Find the Fire, Don’t Light It: Why Top Performers Are Hired, Not Made

Hello, everybody. We've got a treat this afternoon. We're talking to Gabe Lulo. Hello, Gabe.

And hey, Larry, how are you? Thanks so much. I'm a huge fan of yours, man. I'm excited about this.

Well, thank you. I'm, I'm flattered and I don't know why that would be, but I, I'll take it.

And so when compliments are free, you got to take them.

All right, Gabe, you know, let's get everybody. I feel like I know you a little bit because I've listened to your podcast with Tom Hunt from Fame, which we're going to get into. What I'm going to say, before you even get started, what I'm going to do is recommend people who want to get into the minutia of how they would apply your business background to their business in the ins and outs. I think they would do well to go listen to that, to pick up some things that we won't cover here. But, and I'll tell you why I rec. I recommend that the deeper we get into this. But I thought you covered a lot of good stuff, you and Tom, from a business standpoint. And what I'm going to try and get into is from the personal side, because what, what I'd like to do in my podcast is what I've done in my life, and that is help people that are like the 20 percenters, you know, that have some smart. And so I'm real curious, as you came up, what would you, you know, as you look back at your formative years, you know, you've been a, you know, you've gone to CEO, you've managed hundreds, thousands of people. You know, you've had all the success that will, we will get into, but, you know, it's got to start somewhere. What do you think it started for you?

Yeah, it's funny that you say that. So I have a podcast also called Do Hard Things. And the reason why I came up with that is it's our family motto, right. So I grew up being told that, hey, we're winners, we're not quitters, right? We, we push through, we don't give up. And the big reason why is, you know, I grew up in Buffalo, New York. The people in the U.S. you know, it's like the tundra of the United States, right? It's, it's a cold place. I think there's three seasons, right? July, August, and winter. And so, you know, it, it's hard just to grow up there, but it's a blue collar town and so when I grew up, my family, my cousins, my. My. My close friends, the people that I looked up to when I was a kid, they had to literally lift heavy things to make money. They had to, you know, get dirty to make money. They had to literally, you know, get hurt on the job sometimes. Right. Because they're. What they were doing was dangerous or physical manual labor. And that's how I looked at making money when I was growing up. And I was 11 years old and I was having. I was in school, and we had to raise money for a fundraiser to save our local aquarium. And it was interesting because they told all the kids, okay, kids, you're going to sell T shirts to raise money, right? And everyone was selling t shirts for $10 a shirt. Well, I had this bright idea. I was going to sell t shirts for $20 a shirt. And what happened was I convinced my uncle to buy 10 of the same T shirt. And these were very bad quality shirts, Larry. So I convinced him to spend $200 on t shirts that he absolutely was never going to wear. And I realized, oh, my God, I made the most amount of money for that fundraiser, by the way, in my class. And I said I. All I had to do was talk, and I made money. This is incredible. It blew my mind. And so once I realized that, I got really infatuated with language, with communication. My mom's also an English teacher, so she's retired now, but I grew up with an English teacher, a wordsmith, and, you know, every time I said the wrong thing grammatically, she smacked me at the top of the head in the dinner table. So I think with that type of upbringing, it really got me focused on what I wanted to do, which is get involved in, you know, in business. And that's really where it started.

At a young age, you're smarter than me because I. Eight years old, I started, you know, a little route selling TV Guides and things like that. But the. The connection between. And all of my uncles and were all appliance repairmen or, you know, mechanics or something. My father was in the air force, manual labor. Farmers, a lot of farmers. But that. That light bulb didn't click for me. Wait a minute. I'm making money and I'm not having to stick my head underneath the hood of a car. That was a great insight at a young age.

Yeah. And my mom knows she was in Mary Kay. I don't know if you remember that company. And so she, she, you know, my dad died, and the big. The big start of it to get super Personal. My dad died when I was 3 years old and so I was, I'm the oldest of all my siblings. And you know, my mom, I saw her put herself through school after we were born. I saw her become an English teacher, get her master's degree. I saw her doing Mary Kay parties at the house to sell makeup to, to get by. So we came from humble beginnings, but the work ethic was there. Right? So she was bartending on the weekends, she was selling Mary Kay on the, you know, at night, and she was putting herself, her through school and had a full time day job. So I saw that grit and that flat out work ethic from my mom just to make sure that we are okay. And I'm like, oh my God. You know, and then so she started sending me these books and I was reading these books and I met a guy named Jim Rohn. And he said in his book he's like, profits are better than wages. And I'm like, holy cow. You know, that's incredible. And in sales, you know, even if you work for a company, you're still, you know, running a profitable business. You know, you have to add, that's how I look at it. When I got my first sales job, you know, I said, okay, this is my own business. It's my own business within this business. And I treat every job that I've had as like a franchise, if you will, and, and measuring it from that result. So that's how I was raised.

Yeah. You say you met Jim Rowe. A lot of people have listened to Jim Rogue read Jim Row, but you met him.

Yeah, I actually, I went to a conference that he was speaking at and it was pretty awesome. And so I did see him and meet him and then I. Big, big fans of his. And when he died in 2009, you know, I still remember the day, I think it was December 9th. And it was just a crazy, you know, he's a crazy mentor of mine from afar, but didn't meet him much.

Yeah, but the thing is, you were at that point, you were already reaching out for information, you know, and training and insights. You knew that somewhere in that meeting, you know, you, you had to go out of your way to find out about it, to go to pay for it, to sit there, take notes. And so that kind of says something about what was going on inside your mind.

Yeah, I mean, I wanted, I didn't want to be challenged financially. You know, growing up, you know, it was interesting. My aunt was the headmaster of a very well off private school in my hometown. And because we got a discount from the family, I was able to be able to go to a great private school, and most of my friends went to public schools. And it was a blessing and a curse because I was always sometimes feeling like, oh, I don't have the things my classmates have. But then it also motivated the hell out of me because I'm like, I don't have the things my classmates have. So I wanted to be better financially growing up with a humble financial background, but I was exposed to people who were doing pretty well and dressed up in suits every day to drop their kids off at school. And I said, wow, this is pretty exciting for me. And that's what got me on this track. So I think the culmination of all of that definitely got me excited to learn. And my grandfather said to me, also was in the airports. He was in World War II. Great story. But he said to me, gabe, like, smart people, right, you're going to learn from your mistakes, but geniuses learn from other people's mistakes. So he said that to me, and I'm like, oh, my God, I just got to listen to what other people are doing, and maybe, you know, it'll rub off. So that. That's how I got started, my personal development.

And here we are, you and me, at this stage of our life, and we're still picking other people's brains.

I mean, you're constantly learning. I mean, it's funny. Like, I love podcasting. I never thought I would ever do this, frankly. And, you know, I love it from watching yours and listening to so many great people. And, like, what. What it is for me when it comes to podcasting on the other side of this stage is I learned so much, right? And I get to learn from people that are wildly successful. And I learned so much to still to this day about what I can do differently to have success.

Well, I'll tell you that I'm going to this. I'm going to insert this. This is an observation from listening to you the first time with Tom, and that is, you've done a good job of maybe it's doing the podcast and staying with front of a wide variety of people and things like that, but you've done a great job of maintaining your humanity and relatability. You know what I'm saying? You're, you know, you talk straight at people. You know, it's like, you know, we're all around the breakfast table, you know, batting ideas around and everything, where when you do that, magic can happen. And so it's not like, you know, bow down, sit at my feet while I give you the, you know, Moses has come down from the mountain, but you've been able to remain to maintain that relatability. And I just want to point that out to you because I can see that you'd be a fun guy to work with and being very encouraging. And I can see that you can build that kind of organization which is as important as doing the work, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. I mean, culture for us, I call it our ecosystem. You know, we're all working remotely so we have this camera on philosophy. And I know not all companies are like that, but we're in sales, we're a sales firm. So if you think about it, people like other people typically in sales. So we buy a HD camera for all of our employees when they start and we, we have a camera on philosophy. And you know, my chief operating officer used to be a seller for me and I went to her wedding, literally I got an invite to her wedding before I ever actually met her face to face. Think about that was all built through video remote work. And so I think culture is really, really important. I think having fun and doing the job is just as important. And so, yeah, I think, you know, culture is really, really, really important, especially in a, again, a motivated, driven, sales, performance based job. It has to be that way or it just, it falls apart.

And so you figured out how to get your people involved in not just posting on social media about themselves and their birthday party and their great salmon dinner at the restaurant, but what's going on at work. And so talk about buying the how you did that with you buy what kind of camera and you have their everybody's on all the time. And you said the thing that perked my ears up. It's like, you know, the things that you would say the kid, you know, if you're getting around your family, you're talking about stuff and when it comes to your job and things you've learned or whatever, go on social media with that and build. The other thing you said is build content around that, which I didn't really follow, but I think we all can learn from that that are running the business. We're trying to make a bigger splash in the water.

Here's the in. My marketing professor taught me this a long time ago. He's like, it's not what you know, it's who you know, right? And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, that's it, that's true. And then he's like, no, it's he said, it's not what you know, it's not who you know, it's who knows you. And I'm like, what? And then he said, you know who Tiger woods is? I'm like, yeah. Does he know you? I'm like, nope. You know who Robert De Niro is? Yeah, I know him, but does he know you? Nope. So marketing is not about who you know, it's about who knows you. Right. And so when I hire people and I've started doing this to your point, I was talking about this with Tom two years ago. I made this decision. I'm like, okay, I'm going to interview and hire people, but part of the interview process is I'm going to let them know. So listen, I'm going to have you video diary your career with us, your life with us, and it's going to be like a documentary of you working here. Now what's going to happen is you're going to have this huge following on LinkedIn and if you leave us one day, you're going to have a huge network and a huge following and it'll advance your career. You stay with us. Great. It's going to help us also. But long story short, it's going to allow you to have social proof. And especially if our sellers, our client success managers, our partnership managers, our operators, they do this. So we started off as a company. I looked at how many followers we have as an entire company, all of our employees, and we were less than like 50,000 followers. All of our employees, and we had like 120 people at the time. So it's very, very small. No one really used LinkedIn to do anything other than maybe do some research or post their resume. Now we have over 870,000 followers in two years. And it was because we just dramatically just went all in on doing video documentary of our lives and what we're talking about. And so that's how we've been able to build it. And it's been astronomical in our success.

So you've been from like 35,000 total followers in two years to, you know, freight training towards a million, you know, and, and so the thing is, as they. What is the video diary of? If I were to go to one of your employees, what would it look like? You and I both know video can be time consuming and this, that and the other you worry about. You want it to be perfect and. But, you know, there's a lot of tools out there that can make it go quick. How much of this do they do? Completely themselves in poster. How much do they, you support them?

We support them in a big way. So I actually hired an agency to do this with me and our COO three and a half years ago and I was going to test this myself. And so we hired an agency to do it, our content, her and I. And we had so much success and so much fun with it that we acquired the company, we acquired the team, so. And added to it. So the people that were doing it originally through the agency, we hired them and then we also have doubled down and built an in house team. So everything that we do content wise, just so you know, we're doing 252 right now posts a month on LinkedIn across our team. So. 250. And this is not company pages. We don't even hardly post on our company page anymore. It's all organic individual content, 252 posts. And our team does a lot of it. But what we do is we bring those content creators, those, those employees that were diring, we put them in Riverside, the software we're using right now, and we, I actually ask them questions like it's almost like an internal podcast, essentially. We created internal podcast. It's not a, you know, a public podcast. Internal only. I'm asking them questions and we're having fun with it. They mess up, they say things they say. And our videographers are incredible. They put them all together into short, bursty fun two minute segments and, and then we write, we write across that. So the influencer themselves has 100% control over what goes on their page. But we're giving them video and we're giving them copy to use that as inspiration and then they post it themselves. So we're doing the admin side for sure, but they own the final say.

It sounds like you're doing like Fang does for us on the podcast, which, you know, take the stuff, package it up, not only just posted on all of the platforms for podcasting, but for make snippets and small parts to be used in on social media. They go ahead and prepare that for us. So you're doing that for your employees. How do you do that for, you know, a thousand employees?

Well, yeah, I mean we're doing it right now across 15 different influencers that are employees of ours. And so essentially what fame does for companies is very similar, but we just do it in house for ourselves. You don't do it for any, anyone else other than that's what we do.

You pick 15 people in your team that have that gift and have that influencer type, outgoing personality. And of course, if they're that kind of personality, they're going to love you. Helping them become more famous.

Yeah. So we took 15 people, we're doing three to five posts per week for those individuals. They're the star. And we picked those 15 across all different types of roles within the company. So every. Would you say team or division or role has a voice and it also of course the audience appreciate, appreciate it too, depending on who it is. So technology has a voice, recruiting has a voice, partnerships, marketing, sales, SDRs, managers. So there's different topics across what they're doing every day. And those 15 people are essentially our movie stars, if you will. And we're building content around them and, and that's what's working.

We'll wrap this up with you doing a quick interview of me. I'm, I'm on your team. You know, I'm in, I'm in marketing. So what would it, how would a typical one of those go?

Yeah, so we jump in and we want to look like, do a real life assessment. So I would look at the week and I'd say, so it's an, assess.

An assessment of the week.

Yeah. And it's like, almost like doing it one on one internally with your manager. Hey, what are your. I like to do roses. Right. So what's your thorns and what's your petals? Like, what are some positive things that happened this week? What are some negative things that happened this week? What was your biggest challenges? Take me through a success story. You know, what are some posts that you read on LinkedIn that you got caught your attention that you had some opinions on? You know, how are you feeling about AI right now? Take replacing your job like challenging questions and getting your feedback and then those are the topics. Right. So we really tried to make it relevant to their role. We try to make it extraordinarily relevant to their week. And then also we like to get some thought leadership out of that as well. And so I disagree with some of the things they said. Like they'll say to me like, you know, I had a sales coach on my team, he's actually a manager of my team and he's like, I hate permission based openers, but I know you love them, Gabe. And so it's like, and we, we debate on it and we have fun with it, but it creates, it creates conversation, engagement.

You know, this is a great idea that I could use in my community. You know, you're giving, you don't mind me taking your brain no, that's why I'm here.

Well, here's the deal. Like, that's the whole point of it, right? Like, everyone is scared to talk about secrets on the Internet because they feel like they have this intellectual property. But the reality is, is like, most people aren't going to go do it. Most people are going to go talk about it. And I always tell people, I said, listen, if you want to copy everything we do and compete with me, go do it. But the reality is, like, this is hard, right? What we do is hard. So if you want to do it, awesome. I'll be your biggest fan. The marketplace is big enough for both of us.

What I found is that with most people, you could stand in front of their face six inches from their nose and scream the answer to solve a block. Your hand is in the blender. Pull your hand out of the blender, okay? And it will stop being shredded and they'll go, huh? And you know, you, they just don't, they're not listening anyway.

Most of the time, yeah, maybe you're talking to my clients and I know they listen to my calls, right? But at the end of the day, it's like, like all our clients follow us on LinkedIn. And that's what's great about it, is, you know, sometimes we even talk about, you know, things that we're doing with them, obviously keep names out of it with NDAs and stuff, but we're very transparent about it. So I looked at it like, do you want to be highly secretive and no one knows who you are, or do you want to be super transparent and everyone knows who you are? And what we've found is yes, we've been growing dramatically because of this. We've also been working with people that really respect the hell out of us before we even start with them. So they're really, they're, they're bought in on our long term relationship, day one, because they trust us more. And, and that's what we're getting, more quality. Not just a more clients. We're getting more quality clients because they appreciate that. And so that's what's been exciting for us.

That 200 and something posts per week, they're spread out, right? You say your customers follow you on LinkedIn. Would they be following you primarily or some of your top people or how would they be following? Because you already said you don't post that much on the company side.

Yeah, I mean, 15 people at four posts a week is 240 posts. I'm posting more than, than everyone else. On my team.

And they can, they'll. Your clients wind up finding who these people, I guess they do business with this salesman or that sales person.

Yeah, exactly.

But you know, customer support or something.

Yeah, I mean, walking into a zoom room these days, as opposed to having to sell people what we do, we don't do that anymore. It's, it's, it's, it's changed the structure of our conversation. Right. There's. We don't have to do four calls anymore to close a deal. We only need to do two calls to close the deal. Because it's not about, you know, selling the company or what we do or doing case studies or big reference calls. It's more about, hey, I already know you, I already want to work with you. I really like what you got going on, but how can you help me? And it's more strategic type conversations and action type conversations, which we're excited about.

It even worked back when we were just on audio. I did audio conference calls for 15 years on a Monday morning for the company. And there was this young guy who started, started in high school out in California, but he was a go getter. He is a go getter and his name is Mario Arizon and he's a legend. But when he started, he started plugging into my call and on Monday morning where we interviewed the top people in the company, we picked their brand. And so about years later, when he had got over a million dollars in income, he was in town for a convention the company had and he said, we were talking, he said, you know, this is only the third time I've ever seen you in person. And that was without Sue. That was without Sue. And so it's the ideas, you know that it's like an organizational chart where you have circles and squares and lines going in. That line is the line of communication. And it doesn't matter exactly what that line is. It just means, it's just important that that line exists. And sticks stays open. It's a two way street, you know, so how do you go from sitting in the room, getting excited about what Jim Rohn told you to where you start to get engaged in the real world and start to get a hold on the mountain?

Yeah. I mean, so this company, you know, wasn't something that my family started and I took it over. This wasn't something that I started even myself. I grew up within the company and then took over as CEO. And so I had to prove myself before I had the opportunity to be the CEO of this company. And so to Your point? You know, my, my goal was to be an individual contributor and produce and generate revenue. But I remember in my early 20s when I was doing that, I wasn't like, I realized I wasn't that nice of a guy because all I cared about was myself. And I realized this when I actually started being built. But being asked to build a team, right? Because what would, what do we do as managers? Wow. We had this individual contributor. They're crushing it. They're awesome. They, they're our next manager. So I was put into management role because I was producing, but I wasn't management material because here's why. I hired a team. And they all quit after six months. And I'm like, and I'm like, why the heck is all everyone quitting? And my, my owner at the time said, gabe, the reason why they're quitting is because you're not leading them. And I was getting so mad about this, right? And so I realized that it's not my job to motivate people. It's my job to find motivated people, and it's my job to put them on a track to run on and support them and coach them as opposed to just bark orders at them. So that was in my early 20s.

And I really, if you don't mind, say that again. It wasn't your job.

My job is to give them a track to run on, support them, coach them, and mentor them, and not just bark orders at them and tell them.

What to do and find motivated people, not make them motivated.

Yeah. So my quote is, I always say this all the time. It's not our job to motivate people. It's our job to find motivated people.

You know, you can, you can save decades of your life learning that lesson. Now, folks, we just had on our Monday morning call two weeks ago, this husband and wife team, the greatest salespeople in the history of the company. And they're organ and they're making, you know, like 3 million a year. They could be making 30. But they said, we just recently woken up to the fact that. And we wasted so much time trying to pull along dead meat basically down the highway. And, you know, no matter if you pull the 1 mile or 10 miles, there's still dead meat, you know, they're never gonna wake, they're never gonna come alive, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. It's funny, you know, I, I, I always think about, like, pushing a wet noodle. One of my mentors said to me, he's like, what? Try to push a wet noodle? Right? You can't do it.

Well, you know, you've, you put your finger on a thing that people, we need to put on the table and that is, it's rare that you find somebody great in sales that's great in sales management because to be great in sales, you're going to be disciplined. You got to organize, you got to be time management this and the other. You got to push yourself. And you know, it's like why Michael Jordan could never be a basketball coach is why Magic Johnson had so much trouble trying to be a coach. And it shows why Larry Bird is such a miracle, the fact that, that he was a great coach too, you know. But then there's a transition that people shouldn't take lightly and think automatically I move over to that role and I'll be a great manager. Because it is a different thing is.

Yeah, seven years ago, I fired my top producer on my sales floor.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, we had, we were all in office Ben back then. We had 100 people on our sales floor. He was our top producer number one, four months in a row. Great guy, arrogant as hell, horrible team player. Anytime anyone asked him for help, didn't, never helped him, walked in late, didn't, you know, went on a one hour lunch, came back two hours later. Right. But he was a top producer. And everyone's like, you know, it just was a cancer. And everyone would see it now in office a little bit different than remote, right? When you're on the road or you're on, on the road type seller, you can get away with some of that stuff. But when you're in office, everyone's looking at you. And I brought him in an office and man, listen, you're done. You know, I've, I've asked you three times to help these, these people that are new and keep saying you want to be a leader, but you're just, you're not, you're not nice. And it was, it was a wake up call. He actually came back a year later a completely different person. So maybe I, maybe I was helpful in that regard. But, you know, just because you're a great seller or great producer does not mean you're going to be a great manager. Now I do believe great managers do need to be good producers, right? Because now you're obviously not managing the way that is maybe most effective. I don't, I don't, I don't say, hey, you know, promote the C students to manager. But at the end of the day, just because you're a great producer does not qualify you to be a great manager at all.

But you started, I use that now as an intro in that you started as an SDR in the industry according to the Tom podcast. And so explain what that is and why that was a good place for you start.

Yeah. So an SDR stands for sales development rep. It is a relatively new position or the title itself is about 12 years old. It started off in the SATs or software as a service industry where they realized that account executives are full time sellers who are owning the entire sales process. It doesn't make much sense to have all of their day being spent, which is about 80% of their day prospecting and finding and booking appointments. They, we rather have them spend all of their time selling, closing deals. So the SDR, some people call it appointment setters, BDRs, business development reps, cold callers, whatever you want to call it. These guys, ladies are focusing 100% of their day on generating appointments and creating leads for the sellers.

Let me just interrupt you for a minute. This has always existed, but it hasn't been identified. I remember when I got started financial services, the lady who wrote the book, Vanita Van Castle out of Houston, she wrote this book on money dynamics or something like that, but she was this phenomenal producer. But she had a secretary in the office that, you know, she would go out, do the seminars and then call the office and then we'll book a presentation. And then she had her system and she had that they would add a person who would book her and then actually they come in. She set it all up kind of like the surgeon and where the surgeon turns it over. The nurses, okay, sew them up, she would send it back out, okay, write them up, send the next one in. But to this, this people, these, this couple I told you about that has been so successful before. The reason they're successful, they had their 14 year old daughter setting appointments for them and nobody else in the company was doing, was doing that. But you hear that over and over. It's a, you know, a spot thing if you're lucky enough to find someone to do that for you or whatever. And now it's becoming a thing and you jumped in that. But that's really, you know, we, we have known all along. You learn that in sales is that this, you know, if you're in sales, you teach sales, but it's like 80, 85% of your time is spent finding people to talk to and then you know, 15 to 20% is talking to people. And then we use that to sell sales Management and recruiting and training because now you can get people in and use them to find people to talk to. And we never thought of them as a SDR though. So talk about your journey on that and then how you wind up building a company that's around that model.

Yeah, well, here's the deal. Most people don't want to do that, right? And people look at it because maybe it's a little bit more of an entry level type of focus or maybe they want to be spending their time with low hanging fruit. And then you have all these leads that had really not been touched correctly or enough attempts or touches to be making that, you know, successful. And the ROI is, is really dramatic. So you know, it's like the Henry Ford approach, right? It's the assembly line of sales. You know, marketing's job is to create, create demand. Sellers jobs are to sell. But there's this in between, between marketing and sales where you have all these leads and no one is doing anything about it. So the sdr, their job is to rehash, re, engage, contact, qualify, prospect and get that interest enabled and then pass what's valuable to the, to the, to the account executives or the full time sellers. So I started doing this for companies when I was younger and I realized, you know what, this is something that absolutely can, you know, can grow. And at first I started hiring people out of college, former bartenders, people in hospitality that knew how to talk. And I said, hey, do you want to go to work every day or do you want to be in the software industry? And we focused on launching companies like ZoomInfo. One of our, we were their first SDR team and outreach and sales Loft and all these really cool brands that everyone knows today, but they were startups when they came to us and we, we said, okay, we will do your sales development for you, we'll do all the prospecting for you and we'll give you appointments and stack your sellers calendar. So all your team has to do is sell and that's, that's our pitch. And so we have over a hundred of these individuals on our team today and they are completely branded and white labeled if you will, to their brand. So Peloton, you know, when, when someone gets a call from Peloton to set up a, set up a conversation about business to business relationships, it's coming from us, you know, so that, that's, you know, things that we do and that's how we operate.

So the person, the person getting the call would not know it's coming from you, but they think it's peloton, but it's really you. And that's kind of like, that's kind of like the Billy. You know, like they'll pay bill to a certain company, but there's a company behind the company essentially, you know, stripe or somebody like that that's, that's actually handling the transactions. But this is kind of a. How similar is this? Like a booking agent for a TV show or something like that?

Yeah, it's very, it's very, very similar to a booking agent. But we're, we specialize on business to business enterprise software or tools or professional services. We're not B2C, you know, we're not calling homes to sell them DirecTV service. You know, we're not, nothing against that, but we don't do those things. It's not B2C. It's all business to business. If your, your contract value is anywhere $15,000 a year or higher, that's where it makes sense to put someone into this role and run a team around it.

And I will leave the further development of understanding that and whether or not that would be something for your business too. I would defer them over to the podcast with, with Tom Hunt and Fame is a B2B podcast, but Confessions of a B2B Broadcaster. But anyway, the, the thing is that when you got started, a lot of people are doing this job. Usually rooms full of people who disappear overnight. Now what, what did you carry with you in your thinking? Would you say that allowed you to get on track, stay on track, to move all the way up to where eventually you wound up in a CEO world? What did you do right?

I appreciate that I did a lot of things wrong, but the few that I did right is, you know, I had my, my why in place. Right. I know that's almost a maybe a cliche thing to say, but in sales it's so important. You know, you need to have a carrot. And it's not just a commission check. It's, it's a purpose bigger than yourself. And so I had a daughter 11 years ago, right around the time I started working here. And she's been my, you know, my carrot, if you will, keeping me in check and making sure that, you know when I want to quit and when I got, you know, a hundred no's for the day and I didn't get one appointment, I, you know, made sure that she, she headed everything she needed. So that kept my mind in check. And then I really focused on training, training, training, training. And you know, the things that were, was bad at, which I had to get good at, was understanding technology more. I consider myself tech savvy, but I'm not, I'm not a software developer. So I started really learning from people who understand technology, who build technology associated with those individuals. Because a large part of our business, you know, the people side and the sales side I kind of had. But the technology side, I needed to really learn to take over as a CEO. And, and that's, that's what I was working on. So I'm today.

Well, what did you. Since you brought it up, we always, you, you make more friends with your audience by telling what you did wrong. You know, because what they're listening to, they always think that you, you know, you've had the charm life and you've never had a problem. And so usually the people talking on the stage or on TV or whatever have had the most, the biggest mountain of problems and done the most, you know, made the most mistakes as a result. They've learned more and they know more things to avoid. You know, and that's my thing about being a genius. They say you're a genius. I say, yeah, you get to be a genius by making millions of mistakes. Okay, so what you're telling me I made more mistakes?

Right? It's really wisdom.

Yeah. So what did you, you know, some of these are self imposed and then some of these you stumble into. But what are mistakes that you made early on that were revelatory to you in to kind of also keeping you on track moving forward?

Yeah, I think the big thing for me is I was very fanatical in my early stages of having something to say no matter what. And what I mean by that is it's really what we call in sales. Objection. Handling. And so I started studying that. There's really only a handful of things that anyone would ever say to you on a sales call when you're trying to get them to say yes to an appointment. And I've studied thousands and thousands of calls and I realized there's only like 10 things that'll ever come across your desk when it comes to trying to get someone to say yes to an appointment. So then I started testing what to say back and I got really, really, really, really good at objection. Handling. And my problem was I just assumed everyone knew that. So when I hired somebody, I just kind of saw some people fall off or, you know, not, not, not stick. And I'm like, what the heck? They're just supposed to do this, this and this, and I forgot about my Teaching, right. I got to teach them how to do it. So once I started part, you know, you know, transitioning into being a good teacher versus just a good communicator, that's where the magic started to happen. And that's when people started to respect me and, and listen to me and, and take notes when I talked. I'm like, wow, okay, they're taking notes when I talk. This is amazing. And then they told their friends, hey, you should listen to game because he knows what he's doing because he helped me make money. Oh, wow. Now these people are actually being told by the other people that took notes that they should listen to me too. And then it just started building from there. And I said, you know what, I just got to teach people how to teach. And I'm like, okay, now I'm teaching teachers how to teach people how to do it. So I'm just, it just started building from there. And now we have, you know, we've taught 8,000 SDR sales reps that have come through me by two companies over the last 20 years.

Well, when you look at your career, what are you the proudest was interesting.

As soon as you asked the question, I knew what I was going to say. And then you kept doubling down about my check or things if you going back to the teaching, like I get more excited about my team success, even the ones that don't work for me anymore. I'll give you an example. I'm still friends with people that don't work here anymore. I created this thing called alleyop alumni, meaning that if they are going to leave us, they're going to be our alumni. But we're going to celebrate that because in sales everyone wants their careers to grow. And admittedly we don't have careers past, you know, appointment setters or sales development rep. So when someone leaves us, we celebrate that our clients can actually hire our reps and bring them into their own company. And many have. And then they'll go out and become wildly successful. I mean, we have people that started here that are literally the vice presidents of multi billion dollar publicly traded sales teams. And they started their job cold calling here. And when they text me or send me a note on LinkedIn and say, hey Gabe, I just made my first million dollars or hey Gabe, you know, when the company went public, you know what I mean, I'm never going to have to work again and my wife doesn't have to go to work anymore. And like they started off making, you know, 40, $50,000 in sales 10 years ago with me and now they're millionaires. So when I see those things happen, you know, another great thing, my CEO just got promoted last year. She was a seller for me for five years. And to watch her grow up in, in. In my company under my mentorship and. And then she buys the house that she wanted to buy and buy cards a lot to life. Instead of babies. Instead of babies. It's just cool to see that these individuals also pump and humble game. And it's not just financial, but it's the things you do with the money. Right. I think it's Jim Rohner, Zig Ziglar said money's not the most important thing in the world, but it ranks right up there with oxygen. Right. So when I see those things happen, that's what gets me pumped up and excited, you know.

But it's also fun to deliver as a CEO for the company and to see the company grow. Even though you don't say I did it, but to see the company deprived of the accomplishment of the company. How big is your company grow?

Oh, my gosh. I mean, we're in. We're eight figure company right now. So we, well, we went well past, you know, we're doing really well.

And of course you're going to wind up making money if you're successful, but that fades in importance in terms of the experience. It's basically the experience of living a winning lifestyle at a high level and where you're creating value for other people in the process, you're making a positive impact. And so the world needs more people making a positive impact and you are definitely doing that.

Yeah, I think it was. Someone had told me this a long time ago and I love it. It's, you know, money. Money is just a measuring stick and the amount of people you've been able to help and I think that's a great way of putting it.

Hey, thanks so much, Gabe. We're going to have to do this again very, very soon. Thank you. And I can't wait to dial into your podcast because I know it's going to be right up my alley and I don't have to do the work. I could just listen.

So thank you, Larry. Been a pleasure, buddy.

Thanks so much.