This remote closer made $100k, then launched his own company with it

There's not a better vehicle than getting into high-ticket remote sales to make that kind of revenue that's going to allow you to pursue things you want to do. So it was just one of those, you know what, I'm going to pull the trigger this time. And I did, and I couldn't be any more grateful that I did. It's still one of the best investments I've ever done. What we're creating is essentially a hardware-agnostic global refinement layer. Well, all right.

Here we are. Welcome back, you guys. Community member interview. We've got Longtime community member, now homie, frequent Austin, Texas visitor. We've got Austin Lamb on the podcast, the channel today. Austin is someone I've gotten to know. When'd you join?

I joined late February of last year.

It feels like it's been longer.

Yeah, it has been.

Yeah. So a lot's happened. You came out Austin came to Austin, went to our meetup. I think you came out again. We went to Tampa. You're back right now. You're going to be back in a few weeks.

Yeah.

You might as well move here at this point.

It's only my third time here in what, like 2 months?

Yeah.

About to be a fourth.

What's up guys? Welcome to a new community member interview. Today we have a conversation with our boy Austin. Joined us in the community February 2025, went on to work a little bit full-time, a little bit part-time. At the end of the day, cleared over 6 figures as a remote closer. as a contractor and used it to fund the business that you're going to hear him talk about. A lot of people that look into this space are running a business or want to start a business, and the traditional 9 to 5 just isn't suitable. It takes too much of your schedule. You have to be in person. And I think that the 1099 remote appointment setting or closing space is one of the most flexible sources of income, given that you can do it from home and pretty much on your own schedule. And so if you are current or aspiring business owner, this interview is going to be especially Good for you to listen to. Before we get any further, I'm going to jump in here as always and let you know that Austin's result is not an average result, not a normal result, not a guaranteed result. In most cases, it's not a result that you will get. I mean, we're just talking probabilities here. If you're the type of person that hears this interview and thinks, if he can do it, why can't I? Then you're the exact type of person who might do well in this industry. But if you're the type of person that's looking for guarantees, income claims, handouts, and all those things, probably not the right fit. So anyways, just jumping in here to say that. As As a good pal of mine has said, just because you buy a membership to the best gym with all the good equipment doesn't mean you're going to have the six-pack. You got to show up, you got to put in the work because there's other people there putting in the work and they've got the six-pack, but it doesn't happen automatically just by paying the membership. So you guys, without further ado, let's get into the interview with Austin. He's a guy that joined us. All those stories you've already told me, dude, you probably get to tell them again on this.

Fantastic.

Got into remote closing over the last year. He really ran with it, set himself up to do something that we're probably going to talk about more later towards the pod or the episode. But running his own thing now, we're just going to paint the picture, man. Show, show y'all how he did it.

So, oh yeah, shout out to Kate and Jeremy for picking me up on my first offer too.

February 2025, I think you stumbled across this Instagram Dude talking shit online one way or another. Start talking. You jump into what we have going. But before that, you got a journey, man. You've got so many stories and stuff, but you were doing home exterior roofing.

I've done a lot of that. And even before the roofing sales, before the door-to-door, before the online sales, I was in project management. And even before project management, I lived out of my truck for a few years on the interstate pouring concrete.

Yeah. So blue collar through and through.

It's, it's been a fun life, you know? I mean, I, I like to think I got the, the good old boy curse from Iowa. You know, it's one of those, if you want it, you just go figure it out.

Yeah.

You know, so I guess I don't know whether you call it acumen or being dull. It was just, hey, let's just go figure it out.

Can you tell us about the straw that broke the camel's back story?

Yeah. So in 2024, I was essentially acting as the lead project manager for a GC down in South Southwest Florida. And this was after I even got out of roofing sales, got out of door-to-door. I wanted to go back to my roots a little bit more. A salary was nice, looking at the fact that I was having systems again rather than just running on my own. But doing that, I'm naturally a high-octane guy. So I was the 4:00 AM to 10:00 PM guy, 6 days a week, even though I was on salary and it made no sense. So it was just really, it was just burnout.

Yeah.

That's all it was. I was— nobody worked harder than I did. And from that, it was just, you know, it's biology that we all have a capacity.

Yeah.

And I didn't know what my capacity was yet.

Well, there was, there was a roof that you put on that you never got paid for.

Yeah. So about that, the, the roofing company that I was selling for is based out of Tampa. And the detail I didn't tell you about that specifically was the guy who owned the company was actually on the show I Almost Got Away With It 9 years prior to me being hired. And he got caught stealing diamonds across the country.

Okay.

So I was, I was selling roofs for a diamond thief that evangelized. And you know what? We're all able to grow and be different people. But after he didn't pay me for 9 weeks straight, it's like, yeah, I should probably go do something else.

Yeah. Welcome to roofing, man. So you get out of roofing, you're like, all right, man, I'm freaking hot. I'm not getting paid. The online stuff, dude. Why, why did you go from roofing to remote closing or whatever you want to call it instead of, I don't know, solar could have been easier, bathroom remodeling, something that was more direct transition. Why'd you go online?

I realized the vehicle was sales. It was just what I ran away from wasn't because sales wasn't right for me. It was simply, it just wasn't the proper vehicle more than anything. And yeah, that January going into February, he popped up and it was the Out of all of them, it was the freaking caveman post where you're like, let me put this in simple terms.

That's funny.

Man, make sale, sell online, stay home. I know I butchered that, but it made me laugh to the point where I scheduled with our good old buddy Diego. And me, I like being proper and overkill because first impressions are everything. So I wore a suit, I got my backdrop ready to go. I looked like I was ready for a C-suite position and I hopped on Google Meet with Diego and he's like, yeah, man, you look ready to go. Little did I know what that was foreshadowing.

Yeah.

So I teetered back and forth. It's like, man, do I really want to take the jump? It's another expenditure. Because ultimately I didn't look at it as an investment yet. And that's just because of the naivety. I— you don't know what you don't know. And I think it was a month later you had posted another video about this giant elaborate whiteboard where you're drawing everything out. And the math made so much sense as an analytical thinker. Oh, and then I hit up Diego and I just said, take my freaking car.

I guess so. I guess when you put it that way.

I set up the monthly too, because I'm like, wait, I could actually just elongate the fuse super quick. And then I don't have to take that pound of flesh out. And I went, I mean, it's still one of the best investments I've ever done.

So you get in, you go through the process. We've talked about it, or I've made some content on it before. And then you applied to like 3 jobs, right?

I applied to 3. One of them was in serial sales. 2 of them was prior to giving Diego my card details.

And then that's the one you landed on?

Correct. And I think it was because I'm obsessed about preparing myself in the best way possible. And from that, I think you remember I sent you what, like 148 different Loom drafts or something like that?

Yeah, the resume. I remember going back and forth. Looms. Were you the one Where I told him that it was someone's birthday or was that somebody else?

Yeah.

Okay.

You told me that once again, shout out to my boy Caden.

Little follow-up hack if it's their birthday.

Oh my goodness. That was meta, dude. That was really the cheat code. And just, I had overprepared. I had made sure there was zero gray room 'cause it was one of those, I've sold things before, I can hold a schedule. I've ran teams of up to 50 people and 8, 9-figure job sites for factories, distribution. So there was no reason in my mind that I needed to start from step 1 as a setter. It was, I can go into closing. Yeah, I know how to close. And that's the approach I took. And Lord behold, it was enough to get me on my first BizOp offer. And I was on that for about a year and a half. I just got off the calendar about a month or 2 ago, but that's just for capacity reasons. They're all cool dudes. It's a great program. It's just, you know, we all grow and, yeah, go different directions.

We'll talk about it, but you definitely You left for good reason. You got something cool going on.

Yeah.

Okay. So you get on that team, you're like, I'm not going to setting, I'm going to closing. From my own experience, man, because we came from a somewhat similar background, I was in roofing sales, but when I got into this space, I was pretty caught off guard by how different roofing sales was to this, the fast-paced one-call close. My experience was I felt like I had gotten really good at sales, but my blade wasn't as sharp on closing, which is that one-call-close structure, right? Did you have any of that or was it a pretty quick transition for you?

I'm really not the best framer, if you will, like the whole NEPQ, can I share an opinion?

Just a silly guy.

That's really all it was. If there was anything I was good at, it was relaying conviction. Because I'm one of those people where it's like, if I said it, it's because I meant it. I'm very careful about the things I say, even though I am a big personality, but I put my seal on everything I say because I refuse to say things I don't intend.

Sure.

So just from that, it was just, you know, it was a clear product and a good product is a good product. So from that, it's just identity at that point.

And so you actually, I've never made this connection, but you basically came into this space, landed a job that puts you in the spot to earn like 6 figures remote. Didn't go to another job and just like, I'm not going to say you hung it up, but you're onto something that you got your hands full. Right. Which is super, super rare. And it's a good thing. I mean, it was like the past year and a half, held you over, gave you the platform to potentially really put time and effort into what you're doing now. But I don't know, dude, talk, walk through that a little bit. You get into this team and I remember some of your stories too of like, oh yeah, I closed this deal and I said this crazy thing and I was in this crazy place wearing this crazy hat or what. I don't know. You just do random shit.

Yeah.

But Taking that approach of not taking yourself too seriously when you're selling something that is, you're selling to A-type people, right? So how did that pan out? I mean, how did you get comfortable enough to just really run with your own style and maintain good performance?

You ever play poker against someone who doesn't know how to play poker?

That's usually me. I don't know that well.

So then you're probably the most difficult person to play poker against because if they don't even know what they're doing, Yeah. Everybody else at the table doesn't.

Yeah.

So just from that, if you, if you're just firing blind, it's, you know, it's not necessarily a predictable sequence, if that makes sense. I'm just going to be straightforward. I mean, clearly there's obviously a discovery, what they're trying to get out of it, what is going to be the result of it, and if they want to proceed forward or not, or let alone if it makes sense to.

Yeah.

So I really just kept it extremely simple, stupid. And by no means am I the best closer in the world by any means. But to talk about the transitioning more than anything at the beginning of the year, I'm always happy to give my roses to whoever I need to give credit to. And out of all people, it was Noah Burton that quoted the, sales is the vehicle that you use to get into the aspects that you want to do. Right. So there are folks who are in sales 20, 30, 40 years, the shower ring salesman that lives out of a trunk traveling around. If you know, you know, great movie. But it's just that idea. I didn't want to do that, but there's not a better vehicle than getting into high-ticket remote sales to make that kind of revenue that's going to allow you to pursue things you want to do.

Yeah. And on the the leverage that you can have in your schedule with the right team, right? Because I know especially towards the end, dude, you really started doing some AI stuff that was really unlocking some leverage for you.

Oh yeah.

So what did it look like in the beginning versus, I don't know, 6 months, 12 months down and closer to the end in terms of what it took for you to take home a nice chunk of change? I'm sure there's some points where you had a lot of calls, some points where you had not so many calls, and just there's different things that you did. Again, the AI stuff, but what was that looking like for the most part? Your day-to-day schedule, how many calls you'd have to take based on show rates and close rates to get to certain income levels?

Yeah. And through the first tenner, I would say through 2025, so about 8 Late April, early May, when I first started receiving my first calls on schedule to through the rest of the year, I would say I had a pretty solid schedule. It's just the beauty of high ticket is you are the commander-in-chief of your schedule. And of course there's minimums in a day to meet your quota, your KPIs, et cetera. But I was probably taking maybe 6 to 8 calls a day.

Mm-hmm.

Just, it was one of those, okay, let's try and brute force this, get some reps in. And then When I actually understand what I'm doing here, then I can tone it down because inevitably I did shrink it down to 4 to 6 calls. I mean, between October to December, I think at one point I was taking like 12 calls a day.

Yeah.

At one point it was just, hey, let's let it fly.

Yeah. But you're probably having, I don't know, a sub-70% show rate, right? So you get some—

Yeah, it definitely started dipping towards the end of Q4 going into Q1 where that show rate was really more like 20, 30%. But that's tough. That's also the nature of really just info and product as well, because look at how Facebook ads change. Look at how Meta ads change. Look how the algorithms have changed. Look how, what product demand is, or let alone the access of information that comes from artificial intelligence.

Yeah.

Even where that gap is just, it's mitigating as it is in all sectors. So naturally there's going to be some confusion from that.

Yeah. What did you see the team that you were on? There's still some people there, one person I'm thinking of that's still there, still doing awesome. And there's been a lot of people go in there, get booted out, leave for their own reasons. I mean, high-performing sales teams always have people coming in and out, but the bottom performers versus the top performers, the guys banking $20K months every month, what did you pick up on that was making that difference for them?

100%. I think What made me a gray man, if you will, just kind of in the middle a little bit, was more or less, yes, I was convicted and obsessed that I wanted to make sure I knew everything that I was speaking on. But that being stated, those who are on the bottom versus those who are top, I mean, of course there's still conviction-based selling, but they also followed a pattern and a sequence that is a little bit more polished, I would say. And those are the guys who get from $5K to $9K a month and exceed $20K, $30K, $50K. Varies on the vehicle, but it really just boils down to what is their process? What is their systems? What is their day-to-day? What's their outputs? Outputs and inputs is one thing, but if you can close on the call live instead of having an elaborate follow-up sequence, that's usually easier.

Yeah.

It's just, I like analytics and numbers and AI. So in some weird way, I almost liked doing the, almost like the outbound closing a little bit because I found a way to automate it a little bit. But Yeah.

Did you ever get heat for being like not following a process so much?

Well, of course. Of course.

A good amount of heat or what?

Yeah. No.

Like, dude, stop running your calls like this.

Yeah. Yeah. Our sales manager, when Caden stepped back to start focusing on other businesses, which is awesome for him, one of the closers stepped up to be a manager. Shout out to Noah Ackman. He's Super cool dude, but same thing. He's been a consistent closer. He's done $15K, $20K months. He's been Mr. Consistent. So clearly he knows what systems work. And of course, if I were to follow that same system, you would imagine there'd be some correlation to improvement. But I think where I started having a fork in the road, if you will, was there's a beautiful difference between intention and capacity. And for me, I had every intention, of course, to be better, but it was just, I was so focused on coding, going through all my tokens on Claude, staying with the developer team, making sure that I'm up to trends with, I mean, it's just like iPhones and other electronics. There's a new model every week. There's a new update every week. So it was just keeping up with that labyrinth really did hinder how much I was focusing on just solely closing. Because that's an art form in itself, but it takes a lot of cognitive thought too.

Did you get to the point of taking sales calls for so long where you're like, hey man, I don't really want to be on calls all day so much? I feel like that's natural. Once you check the box, you know you could do it if you need to, you start to look out for other opportunities of leverage, right? Usually minimizing time on call is one of the biggest Versions of that.

Absolutely. And this is my first, this was my first offer. So I didn't really know or have an ability to do apples to oranges, what offers look like, what's the turnout with them, what's the environment look like, what's the product behind it. But clearly the offer I was on is a good offer because we had folks that were doing $20K, $30K months consistently. They've been a 7-figure MR offer for the last 2 years, realistically. So clearly it's not a bad offer. It's just, I didn't really see the means of jumping ship somewhere else when it was clear as day that I was in the vehicle that would make it available to do that.

Before we talk about what you're up to now and how this helped you make it happen in some regard, talk about a little bit of that follow-up. Stuff that you were saying, the AI automations, outbound closing, like what did you pick up on towards the end and how was that working?

As hilarious as this sounds, all I simply did was just extracting all the Fathoms and recordings that I could, took all the content from the offer that I beheld and just created an Obsidian file of everything. And then anyone who say I have a lot of respect for, I learned a lot for, like Jeremy Haynes is a great example. I would go onto YouTube channels where he would elaborately lay everything out, or even, shout out to Johnny Mao and a bunch of others, Nick Zhu, so many good closers information out there. But I would literally just download the transcripts, throw it into the Obsidian.

Yeah.

Be like, all right, that's how I wanna approach people.

Yeah.

So then it wasn't necessarily me reaching out, it was using the verbiage of what Jeremy or Johnny or Nick or Chris or whomever is much better than me. Impertinence to closing and having that frame stay centered.

You did that when we were in Tampa at our weekend event. You closed a deal on the boat. I also remember at our meetup last year, you closed a deal during a random time, I feel like.

What was that? Was it the Sapien Center that we were at?

Yeah, it was a morning.

Yeah.

Doing the workout deal there. It's remote closing, dude. So you've been able to basically over the last year and a half on the same team, the first team that you applied to in this space, survive And maybe hopefully stuff away some cash that gave you some runway to do some of what you're doing now. What are you doing now? Because if I try to tell the people, I will butcher it.

No worries. So I own a, and this, as crazy as it sounds, it is a RaaS company. So robotics as a service. And from that, what we're creating is essentially a hardware agnostic global refinement layer for really any kind of robot. Ultimately. And I know that's like, I'm not Skynet, I'm not doomsday or anything like that, but it is, it is pretty crazy.

Yeah.

What we've built realistically, we have a product, we're going international even with it to prove that it does work. And we'll be coming back as conquerors and I'll be back for the event to show it off.

So what Austin is doing is getting on the radar of a lot of serious players in that space, and it seems like it's trending in a positive direction. How did you start doing this while closing? How much of an overlap was there? I mean, talk about that a little.

How much overlap there was. So I guess it would be the equivalent of how people treat a 5 to 9 after their 9 to 5, where I would have my 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Just slotted out with as many calls as I could. I'd spend an hour doing SOPs. I'd go to the gym, come back for the gym, and then I had a few hours before I go to sleep. So it's like, okay, let's cross some boxes off today. And that's just how I treated it to the point where I now brought on developers. We had a clear advantage. We had industrial leaders that reached out to us and identified that, hey, what we're doing is got some substance or some potential concrete to it, pun intended. It just started snowballing a little bit more, a little bit more. And it's a lot like a scale, you know, like what is important to you can change. And it was just naturally, it just, this became more of the catalyst for me because ultimately what can I take and obviously make money, you know, but it's just what's going to be the bigger vehicle for me.

Was there an event that took place where it became super clear that like, I need to shift my attention from closing to this fully now.

Yes. I think that transition was when we finally had something presentable, like from a TLR, which would be like a technology readiness level standpoint, where it's just, it's a 1 through 9. The military loves using it. It basically just identifies where you're at in terms of progression. And we got to a point where we finally had substance that was worth sharing. And from our peers that we shared with, they were absolutely blown away because It's either you're the best at what you do or you simply do something different from everybody else. And we focused on something that is different from everybody else, but because we're early on that idea, it's giving us longer runway than everybody else to be the best at it.

So obviously you have to pay to live and put gas in your King Ranch and fly out to Austin, Texas, do all this. If you have something that's presentation ready, how does that give you the confidence to cut out your direct closing income? Obviously the space that you're in now, the sky is quite the limit, but how do you, I mean, being someone that has expenses just like everyone else and likes the finer things in life, how did you justify that when you had something ready to show?

Yeah. I figured out what, I mean, the best part of high-ticket sales is it truly shows you what the meaning of FOMO is and identifying that framework. So Being incorporated as a C corp, we are you know essentially structured in a way where we're going to be VC backed and we're going to have venture capitalists, Core Three Group, potentially the military even. And that's a pretty crazy one by itself. I'll tell you about that later. But essentially, there are folks out there who have capital and they want to invest. They want an inflationary asset, and from that they see that there's a premium in investing just like in Shark Tank, Angel Dust investing. They see that okay, I deploy capital. I'm okay with allocating in exchange. For a future return. And from that, we identified problems that in large scale that we see in the industrial sector, in the military sector, in commercial, in all facets of life, even how it can supplement the human condition, if you will. And because we have an argument and really a product that will effectively be beneficial, there's investors that see that potential of making capital out of it. So that's where we are been receiving grants, other offers. Now we're vendoring around, but ultimately it boils down to creating that sense of FOMO.

And we got about half the time left. So yeah, we're about to switch to a new podcast exclusive conversation here. Before we do, you have to rewind back in time to February 2025 and tell yourself something that you think, or something that you know now that you wish you would've known then about this space of remote closing and seeing it through, what would you tell yourself?

Oh, by the grace of God, I at least took that jump and just, you know, you're, you're not, you're never going to know it's going to work until you pull the trigger. So it was just one of those, you know what, I'm going to pull the trigger this time. And I did. And I couldn't be any more grateful that I did.

There it is. So you guys, if you're watching this, we're going to wrap up the community member interview here. If the next conversation is published online, you're going to see it as the recommended video. Uh, it's not a matter of if, it's just when. I don't know when it's going to drop, but we will drop it and we will plug it here. Um, so Austin, thanks for running this interview.

Thanks, dog. It's always a pleasure.

And that, you guys, was the conversation with Austin. Thank you for tuning in, watching till the end. Austin is a really cool dude, a character to be honest with you, but he's, he's a great time, has a very unique selling style, been able to do great things with it in both high ticket and for high ticket and after high ticket. So a glimpse into what is possible if you have aspirations to run your own business and how this can help you fund that or break away from a job so you have more time. Ultimately, high-ticket closing was a tool for Austin. It wasn't the end goal. And honestly, for a lot of people, it's not the end goal. A lot of the people that can stomach the 1099 commission-based nature are quite entrepreneurial. They want to do their own thing. If you feel like you're in a similar situation to Austin, we can definitely help you. If you go down to the first link in the description. That is the Cereal Sales Community. I've said it a million times on this channel. That's where we help people get remote sales jobs, people just like you, regardless of experience or background. As long as you have manageable expectations based on what you're joining in with, then we can help you out. So go down below, first link in the description, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.