This Dad is crushing $10,000+ months from home with remote closing (here's how)

All right, what's up, you guys? Welcome back to another community member interview. This time around, we've got Paul. Paul, you're based out of which part of Florida?

I'm in Wellington, Florida, which is part of West Palm Beach.

Okay, cool. I don't know what it is about high-ticket remote closing in Florida people, but it has to be the number one concentration of people that I know in the community. Aside from Texas, Florida is number one. But anyways, you guys, thank Thanks for tuning in. We've got Paul who has a good perspective on the high ticket stuff, has been in the corporate space, been in the high ticket space, seen both sides of it, can weigh the pros and the cons. And that's ultimately what we're looking to do here for you guys is just give you the truth about what this space is, not just the highlight reel. So Paul, before, I guess like a good starting point would be to ask before you even were ever in the high ticket 1099 remote sales space? Like what were you doing?

Yeah, so I was corporate sales my whole career. I got into outside sales as a 24-year-old. I started working for like a motor repair shop, so I sold electric motors. We did repair services, very technical sales. I had a business degree, so they made me work in the shop for a year. I took apart motors, learned winding, learned how to be a machinist. Then they went around calling on like power plants, rock quarries, and mining companies, and we did equipment repair. And then, you know, I worked for a number of manufacturers as well, became a sales director, had a team of 9 sales engineers reporting to me, but, you know, found my way eventually to high-ticket sales.

Yeah. What was it about the corporate stuff that, you know, led you looking for other things? Because I know actually when we met, you had done, I think you had like an Amazon business, like you had done some other stuff. But how did you ultimately end up on the high-ticket sales side of things?

For me, it was exploring a better way to create work-life balance. I got married. I've been married now for 14 years. I have a 9-year-old and a 7-year-old. But when I started this journey, it really was kind of back in COVID when my kids were very young and I'd been traveling. The way in corporate sales that you make the most money by being like a road warrior, being— my territory kept getting bigger and bigger. I mean, when I was a sales director, I had half the United States and a team of 9 people. So I was gone Monday through Friday most days. The thing COVID happened and now I spent 2 years at home and it actually turned out I like my family. They like me as well. And I realized how much I was missing. So kind of went through the general path. High ticket sales wasn't what I found first. Kind of did the YouTube search, how to make money online or how to start a business online and started an Amazon store and ran that for a year and a half. Just the profit margins were low. It was very capital intensive, but it kind of opened my eyes to other things. Got on X, started seeing people like you and Learn more about this high-ticket sales and realize I had skills that I could, you know, kind of work on a contracting basis.

Yeah. Aside from, well, I guess you mentioned like your whole, your territory was growing, but then, you know, COVID happened, but how much were you traveling before the pandemic?

It was pretty intensive. I mean, it was creating a lot of disruptions in my family. I mean, not only was I traveling a lot, I was making bad choices on the road. I mean, I was working for a VP of sales that was a massive drinker, so we'd be out till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Obviously never did anything like cheating on my wife or anything, but I was 60 pounds heavier. I was drinking all the time. I was coming back more tired than I left. And, I was really gone probably 3 out of 4 weeks, almost always Monday through Friday. So, I was gone 75% of the time and only home about 25%. And, when I was home, I was recovering and not really checked in with the family.

Yeah, dude, that's tough. And then, you mentioned you have 2 kids now. So, I mean, there's probably a lot of benefits that come from just working from home and not traveling, not to mention like this type of sales, but we'll get into that some more. But did you try anything else aside from the Amazon stuff? Like before you found this, like did you do any coaching or anything like that?

Yeah, I tried to do coaching. I was never super successful with it. You know, I consulted a few people, got paid some money. I even tried like a lead gen business as well. Where I was doing like email marketing for people. I had a few clients, nothing that was really, nothing that I was able to scale and really create that income I needed to keep the quality of life going.

Yeah. Were you making as a, like, or you were a director of sales, right?

I was a, yeah, I was a regional director of sales. So I reported into a VP.

You're making a decent amount of money, I assume. Like you got pretty, pretty comfy doing that.

Yeah. And then, you know, your life expands with that too. I mean, we have kids in private school and You know, live in a gated community and, you know, you know, have nice cars. I mean, yeah, you're, you kind of grow into that, that income and you create a life around it. So it, you know, that's kind of the trick, especially when you're trying to find something that can replace what you're doing. You know, you never want to step back in the quality of life, but then you need to find something that's scalable and also gives you those extra benefits of having like better work-life balance that you're trying to create for yourself.

Yeah. What was it like? So you discovered this thing of high-ticket sales and just to set the record, Paul is one of those guys that Got into high-ticket sales, found the proof of concept, and then jumped into the community at a later date to just expand the network, like stay connected. So he originally like got into this kind of on his own. Like what was your first step into the space like? And kind of, you know, let's talk about the first few months and the trial and error if you felt that at all.

Yeah, I mean, it really kind of fell into my lap. I was in a community in the Amazon FBA space and my mentor helping with my Amazon store, he ran a $10 million a year revenue business in Amazon. He had a team of VAs doing all the work for him at 30% profit margins. He was making really good money living on Amazon, but he was looking to move up in the world too. And he actually reached out to a mentor of his, somebody that he's known for a while that was the last direct coaching client of Bob Proctor, kind of the self-help guru guy who passed soon after COVID.

Oh, wow.

But he paid that guy $250,000 to do private coaching with him for like 6 months. And he, this guy was one of the original high-ticket sales guys that started like the Amazon back when they were doing all the Amazon done-for-you stores were like dropshipping. He had a $30 million a year business running a high-ticket sales team in the Amazon space. And he had sold that business, exited it, got a huge payday. And so this guy partnered with him and actually they started working together and started a new high-ticket sales company. And I was in the community and I had moved on from doing like a retail online arbitrage model of Amazon. And I was doing more of a wholesale model. So it was similar to using my sales experience where I was, I had all my business documents. I had a resale certificate. I was calling up distributors from legitimate manufacturers and I was placing wholesale orders and selling that stuff on Amazon. And so I did a sales training in this Amazon community on how to call up a sales rep as an Amazon business and, you know, talk to them like a person, get an account signed up when none of them wanted to. sign up an Amazon business and be able to place orders with them. And when this guy, he knew me as the sales guy from corporate. So when he was starting this new high-ticket sales agency, he called me in as his first closer just because of my background. So that allowed me to get my foot. We built an offer up from the ground. You know, it was a, it was an Etsy offer. It was first in the, in the e-commerce space. But then that's where I kind of got involved in this high-ticket community, ended up meeting you and that led to future opportunities. Yeah.

I remember you were in the Etsy space. Yeah. So I think that's cool to point out. Because the hardest part about this space across all the data points that I have is not being good at sales. It's not performing once you're in the role. It's finding the good role where you can be B-, but get like A+ results. Not saying you should want to be B-, but like the role where it's like the products kind of sell themselves a lot and you don't need to be Jordan Belfort in order to make $10K per month, right? Like, Exactly. So I wanted to point out like kind of through that story, how you ended up in this space on your first role. It's not like you just go to LinkedIn or Indeed and they're just there, you know, in swarms. It's like the space is a little bit low-key in that sense. And the best roles usually aren't going to be advertised like far and wide. So anyways, you like start selling these offers and I know you've been on like a handful of offers between then and now. But I do remember correctly as you had, you went back from like high ticket. This was kind of recently into back into like a more corporate setting, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was on a really good offer. I mean, after the Etsy one ended, you know, some of those e-commerce ones, sometimes they don't always scale. And I went on to a finance offer and it was doing really well. I mean, I, you know, I was probably averaging around $10,000 to $11,000 a month, but I, you know, I think my top month was like 18, something like around there. There was some tension stuff on the actual offer and it kind of ended. So, you know, obviously with a family and all that, I had to kind of figure out what I was going to do. So I went back into the corporate world and, you know, um, you know, took a, took a role where I was running a BD team and, uh, and an industry marketing team. But, uh, you know, kind of always kept my pulse. I was in the community at that point, you know, I was kind of looking around. I would put out my name for offers, you know, occasionally. And I think you and I ended up texting and I said, hey, hey, My schedule was kind of freeing up if anything came up. And maybe a month or two later, I got contacted by somebody I knew from the space and they were expanding their team. They already had a proven offer. It was a good offer and they were looking to grow their team. They knew I had done stuff similar, so they reached out to me just because I sold similar stuff and that started doing this again.

Yeah. When you went from like some solid months closing back into more of that traditional corporate role, Did you feel like you were like, was it kind of with the intention of like, hey, this is a temporary thing because I know I want to be back in the remote, like 1099 space? Or was it like, you know, I'm going to go into this and just like fully focus on this? Like what was going through your mind as you took that? You know, some people would be like, maybe have like an ego check of like, oh, I'm not going to go back to corporate or whatever. But like for you, what was your mindset around that?

You know, I think the Mindset shift. Maybe I would have had an ego check, you know, like back in my my twenties prior to being married and having kids. But I think when you have a family and you're responsible for other feeding other mouths and like the future of not just yourself but also like your kids, I think you really just do whatever you have to to keep food on the table. You know, keep security and peace in your in your life. And so it I've never really thought about like you know I'm going to be this full time or this is my identity of the high ticket closer. It's all about a means to an end as far as like providing. And for my family. So obviously I think the challenge is when you're going back and forth, I mean, the type of sales I've always done in the corporate world's been always very relationship driven. And you obviously still need to form relationships, but you have to do it on a lot shorter timeframe in the high ticket sales space. And obviously urgency comes into a lot more play. And where in the corporate world, I've never really had that urgency play. I mean, we're always on the customer's timeline. We're just building that relationship, providing value, and that can hurt you in the corporate, in the high ticket sales space.

Yeah. No, I've seen that a lot. That what I said earlier about like, you're probably already good enough at sales, you just need an opportunity. If you do come from that B2B typically, but like relationship-based, longer sales cycle, like it can be a little bit of a shock. I even experienced that myself coming from roofing sales because we'd play the insurance game and insurance gets involved, it gets dragged out. Next thing you know, it's like sales cycles could be 2 weeks, it could be 2 months. But it's not like one call closes, right?

So anyways, the corporate job I went back to, the average project was like 3 to 5 years. It was like medical device, like we were selling components to medical devices. And, you know, by the time you do the design wins, the initial prototypes, all those different life testing, all that, and then go and do like FDA submittal, I mean, it was at least 3 years from like kickoff to project to the finish. So there's no urgency in that space.

Dude, that's That's tough. So you, I mean, we're filming this interview now because recently you've just, you've come back, you've had some really good months, connections obviously helpful in landing like a quality opportunity to come back and do that. But when you got the offer to like take another stab at the remote closing stuff and you had already kind of committed to the corporate stuff, like what was going through your mind at that point? Was it like, yeah, this 3-year sales cycle is kind of boring to me? Like, you know, or like what convinced you to jump back into the high-ticket stuff?

I think it's trusting yourself. I mean, when the offer's good, it was already proven. I'd been on a number of offers that we were just kicking them off. And so I was the original sales team. The offer was being built up. Now the company had been around for a while, but they hadn't used a remote team. It was new to us. And those take a little bit to prove out that they're going to be successful in this model. Sometimes they don't work. I've been on a number of crypto ones that don't end up panning out and we just couldn't sell it. The value prop wasn't there. But this was a proven offer. They already had a sales team, they had guys making good money. And I knew that just like any salesperson that trusts their own ability, that you have a lot more earning potential, you know, in, in being in a 100% commission role. So, you know, typically when you're in that corporate role, you're gonna, you know, most of these companies are moving to like a base with maybe a year-end bonus. You know, it's good stable income, but the upward potential, it's just not there.

Yeah. Do you like more of the management stuff or do you like being the guy who's selling?

You know, I don't have ego with that either. You know, I've been a manager of people. I like growing, I like nurturing talent, but at the end of the day, I also like doing it. You know, any of my manager roles, I would get involved in customer calls. I'd help drive the projects forward. I'm a salesman at heart, so I don't mind doing it, but the management's fun too.

Yeah. Because they say, you know, it's usually not the same person who's the best at both of those. Like there's different personality traits. So I was curious.

I don't think I'm the best salesperson. I think I have good habits and I'm consistent and I'm good at connecting with people. I don't think I'm the best closer. You know, I hit solid months. You know, I've had times where I've been top of the list, but usually I'm kind of upper half, you know, middle of the pack. I'm just consistent. I'm a good base hitter.

Yeah.

But I'm good at connections. And so I know what my skills are and I know what I need to work on to keep getting better at this, but it's not, You know, yeah, I think that's a good point to make too, man.

I've been, I've been saying this a lot recently, you know, these companies, yes, they want good salespeople, but what they, even though they might not say it, what they want more than a good salesperson is a good employee, like a good team member, right? Because being a good employee or being a good team member is a completely effort-based thing.

Yeah.

You know, it's inputs, right? It's like showing up on time and hitting KPIs when it comes to inputs, which just because you're the best salesperson, like that's the good employee stuff doesn't automatically come, right? And so you can kind of hang in the pack. No, like if you're not, like I said earlier, that if you're not Jordan Belfort, like you can hang in the pack just by being someone super reliable that they don't have to worry about. Because sometimes, dude, some of these best salespeople are loose cannons. Like they are liabilities, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I show up. I do. I do my nights. I'm a weekend warrior. I mean, one of our setters said last month, you know, when I got a piff on the weekend, he goes, death taxes and Paul Shanoff getting a weekend piff. You know, like I mean, it's it's you know it's because I show up. You know, I work the hours. I follow up people, and you know, I'm honest about who I am. I know what my personality is, and you know, I know what styles work for me.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more holistically about just like the space. Who is for, who it's not for. You know, I think we mentioned it, but yeah, you've got wife, 2 kids, live in a nice community. You have a life that I'm sure other people would look at from the outside and be like, he's doing it. You know, he's got some stuff figured out. But if someone similar to you has already had some wins in maybe corporate or in other things, and they're looking for that next thing, what would you Not to sound like doom and gloom, but like, what would you warn that person about? Like maybe some mistakes that you've made that if you could go back, you would do something differently? Like what would that be?

You know, I think the first thing that comes to mind, and there's probably more, but I think we in high-ticket sales only control one aspect of this. You know, we're part of that sales and marketing, but we have nothing to do with the fulfillment. So I think knowing that your reputation is going to tie whatever offer you're tied to. I mean, if the fulfillment's not dialed in, the customer satisfaction, the results don't live up to expectation. I've seen where a sales, a high-ticket salesperson, their name gets tagged to like a complaint in the Better Business Bureau and somebody does a Google search on that person's name. And now all of a sudden they're like, hey, there's this complaint against you over an old offer you sell and they cancel the call. You know, I've seen that happen and it's, you know, you want to make sure that your reputation is tied to what it is. And, you know, I think the other challenge is somebody coming in like my background where you've already built up a life and certain expectations. is the stability thing. I've had 4 or 5 different offers in a 2-year period of time, and just making sure that you are good with your finances, you save that money, you live within your means. If you have a really good month, make sure that's tucked away and know that there might be a rainy day as you're going in offer to offer. And that's why it's important to have contacts in the space and have a network so you can keep that gap if something does happen with the offer you're on. keep that gap as short as possible. I mean, that's there. You don't have the same assurances in the corporate world either. I mean, they could fire you tomorrow and you don't have any assurance of that. It just feels a little more stable on the outside because it's a brick-and-mortar business.

Yeah, that's a really good point too, is just because it's W-2, just because it might have benefits, doesn't mean those are promised to you. You know, that brings up a good point though, like W-2 versus 1099. There's a you know, some advantages to both sides, but with you and like kind of, you know, where you're at in life, like what do you notice about the 1099 stuff that's different? Like, is there anything that you do or don't take advantage of being a contractor? You know, obviously there's a tax side and then W-2, there's benefits, but I'm curious, like your thoughts just around the comparison of 1099 versus W-2.

Yeah, I mean, obviously as one of my one of my first lines in every sales call, I'm not a financial advisor.

Yeah.

Obviously, I think there's being a 1099 and obviously a number of the salespeople I talk to, they've set up LLCs and so they can write off certain things like your meetup and things like that. You can typically write off trainings, communities, but obviously the other thing too, I mean, if you're not in a situation where if you need healthcare and things like that, you'd have to shop for that yourself. I mean, I'm lucky enough that my wife still works a corporate job, so we've always run through that stuff through her. So That wasn't a consideration I had to take, but a lot of people in my boat would have to consider that stuff. What would be the cost of healthcare insurance, funding your retirement accounts, anything like that?

Sure. Yeah, no, 100%. There's definitely some solutions. Healthcare seems to be the biggest thing, rightfully so. And there's definitely some solutions for that. I personally have something that I share with people if they're looking, but that's basically all I wanted to get through. I mean, I wanted to show people like you can have some solid months, you can have some down months, but if you can manage cash flow and you're in a position to do something like this, like it's real. You know, there's people out here doing really, really good things. We were just talking about someone before this who closed $500,000 last month.

Guy on my team.

Yeah. Run the numbers on that at standard commission. Be a little conservative if you want. Any way you skin it, that's a good month.

I won't, I won't mention the bonus that comes with that, with that dollar amount too. Just the bonus a month would be more than some people are making.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know about the bonus. Cool. Well, I guess that's all I really wanted to ask you about it. If you could go back, well, you, we kind of already talked about like what you would do differently. What's something though? Last thing, last question. What's something that you wish you knew sooner about What it takes to be successful in this space that would save you some time, some money, or make you some more money?

Yeah, I think, I mean, we kind of touched on this earlier, but it's one of the things I'm really focused on right now, given the type of sales I've done. I mean, that there's a way to create urgency that doesn't feel like spammy or like too pushy. And I think it's a real good sales skillset. And I've seen it from a lot of people on my team. I'm an avid watcher of like other people's sales calls. I, you know, we share sales calls and I watch a lot of people and the way that they create these little urgencies or these vision what the future could be with the offer you're selling. And I do wish I would've just embraced that a little bit earlier. A lot of the offers I've joined, we had kind of a slow start as you're figuring out the pitch and figuring out what works or not. And I've seen people come in and just immediately get pips on their first sales or that because they're just dialed into that space. So that's something I've been working on developing as a high-ticket closer.

Sure.

Is figuring out a way that works with my personality and what makes me feel successful closing clients, creating the things that obviously are known to work in this space.

Yeah, no, 100%. Well, shoot, man, I appreciate you coming on. I know you gotta go grab the kids.

Gotta go pick 'em up. Part of the benefit of being 1099, right?

Yeah, for sure. If you guys want to connect with Paul, I'll ask him if he wants links down below, we can throw 'em. Otherwise, he is in the community. If you guys jump in the community, you can chat with him there. But Paul, thank you for coming on, man.

Yeah, always a pleasure, Dylan.

Take care.