A short interview between Larry Weidel and Sam Shepard about Sam’s “8 Fundamentals of Success.” Part 1 introduces the idea that sustained success comes from consistently practicing foundational habits rather than constantly changing systems. This chunk presents Fundamental #1 — Prospecting — framed as “friendship farming”: practical, person-to-person tactics (dress presentably, smile, be likable, take genuine interest, persistently meet new people) and the importance of maintaining the same enthusiasm whether it’s the first or thousandth time.
We're talking with Sam Shepard and we're looking at the eight fundamentals he selected as his system of success. That works for him, the combinations that work for everybody. This is what's worth for Sam for over 30 years. And Sam, like you said, when you lose your momentum, production starts to die. You find out that you don't need to change your system. It's that people got away from the fundamentals.
Is that right? Exactly, Larry. It's. Sometimes I think the longer you've been doing something, the more quote unquote bored you get with teaching the same things. But I think one of the keys to success is when you find fundamental principles that work. Just stay with them. You know, you don't have to change. You might have changed your people that you're talking to, but you don't need to change the system. And lots of times people get. One thing I think I'm very been strong in is I can watch the same movie hundred times and still be excited about. It was a great movie because it would excited me the first time. It still excited me the 100th time. And so I think the same thing about learning and practicing fundamentals in your business. There's certain foundational things that we all had different personalities and how we would say things and do things. But when we come back to the fundamentals, I've just found if I stick with the fundamentals, I'm going to have success and I'm going to help raise up successful people.
Yeah, I'm the exact opposite. I'm bored quickly, so I've got a harder job staying with this stuff. Once I see a movie, once I see it again, you know, it's like I want to go do something else. It makes it hard to stay on track. And that's something, you know, that's like your personality will make certain aspects of this easier for you to do. The key is it doesn't matter what your personality or your tendency is. This is what you got to do. You got to stay with what works and stay excited.
You have to have the same enthusiasm and excitement level, whether it's the 1000 time you said it or the first time. Keep the same consistent enthusiasm and excitement.
Yeah, that's very well, very well said. And that's what I've heard, I did hear earlier in the game that one of. If you're going to be successful, you have to have a find your niche and do it over and over and over again. That's what, that's what people that build million dollar incomes do. Consistent. It's like milking a cow. You know, you've got. You've got to find what kind of business you're going to have, where you're going to be milking the cow. You're going to be doing the same thing over and over and over. And the key is, can you keep yourself excited about doing it and not try and reinvent the wheel and start milking the ear and milking the tail and see if you can reinvent milking the cow. The guy who wins is going to stay with milking the cow, try and perfect things, find ways to compress timeframes maybe, but doing the same things, a little bit more exciting, quicker, fun ways, make games out of it. And so that's what we're talking about here. Fundamentals that work for you and passing them on. And the first one is, Sam.
The first one is prospecting. We've got to find clients for our business, so we've got to find new. If we're expanding the size of our sales force, we're expanding the products that we market. It starts with prospecting. That's the very beginning. Prospecting, which I said earlier, I consider it friendship farming. You think of prospecting, it doesn't sound like a positive term, but most people don't have a problem making friends. So I just think I'm just going out to make some new friends. We've all got friends that at one time were not our friends. So at some point in time, we have to make new friends. And I just find the business is easier when I make friends. And so when I'm out meeting people, and sometimes you meet people and there's no connection. And maybe you, you know, you keep moving on, but I'm just looking to make friends. It's kind of like, to me, prospecting, if somebody's running for political office, you don't see them hiding. They running for office, man, they go wherever there are people. They got their paraphernalia on, they got their buttons on saying what they're running for, whatever. You know, they're letting people know. They don't. You might not vote for them, but they let you know, I'm running for office. Well, in our business, I'm gonna know I'm making friends today. I want to make certain. I'm gonna wear something that identifies my business. I'm gonna make certain that I'm. I think when you're prospecting, if it's out person to person, you need to look like something, you know, you need to look sharp. You don't go out with saggy pants on talking about your friendship farming. No. Okay. So when it's personal person, you look good, you look nice, you look presentable. And you don't have to be impressive with how you look, but you shouldn't be depressing in how you look. So I would say you don't have to impress, but certainly don't depress.
Did you have to find this out or you just kind of naturally come to you?
Well, I learned it by, you know, going out there and doing it. And I got into business as 22 years old, I really didn't have a market. The friends that I had were really not my market. I didn't get any success there, so I had to go and meet people. So I started getting dressed up and going out and shaking hands and meeting people and making calls and finding people who knew people, you know, finding out who the person I knew, maybe they couldn't help me, but they knew somebody could. And I would ask them to, you know, refer me to people and, you know, do a lot. I did a lot on the phone and I did a lot face to face. But my face to face was just not, not like walking to a mall and standing there, just, you know, just meeting people as I go in my every. And going to a dry cleaner, going to the grocery store, going to the bank. Just being friendly. Smiling is very important when you're prospecting because nobody wants to be around somebody's grumpy looking look like they got the weight of the world on their shoulders. So when you're out there, I would say, smile. That will really help you.
Yeah, I heard one of our guys got a button. He went up to one of the guys who worked in his office and gave a button and it said smile. And Bob, it was Bob the engineer that got the button. And Bob said, why did you give me this button? The guy said, well, do you like the business? He said, you happy about what you're doing? And the guy said, Bob said, yeah, I love it. He said, well, I got you this button so you can tell your face about it and know. And you know, as far as being friendly, it's like the Bible says, you want friends, be friendly. Let people, you know, at breakfast this morning, sitting next to a couple, they're, they're into Aspen. I'm in Aspen right now. They came up from Santa Fe and they were telling me their trip through Santa Fe until you ride. I learned some stuff. I met some repeats and contacts. Just open yourself up a little bit. And again smile, make it easy for people to want to be around. Try and be a little bit magnetic rather than. Like you said, try and attract without being creepy.
Right.
It's not weird attract. Just don't repel.
Exactly.
Don't be obnoxious. And here's the other thing. Sam is taking it. If you take an interest in them. And that's the. Fine. That's the thing about you said earlier, find people you connect with. If you find people that you can take an interest in, for some reason they're interesting to you and you're asking questions about them and you're listening when they respond, you take an interest in them. Guess what's going to happen. An interest in you.
You know, they're going to like you. You need to be likable.
Yeah. It comes down to being liked, right?
Exactly.
You want to find. You want to find people that you like. You like them, they like you, because hopefully you're going to be in business together for a long, long time. All right. That's one of the. We kicked off the Fundamentals of Success. Frankly, I'm excited about getting into the second one. And so let's wrap this one up and then we'll do next video. We will do the number two of Sam's eight fundamentals. Thanks, Sam.
