Taylor Welch breaks down business and the pressure it brings
Matt Ryder and Jeremy Horosi talk with Taylor Welch about scaling businesses and managing sales teams. Welch discusses the pressure of growth, building team culture, and why most founders struggle with leadership when their company gets bigger.
Hey, guys, what's up? Welcome to another episode of Coffee's for Closers. Today I'm very lucky to be in Taylor Welch's house. And now we're going to be talking about business and all fun kind of things. So make sure you stay tuned, like subscribe, notification bell, all that kind of good stuff. And we'll see you after the intro. You know, one thing that I wanted to ask you. You started running the businesses when you were younger. How much do you think of that kind of being under the age of 30 and coming up as fast as you did and scaling as fast as you did. How many mistakes do you think you made just because you were younger?
All of them.
Yeah.
Like every mistake that you can think of.
Yeah.
Because I came right out of church world.
Okay.
So it was 2000, 2015.
Yeah.
I would have been 26. I had no idea how to set up infrastructure. I had no idea how to build a business. I knew how to get clients.
Yeah.
People kind of tend to think that that's business.
Well, that's what business coaching is, right?
Yes. Getting clients.
Yes.
It's just like acquisition models.
You can acquire your way into bankruptcy.
Oh, yeah.
Because if you don't know how to.
Keep the clients, you're just going to turn through them.
Yeah.
Turn and burn.
Yeah.
So 2015 to 2017 was figuring out, like, how to hire people. But then I lost all of those people because I wasn't a great leader. I don't think I actually became. I won't even say a great leader, but like a competent leader probably until after Covid.
Yeah.
Because what was it about money that I think people almost became an accessory.
Yeah.
Like, very transactional. But after Covid is like when we. When I. When I lost my first round of salespeople.
Yeah.
And I was like, why would somebody leave?
Yeah.
This is the greatest place to be on the planet.
The best.
Yeah.
50 grand a month. Why would you leave? It's like, oh, they hate me.
That's realization.
So that was my first, I think, aha moment. I like.
Yeah.
You know, how you manage people is important. And then like, client retention became a big thing because if you can just retain. You guys seem to be really good at this. If you can retain customers and clients, you can bankroll almost anything. Like any project.
Yeah.
Well, if you're. It's the ratio of front end revenue to back end revenue.
Yeah.
Right. So like, if you're 90% front end and 10% back end, that machine has to keep going.
How do you define Front end versus.
So like for, well, for me it's like new cash in the business. Right. And then anything but the new cash. As soon as it becomes a payment plan, as soon as it becomes an extended thing, or as soon as it becomes like a resale, an upsell, a cross sell, that all becomes backend revenue. And so I have a mandate where it's like no more than 50% of our money can come from front end. Which means that like the problem that has to be solved is, okay, well how do we maintain 50% coming from backend services, which then forces like innovation and delivery. It forces innovation from the sales teams because like, you know, they, they have to get referrals and stuff. Although I'd say the thing that I up the most was, was probably not. You know, my best friend's like a world renowned dog trainer and he went to me one day because I was talking about like, I wish they did this. And he goes, you know, behavior goes unrewarded, disappears. And he goes, that's just behavioral science.
Yeah.
And then I sat back and I realized that we had done nothing to incentivize the behaviors that we wanted, but we had disincentivized the behaviors that we didn't wanted. And then after like looking into kind of management styles and kind of things that you should and shouldn't do, disincentivizing is a bad thing, but you just want to incentivize and that by proxy disincentivize.
So I have a question about that because that's factually true. But the other thing I've noticed is that the most desirable form of problem solving is actually problem prevention.
Yeah.
Which is almost impossible to incentivize or celebrate. How are you like, because you don't oftentimes you don't even know that it's been prevented.
Yeah.
I mean, with money it's a bit easier because you can track it tangibly. Right. But like we want referrals, we want upsells, we want cross sells and like all that kind of stuff. So we're actually testing two to three different like packages, like comp packages for the sales teams at the moment. So I picked some very consistent guys that I know, like, okay, I know that I can get these outcomes from these people, that it's very guaranteed. And then from there trialing different like ways of compensating them based on like back end and front end. So at the moment I've got one guy who's got two comp plans. One, if he hits the KPIs that I give him one if he doesn't like a tier. Yeah. So, and then it's like he has to upsell at least 1 in 6 and he has to get a referral that buys from 1 in 10.
Nice.
So if he does that and then I have a customer service team that's also offering upsells, then we should be able to maintain like a 25% upsell rate, which is the overall KPI for the business. Yeah, 25%, which we're not at. But that's like the KPI.
Yeah.
And so the pathway. So it has nothing to do with anything but education. So I didn't write it for money. I didn't write it on like the most efficient manner. I wrote it on the way that makes the most amount of educational sense. Because like any PQ is a method that requires a fundamental understanding of how it works. Like there is, it is a proper like method. And so you have to learn that first we tell people not to adapt it quickly. Like we have a slow roll adaptation. Like don't just quit what you're doing if you've been in sales for 10 years. Like I tell people, I'm not arrogant enough yet to tell you, like just throw it all away yet. Yeah, one day I definitely will be. And I'll sit here and people can look at my bookshelf with my Lamborghinis in the background. And yeah, we're going to be Porsche. And so I just feel like, hey guys, like just take bits and pieces of it and we sort of teach them how to adapt it to where they can get, you know, some tangible benefits from it quickly.
Yeah.
And then from there, like once they learn the foundations, the next lowest hanging fruit for sales reps, as you probably know, is going to be like objection handling and like tonality. So like not sounding like a weird robot, you know. And then once they have that, then we give them a script. And a script is inner circle.
Nice.
So it's really about like foundation building, getting rid of the rubbish. I also have like, we have like sales maximization courses where like we take them through, they input their data and it's like we teach them like if you were to go through the effort for two years to raise your close rate by 10%, right. Then you would get X amount more sales, which is fantastic. But if you increase your speed to lead and took your pickup rate on your outbound from 10 to 12%, you would make a lot more sales. And that can be done in a matter of days. Whereas the close rate is going to take a matter of months or years because being good at sales is hard.
Yeah.
So it's about kind of managing the process and then managing the skill functions as well.
Yeah.
To try and get them results.
Nice.
Yeah, it's interesting. It's a weird ride though.
Well, you guys are, you've been around for. So Sniper. Sniper is what, five years old?
20. Nah. 20. Yeah. 20. 19. I started. So I started with the fitness thing like we talked about before. So doing fitness sales, that was fun. I remember when I started because I had no money. I had like four grand in the bank and my rent.
Aussie or USD?
Aussie.
Right. And then so I, I had quit from the gyms and I organized like my, my buyout which was basically nothing and it was over a period of time anyway and my rent was like six grand a month. And so my wife was eight months pregnant at the time with our second kid. Amazing. And so I remember going to her, I was like, hey, I quit. She's like, yeah, it's probably because I gotten really fat. Like I was probably two hundred and fifty.
Dang.
Right. Like 240. I'm like 220 at the moment. So I was like a good 30 pounds heavier than what I am now. I was unhappy cuz I had just been like literally doing nothing but selling fitness full time and I was on a wage and it was all for like the greater good because I had equity in this company. But like after reading the shareholder agreement, I realized like the director of the company had full ability to do whatever he wanted with the money. Like so there was no money ever coming. I basically figured out. So I was like, hey guys, I'm out. And then from there I started this thing. I just started cold calling gyms and I was like, hey, I'll do your sales for you. But like we had no money. And so I just, I like was like, all right, I'm good at fitness sales. I'll just, I'll figure something out. And I went back to the guy who I still owned a gym with and we had split, that stayed together. So we had gone into this business together and then we owned another gym together. And I said, hey, I'll do this bit and we'll both benefit from it. And then you do that bit and we'll both benefit from it. And so I went back to him and I was like, hey, I'm back. Like I'll do whatever. And he was like, ah, you haven't been here for a year. And a half. I don't need you anymore. I was like, well, I still own the business. He goes off, you come back. I'm going to fire all the stuff.
Dang.
And so I went, all right, I guess, oh, leave. Then I was like. I was like, literally, man. And I was like, okay, I guess, like, well, that sucks. He was like, yeah, I'm starting a family. I was like, my wife's eight months pregnant with her second kid.
Yeah.
I was like, but anyway, you know, you live and you learn. And so I was like, okay, I'll do this gym thing. And then I started doing sales for gyms. But because, like, you know, I'm selling $197 product for 22 bucks commission. Like, it wasn't a lot of money.
Right.
So what I did is I found gyms all over the world so I could, like, time zone. Like, I could, like, time travel, essentially. So I would start work at like 6. And I would work. I would do like. I would do like us in the morning. And then I would. I would go from east coast all the way through to west coast. I had like three gyms. And then what I would do is at like midday, I'd start doing sales for Australia. And I would do sales for Australia from like 12 until like 8pm and then from 8pm to 11pm, I would do UK crazy. And so I just did that over and over again. And then I started. And then I was like, hey, I should probably get someone to help me. After I built it up, collapsed it, because I over promised, under delivered like 30 different gyms that I couldn't. I was like, classic. I was like, I'll say yes to everything.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I put up. I remember I put up an ad for like, are you a personal trainer that doesn't want to be a PT anymore? Wants to learn how to sell? And I got one guy in the UK and he still works for me today.
No way.
Yeah, he's like our accountability coach. Like the main accountability coach that we have for all the clients. Because we put a lot of the clients on a fitness app right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For seventh level.
Oh, wow.
So you make them work out and stuff?
No, no. Just because you can do all your push notifications and coaching through it. So I spoke to the owners and I was like, can you just change like, pounds to dollars? They were like, yeah. We're like, all right, sweet. There you go. Fitness app. And then they can track all their stuff. They can ask questions in the app, and they can Push notifications out.
So they track their sales metrics or their biology metrics?
Both.
Wow. Yeah.
How many people do you have on that app?
We're beta testing it at the moment. Like, it's been around for a while. There's a few hundred on there right now. Good. Because I had equity in this company, but, like, after reading the shareholder agreement, I realized, like, the director of the company had full ability to do whatever he wanted with the money. Like, so there was no money ever coming, I basically figured out. So I was like, hey, guys, I'm out. And then from there, I started this thing. I just started cold calling gyms, and I was like, hey, I'll do your sales for you. But, like, we had no money. And so I just. I, like, was like, all right, I'm good at fitness sales. I'll just. I'll figure something out. And I went back to the guy who I still owned a gym with, and we had split, that stayed together. So we had gone into this business together, and then we owned another gym together. And I said, hey, I'll do this bit, and we'll both benefit from it. And then you do that bit, and we'll both benefit from it. And so I went back to him, and I was like, hey, I'm back. Like, I'll do whatever. And he was like, ah, you haven't been here for a year and a half. I don't need you anymore. I was like, well, I still own the business. He goes off, you come back. I'm gonna fire all the stuff.
Dang.
And so I went, all right, I guess I'll leave. Then I was like. I was like, literally, man. And I was like, okay. I guess, like, well, that sucks. He was like, yeah, I'm starting a family. I was like, my wife's eight months pregnant with our second kid.
Yeah.
I was like, but anyway, you know, you live and you learn. And so I was like, okay, I'll do this gym thing. And then I started doing sales for gyms, but because, like, you know, I'm selling $197 product for 22 bucks commission. Like, it wasn't a lot of money, right? So what I did is I, I. I found gyms all over the world so I could, like, time zone. Like, I could, like, time travel, essentially. So I would start work at, like, 6. And I would work. I would do, like. I would do like, us in the morning, and then I would. I would go from east coast all the way through to West Coast. I had, like, three gyms, and then What I would do is at like midday, I'd start doing sales for Australia. And I would do sales for Australia from like 12 until like 8pm and then from 8pm to 11pm, I would do UK crazy. And so I just did that over and over again. And then I started. And then I was like, hey, I should probably get someone to help me. After I built it up, collapsed it, because I over promised under delivering like 30 different gyms that I couldn't. I was like, classic. I was like, I'll say yes to everything.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I put up. I remember I put up an ad for like, are you a personal trainer that doesn't want to be a PT anymore and wants to learn how to sell? And I got one guy in the UK and he still works for me today.
No way.
Yeah, he's like our accountability coach. Like the main accountability coach that we have for all the clients. Because we put a lot of the clients on a fitness app right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For seventh level.
Oh, wow.
So you make them work out and stuff?
No, just because you can do all your push notifications and coaching through it. So I spoke to the owners and I was like, can you just change like pounds to dollars? They were like, yeah. We're like, all right, sweet. There you go. Fitness app. And then they can track all their stuff. They can ask questions in the app and they can push notifications out.
So they track their sales metrics or their biology metrics.
Both.
Wow. Yeah.
How many people do you have on that app?
We're beta testing it at the moment. Like, it's been around for a while. There's a few hundred on there right now.
That's actually brilliant.
Yeah.
But we're looking. I got a few ideas, like, about tracking that out. Yeah. Like we're talking to a few of them.
Yeah.
I want to try and see if I can predict slumps using hrv.
You can probably, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think, because your mo.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I've seen from following you is you'll use something and then you'll just buy it.
We've done that a few times.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's why I was like, you're probably gonna buy a fitness app.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you have them wear a whoop or aura or.
So I would like to.
Yeah.
Get them to wear like an aura or something like that. I had a fitness guy come in for a while and test it on all of Sales Sniper. This is back when we had like 150 reps at sales sniper selling full time. And so I had everyone on an aura ring. I bought everyone one.
Yeah.
And then I paid for the whole company to get like personal train just so we could try and track everything. But it was like very. It wasn't set up well enough at the time to do you know what?
I noticed more of a correlation in slumps than HRV is reps who would walk outside.
Yeah.
Right.
And get sunlight.
That makes sense.
That was heavily correlated.
Start putting happy lamps on people and just strap into a chair. Make a.
You think about it, dude. It's like what. People will hit their rut every day right after lunch.
Yeah.
So you just like. You remember this? Go for a walk right after lunch outside.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even if it's cold and people just have kind of got them over that.
Yeah.
That lunch lull.
Yeah.
Maybe put some plungers in the new office when you get it back up.
We don't even have an office right now.
Yeah.
We're all remote. It's the weirdest thing ever.
Dude.
What are your thoughts on remote versus office?
For culture, there's nothing that beats in person.
Yeah.
Office. Like, we're doing okay now. But the remote work is just like what my. My preference would be. Like in person office two to three days a week.
Yeah.
Work remote on the other days. That way there's a little bit of both.
Yeah.
Because I think sometimes certain types of people are more productive remote than they are in office.
Yeah.
But there's nothing that like. And we would have all team meetings. You have 80 people crammed into it. We had a chain of conference rooms and everybody would just be in conference rooms. And like that energy. You can't not. You can't rival that.
Yeah.
Remote.
We've just started. Started mandating that everyone has to be in office.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, dude, especially for sales.
Yeah.
It just makes such a. I would tell people when hiring them, it would be six months before you hit your targets if you're remote, or 30 days if you can move out here because your learning curve is so much faster. So is that in Scottsdale?
Yeah. Yeah.
Scottsdale seems like a good place sort of for sales. It's a very good location because of the time zone. So you can do EST and pst. You can also hit some Australia because we have like a fair bit of actively generation going in Australia. That's been super interesting actually, because the marketing in the UK versus the US versus Australia is totally different.
What do you notice about this? Different in the UK particularly.
So the uk, we tried to crack it and we couldn't. So we're just like, hey, Marco, go to the UK for two months just to figure out the people. And what we noticed is that there are very, very few individual brands and.
They don't believe you.
Yeah.
It's all franchises over there.
Yeah.
And so, like all the food, all the rest, everything is franchise. So there's no independence.
Tall Poppy, they'd say, comes from Australia.
Yeah.
It's worth. In the uk, actually.
Yeah. So what we've sort of figured out in the UK is that one, a guy like Jeremy in a polo shirt's not going to work. Right. It's got to be someone in an office with a suit on.
Yeah.
Right. So we've tested me, like, nice sky background, you know what I mean?
Tested a female.
Not for the uk, but we do have a female for the us.
I bet a female would work in the uk.
Yeah.
And then it had to be brand focused and then the commission structures in the US and the UK are different. There's not very many commission sales reps in the uk, they're bonused.
Got it.
So they're all high salary, like with quotas and bonuses and then they're trying to climb the corporate ladder. So it's like my story would actually resonate more because it's like from sales guy to CEO, like, that would be a better storyline.
Yeah.
Over there. Than like Jeremy making a bunch of money as a sales dude walking around just being Jeremy. Like, that doesn't resonate that well over there.
Yeah.
And then from. From the Australian side, we had to tone everything down in terms of, like, CL.
Believability.
Yeah, exactly. And then we gave him, like. Because we, like, I'm Australian, like, we had him wear Australian brands and that actually made a huge difference. So it's clearly Australian brand clothing.
Did you teach him how to have an accent?
No.
No.
That would have pissed everybody off pretty good. Just some guy going, hey, man, he has a gallop.
Yeah.
So Jeremy, do that though. Yeah, that would be amazing.
It would probably work in the us. It would be, oh, dude, this guy.
Who is this guy? Yeah, yeah. So, like, we've. We bought a few. Like, we bought like an ops company, basically. Like, you just buy to absorb stuff. Like that's the only reason why you do it.
You buy the players.
Yeah.
You just buy the people.
Or the. I guess technology, if you're talking about the fitness app.
Yeah.
And so, like, it's just like we could spend the next six months and a bunch of money trying to. Trying to figure out how to find how to do this and replicate it. Or we could just like, offer them some money. Sometimes it's not even money. Sometimes it's like, hey, we'll provide oversight infrastructure in exchange for, like, you guys coming in. And so some of them have been like, more operating agreement type deals where, like, we'll provide income floors for the owners and which, like, that level of stability in a growing business is sometimes really nice. So, hey, I'll make sure you never make less than ten grand a month.
Yeah.
And we'll do your finances and your books and shit. And they go like. Yep.
The hardest part to me about learning how to. How to acquire is that there's really, like, no rules at all. It's different every time.
I watched the Bob Iger thing on it and he gave me, you know, masterclass, the app.
Yeah.
Bob Iger has it on there, which. And a lot of it talks about the acquisition of Pixar, the acquisition of Marvel, and a few other ones. And, like, the negotiations. And he had a really. It came out in 2019. He had a really interesting thing where he said, like, you have to really understand, like, the value attributes of your brand, and then you can never acquire a brand that has conflicting value attributes. And that was. That was the big thing. And so after hearing that, I was like, okay, we have to figure out, like, what the brand is so that we don't, like, acquire people or brands that are sort of, like, antithetical to who we are as people.
Yeah.
You know, and so that made it a lot easier because, like, before we sort of did that, we had done, like, a lot of sort of like semi jv, like, phantom equity agreements, because people were like, hey, you know how to do sales and marketing? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, here's some percentage. And then I was. Ended up giving it back because it was just a headache.
Yeah.
And a waste of time. But then after kind of going through that process and looking at the brand values and like, going like, oh, okay. You know, it's one of those things where, like, you know, your business coach or whatever always talks about vision, mission, values, and you think it's stupid. And then you realize three years later, oh, that's actually smart.
Yeah.
It's actually kind of a. Kind of a cool thing to actually think about.
Yeah.
And then I met a while ago, I got introduced to a few, like, army friends, the guy who ran Seal Team 6, and he was actually commanding officer of Seal Command. His name is Rich Diviney. There's a really good podcast with him and Jocko.
That was Marcus Lutrell's SEAL team.
Right.
Was SEALS Team six.
So. Well, like, six is. It's a. It's a. It's a fairly big.
Oh, okay.
Like, it's, you know, like, they're like, big sort of like. Like commands underneath seals.
Okay.
And they're like location and job specific. So there's 1, 2, 3, 4. I think there's. I think there's 8. I could be wrong then, but. So he was the commanding officer of six, which is like the sneaky. They're all the sneaky, peaky ones.
Right.
And then there he was, the commanding officer of SEAL Command as a whole. But what he got asked to do was to figure out the attributes of the individuals that were right for each team because, like, everybody in SEALs was actually a really good fit for Team 6. But they, like, couldn't have too many of the same person.
Yeah.
Otherwise it would create poorly performing teams or go. So he figured out, like, okay, there are 37 behaviors, and we need to have every behavior ticked off.
Wow.
Right. And so. And then, so he developed, like, an attribute assessment that basically you had to do that before you could apply.
Nice.
And so now he's out, and I've been talking to him for a while, and the reason why I'm here and I'm going to Scottsdale is because we're having him come in and we have like, a random assortment of 10 people from the company, and then we're doing the attributes assessment at the moment for the actual company.
What are you using? What are you using his 37 behaviors or using, like, Culture Index Disc, The Curry profile.
He's got a book called the Attributes, and it's the 37 different behaviors.
Nice.
And those behaviors then link to an attribute. And then what you do is you find. You figure out. It's a per department thing, and you figure out, like, okay, what are the attributes the company wants as a whole? And that goes off your values. So I got this questionnaire based on the values of the company. And then you ask people to, like, what are three behaviors that you've seen in the company that links to that value, et cetera, et cetera? And then from there we go in and I sort of compiled all that and gave it to them. And then it's like a full day workshop, and then it's five months of other stuff. And then we build out the attribute profiles of each department, and that creates your hiring Criteria.
Nice.
So instead of just hiring for skill, you hire for skill and attribute. That was really cool. He's a really interesting guy.
So we're doing that right now with Culture Index.
Okay.
Which is kind of like a, A similar thing.
Yeah.
I've, I've primarily used Myers Briggs.
Yep.
In the past for hiring. But Culture Index is like you have two, basically two tests. It's got an AI in the background that monitors the words you select how long it takes you to select them per question. See, before the better change. So it ranks your like certainty on answers too.
Yeah.
And then it basically rates you and puts you into different. Like this, this role would be good for you. Or like this is because some people can do something, but if they're deviating from like their natural personality, it's just hard.
Yeah.
And they're going to burn out. It's exhausting.
Yeah.
So I'm kind of like wanting to figure out for salespeople particularly what profile.
Yes.
That makes them work.
It's funny, we're trying to figure out the same thing as well. Besides the attribute thing. We spoke to the same company that does all the employment profiling for Apple.
Okay.
I can't remember what the name is, but I'll, I'll find it and I'll get it to you. And so we did some of their assessments. But it's $1,000 in assessment.
It's a lot.
Yeah.
And. But I mean, that's why Apple uses them. Right. It was, it was the most comprehensive in depth thing I've ever seen. And it was so shockingly accurate.
Yeah.
So I tried to work out a deal with them where everybody who bought then like we could do like $100 and we would send you thousand people a month.
Yeah.
But they had no interest. No interest. They had no interest whatsoever.
I mean, I know there's a correlation. It's just figuring out when I was hiring salespeople the first time, I didn't have the maturity to know. To do that.
Yeah.
You know, so like, I don't know, you've probably hired more salespeople at this point than I have. But there for a while, you know, we were bringing in 50 new people a month.
That's wild.
We would just turn and burn.
Dude.
Yeah.
And it never, it never occurred to me to be like maybe we could just profile them and hire 10.
Yeah. Yeah.
And keep eight of them rather than hiring 50 and keep 10.
Yeah.
The hard thing is as well is with sales people is like someone can tick all the boxes and just not be skilled enough.
Yeah.
So like, that's, that's the real, like. And then it's like, do you accept someone who you know is culturally wrong but highly skilled and segregate them?
Never.
Because I've done that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The load will just. Yeah. Like, but it was sort of like, it had to be. It was not a secret. It wasn't like, oh, we're going to do this. It was like I sat down with the guy and I was like, you are never to speak to anyone. You're a highly skilled person. But, like, you're just not a good culture fit for whatever reason.
Psychopath.
Yeah.
And so like, you're going to be over here doing this slack access and.
Stuff, or you just.
Let's do their own thing.
Like, you know, gosh, you're bolder than I am.
But, like, I'm super comfortable controlling those people. Like, personally, I'm very comfortable. Like, hey, man, we can't do that. And also, like, as long as you keep them in a box. Right. And it's not that they're like unethical salespeople. That's not what it is. Because I won't hire them. It's more like they're just terrible. Culture fits. But like, there is a time and a place for someone who. The reason why I say that is because, like, I. I was not a good person to have on your sales team because, like, I enjoyed making people crumble when I was on the sales team. So, like, my. What I would do is I would come in and go, hey, guys, I'm going to be so good at this that you're all going to quit. Like, that's what I would say. And they'd be like, huh? And I'd be like, yeah, you're all going to quit. I will make so many more sales than you guys. It will terrify you and you will question even being in sales. And I would just stare at them. And I would. And I would. And so, yeah. And I just like. And for me, because I come from a specialist background, like, it took like, I'm not like that anymore. And I see how that was stupid.
Yeah.
But the environment that I used to be in, that was your worth as a person, was how good you were.
Yep.
Your identity.
Yeah.
And so, like, you know, me and my friends, like, all my friends are all, like, my close friends are all ex special ops. And like, there's a real interesting transition period that happens when you leave and you realize that the Green Machine will go on without you.
Yeah.
Because you thought that you were integral to the freedom of humanity. And.
Yeah.
And then, and then you realize that you're not.
Yeah.
You know, you're like, oh, okay, someone took my spot. Oh, it's interesting.
Yeah.
And so, and especially when your entire identity and like in special operations, like if you're bad at your job, you're hated. Like, I mean, like, it's because you're.
Like a risk, you're a liability.
Yeah.
The level of ruthlessness is, is borderline like, unfathomable. You know, like, dudes would joke like, oh, hey, we're going to, we're going to try and make you kill yourself.
Wow.
And it's like, and, and, and, and, and make sure you go vertical. You know, like, dude, like the most ruthless things like that. And that's tame, like ruthless because like when you, when you're going out and doing the thing, if you don't trust someone, it's a big deal. And so like, that is a very hard stench to get off you. Because in reality, like, if someone's not that good at sales, like, they're probably still a great person or, you know, a great dad, whatever.
You want them to quit. You don't want them to kill themselves.
Yeah, exactly. So, like, I've kind of, you know, I've come through that now and the more I've been in business, the, the less I sort of think that way.
And.
Yeah.
You know, but that is like, that's.
But that's where standards come from. And I will say that that seems to be like the pandemic of small business. We talking at lunch today and someone who won't be named, you're saying you saw them on a webinar. He was like, to be a coach, you don't have to be an expert.
You just have to be one chapter ahead.
One chapter ahead. But when you think about, like, what are you teaching people? Like, the standards are so low.
Yeah.
And that's coming from a prominent leader. It's like there is something really refreshing to a players about being in an environment. Our, Our top salesperson right now. He is here because he wants to be beat up.
Yeah.
And he's like, I think that you're the intense enough to take me to the next level.
Yeah.
That's an A player. Like, they want to be beat up.
Yeah.
I think there's something wrong when people are coddling. And like you said with the. The whole sales culture has gotten super weak.
Yeah.
Especially lately.
Yeah.
I think like, you know, the, the COVID realm, it was so easy for a lot of people.
Yeah.
And because, like, I had never heard of high ticket sales. My first foray was like, you know, know, I heard about Dan Lock and then like, like one of the first ones.
Yeah.
Then I couldn't afford his course. And then you must had some sort of retargeting set up for your 21 day challenge if you've searched Dan Lock or something like that. And then I did your $97 21 day challenge and that was what introduced me to high ticket closing. Like, I had no idea what it was. I never heard of it.
Yeah.
But I've been in sales for 10 years.
Yeah.
And then like, when I came in, I was like, oh, there's all these people who are like brand new salespeople and they don't know how to be salespeople.
Yeah.
And so when I came in I was like, oh, this is, this is like way easier than the stuff I was doing and the commissions are way higher and like, things are getting booked on my calendar. Like, this is wild.
So you're going to give me leads?
What does that mean? This is wild. Like, it was so crazy and like everyone just kind of took it. Like, that's normal. And I was like, this isn't normal. Like, this is like the greatest opportunity that I've ever seen in terms of being a sales professional.
Our old sales people used to call, they would call leads, but they were really customers. They weren't even calling the leads.
Yeah.
They bought something.
Yeah.
They're like, well, the lead quality has gone down for like, we have their amex. There's no such thing as lead quality going down. We have their credit card.
Yeah.
I was like, yeah, can't fix this.
Even, like, even like my team, like, because we have a lead scoring system.
Yeah.
Every now and then, like, we'll go, hey, let's listen to five calls that are all lead quality of two out of five.
And is that automated?
No. We have a. We. We try and have as subjective a system as possible. But I mean, you know, sometimes it's like makes 30 grand a month.
Yeah.
Has been following Jeremy for two years and it's a two out of ten. It's like, mate, you just couldn't close it.
Like, so that the salespeople rate the leads.
So we, we try and have the SDRs rate the leads.
Okay.
Or the setters prior to getting there, which I don't really like because, like, I don't like salespeople having preconceived notions of lead quality and stuff. Like that. But like, you know, you got a twos and frozen, you know, but like not that many of our. There's a lot of people that just book themselves in. And so then from there like they get, they get scored.
Inbound lead usually is going to be like. At least for us, I think it might be different for your business, but for us, somebody gets to the point of booking an inbounds, they've usually gone through so many different touch points. They've probably bought a couple products and they're automatically going to be out.
Yeah.
So the people who have bought our front end liquidating offer stuff, they by far have the highest stats of everything. It's the highest paid in full rate. The highest. But to maintain volume and opportunity, we have kind of like both of those things going. And so just to keep the sales team full at all times. But I tell them like, hey guys, sometimes you're going to be full of lay downs. Sometimes you're going to be full of people who are harder. It's just like, do you want to be full or not? But like that's the question. Do you want to be full? Like if you do and that's the thing, go do it.
Yeah.
And yeah, that's when you got to manage like. So one of the really interesting things that I found was when we realized we were sort of in uncharted territory because we book like, like 100 and something calls a day. Right. We had the sales team taking an hour per day to do all their admin. Right. Do all their admin. And I started looking at it and I was like, oh, that cost me about $10,000 a day. And I was like, what an interesting problem. So what'd you do? We hired a team of people just to do the admin for them.
Yeah.
Because like we're. It no longer became how many calls can we book, it became how many hours available. I need 500 hours a week available. That's what we need.
Yeah.
And we booked the 500 hours and then we have a system where we'll book more than that. Because anyone who doesn't reply to a booking sequence gets marked as free and then gets booked over the top.
Yep.
To make sure our spot utilization rate has to stay above 70. So we have a show up rate of 50% but a spot utilization rate of 70%. Right. If that makes sense.
Do you color coordinate on that? Is that how you manage that with SDRs?
Yes.
Yeah.
So yeah. But you know, Google Calendar made an update like a month ago or two months ago. Where if the person booked in on a link. Right. The organizer was marked as a maybe. Oh yeah, that was that. Us up for like a good three weeks.
Oh, wow.
Trying to problem solve everything. And we realized it was a Google Calendar update. So then we had to have someone go through and confirm every single one from our side.
Yeah.
So like from the customer side it was seeing like it was a maybe. So we had like a high notion rate and we were tearing our hairs out trying to figure out what's going on.
Yeah.
All the deep diving, everything you could imagine. But turns out it was a Google Calendar update. Right.
Like that's where it gets stressful.
All kinds of stuff.
Well, because the level you're playing at, it's like one little mistake is half a million dollars a month.
Yeah.
I mean like we, we change Systems to get 2%. To get a 2% higher pickup rate.
Is that Kixie?
Yeah.
And they were like, oh, it's not worth. It's 2%. I was like, guys, 2%. I was like, we do $49,000 a month. Yeah, it is. I was like, 2% is a shitload of people, man.
Yeah.
I was like, change it. I was like, that's a lot of people.
Oh yeah.
How many calls? I wonder how many calls we do at the peak at 250 calls a day, is that what they're anywhere between 100 to 180 average. So you guys are way more than. Cause your KPI is 500 calls a day.
It's 14 book calls.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Yeah.
Per person per day.
I mean, that's awesome.
Yeah.
If they can't do it, they can.
We were like, that was three years ago, which was like you can make a 10% connection rate just by calling somebody.
Yeah, you just. You can't do it anymore. Like the highest we've been able to maintain is sort of seven to eight, you know, but that's on the high side. And then a lot of the time it's dropping to 5. So like we KPI of 5 do the.
So do your SDR is also like text and email after calling and. Yeah, we have forms of communication.
Yeah, we have a lot of automation set up for that. Yeah, there's some new cool AI stuff coming out that integrates into close and are you using close or HubSpot? Yeah, it integrates HubSpot as well.
Yeah.
If you want like an intro to the guy. But it can do automated. It can chat to the prospect and follow up.
Nice.
Like three times.
We have one, but we Turned it off because we had a bunch of FTC agents in the funnel. So it's like, well, we need see what's going on first.
Go from there.
Yeah, yeah.
You just know. You have no idea.
Yeah.
I'll give you a playbook.
Okay.
If I ever have to call you if ever. Anything ever happens, I know how to call.
Well, you know.
Yeah, yeah, you.
You should do it now.
That way I will.
Yeah.
No, I've been. While I was in the car, I started putting my voice notes together for myself.
Dude, it's.
It's literally, it's. It's just a different way of thinking. Like, it's almost like a smell.
Yeah.
You know, like, you can't exactly explain it, but you get a feel.
Yeah.
Like a smell. When you were talking earlier, I was like, man, I remember. And that, like, the cutthroat type of culture where we would, like, bonus. Based on, like, you're talking about the complaint. Change it based on KPIs.
Yeah.
And I need to figure out now how to do that in. In the, like, in light of compliance.
Yeah.
Because to do that, I almost have to counterbalance that with, like, things you're not allowed to do to get the sale.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
This is where like, ethics come in. But to be honest, bro, ethics and sales is just like, people tend to. Sometimes whatever gets them paid is ethical. And it's like, no, no, that's not.
Yeah. For the. So we do. We do do a lot of training around that specifically. And, like, our. Our scripts are run by the lawyers and all that kind of good stuff. And we have a very specific, like, pattern. They have to say when they make the sale.
Yeah.
Like, and. And that's all kind of. That's all kind of part of it to make sure it's like, hey, guys. Like, yeah. You guys have to know exactly what you're buying, why you're buying it, what's happening.
What policy is.
Is the refund policy. And then we started doing. We've only just started doing, like, every program gets a group onboarding, like, everyone down from, like, the $27 product. Really?
Yeah.
And then on that first one, it's like, hey, guys, this is it.
Nice.
And everyone cool with that?
Mandatory attendance.
Yeah, mandatory attendance. And then from there, we have a Google form they fill out, which then has, like, all this information. It's like, I have read this. I understand this. I know this.
Yeah.
Like, that we're trying to do that.
Because we need that at point of sale.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Same thing, but just slightly ahead.
Yeah. So we have a point of sale one and then we have like a sort of. Because what we found is like, actually, if you, like, you end up nullifying both contracts if you do the point of sale contract. Wrong.
Yeah.
So what we. It gets so complicated.
Yeah.
Like, as it gets bigger, it really disincentivizes you, even trying to go bigger.
Yeah.
And that's one of the things that I've thought of is like, well, it's.
A bell curve, man.
Like, do I really need to go? If we sign up 5,000 people a month, like, what would that look like? What's the point?
Yeah.
You know, I look at someone like Tony Robbins who, you know, at one stage was just signing up the world. Right. And like, how much infrastructure did he have? How much time was he spending?
Obviously he didn't have that much.
I didn't.
It's Tony Robbins.
Yeah. He's just got a. He's got, he's got. Hands are big enough to support everything.
I mean. Yeah, the branding goes where it's like, man, Horosi's nailed it on branding. Cuz branding covers a multitude of sins.
Yeah.
Inside of your infrastructure.
Yeah.
If you have a good brand, it's like, you know, oh, it's. It's Tony, you know, whatever. Like, if you don't have a brand, it's like, yeah, I want a refund, you know.
Yeah.
I don't feel good about how you didn't call me. And it's just like wildly different experiences.
Yeah.
I think, like, because. Because I'm a little bit older than most of the guys in the coaching space. Like, I'm 39 and I'd already run a few businesses and sort of had things go shit. And I'd had some personal, like, you know, military experience. And I think, like, as I sort of entered into the market in Covid, I sort of saw everyone doing stuff and I was like. And I see it today. I see a lot of youth, like, and I see the exuberance of youth within the, within the industry. And I can see, like. Because, like, I'm really cool with who I am as a person. Like, I don't need more friends. I have really good friends. I have great kids, great family. Like, I'm very happy with who I am. I see a psychologist because, like, I have army shit that I want to deal with and I want to be a better dad and a better husband. All that kind of shit.
Yeah.
And so I work on that. But, like, I am fully okay with who I am. And I know that I'm, like, genuinely a pretty good person. I treat people quite well.
Yeah.
And so, like, that gives me, like, a very good feeling of rest that, like, I don't need to chase certain things. I don't need to lie about revenue. I don't need to, like, do stuff. And I can see, like, people, you know, just sort of making those mistakes, and I'm just like. That's just a symptom of, like. Like, I couldn't imagine being as successful as I am now, which is, like, I feel very lucky to be doing well, but obviously there are people doing way better. But I feel like if I was me at 27, I think I would have this entirely. Like, I think I would have screwed everything up, and I would have made catastrophic mistakes, and I probably would have made a lot of enemies in the process.
Yeah.
And so I'm quite glad that I have the ability to be like, the older person in the organization. And then I staffed it up with people who are older. Like, my finance department is all in their 60s wisdom. Right. Because they know stuff.
Yeah.
And they give me insight that I never would have had. Like, my bookkeepers call me up and they go, hey, you should look at this. And they go. And I go, oh, that's interesting. Thank you. You know, my CFO is, like, in his 50s, and he's been the CFO of huge companies. And, you know, I've got a mentor who's older than me and done much, much, much bigger things than I probably ever will. And that's. That's given me the ability to go, like, all right, cool. Like, I can just chill out.
Yeah.
Be okay. Be okay with everything. Because I see companies, you know, the CEO is 27, 25. I'm like, mate, like, C level positions, like, now that I understand them, that's not a position for people who haven't had significant experience.
Yeah.
You can't learn it in a book. You have to learn it from someone who's gone through it.
And also, like, internal promotion is the death of a company. Like, I remember, like, one of my best friends from the military is my VP of operations, and he came to me and he goes, hey, man, how do I be the coo? And I said, you have to quit, bro. And he goes like, what do you mean? I was like, dude, like, I can't. You were here when this business was, like, a $300,000 a year business. Like, and. And you've learned an awful lot along the way, and you've grown into a phenomenal VP of Ops. If I make you the CEO, you will shit the bed and I'll fire you. I go. Because what I will expect is tremendous. And, and, and also, like, there's no point because, like, you know everything that I know. So, like, you have to quit, which would suck. Go and be the VP of Ops of a much larger company and then come back as the coo where we're a little company compared to what you're used to now. Then you bring shit to the table that I couldn't possibly imagine. But, like, I don't. I can't surround myself with the C stuff that I know as much as all of them. Like, that just doesn't work. We're going to end up missing something.
Yeah.
And so it's called the Peter Principle, I think, where it's internally promoting someone to a state of incompetence, which is why, like, you know, government is usually full of idiots.
Yeah.
Because, like, the, the best politicians have all been offered private. You know, they've been offered the CEO. CEO of some massive company or whatever. Some private geek on a board getting paid tons of money because they're innovative and good thinkers. But just the ones who were left. Yeah, pretty much, you know, 100% and same as the military, to be honest. Like, it's the people who just stay. You know, it's why, like, the military very rarely evolves from a leadership standpoint. And so I think, like, that was a big one for me when I realized, like, oh, okay, like, internal promotion is okay, but only up to a point. And we have to be able to have really difficult and honest conversations with people about, like, where their future is in the company so we don't set false expectations and start creating resentment and like that.
Yeah. What's.
What's one thing you wish you would have done different then? I've got a. I've got a roll downtown.
Yeah.
One thing I should have done different, I, I. Like I said before, I wish I would have started taking money out of the business sooner. And it's not because I want more money. Like, it's just because I feel like I would have made better decisions along the way.
Yeah.
You know, because, like, when you're removed from it, like, the reason why, like, I remember when I was like, war fighting in Afghanistan, and you get an order to do something from up high and you wouldn't understand it, but you do it.
Yeah.
And it would work out.
Yeah.
And you're like, oh, okay. Because that person is at a 30,000 foot view, but they're also, like, in a bunker. They're protected. So their decision making is cool, calm and collected. And if you're working for a business where the person is, like, relying on that business to make money, they're going to make far more emotional, visceral decisions than what someone who's just, like, chilling out and pragmatic about it.
Yeah.
You know, like, Bob Iger is worth, you know, I think he's worth 79 million, you know, personally or so. No, no, sorry. 690 million. Sorry.
Yeah.
And so, like, he's sitting back as a CEO of Disney, just going, like, all right, let's try and fix a few things. But he's not worried about it because he's chilling no matter what.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Beautiful.
Put that coffee down.
