How To Build the Best Work Culture for Sales Success

All right, guys, welcome to another episode as coffee is for closers. Today we've got a special guest, Tony Haddad, famous DJ from the Seattle area. What's the DJ name, Tony?

Oh, I've gone through a couple. My last DJ name was Jafar.

I would have. I kind of was always expecting just one of the DJ Haddad in the mix.

Yeah, yeah. I wish I had my air horn. You know, I would have hit it for sure.

So we want to do something a little different on today's episode, and we thought it would be really interesting to sort of like, contrast and contract the differences between a business owner and employee. Right. And kind of a little exercise that we wanted to do just to check in on Sales Sniper and see whether or not, like, the perception that we have as, like, upper management was actually being felt. And that was the same perception as what it is on the ground floor with our staff. So with that being said, guys, cue the intro and we'll kick off.

If you listen to this podcast, you will make your first million within three years. I'm going to repeat that. You will make a million dollars within three years of the first episode you listened to. We don't want pikers. We're not here to save the manatees. We're here to make podcast podcasts. You really want this? You listen and review. Put that coffee down.

You know, it's funny though, the first episode of this podcast that I heard was about two years ago. So I have one year left to finish making a million bucks.

So this is the year I'm sure it will happen. The podcast, not financial advice. So. So anyway, guys, like I mentioned, I think it'd be really cool just to have a look at that and see if we are in congruence and see there is any real disparity between, like, what we aim to do up at management and what is coming out through to the staff. So with that being said, maybe, Tony, do you want to give a bit of an intro, talk to guys about how long you've been with us, what specifically you do within the company? You know, the guys are obviously going to see your face a little bit more as you're involved in a bit more of the content. Just tell us a bit about you.

Yeah, you got it. So I joined Sales Snipers. I got essentially poached by Matt off of an account that I was on, like, a little less than two years ago. And I came on to the team and it was real lean back then. It was just like, I think you guys had just finished Being fitness sales snipers and we're now transitioning into like more of the high ticket realm. And the team back then was like you and Matt, me, Will Adams Road and Dan, Van and Jimmy.

Yeah, guys. Max.

Yeah. And, and Joel and so it's been, it's been cool to kind of watch the progression over the years, but I guess your, your question of like what I do. So I'm a sales rep for one with the team. I like you said I help with the content. So getting more involved with like helping with closing code stuff and creating content for the community and then also just a bit of a coaching role with like the newer guys and helping them get started and things like that as well. And helping with the closing code roleplays.

Yeah. And you do a lot of like one on ones with people that, you know, come into the closing code and they want a bit of extra help. You've, you've been known to, to do some sales coaching for us when we don't have the time. So that's, that's awesome is sometimes like you forget how long certain people have been here and they'll hear when there was no one else just because you've been around for so long, you know, being one of the alphas. It's funny how everyone from back then are all alphas. You know, there's no like stragglers. Everyone that came through that mold is, you know, top of the class then and, and still is.

So it's cool you guys know how. Welcome.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's funny like you did. We were speaking before we actually started recording. You had some questions around hiring. Right. So you might not have the best perception of that from an employee because things would have changed significantly from when you came on. But you wanted to ask me about like some of the stuff that we do around hiring and how we look at that. So I'll, I'll let you go there.

Yeah, I do. I'm curious about a lot of things in the way that you guys run the business in the sense that like the management team is so diverse in their skill sets and kind of like outlooks and things like that. And you all share the same vision, which I think is necessary when you're running an organization like this. But the styles in which you guys operate is, you know, vastly different. So for, for your perspective, I'm curious, like when you're meeting with somebody to bring on as a sales rep, like what is that sort of first impression that you're, that you're like really Looking for.

Yeah. Okay, so in terms of sales reps, like, I can't speak too true to that at the moment because we have an entire recruitment department that handles that. So I haven't hired or been in like any active recruitment for sales reps for some time now. But I do do like the hiring process and that for upper level staff, you know, C suite accountants, all that type of stuff. And usually like when we're meeting with people like that will go out for lunch, you know, have a sit down lunch. There's a couple of metrics that we look at. It's like one is they're going to offer to pay the bill. How they treat the waitresses is really important. And I think a lot of the time how you present yourself at lunch with how enjoyable the conversation is really gives a good reflection on what someone's like as a human. And the other thing is like trying to assess when we're having conversations for particular language and the way that things go, the way that people go about things and trying to look for like two key distinguishing factors when someone is offering something and is that, are they looking to add value and to help for the sake of like excited about it, wanting to genuinely help, which becomes very mutually beneficial or does that mutually beneficial relationship come in the same of like, I'll do this for you because it serves me right where we have that distinguishing factor. Are they looking to serve for the sake of serving or are they looking to serve themselves because they get something in return? Which.

How do you see that in them? How do you see that? Like, is that just through questioning and through conversation? Like, are there cues looking for.

Well, it's really, it's hard to tell because it just comes from having like detector. Right. There's a, I think like there's a level of excitement, enthusiasm when you're struck with something that you want to do because it's entertaining as opposed to something that you want to do that's self serving. And you, you carry yourself different. The better you are at being in that type of environment, the better you start to notice it. And we don't get it right all the time, but that is something that we're aware of when we look for. Then obviously from a technical perspective, are they able to carry out that? You know, whereas I think I've talked about a few times, when we hire salespeople, it's we, we hire like culture first. You know, are they going to be a good fit? Where do they fit in with the organization? Do we have a need to Bring them on. Because we have an entire boot camp process now. So people come in when they want to come to us. We have like an, I think it's eight week training program with Sean, with Marco, with will they run and they do a whole bunch of training to make sure skill sets that now depending on availability to put people places there is, you know, we can or we cannot take them on due to limited space, but the ones that we want but can't take them on because they are good culture fits will keep them there, keep developing there until an opportunity comes up, provided it doesn't get in the way of their life. You know, if they get offered another opportunity, then we'll say take it because you know, something could pop up tomorrow, but it could be a month. So we really sort of look at is this person a culture fit and then really through that process, the rate of development that they're having, you know, they could have come in with like no discernible skills. But if they got better quickly, then that's key evident that in the future they're going to keep getting better at a really good rate. So we want those type of people that can develop quickly plus fit the cultural needs.

Well, I think every company wants to do that, but I don't think every business owner understands that that's how they should.

Right.

Like, like I've seen a lot of businesses where people do hire on, you know, how much can you produce? Are you a top performer? And they're not really looking at the, at the culture. Like what was that factor for you that made you decide to do it that way?

Just because we've seen how, you know, like you see companies all the time that start off with really good cultures, they get, get too big and then that culture fails to exist and therefore they end up selling the company. Someone else takes over and it's just not the same. You know, at the end of the day we're looking to having like the set culture and set standards that we've had in the company has allowed our guys to do really good jobs. You know, it's allowing our guys to kill it and build the reputation that we have. For me, the way that I see that long term, the only way that we can continue to do that is if we continue to retain that culture and do those things that we know were responsible for getting our results. So it's our job on the upper managements to put in processes and structures in place which allow scale without the sometimes inevitable, the demise of culture which we want to. I guess really attenuate and stop from happening for sure.

And like especially with massive growth.

Yeah.

Like that's such a culture killer in companies that we've like seen across the board. And that's honestly been like my biggest not fear because I know that obviously with the leadership team here, like we're in fantastic hands. But it's a thing that's on my mind. Like I don't want to see this company go down a path of losing the culture because that's what keeps us here and that's why this company is going to be as big as it will and be as great as it will. Is that culture. That's the, the skeleton of the whole thing. And like it's funny road and I were talking about this the other day as the growth has happened. Like when we kind of think about the early days, it was like not that there were no rules but like it was like you could just book in an hour, chat with Jimmy anytime and get a, get coaching from him at a very high level. Or Marco would just listen to your calls. You just go into close IO and listen to your calls like do call reviews for you and then text you and be like hey, why'd you do this? And and you would get like such high level help because that's just how it was. And now we have you know, a hundred reps. Like Marco can't go listen to everybody's calls. Jimmy can't do a one on one with every person. So how do we maintain that culture? And I think what has been put into place now that everybody's working so hard on like this RTC and having this development, like this streamlined development for everybody. I think that was maybe the missing ingredient over the last few months. And now that that's implemented as like I can see how this is going to skyrocket.

Yeah.

Now, now there's systems in place.

Yeah. Like, like I had a really strong thought and me. Matt discusses pretty heavily how do we attract the best people to want to work for us? Because like for, for probably 16 months we haven't gone out and actively recruited people. We've had people come to us, you know, particularly flat from semi competitors, competitors, people in other niches. Like and what, what we did was we kind of, I kind of sort of saw like Google and stuff. Like you saw Google in the early days. It was the fun, it was the hip hate place to work. Everyone wanted to go work for Google. Right. The one thing that we had was the ability to one have a fun environment and be Known for developing people quickly so they can make money. And we had a key distinction is like, we want this to be known publicly. We want the perception to be known that where the guys go to when you want to have fun and you want to develop quickly and you want someone to get the best out of you in this field. Right. Obviously not in other fields. In this field. So because of that, we've made that a pretty consistent theme. You know, we've engineered people speaking about that, we've spoken about that. So that's what's happening, gets discussed when we come up in, in the circle of recruitment. Right. So now because of that and because what we're known for, we've made it known publicly what we do, why we do it, how we do it ethically, how we develop people. So that attracts people that want that. So now we're lucky enough to have built a tangible system via perception that people that want that will come to us. Therefore we're able to recruit really well because we're attracting the right people from the coming in. So it's, it's interesting. I, I don't know if that's what it seemed like on the ground floor, but intention wise, that's what we've wanted.

It definitely has seemed like that. I've spoken to many, many reps and employees and people on this team and we all are, we all are in, you know, we corroborate in the fact that we've never seen culture like this in any other company that we've, that we've worked at. Curious, like your journey through this. You know, obviously mistakes are made in anything, a lot of them behind the scenes and we never even know about them because you, you know, it's, you guys are quick and things get fixed and stuff like that. But do you have any regrets in how we've, you've built the company up to this point?

Any regrets? No, no. Like, even when like mistakes are made, I don't really see them as regrets. We just kind of like sort of lessons. Like I can see, see where, how did we get to the point where we made this mistake? Like, what were the decisions that we made? What were the things that we missed? What were the things that persuaded us to go down this path so that we can sort of look at that and be like, all right, well they are now like indicators in the futures. Like let's assess this before making that decision, you know, So I don't. Regrets? No, I don't think so.

Because from this perspective, like from the perspective of A. Of a rep or an employee. Like, it doesn't seem like anything bad has ever happened. Like, it seems like such a. Which is good, right? But it seems like it's been such a smooth ride. But obviously, like, using logic, like, we know that that can't be possible. Like, things happen, mistakes happen. But I'm just so impressed with how smooth of a ride it's at least seemed like from this perspect perspective over, over the time. Like, do you have a process that you follow when, say, a mistake is made or a lesson needs to be learned that you, that you utilize to, like, implement?

No. Right. Because if a mistake has been made twice, then we've ultimately failed. Right. We don't want to make. Continuously make the same mistakes. You know, they. They might happen, but it could be because someone else made them without the understanding and process in place. But in terms of, like, building, we, we build processes around to ensure that things don't happen again. But being able to predict potential problems is something that we spend a lot of time doing and putting things in place. You, Whenever you make a decision, if we go on to a new venture, you kind of go through a process of looking at it like, well, at least for me, anyway. Like, I, I. It's my job, it's Matt's job to take risks. It's my job to ensure they're saf. But that's kind of how we work that partnership, right? So, like, I got to be the negative one and pull out any potential problems and say, okay, we need to be aware of this. If you got to be the turn, dad, this pathway. Yeah, it's like, this could happen. Are we okay with that? Yes. No answer is yes. All right, let's do it. Just be aware that this could be a potential outcome. It's like I, I go through the mindset as like, okay, if I was the competition, what would I do? Or, like, what could I do to prevent that from happening? What could I do to sabotage that? You know, that's. That's one way. The other way is like, what are the outcomes? If we did this wrong, where could we do this wrong? Who would that impact? How would it impact them? Then looking at that and saying, okay, well, these are the five risk factors that might come with this decision. You know, these are the 10 benefits. Let's. What can we put in place to mitigate that? If this was to occur, then we somewhat have a plan. Obviously, you don't catch all of those. You know, that's why the mistakes is like, I never Even thought of that at that stage, you just. You solve the problem when it occurs.

That's interesting. You bring up that, like, dynamic of interplay between you and Matt, like, his ideas, Ideas. And then your logic of is that really the best course of action? Which is like, you definitely need both in any sort of venture. And now with, you know, having. I mean, Marco's been there since the beginning, and now we have Will, and you got. You guys are all sort of steering the ship together in a sense. Like, let's say that you all have a differing opinion on something. First of all, does that happen often? And two, like, if it does, like, how do you guys sort of sort that out to come to the.

Yeah, okay, conclusion. Yeah, me and Matt have differing opinions all the time. All the time. There's plenty of times that I've been wrong. There's plenty of times that he's been wrong. Usually if I think he's wrong, I tell him, same as Will, same as Marco. Those guys don't usually, like, be like, no, you can't do this. Like, it's stupid. For these reasons I usually do. I'm like, that's dumb. This is why. But a lot of the time, I. I'm okay with making mistakes, and I'm okay with making the wrong decisions. So if I disagree with. With Matt on something in the same vein, he'll. He'll say the same thing to me is I'll be like, I think you're wrong, but I back you to do it anyway. So have a crack. I got me that way. There's still support there. You make it known. It's like, I think you're wrong. What do I need to do to help you? Doesn't really matter. Because at the end of the day, worst case, yeah, okay, Makes a bad decision depending on the level of risk. I'm talking, like, low risk things. Worst case, we lose a bit of time, maybe we lose a little bit of money, but at the end of the day, if we get that wrong, sometimes you have to touch the stove to realize it's hot. And that's okay. And I'm okay with making those mistakes, knowing that we have risks, knowing that there's a difference of opinion, and still supporting them anyway because they could be right and I could be wrong, you know? And I think that's really important. And that works both ways. If the risk factors are way too high, then at any given stage, any of us put our foot down and say, no, you're absolutely wrong. I will not let this happen. And if that conversation happens, we don't move forward. So it's very supportive and to a.

Point that makes sense. And that's what I really appreciate about this company, too, is, like, you can be stern with people, but there's always that underlying element of, I'm stern because we care, because it's for the betterment of this company. And nobody comes in with a big ego and tries to be right. And if you do, you go to Hinks in jail, which I know who hates the terminology, but that's kind of what it is.

Yeah, let's jump back in because we had a couple of points and we went so far off track. Plus, it was exciting. I told you this would happen. We spoke about the hiring career progression. Give me your thoughts on that, what your interpretation is, and maybe I can add a little two senses to be, like, behind the scenes. This is why this has happened. So tell me about your progress, career progression to date, and then maybe a little bit about your ambitions and where you want to get to and what that looks like. Yeah, maybe we can sort that out. Come here. Today?

Yeah. Where am I going? My progression was like. You know, it's funny, I didn't really have, in terms. I didn't have, like, the standard progression that a sales sniper rep goes through now. Like, now, you know, we have a system. We have Charlie's, Bravos, Alphas, you know, and you go through a boot camp. Like, there's a standardized process. But before it was, like I said, it was the wild west, like, figured out, and they're. And they were like, hey, you're gonna sell for Ryan Sirhant. And I was like, okay, cool. And then you just went in there and sink or swim. And, like, I started off doing sales calls. Cause I had some sales experience before this, and I'm. I'm obviously so thankful for, like, everything I've learned through this time. But there's a part of me that wishes that I learned the hard way. Like, wishes I went through some sort of progression. Like, hey, you gotta start as a DM setter for 6 months.

Started too early.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you gotta pay your dues and learn that skill. And then you go to triaging, and then you learn that skill, and then you can do sales calls. And, like, I definitely paid my dues. I locked myself in my room for basically a year before Sales Sniper. And I just, like, studied sales because I wanted to get really good at it. So, like, not saying that I didn't pay any dues, but there's A part of me that wishes that I went through the progression that, like, a rep.

Goes through now because you were above average when you came to us. Oh, stop it slightly.

I'm not that cool in terms of progression now. Like, it's. It's. It's not so much about. It is a bit about sales skills. And that's where, like, you know, you. You never stop coaching. It's not a thing that you did in the past. It's a thing that you continue to do. You never stop learning. So, like, every year, I spend more money on coaching, on sales coaching or training or whatever. And most of it either goes to Jeremy or somebody in sales Snipers. But now, like, with the RTC and everything, like, I like that there's a defined path because before it was like, who do you want to get help from?

Cool.

Make it, like, make it happen. Cut a deal or something. And it's nice. But to have, like, a clear path like that is. It's better for continuity within the company. And I also know where I'm headed now. Now that's in terms of sales progression as far as career development within the company. What I. And I know you and I have had chats about this before, but I want to be as heavily involved with helping new reps as much as possible and just stepping into a role of leadership where it's very focused on development of. Of new people. And I really enjoy helping people with mindset stuff because I've struggled a lot with mindset things in the past and can come up with ways to overcome them for me. And I've noticed, you know, this isn't something I've shared with anybody. This is my first time saying it in public, really, that I enjoy working on mindset stuff, but I've had quite a few people reach out to me in private. Won't name names, but, like, saying, hey, I'm struggling with this thing. And it's usually a mindset thing. And they ask me, they ask me about, and they're like, I came to you specifically, and I never really asked why, but because, you know, that's not the reason why they're there, but it's happened a lot. And so I think there's a bit of a calling for me in my. On my side to actually help people with. With that side of things. So that's where I see myself moving with this company and just being as involved as I can with. With, like, that progression of other reps and stepping into a leadership role. My. My word of the year is Leadership, like that's What I've coined 2022 as is being the best leader that I can.

How do you define the team? How do you define leadership?

To me, leadership is like, in another word, just selflessness. So that's again, a thing that I've, I guess, struggled with in the past is like selfish leadership where, you know, you're chasing a title or you're chasing clout or, or, you know, some sort of image and things like that. And I've had that in, you know, I've started businesses here in Seattle, and that's kind of what I was chasing. And that doesn't lead you very far. And so I don't know what that came from or why that was ingrained to me as something that I, that I wanted. But it's been sort of an active journey on my part to disregard that, that part of me or at least acknowledge that it exists and be thankful for what it's given me. But that, like, that doesn't serve me anymore. So now it's moving into being a selfless leader and actually being able to help the people that, that want to progress too, and not really caring about what happens with me. Like, you know, don't toss me to the wayside. Obviously, got to make sure your picture is full so you can fill up other people's cups. But it's about creating a culture within an organization. That's how I see leadership is like maintaining the culture that you want to keep and making sure that everybody has the, like, support that they actually need to be their best version of themselves because nobody. Rhodes had a really cool quote. I don't know where he got it, but people don't, you know, people don't leave companies, they leave leaders.

That is absolutely true. Yeah. I've never really put a definition on leadership. I don't think it's something that you can define me neither.

I pulled that out of my ass just now so I could have something to say.

I, I, I, I. I don't think leadership is a definition. I think it's action, right? And I think, like, above all else, I mean, without going into sub definitions and things, I think there's one job of a leader, right? And that's to develop other leaders. That first and foremost is, in my opinion, the main responsibility of anyone in leadership is to create other leaders. You create other leaders, everything's happy days. That's how you expand, that's how you grow. Like I said the other day, the only way for an organization to grow, at least with a People first approach is by ensuring that the individuals and the leadership within that grow themselves. Because you can. A company can only grow when the individuals inside it grow. That's my opinion. But you said something a minute before, like you want to move in. You see yourself doing, helping people with mindset and being a leader there. I'll just ask you this question and the, the viewers can have a first hand insight to how we help with this. Is all right, with that being said, with everything that we have going on here, like how do you think that you could fit that role into our organization and make it happen? So like if I said today, if I made you forge your own career path, made you design your own role, where keeping in mind your main thing there that's going to keep you fulfilled is the delegation of others, meaning creating leaders or helping people with mindset. If I had to make you create a role around that within our organization, how would you do it?

That's a great question. And that leads into leadership because a leader forges their own path, right? They don't wait for other people to give them the path. So I mean within that it's. So a part of this is something I've started recently which was doing like little 15 minute meet the team meetings because I realized the team is growing so fast that there's people I don't know. And again like massive growth, being a culture killer in a company, like the only way to combat that is obviously having systems for culture. But two, getting to know the people you work with and actually understanding them on a, on a deeper level. And my, my thought process was how can I help other people if I have no idea who they are?

I agree.

If I have no idea what they want. So I created a calendly link for 15 minutes and I encouraged everybody to book in a time with me. If we haven't chatted before, obviously I only allowed certain times on my calendar to be booked. So I didn't get just an absolute cluster of 15 minute calls. And then I don't take any sales calls and I make no money. I put that there for the reason of getting to know the team. And with like, with no other agenda other than like who are you and what are your goals? And like is there anything I can help you with? Like maybe there isn't. Maybe there is, but I want to get to know who you are and if something does ever come up in the future, like now, we at least have that first initial connection and you don't have to feel afraid to reach out yeah, because I feel like that's why people don't reach out is like I don't know this person or is this a weird thing to do? Like I ended all of those calls with like, if you ever need anything at all, I don't care what it is, just shoot me a slack message. Yeah.

It's funny you say that. We like we ran into a problem when we really didn't have the systems there, but we started to grow really quickly because we took on a whole bunch of accounts. When you take on a whole bunch of accounts, you have to take on a whole bunch of sales reps. And I remember we're in one meeting one day, you know, there was a conversation, X person isn't performing well. I was just sitting there thinking to myself, I'm like, is that. And then like in that moment I was just like, that's a problem. Not that this person's not doing well.

You didn't know their name.

I don't know who that is. Right. So assess that. We put a process in place. Every single person that comes into this company, whether they're a tech staff, whether they're a va, whether they're a sales rep, is a part of the company onboarding. And I don't have the time to do this, but it's important that every single person has a one on one with me, right? Whether they're with us for a day or whether with with us for six months they go through all the cultural stuff beforehand, all the videos. Based off the fact that I think it's a disservice to our staff from the point that you just made, if one the business owner doesn't know who they are, like that's not the company I want to be involved with. I don't want to go to a retreat that we put on. I don't want to go to a meeting and have someone there and it be my first time meeting them and say like that's not the company I want to be involved with. I don't want to go to a retreat that we put on. I don't want to go to a meeting and have someone there and be my first time meeting them and say, oh, it's lovely. Like to me that's a problem. It doesn't embody what we do here. So we immediately solved that. But the other thing was that conversation is purely around getting to know that person. It's funny because we had one sales rep who had this hobby, right? It was a very specific hobby. It was only because we're talking about a bit of work life balance, you.

Know, I'm so curious what this specific hobby is.

I can't remember off the top of my head.

Underwater basket weaving?

No, I think it was like baton twirling. But anyway, we had. And the perspective, like, it changed because of me. It's like if we get a client that sells that service, we would never connect those dots, you know, and that's happened before where we've had guys that are like, heavily involved in sort of finance stuff. Like he's an ex broker, you know, ran a trading floor, was the CEO of a brokerage. We had a trading platform. It's like, that's the sales guy for you. He can sell that with conviction, provided the product is good. That's his wheelhouse. He understands the lingo. And making those connections with people where they have a subset of skills that's irrelevant to sales, but putting them on the right account. If an opportunity pops up for something very specific. We've never had that conversation. My thought process would never go, that's the perfect guy. They would never get that opportunity. And they would sell it better than someone who's better at sales than them for the level of understanding and conviction that they have in that very specific product. So it's. It's funny, like, you take the time to know your people. It comes back to you tenfold. When you, when you invest in people, they pay dividends every time.

Absolutely. I wish I had the little bomb button that Brad Lee has, because that's a. That's a bomb I'd give you.

Well, yeah, I think that's going on Brad's podcast 10. 10 days from now, roughly.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a big exciting. He's a. He's a fun guy to have dinner with. So one of the other points, and we. We've been going for a while, so we won't go for too long, is we wanted to look at like the mindset going into Coles from a sales reps perspective compared to like what I want and what I expect. The mindset going into calls and see how close we are to each other's ideas. That'd be interesting. So why don't you start with like the mindset that you take going into a call?

Well, the mindset going into a call. I mean, there's. Here's the thing. I don't think there's a right or. I mean, there's some wrong answers, but there's no definitive right answer because I've seen success for like other people Be successful with different mindsets. Um, for instance, I've seen a rep. There was one rep at the retreat who absolutely crushed it. Who. Before each sales call, I watched him, like, look at the screen before the person came on and was like, you're buying today. You're. You're. You're paying today. You're buying today.

Who is that? You gotta know.

It was Patrick. And you know What? He sold $800,000 in a day. The contract value, like, that's, that's absurd. So, like, that's one incredible mindset for that type of person. Now, does that mindset work for everybody? No, but it worked. It worked for. For Patrick. The mindset that obviously Jeremy preaches and I think I have the most success with personally, is coming into it from complete neutrality. Like, zero expectation. Yes. Do we want to close a deal? Of course. Because I got bills to pay and I got, you know, I want to make money. However, it's not about me. It's not about commission checks. It's about that person. And, like, are we. Are we going in to see if there's actually a sale to be made? As Jeremy would say, like, can. Can I actually help somebody solve a problem? And if they have a problem that we can solve, cool. Then we'll stop at nothing. We'll. We'll throw the kitchen sink in terms of skill set and tools that we have in order to get them to, like, get out of their own way so that they can make that change. Because a lot of what we sell is, you know, coaching and helping people with their businesses or whether it's getting leads for their business, something that's going to help them in some way. We don't sell crap, so we have to be able to establish if that's something that's actually going to help them in the first place. So that's where I try to come at. It is just complete neutrality, no expectations. If I make zero sales this week, that could very well be because everybody I spoke to, I couldn't help them. Now, does that happen often? No, but, like, generally, if they get to a sales call, we can. So it doesn't happen very often. But, like, going into that, I've found is helpful because people can smell that commission breath right off the bat if you're getting in there, unless you're very. Unless you're very skilled, like, like Patrick. And people don't sense that. And you can still come into it with, like, that buy or die attitude. But that's what I've seen success with. And that's what I've coached. Like the people that have trained with me, like, I try to instill that mindset in them. But I'm curious how you think people should go into calls in their mindsets.

Yeah, it's two things. Like, for me, this is like, if you don't make the sale at the end of the day and you can tick those two boxes, I'm happy. I don't, I don't care if you lost the dollar value of what the lead is worth. And I assure that the business owner we're working for wouldn't either. Because if they, they did, then we wouldn't be on the same page and it wouldn't be a long lasting relationship. That's. There's one, as you mentioned, just going in and making sure that it's the right thing for the buyer. You know, is there a sale to be made? Does it benefit this person to actually take this product? If the answer is yes, good, we should pitch them. If the answer is no, it's like, don't waste their time. You're doing the wrong thing. And the second one is that if that first box is ticked, did I represent myself and the company well? You know, have I done everything, Have I done everything possible to help this person in the most ethical way? And if the business owner were to listen to this call, would they be impressed with the way I carried myself? If we take those two things and we don't get the result, then I'm happy because we've done the right thing and we've done everything we possibly could. It's that simple. So.

Love it. It's short, sweet, to the point. Before we wrap things up, though, James, I have one, One question that I think was. Is kind of burning.

Okay.

I think a lot of people want to know if you're. If you're okay with doing one more. So this, this question is actually like, it's kind of deep, but a little esoteric. But let's, let's say like, you're at the office, right? And you're. It's late, nighttime. Let's say everybody's left. Matt's gone, Marco's gone, Luke's gone, Dan's gone. It's just you. And there's something on a really tall shelf.

How do you. How do you get it?

What do you. Do you have like a stool with your name on it or.

No, I'm pretty good at climbing.

Oh, sweet. Like a wallaby.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess more like possums. I don't know if you have possums? We have, we got.

Yeah, yeah, we got possums.

Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's. You stand on a chair or a Nicola admin and say, hey, you call Ben.

Like, get your nine foot ass over here. Be.

No, no, no, we, we got a ladder, so we're pretty cool.

You got a special James ladder. That's awesome. You can thank Road for that question. He was very curious.

Thanks Road. But at the end of the day, like, I've never hit my head on anything. I probably never will.

That's a big win.

It's a good win.

What about a dog door?

You don't.

A dog door? Yeah.

Nah, we do. We don't want animals getting into the office and messing it up during out of office hours. Like, we got, we got snacks, we got protein bars, we got nuts, a whole bunch of things. You know, we don't want to attract any wild animals. So off the cards.

Probably smart.

I want bears getting in. Yeah. Actually, I'll give you one last question for you. Like from your perspective, what do you think that like we can do to improve? Like if we were to make your lives easier? If there was one thing, because like I've been in companies before where I wasn't at the top and there's always those conversations that you happen with the staff around. You be like, ah, they need to change this. This is stupid. What is it that we can improve that we don't notice because we're no longer on that, that ground floor and have a completely different perception? Like, what can we do to improve?

I don't know how much time we have left on this podcast.

You can write a letter, I'll try.

To give you the abridged version. Maybe I'll just have my assistant send an email. Honestly, I don't have an answer for you. I think the one thing that I would have liked to have seen has already been put into place over the last week. And that was rtc. That was really my only. And it wasn't even like, like I was dying to have it, but it was like a thing that would be nice because you and I have talked about it before. Like to have sort of trainings based on people's, you know, level.

Yeah. We're also making some more changes there as well.

Cool.

Yeah.

Cause like the company trainings that we do, like we have alphas that are closing, you know, you know, like they're focused on closing and we have people doing DM setting and like, if we focus on one of those things and one group is left out. And both are integral to the organization. But it might not be the most effective use of their time to learn something that isn't what they're doing. And so that was the only negative thing that I saw going on. But now with like this structured development path for everybody, like that's really the only thing that was an issue and that's been solved. But tell you what, I will keep my eyes peeled and you'll definitely be hearing from me when shit pops up.

I'll go into that for like maybe two minutes before we finish up. I kind of look at that as like the restaurant complex, right? So you all of a sudden we keep that going where it stops being super beneficial for certain people to go there because they're either at much higher level than what's being presented, they're at a much lower level, that's what's being presented. Therefore there's no benefit. The benefit only fits into the guys within this range. And all of a sudden the guys that are up here and the guys that are down here stop attending. Attendance goes down. When attendance starts to go down, people notice like ah, attendance because these are not mandatory, they're optional. As soon as a tenant starts going, it's like ah, there's less people here. I guess it's okay not to come. Next person. Guess it's okay not to get done. Now when you're break from a human psychology point of view, you're walking past a bunch of restaurants, they all smell good, you're hungry, you see 10 people lining up to this one place or this one place is packed. The restaurant next to, there's only one person sitting in there. Which one do you choose?

You always choose the packed one.

You know it's better, you know it's good. There might not be any difference in that. But perception changes. We all make decisions based off our perception, right? So when that happens, people start leaving something, it starts snowballing the effect and people stop going. So now we've noticed that like some of the top guys aren't as punctual to some of those optional meetings because there isn't as much benefit if we can change that, get them super punctual. Then all of a sudden more people are turning up with far more attention. That development cycle picks up and goes quicker. They start pushing more value out. Other people like you start recognizing and going, I want to help these. I've noticed these people have this program, we get this giant self licking ice cream where people are now starting to help because there's more people presenting more problems, which means that we can provide more solutions. So we've absolutely recognized that and are putting in things in place. There's just sometimes when we've got so much going on, it's like, all right, where is the priority lie? When can we action this? How many hours? What does it take? Who do we need to hire? What software do we need to put in place, and what time frame can that happen in and in which order? So stuff like that does get thought of. We do plan for it. It's just, you know, you might have bring that up six months ago, and it was only possible to implement today. So. For insight. But anyway, guys, thank you for coming. If you stuck through to the end and enjoyed those very long, interesting, hopefully rants, then thank you. And you can hit the subscribe button. That would be majorly appreciated. All the links will be wherever they are in the system. If you want to follow us, jump into the closing code. Facebook group, potentially even sign up. It's 50 Aussie dollars a week to get some group coaching with Tony and others, presenting role plays in which you can work on your skills and get direct feedback from someone who has absolutely crushed in the field before. So thank you guys for listening. Tony, anything you'd like to say before we head off?

So I want to say thank you, James, for the time. This was great. Thank you for your insight. Hopefully, people get a lot of value out of this. I'm sure they will if they actually pay attention.

Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye.

Before we wrap things up, though, James, I have one. One question that I think was. Is kind of burning.

Okay.

I think a lot of people want to know if you're. If you're okay with doing one more.

Yeah. It's seven inches.

Your height. Yeah. So I think we could have guessed that one.

Yeah. Actually, I'll give you one last question for you from employee.

9 inches.

From the floor. Right. So, yeah.