Million Dollar Income 'operating system' with Brandon Fluharty

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster and and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd and we're going to talk operating systems today. But not the standard boring in the boardroom type meetings of an operating system. We're talking life operating systems because a topic we actually don't talk about enough here is the income potential for sales. There are seven figure sales earners out there that are changing their lifestyles, providing for their families and being able to make more than almost any other profession. But the idea behind them always is hustle and grind and fight and claw. No balance. You give your life to it. Early mornings, late nights. But it doesn't have to be that way. Which is why I'm so excited to have Brandon Fluharty on the show with me today. Because he has lived it, both sides of it, the good and the bad, the highs and the low. And he's going to talk to us about how his results got better the less he focused on work. And I know that might be blowing some people's minds right now. But I'm telling you it's true because he's done it. Brandon, my man.

Welcome to the show, kd. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

I'm pumped, man. I'm pumped because as I looked up your background and your experience and also what you seem to be passionate about, it's very in line with what we try to focus on here, right. This premise of live better, sell better. Right. And so let's dive right into it here because I think it's really, really important for people to understand is that, you know, first let's talk income. Right? We don't talk about this enough and a lot of people do dance around the idea of like making money. There's still this kind of thing around it. So talk to us about what it felt like to join that seven figure annual income club. Yeah.

So I broke into it for the first time in 2019 and getting there was definitely hard. And I'm not shy about posting my W2s on LinkedIn and kind of using money as the hook, but I really want to help people understand. It seemed like this unicorn thing that was extremely out there in the distance that I just could not ever achieve no matter how hard I worked. But reaching it for the first time, I definitely felt like, okay, I've made it. But the biggest lesson I learned is having a different relationship with money. That wasn't always the case. I mean, there were times when I was so broke living in New York City had to work not only two jobs, three jobs. You can see it in the background here. I got DJ tables. I had to to, to hustle hard, work part time as a DJ at night till four in the morning, get up, work a corporate job and then even supplement income beyond that and you know, living paycheck to paycheck or cash in hand, that would immediately go out the door. And I was so broke I'd have to even jump the the subway turnstiles because my, I couldn't refill my Metro card. So that was not that long ago. I mean, we're talking like less than 15 years ago. That was my life. So to think I could go from being extremely in debt, a negative bank balance, to making over seven figures in a single year. It's almost like hitting the lottery.

So I have so many questions around this because it's important, but actually we haven't talked money. That's why I put it in the intro here. Because sales is this industry where people say, oh, like sales with their money motivated and oh, the money is good, but salespeople have a really weird relationship with money. As much as we like to talk about it, we don't like to talk about it. And we also don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to manage it. So talk to us about that shift a little bit, right? You weren't making that much money. You were broke. Like, what shifted right where then money started to become something that you knew how to generate.

Yeah, because I didn't have it. And then I had the hard lesson. 2008, I had to declare bankruptcy. I had to learn fiscal responsibility the hard way. And I'm actually just like everything in life. It's easy to look back and say, oh, wow, these things happen for a specific reason. And I can look back on a moment. Certainly as related to my relationship with money as that was probably one of the best things that could have ever happened to me because I started to appreciate it. And having to, like, build yourself in adulthood back up from scratch, you know, you can't get a credit card, so you're not going to approve for it. So you have to, like, build your credit back up using, you know, a debit card and slowly. And like, you rely on people, right? You rely on your family members, my in laws, my wife, to, like, be super humble, right? And just work step at a time, day at a time. And one, I think that helped one just be more appreciative of and have a better relationship with money. Understand, like, I can't exceed, you know, I can't spend beyond my means because that's what put me in a tough situation to start with. So I just started learning. I learned about investing, I learned about savings. I learned how to pay my future self first before splurging on anything. And so that was a long process. But I learned, I think, through humility and the pains of going through that. And that's kind of helped me. Now that I've made money, I haven't inflated my lifestyle so much where it's just like, oh, I've got to work for someone else forever. I mean, I have retirement squarely in my sights over the next 12 to 18 months.

Love it. I love it. And so what, you know, you mentioned kind of, you know, you hit that low point. But if you look back, what could you have done to accelerate some of this learning, right? Because hopefully through, you know, shows like this and interviews, we can help people avoid some of the mistakes that we made, right? So what, like, you know, to the people that are first starting to make money. It's weird. I've been having a lot more of these conversations where like we came from nothing and you start to make money and like, what do I do with it? Well, the only thing I know how to do with money is spend it. So that's what we do. Right. So what would be some of that advice to some of the people that are just starting, right? They are you 10 years ago, getting into it. They can build this better relationship there. Yeah.

The best advice that I got when sort of building out, you know, where to put my money and ensure that I fought more about the future versus the here and now was think about all the various buckets that we have that we could put our money. And like you said, Katie, like most people think about spending their money first, right? Especially after like a big win, right? You're euphoric after that big win and you want to go celebrate. You want to buy something big for, you know, maybe your partner, yourself, whatever it is. I say shift that to the last thing you do and you know, put put away in savings. You know, there's 401K, there's Roth IRAs, there's just your cash rainy day fund. So save there first. Once that's built up and that bucket's overflowing, then you can invest in crypto, you can invest in the markets, you can, you can start to take a little bit risks. But like simple investing in something where it's just automatic and you're just investing a little bit into the markets and you're not even really thinking about it, that's going to be your, your medium term and long term. And then once you know those buckets are full, right, and then you've paid off your expenses for the month or whatever, then you can splurge a little bit. And that's going to help you to not like over splurge because that's the first thing you did. Now you'll be a little bit more reasonable. And when you start earning really big commission checks, I'm like, hey, skip out on the luxury home, the Lambo, the Porsche, and invest in things that actually will pay you and help you to build a passive income so that again, you're not tied to working for somebody else forever.

And I love that I saw something recently that I thought was one I wish I had known when I started making good money. If you can't buy it twice, don't buy it at all.

I love that.

I was like, ooh, that's good, right? Like, you know oh, you're looking at that Rolex, you're looking at that Porsche. If you can't buy two of them, you're not ready to buy it yet. You're not ready to buy it yet. And I was like, oh man, I sure wish I would have heard that if I had just enough to buy the one, I was gonna buy it. So then let's talk about how you started to make more money, right? Because you mentioned earlier like this and people are always looking for what's the easy way to seven figures? You know that passive income, Amazon drop ship, chilling on a be, you know, seven figure Internet marketer you mentioned, like.

It was a challenge.

So what are the things you start doing to make more money? Because you can't invest a lot if you're not making a lot. What were the changes you started to make to start to see that income come up? Right. You hit the bottom, you declared bankruptcy and then you worked your way out of it. What changed that started to make money appear?

Yeah. So the first thing is we're fortunate that I think most of your audience, they're in sales. So we're in a really great role to control our income, certainly compared to other roles and even other roles where you've got to go through years of education and so forth. So we're very similar to entrepreneurs. So if you can take sort of that entrepreneurial spirit, right, and be strategic and create a well thought out plan for yourself, but more importantly, just execute effectively. When I was rock bottom kind of building myself back up, I was selling small little print advertising to bars in small town of Florida. So I wasn't doing anything sexy or prestigious here, but that's where I started and I cut my sales teeth in small, medium sized businesses. And then I eventually like I kept a learning mindset and that's through curiosity. So I always thought to myself, I'm capable. I could always feel internally I was capable of big things. I just need to be in the right environment to do it. And so I just kept expanding my capabilities. I would learn and then when I couldn't learn anymore, I looked for someplace else where I could grow and acquire new skills. So I wasn't in the SaaS space, I wasn't in technology, but I slowly got there just parlaying each of my skills, like from media advertising, I was eventually print to television advertising to eventually digital media. And then I was able to take digital media to move into a SaaS company still working with small and medium sized businesses. But it got me into the SaaS industry where, you know, higher margins, right, Higher payouts, you could sell less and earn more. Not like say real estate. Nothing against real estate, but you know, you're kind of capped, right? And so I then once I was in SaaS, I was like, okay, I need to elevate myself into the types of businesses I target. So then eventually got into IT consulting and outsourcing for mid market companies. And then that got me noticed by an iPad based point of sale company, a late stage startup out of San Francisco where I was selling into enterprises. I was on a small team, but it was a startup and I didn't have like the type of resources I needed to really land huge deals like legal resources or solutions consulting who could really talk to these major brands. And so that sort of then it was like a 10, 12 year journey that landed me to where I am today with a live person. A public company still felt culturally like a late stage startup, but you had the chops to, you know, because they already work with large enterprises, have the legal resources, the support. And honestly the first thing that really helped me was hearing that this role I was in a comfortable, you know, the late stage startup, I was earning six figures comfortable, like wasn't looking to leave, but once I heard the hiring manager say this is a seven figure earning role, not that anybody's necessarily done it, but the potential is there, that's all I needed and I believed it. I took that to heart. And it took me 18 months in the role to get there. But putting myself in a position strategically to do that, that was the first step.

They used a really important word there which was like environment to succeed. Right. And sales isn't always the best environment. Some of that is external, what companies do, but also even internally what salespeople do to celebrate, what salespeople say to each other, treat each other. It's not always a successful environment. So what are things that you look for in an environment that you think could lead you to success?

Yeah, people first and foremost. That's what won me over at Live Person. Again, I wasn't looking to leave. I was recruited and I was on the fence to be quite candid. And it wasn't until I went through and escalated the level of interviews that I had that I was like, whoa, wait a minute. The people here are awesome. And I'm always, always been a believer in people first. But then when you get past the people, I think it's really important on. I kind of kept a list, I kept a list of, okay, here are companies I Had a short list of companies I would be willing to speak to, but also had a list of industries and live person sat on the industry. Artificial intelligence, this new thing, what's conversational AI. And I could really tell, right? So people then the culture felt awesome because it wasn't like even though it was a 25 plus year old public company, it didn't feel that way. And so culturally I wanted to come into something where I knew people were willing to move fast. There was almost like a little bit of chaos in a good way and I wanted that. So it was a perfect balance of like. But I know that hey, when I'm in front of a Fortune 50 company, you know, the legal team knows how to go through a contracting process, we can go through an infosec audit and it's not this scary thing and people don't have answers. So it was like this perfect balance, hitting a sweet spot on timing of the market, being a leader in the space, but not too far advanced where I'm just going to be another number here where I couldn't break through. And I won't name names of companies, but think of those super massive companies out there where you're just a number and it's hard to make a name for yourself. And this was the perfect sweet spot for me.

And so we were riffing just a little bit right before, you know, we hit record about kind of this journey, right? And so it's fun, like we've gone through the whole journey, right? Where you started hitting the bottom, turning that lever and then, you know, starting to see success. But I think a lot of people, myself included, have also chased success through just pure grit and will and grind your face off type, you know, processes. And so walk me through that a little bit of, you know, one, you lived it, right? So there's that side of it.

But then I also believe you made.

A change and something clicked, something changed and actually led to even more results. So walk us through that a little bit.

Yeah, so before getting into sales, I was a highly aspirational soccer player. I played collegiately, I had the chance to go train with a friend, first division club in Eastern Europe, and I was trying to win a professional contract, unfortunately ran some injury issues. But being in that environment where you have coaches helping you with your nutrition, you have coaches helping you with your mindset, you have coaches helping you with your flexibility and conditioning, then you have your obviously your technical and tactical coaches and trainers helping you to be the best player possible. And then your meals are planned out for you, your workouts are planned in a very methodical way to maximize your energy. I always thought to myself, like, that's kind of like the way it should be in like high performing teams, right? And then when I got into sales, nothing, none of that is available, right? Especially like even, you know, high tech sales, you think like, oh, wow, like there's gotta be something, right? We're pulling. And that's like, I've always thought of like, and that's a common thing, right, is you think of salespeople as like the athletes of the corporate world, the business world. And that's definitely true. But I think it's also any craft, whether that's music or art or acting or writing, even science. So what was telly for me is like being on a plane every, practically every week, every other week, jumping time zones. I got to a point where, you know, 2018, I was starting to build success. I was definitely in that hustle and grind, you know, staying up late, working on the proposal, getting up early because, you know, people tell you you got to be a 4am up at 5am that's what successful people do. You got to get a jump on the competition. You know, you're grinding, hustling. You were living in your inbox. You're hyper reactive to prospect. You're hyper reactive with your team, trying to make sure deals are moving along. I'm moving fast and I'm grabbing everything. I'm saying yes to everything. And I, I got to a point where it's just like my eyes started hurting and I'm like, like getting blurred vision and I'm, I'm not getting, you know, sleep deprived. And I'm like, this is hurting my health. Like, this is just not sustainable. So coming into 2019, I really like, I worked with coaches, I worked outside that I paid for. I worked with my internal manager who was awesome. And we were just like, we got to a point where we're just like, hey, say no to more like slow down to speed up. And I really, that was like my theme of 2019. That was again the year that I got into the seven figure earners club. So I became hyper focused on saying not yes to everything, saying actually deliberately no so I could focus where my motivation was high and I knew I could like talk the talk with, with these accounts. I was actually a customer of these accounts, whether it's Delta Airlines or Chipotle. And so that was, was really effective for me. And then staying in the seven figure earners club, really that came about when the Pandemic hit and I really doubled down because it reminded me of that year I had in Eastern Europe where I wasn't on a plane all the time and my schedule was the same so I can go to bed at the same time, I could wake up the same time, I could really watch what I eat, I could manage my exercise, I could manage my energy. So I really started getting into things like wearables like Whoop or Oura Ring. And yeah, I know you like the Rise, this app that helps you understand your sleep debt and manage your energy throughout the day. So I got into really this stuff, I just started tracking it, I just set up an easy, simple Google sheet. And what I learned was when I started shifting away from looking at activity metrics, how many emails and calls and meetings, to looking at my sleep debt and managing my recovery score, how well rested I am, that actually became a better leading indicator of how well I was going to perform that day or that week than the activity metrics. And so I started doubling down on that and I started finding a more meaning to my day, which was I want to leave the day feeling healthy and satisfied and that I really contributed well to my day. And ironically, over the past 10 months, I've been able to sell more operating that way than I did the two years leading up to it in this constant on a plane, working all hours, hyper reactive to customers. And so now I'm a firm believer. I'm like, that's why I'm so active out there to say you actually don't have to hustle and grind and you don't have to sacrifice your well being to get yourself to a position where you can earn and keep earning the dollars.

So I have two questions here. One is in full agreement and one is slightly devil's advocate, which I always just thought to just go through it. Do you think you could have gotten to this position earlier if you had focused on these things earlier? Or do you think you're able to now do this because you got here, right? Do you think if you had started this earlier, you would have gotten there sooner? Or is it potentially on the flip side like, okay, you did, you had to hustle, you grind your face off to get there and now that you are there, you can elevate it? Like, what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, that's a super interesting question. So this concept isn't new. Certainly new to me. It was always something that was floating around in my mind. Actually reminds me of an article I read. I think it was like 2015 and if we rewind to where I was personally, that was when I just started selling enterprise software with this late stage startup. And so could I have earned seven figures in that role? Probably not. Could I have done very well for myself and perhaps even better had I been operating in this new way? Like, you know, even I was top of the leaderboard or in the top five, I could have, you know, done even better. Yeah, I probably could have done better because I read this article about a CEO and I honestly can't remember the name of the company. But what he talked about was prioritizing his workouts like everything else was secondary to it. Client meetings, team meetings, town halls, whatever it was, he would prioritize every single day, his workouts because he said, when I give myself that time, I know I can be better to others. And so I started incorporating this a little bit but then got scared. I got pulled back by the hustle culture, but I started actually getting into cycling at the time and started like, all right, I'm going to try this out. And ironically I was actually performing better. But like I said, I got pulled back in and who knows what would have happened? But agreed, right. With kind of the pushback there. That, no, that role was not suited to be a seven figure role. No matter how much I sold like it would have been a ridiculous amount to have had to sold. The ACV just wasn't there to support it. Had I gone into live person more with this, this, this train of thought, yeah, I probably could have gotten here faster, right? But I'm certainly glad I'm here and obviously needed to get the results to prove myself. So yeah, it is proof though that you prioritize yourself first and your health first. You'll see, ironically, things work out in your favor because it's logical. I always believe in human first, seller second. You got to optimize yourself as a human being first. And when you can be, you can feel authentic. You're not in sleep debt where you're grumpy, you might not be willing to make that extra phone call. It's just natural, right? If you're healthier and you're feeling energetic, you're going to perform better because you will stick to the discipline of picking up the phone if you have to dial for prospects or you're going to be sharp when you're in front of a C level executive and you get pushback. If you're sleep deprived and you're grumpy and you're like all over the place and flustered, your response is probably not going to be strong. And so yeah, you might miss out on that opportunity. So your closing ratios are going to be higher. Just makes a lot of sense and I love it.

And that was where the question was. It wasn't so much around like a seven figure earner per se as much as the increase in results. Right. No matter what role you're in, these types of things should have an impact on results. And you started getting into my next question, which is why do you think it works? Right. Because it is. It's one of those things like, oh, take better. People say, take better care of yourselves and everything else matters. Prioritize you, you're the only one you got.

Cool.

But where did you see the impact? Because you've gotten to live both sides of it. So you've mentioned sleep a lot. Right. So I'm going to actually rephrase the question because I want to make sure we get to some of these things. Where are you optimizing when you think about this operating model? Where are the places you're optimizing that you feel have the biggest impact on the real world results?

That's a great question. So when I started tracking this, like what, over a year and a half now here's what I've discovered. Again, you got to think about my role. I'm a strategic seller. So for me, sometimes less is more. Right. Focusing on the big whales, that's the nature of my job. So I got to make high leverage decision like big impact. And I've started to become more of a systems thinker, design thinker. I want to think, how can I design something once and sell it twice? And what I discovered, like to put myself in that optimal role that to deliver on that is the foundation has to be built on good sleep. So when my sleep debt is over three hours using things like whoop or aura or arise, like where I can get these insights, I know I'm not going to have my full energy potential for the day and it's not going to go as planned because salespeople, we're all highly ambitious and we have way more on our to do list than we can always get to. And we always think we're going to do more than we plan for. So sleep has to be like the Rock foundation and depends, right? People ask them, well, how many hours of sleep? So for me I'm averaging about seven hours. Could I do more? Yeah, but I'm not also training really hard if I were, you know, LeBron James gets like close to 10 hours, maybe 12 hours of sleep, like, right. But he's working his body really hard. So based off of that physical recovery need. Right. A little bit different. So for me, as a professional salesperson, that works for me. I need to get that foundation of sleep. Then I found that if I'm in more than four hours of, of meetings, my cognitive ability declines and I don't have the time to actually do really high valuable work on behalf of my customers. So if I'm on these back to back zoom calls, we have all these deliverables, right. I scrambled them down in the notebook and then, you know, if I don't have proper breaks in between, I'm going to forget about those things. And the best thing that I have found is you need the momentum right after a meeting is completed. You capture those follow ups. You follow up in a timely manner and you do it in a really thoughtful way. You actually follow through with what you say you're going to do as a next step. And so for me, deep work, working in deep work where I'm concentrated, I'm not being bothered by Slack, incoming emails, notifications, scrolling through social media. I can put music on and I'm highly concentrated working on that proposal, that follow up, whatever it is, that presentation for tomorrow. So for me the balance is four hours of meetings and four hours of deep work. An eight hour workday. It may not be eight hours straight, but it could be eight hours over a ten hour day. We're all working from home, taking breaks. I use things like the Pomodoro timer, so I'll work for 25 minutes and I'll get up and take a break and I'll go outside, like get sun on my face, get fresh air and those are the little things that make an impact. And then the other thing I do too that is critical, I start my day in the same way and I end my day in the same way. So I sort of have this sandwich because I can control those things. Everything in the middle is going to be a little more fluid. So I have this thing called DFC&D stands for discipline. So I think of myself as like a world class athlete. At the beginning of the day I need to be disciplined because just like Serena Williams gets ready for a tennis match, she knows how to warm up every part of her body, go through a specific routine to get her mind right and her body right. So I'm disciplined. First thing in the morning, I go through a very specific prescriptive routine that works for me. Then in the middle of the day I Need to be more like a creative artist. Can be an actor, a musician.

Why?

Because they're fluid and they're flexible based upon what's coming in and at you. Right. At the end of the day, we still are serving other people, our teammates, our people who we manage or our customers and prospects. So we have to, like, we can't just deny them. So we have to be reactive to them, but we can't control what's going to happen in those situations. We've got to be a little more flexible. And then at the end of the day, I like to be curious. That's the c. Like a scientist. And that's when I look back and review my day very objectively, and I try to keep emotion out of it. And this is where sleep comes in. Right. So if I still have energy in my reserves at that point, I can objectively review my day. I'm not going to skip out on it. And I can say what could have been better in that presentation or how I pitched that or that disco call. And I can quantify it with, like, a number versus being emotionally like, oh, like, that person hung up on me, or, you know, they objected to that and, oh, it's their fault. Right. You play the blame game when you put emotion to it, but when you're objective and use data, then you can act more like a scientist. That's then how I can go into the next day planning to improve. Right. Just 1% at a time. And if you improve 1% each day through this sort of methodology, how could you not get good results? So that's sort of like the overarching part of the personal operating system that.

I work by now, maybe. What did the F stand for?

Flexibility.

Flexibility. Okay, got it. So because you used a word and it's actually the name or part of the name of your group, right. You have be focused. How's it go? Be focused. Live. Great focus. I feel like salespeople. We are notoriously unfocused individuals. Just shiny objects. Oh, there's a squirrel. Oh, I need to make this call, like this email. So what are some of the tips you give on focus? Because we've talked a lot about energy. I hope people are picking up on this. Dan Gordon actually had this in his book the Energy Bus. But he said in there, energy determines discipline. It is almost impossible to be disciplined if you don't have energy, because discipline requires energy. It's where we almost always fall off. We fall off at the end of the day. We fall off at the end of the Week, right. Like we just don't have enough energy there. So the sleep and everything is cool. But talk focus for me real quick as we start to wrap up. Like how to stay focused during the day. Because people would be shocked at how much work they could get done at work if all they did at work was work. But that eight hours stretches into 12 hours because there's so much fluff that didn't need to be there. So it's toxic. Focus a little bit. What techniques or tools or actions have you used to stay better focused during the day? So that eight hours can be. Eight hours.

Yeah, exactly. Timeboxing your schedule. Because like you said, energy is often the missed limiting resource that we have. We talk a lot about time, but it's energy. You have all the time in the day, but you don't have any energy to make it impactful. You know, it's all kind of for not it's wasted time. So time and energy need to be protected at all times. And so timeboxing my and a great app for this that I've actually discovered that I love is Sunsama. It helps integrate your email, your calendar, tasks from various apps. It pulls it in and then you can like almost orchestrate your day through this planning. And I always try to do it the night before, so that's effective. The second thing is just constantly ask what am I doing right now? And is this contributing to what I want in my future? That's an easy way of getting yourself off of TikTok, Instagram, scrolling through LinkedIn and you're doing these low value tasks, right? Am I consuming or am I creating? It's another great question to ask yourself. So you need like these cues, right?

You can put it.

This doesn't have to be high tech, be like low tech. Just putting a stick it on your monitor or wherever throughout the house where you find yourself being pulled into these bad distractions or habits. And you just ask yourself, right, so that's another thing. And then the meetings understand like truly you need to be in this meeting. Getting myself out of non essential meetings has been a game changer. Then when I'm out of meetings I got to make sure I'm again focusing on that deep work, high value tasks that drive bookings, revenue. So that's working on proposal, that's building systems that can be repeatable for my team if I'm managing a team and so forth. So again I use a Pomodoro timer. It's a great technique. Look up the Pomodoro technique. Basically you set a time for 25 minutes, and you are working only on one thing. No multitasking. You're just working on that one thing. And then when that timer goes off, take a break. And it can either be 15 minutes or 5 minutes or 15 minutes, depending on how many cycles you've done. And then that's when you. Again, you don't go on social media. You go. You take a walk outside, you get the blood flowing, you get some fresh air or something. You know, you're doing something where your brain needs rest and you give it that proper rest. So those are like four really simple things that anybody can integrate and they can change the game.

I love that. And my word for this past year, almost year and a half now, has been intention.

Right?

Like, am I doing it with intention? Whatever it is I'm doing, is it with my full intention and focus? Not attention, but intention. What am I actually trying to get out of this? And so actually, we've already been riffing. This could go for hours. I love this stuff. And so there's a few things I want to wrap with here. Right. And so, you know, we've talked, you know, kind of the journey, the relationship with money, and then also how focusing on yourself has led to more of it. We've covered a lot already. I love to ask this question because people remember the start, sometimes the middle, but definitely the end. What would your big three be? Right, We've covered a lot. If you could give three parting pieces of advice on the things you've talked about, what those three key takeaways from what you've covered today be.

Yeah, focus on being the best human being first, seller second. I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in wanting to be somebody in the workplace. Right. We kind of lose sight of the human first. Right. And then focusing on that. Right. Can help you understand what rules are. Back to. I love that word intention as well. We need to be more intentional with how we. It's not about work life balance. I don't agree with that philosophy. I agree with work life integration. And we need to be more intentional about. So I guess this would be second piece. So first focus on being good human seller second. Right? Because actually you will be a better seller by being a more optimized human being, more intentional work life integration. And think through an athlete, an artist, anybody with a craft. We need to elevate the craft of sales. And you need to be deliberate about creating rules for yourself. Maybe a rule could be, I don't go out on happy hours during the week, no matter how tantalizing it is or fun it seems to go out on a Wednesday night with my teammates and have a few beers. Few beers might set you off course where you will not have a better tomorrow. And by creating these rules because you're intentional with where you want to be in your life and the results that you want to get, that's going to help you to create the discipline and the focus you need. So that's sort of second piece and then the third piece is starting out. I think it's okay to say yes to everything coming your way. Whether it's starting at a new company or you're just getting started in your career, Go ahead and say yes. That'll help you to fail quickly. Learn right? It's. It's okay to do it. Don't like, wait for perfection. Like, you got to know everything about the product. You got to know everything you know from a scripting standpoint. Just go and have the best conversations you can, good business conversations, and learn right. And. But once you've gotten yourself higher up in your career, it's going to be the no's that are more impactful. So you got to be really deliberate about how you share your time and your energy. Is it worthwhile? Does it match the intentions that you have for yourself in life? Those would be the three, and I love that.

And as we wrap here, I'm actually going to flip this question right. So the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Right? Because I do. I have a similar idea to you of like, if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, more joy, more fulfillment, more happiness in life, the sales would also get better. But most of what we've talked about today actually has been on the live better side. So I'm going to flip this for you as the last question is what would your sell better advice be? Because I don't want this glossed over. You are closing millions and millions and millions of dollars in sales for some of the biggest companies and brands of the world. So what would your sell better advice be to people listening?

Yeah. So again, I can only kind of talk through my personal experience in the environment that I'm in in strategic sales and working for a B to B2C company. Company. What has been hyper effective for me is putting myself in the shoes I have. I call it the diamond standard. One of the diamond standards that I try to uphold is know the customer experience for this brand. I'm targeting better than anybody. I'm going to meet in the room or talk to. So Delta Airlines, I talk about this story a lot. I was on their planes every week, and it was the first deal I got done here at Live Person. And when we interviewed three years later, we actually invited them recently to this year's sales kickoff. And what Amy from Delta talked about was she could feel the passion, like, she could feel, like, the love that we had for them, because it was. I was spending a lot of money spending, like, I knew things about their plan, people's names at the ticket counter, like, on the planes. I knew, like, what their uniforms looked like and what they complained about. And so I had this, like, really deep personal relationship. And that would have been really hard to do with somebody else that I knew nothing about. So know the customer experience, especially if you're selling in the B2B, excuse me, B to B to C type of environment. And that was extremely helpful. The second thing is have a transformation mindset. Don't sell solutions. We hear that all the time. You obviously can't lead with features. What you need to think about is helping a company fundamentally different, you know, operate in a fundamentally different way. And when you can get them on that mindset, you elevate yourself up. Because here's the reality. Whether you're selling a $250,000 solution or $2.45 million solution, that's the box that they're going to put you in. And if you're talking about a net new logo, they're going to keep you there. And you're going to make it harder for the client partner or the customer success team to upsell that, because they're going to be thinking, oh, they're just a $250,000 solution. We didn't have to go through this large transformation to pull them in. And if you're not going through that and showing them how they can fundamentally change, change their operations and improve, whether that's lowering costs, improving customer experience, increasing their custom, their competition, and their place in the marketplace, you're going to stay in that box. So you might as well go for the big. And sometimes it can go faster thinking big, because you're going to be pulling in. Executives might feel hard at first, but looking back, it almost takes as long as selling a $250,000 solution than it does the $2.5 million solution. You might as well go for big out of the gates and show you're serious. Love it.

I love it. It's understanding the buyer. And what he called out there, too, is understanding your buyer's. Customer. Sometimes that's external, sometimes that's internal. But it's really involving and understanding their world. And that is a of salespeople I still just don't think take serious enough is getting to know their prospects world. Day in and day out they just show up and it's okay. I got my Persona card or maybe I don't even have a Persona card. Now I'm just gonna start calling. Get to know your prospect. What do they do? What do they work on, where they time their put their time, where does their energy go? What does that all look like? And that will help you sell them the right thing for them. So Brandon, my man, this was phenomenal. Where can people get more of you? Where can they follow you? Where can they get more of what.

You'Re putting out there? Yeah, four ways. So definitely follow me on LinkedIn. Brandon Fluharty I put out content twice a day during the week and on the weekends. So follow me there. Brandonfluhardy.com I have a newsletter. Sign up for it there. You can text VIP to 917-810-2325 and I will work with you a little bit more one on one in a mentoring thing in a very systematic way. I share some cool stuff there and then if you want to sign up and go deep down the rabbit hole, go to be focused livegreat.com some cool stuff there that I'll be sharing some some goodies for anybody who signs up.

Oh yes. Be focused. Live great. Live better, sell better. My man, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your insights today man. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. This was awesome.

Hell yeah.