't my computer setup, like I'm standing in front of the standing desk, but make sure you're positioned right. Like the rule of thirds, your eyes should be about a third of the way. When I do the audio, the cool thing about the mic is like it's attached to the desk. I just move it around. I just do it like this. Sometimes you'll see it a little bit more in the frame. One mistake I made in my last video is I had it so in the frame, it was actually focusing on the mic and not my face. So you want to have it kind of down. And minimal, something like this. Now, most of these mics, by the way, this is a Shure mic, it's about $230. It's worth it for sure if you're gonna be doing this. You wanna talk into the top of it, not into the side of it. It's just how it works. So I usually put it like this. Now you'll see sometimes people will go like this. I don't like it, man. Blocks your face. It feels, it's like talking to someone when they're wearing sunglasses. Like what's really going on back there? Um, some other people will do it like kind of like this. I don't like it, man. I wanna, I wanna have no distractions. I kind of spin it around. Boom. Now you might notice I'm, I'm doing all this pretty easily, spinning all this around, and that's because I have this boom arm. A good boom arm is worth its weight in gold. This is actually probably maybe around $40. This is a Rode camera brand. Rode. If you've used a bad boom arm, a good one is gonna change your life. It stays where you put it. It doesn't droop. It doesn't fall off the desk. Like I can, I can raise it. And it'll stay there. A bad one is going to like droop down. I don't know. Like there's a lot of like suspension and stuff in here. I don't question it too much. One other thing that you should try to do, it's the eye level thing, making sure that your computer having the right computer display orientation for the camera that you're looking at. I don't like when people are on camera like they're on a Zoom call and they're like looking like this. It's like they're looking at you, But then you're seeing like the side of their face. I could do that. You know, I have, I have a laptop monitor and then I have the big monitor, but I would just get a big monitor and then position your camera right above the monitor. If the monitor has a camera in it, that's easy, but you want to do it to where like anything that you're going to have on your screen, such as their face, is as close to the camera as possible. Besides like talking to someone and they're like, they're looking at you, but you're looking at them like this and you don't know if they're looking at you. The next worst thing is to be having your eyes shooting across a bunch of different screens while you're having a one-on-one direct conversation. So if you can have a screen where the camera is very close to this, I mean, sure, your eyes are going to be moving a little bit depending on what you got, but it's minimized. Same with if you're taking sales calls, like if you need to kind of reference a script or something, put it up at the top, you got it right there. Now the next thing in my opinion is going to be a good chair. This is a Herman Miller Aeron chair. You know, these are pretty expensive, like literally like 2 or 3 grand. But for one, they make a big freaking difference. 2, you should never buy one new. These are like standard issue corporate office chairs and you can always find them used for a very steep discount. Now make sure if you do that, you're getting the right size. There's different sizes based on height and weight. So make sure it's fitted to you. You can just Google search that, but Herman Miller Aeron, A-E-R-O-N, is the one. I see most people using. Besides that, you guys, I mean, this is kind of just preference, but I do have a keyboard and a mouse. I like to have the flexibility there. Let me go back down. Zoom, the setup looks a little bit different. You guys actually went too low. Go right about there. That's a little bit about the setup. I also wanted to give you guys a quick little business update. So I've learned how to code using AI. I built a really cool tool. All of our one-on-one interviews, you can come here and ask it anything. It's stored in the knowledge base. It's pretty freaking cool. I'm about to rebuild our website with AI. I'm now a sales guy turned business owner that knows how to code, and code is one of those extremely scalable opportunities that if you can learn how to do it, you get so much out of it. Like if you're a sales rep and you can build something like this for your offer for pre-call, it's very quite easy. If you want to see that, I mean, let me know. I can I can show you, but Claude is so extremely smart, dude. It's scary. But it understands because of all the data that it gets. It understands like how these menus look and all these other sites that you have to use. So like you would build the code in Claude, you store it in GitHub, which I just learned Claude fully understands how GitHub works. It can tell you what button to click in what order. So easy. And then you deploy that on Vercel. All you have to do is link your GitHub to Vercel. And it deploys it. The cool thing about this, if you're on an offer that has like a ton of social proof, it can really cook your load times. I don't know what it is about Vercel, but my boy told me about this. The load times are just so fast, and you can have 1,000 pieces of social proof, and it's just snap of the fingers fast. So this success query bot that I built allows you to talk to all the people that we've had interviews with. We're going to update this. I did get the tally, and I think it has 40 $10K per month interviews, 57 total on the road to 100 $10K per month interviews. But yeah, dude, bring something like this to your offer. If you guys want to learn how to do that, let me know. I can show you. On another note, I went to an event last week and one of my last videos was me kind of like recapping some stuff from that event. And you guys, you guys see this shadow behind me? That's what happens with that bright little light. But I had a really, really, really big breakthrough for Because of Sales, this brand. And, uh, I am so stoked for what we're about to do. If you guys aren't subscribed, I think it's like the third link down below. Also, if you want that chatbot that I was talking about, it's in the description, uh, TSSC Success Query Bot or something. But our goal, and I have it taped on my wall, my 2026 goals, one of them is to be plus $1 on every subscriber acquisition that we get for Because of Sales. Right now we're like minus a dollar or something. We get about $2 subscribers through Meta ads. We make about $70 back spread across all the monetization efforts. And what we're about to implement, I think, is going to change the game. It's going to help a lot of businesses. It's going to turn us from a weekly newsletter, uh, well, we'll still be that, but we'll be some sort of like broker of sales talent and sales interests. That's what we're going to aim for. And so I might have to code some custom stuff to get that rolling, but I think we are gonna be well on our way to scaling. And I'm hiring someone for content. If you're seeing this, it's probably too late to apply, but we are looking for a content lead and editor for Because of Sales. And honestly, I've talked to some good people already. So just a little update there. I am still sitting on a bunch of good interviews. My last video, $30K per month with Chris, was one that we filmed like 3 weeks ago. Another that I'm sitting on with Joe, sales manager. I'm filming one on Monday with my boy Jordan, like a top or like a first 15 community member back in 2022. He's like 3 years deep. His current offer, he's been there for 2 years making $20K per month part-time. That interview's coming up next. And then we got an in-person interview with my boy Zach who started in this space, came to— he's one of the few that came to all of our in-person events, got his stripes, and now he runs an agency, does fairly well, well enough for him to move down here to Austin. Now he lives like 10 minutes away. From the boys. So got that coming up after. Well, we're just— we're rolling, man. We're getting to these $10K per month interviews. I'm also looking to hire a head of client success. I am in talks with somebody who's in our community that's done big commission months. I'm trying to hire and get the right people in place. All of the best success I've had so far was because I hired the right people. And so just putting the gas on hiring more of the right people. I'm not gonna share too much yet, but there's a new opportunity that I haven't— I have an attorney reviewing the agreement, and it's kind of built for salespeople that make a lot of money that want something new. It's not how to start a sales training program. It's not how to start an agency, anything like that. It's something that's very promising. It's been proven by other people. There is another community member who is likely to jump into this on his own. And if you are like a high-paid sales rep and you're looking for an opportunity with leverage, If it goes well, you will hear about it. If it doesn't go well, you will also hear about it. This is assuming I haven't signed anything, but the goal is for me to like prove out the concept. It's not quite a franchise, it's not quite a license model, it's kind of like a hybrid of the two that has like sales as the backbone. If it goes well, it's something I'm really stoked to bring to you guys because I know how sales is. It's like, dude, you get ahead financially. And you're like, well, I, you know, I'm sitting on all this money. I have money, I don't have time. What do I do now? But how do I like start to work my way off of calls, off the doors without slashing my income? And this could be that. That's at least how it's been pitched to me through a very trusted source. Yeah, just keeping you guys all updated and everything life's got to offer right now. Camera died, but here's the rest of the prompt. I basically fed it some logos. I told it our colors. Gave it some example sites like I tried to build one here. Load time was just way too slow. And then I bought a Webflow template, but I like the design, but I didn't have the time to do it. I'm about to show you guys how crazy this is. Just went and got a ton of sushi. I want to show you the site that I basically just built from scratch. Work in progress still, but these are all interviews, some good like text stuff, process mapping. More interviews. Oops. Um, we're gonna do a bunch of photos, of screenshots here. You see it's like a carousel. More interviews. Again, fixing some of this up. Frequently asked questions. You jump in here and expand. You could talk to our chatbot, ask it questions. I basically did all that in the last few hours, and yesterday I didn't even know how to code. This is all custom, so pretty crazy. All right, team, Sunday long run done. 10 miles, 8:36 pace, 125 average heart rate. Truly a walk in the park. If you guys run, or if you want to get into running, or you think running's hard and you get so out of breath, it's one, because you just need to do it more, but you need to run fast. Not every workout needs to be 100% effort, but I didn't start getting faster and start being able Like lower my heart rate for longer distances at faster paces until I started doing like track work, like speed work and threshold work. Anyways, I know you guys aren't here to learn about that, but it's something I do around like five six days a week. So I'm incorporating it into my videos. What I am here to show you about before I get to editing this one and before I eat these potstickers that are left over is this. What's up, Dylan? Just got in town. Sorry I didn't get back to you, but hey man, after giving it some. I just want to say, let's freaking do it, man. Let's freaking do it. So we officially have a new team member. Now the logistics we need to work out, but this is going to be a head of client success for the community. We already, you know, have pretty good results. You guys seen the interviews, all that, but we want a better result. There's never a scenario where we can't have more data and better results. And so not gonna completely announce it yet, but we did get the verbal. Now it's a matter of figuring this out. I also want to implement more coaches into our business around more specific things like closing, DM setting, interviews, stuff like that. Also, did I did I show y'all the new the new hat? I can't remember if I did, but this is a gift from community guys. Shout out Michael from Edmonton. I know absolutely nothing about this team, but I like the style of the hat, and he came down here to Austin. For this little meetup that we had. Picked this up, brought it down, so I'm gonna wear it, man. It's a cool hat, and it has, it has like a meaning behind it, which is cool. So thanks, Michael. Post-run electrolytes, post-run potstickers. Right now we're in one of those seasons, calm before the storm. When I shot out to the Hill Country last week, I laid a lot of the foundation for the next level for me, for the community business, for because of sales. This past week getting back, I was actually busier than before I went trying to implement all this stuff and stay afloat with normal operations. I think this is going to be one of those things I can look back on and be like, it makes sense why we were able to get here and get this result. All right, we're now 2 months into 2026. My goal was to grow the community by 20% this year at minimum. We are on pace to do that 2 months in, which is cool. I think we're going to beat it by a lot though. I also, I don't usually dox offers, but we had a very new community member. He's a college student come in and before we could even get to the part where he's supposed to be applying to jobs, he lands a job with Brandon Turner. If you guys don't know who Brandon Turner is, look him up. One of the biggest names in the real estate investing space, very involved with BiggerPockets, long-lasting reputation, very successful guy. And this guy is already setting appointments, closing deals with him. I know for a fact some of you guys watching this know who this is because I, when I was in roofing sales, was studying his stuff because I thought rental properties was going to be my next move. Ended up not being, but he's massive. And, you know, how would you as an individual, like if you really just wanted to work for a guy like him or someone else, like how do you go about finding those roles? It really is kind of like a serendipitous thing on how you even end up in the interview process for something like this because You know, there's probably hundreds if not thousands of people that would like this position. Somehow, some way, community member who's a college student that works part-time is in the position, and he's like the top setter there right now. So little look into the community types of companies people are landing in. I'll say it again, but there's absolutely no reason to sell something that doesn't work well, sell something you don't like, sell something you're not interested in. You should go to bed at the end of the day in this space and feel good about what you're selling. And if you don't, you're selling the wrong thing. There is no shortage of opportunity to feel good about what you're selling. That's another thing that we kind of focus on in our group. I think I'm going to wrap it up there. I'm going to shoot out, grab a coffee, edit this video, post the video, finish the potstickers, and we'll see you guys next week.