How One Sale Changed Everything

What if you had an energetic relationship that instead of chasing money, you were that lighthouse for money to come to you?

Yeah.

Right?

Be the magnet.

So I see you smiling. What, why does that make you smile?

Well, because, you know, we think about sales as, you know, that, that magnet that if everything just went completely wrong with life and my business and everything like that, I still have that one skill that I know I can transfer to anything. Yeah.

You'll never go, you'll never go hungry.

I'll never go hungry.

Yeah.

When you have that skill of sales and, and, and that relationship then with money and opening up and saying, you know, money comes, money goes, no, no biggie. I can always make more.

You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Colobley, and on Out of the System hosted by Dr. Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who are creating bold, profitable patient-centered practices and doing it their way. Hello everybody. Welcome to Out of the System podcast, where we teach doctors how to reclaim their purpose, their power, and their passion. And today we're gonna talk about some of the real, I believe, the most important position in the entire facility, and that is the front desk, the people that are handling the phone. And I have Tom Jacobs with me here today. Tom's great. Thank you for flying all the way in. You flew in from Taiwan.

Taiwan.

To do this podcast.

Absolutely.

No, I know you were in town, right?

I was in town. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How in the world did you wind— one, how'd you wind up learning about scripting and closing and all of this? This is something that's completely foreign to doctors, isn't it?

I think it's pretty foreign to most people, especially new business owners when they go into business. And that was my problem. And that's why I had to figure this out.

Because you had a med spa, right?

I had a fitness center.

Oh, a fitness center.

Fitness center and nutrition. counseling center. And I opened it in 2008. It's a good time to open a new business in the recession.

Right when the bottom fell out. Oh, I remember 2008, unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah. And within 6 months, I almost went broke because I didn't know how to sell. And, you know, I'd come out of corporate America. I'd managed millions of dollars of freight logistics. And I thought, yeah, running a small business, that's not gonna be a problem. And then it happened.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. So I dumped out my 401, you know, 12 years in corporate America. I had a nice nest egg in there, dumped it out, started this new business. Within 6 months, I was almost broke.

Wow.

And I had to make one of the hardest phone calls of my life, and that was calling Dad for money.

And asking for money.

And asking for money.

How'd that go?

It actually worked out well, but the actual process of it was very humbling.

Mm-hmm.

At 40 years— I was 38 years old. As an entrepreneur, we're taught, oh, you can figure this out. Just do it on your own. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

Mm-hmm.

You don't need to ask for help. Well, that's complete bullshit because we do need help and we aren't taught to actually ask for help. And so that was— I really had to overcome that as well as, you know, asking my dad for money. And he was, he was great. And he was like, yeah, I'll be happy to loan you the money. And the emphasis there was on loan.

Right, not give.

Not give. And it was with a 12% interest rate.

That's kind of expensive money back then.

Yeah, in 2008, absolutely. I could have gotten— and I told him, I said, you know, Dad, I could get a loan at the bank for 8%. He said, so why haven't you? He's a really good sales guy, even though he had no professional sales training. I was like, well, Yeah, I can't get a loan 'cause I had no credit left. Everything was maxed out.

Right, 'cause it was topped out.

And so, okay, Dad, I'll take your usury of 12%. It's like—

It's the best. You know what? That's the cheapest. It's the best loan you could have gotten, right? Like the 12% is like, I mean, I've borrowed money at like 18% and 22% to stay afloat. Yeah.

Like, I mean, my credit card right now is 25%.

Yeah.

I pay it off every month.

Yeah.

Right? And so he was like, yeah, we'll loan you, but I'll give you 6 months interest-free.

I was like, oh, that's a good deal.

Oh, that was a pretty good deal. So took the $10,000. So I had, it was $10,000 I was short to make payroll and rent on the same day on a Friday. So he wired me the money, paid the landlord, paid the employees, and with a little bit left over, I hired a coach because ultimately I realized I needed help.

Okay. So what kind of coach did you hire?

So I Googled, which is what we do, right? Right. Google, you know, help for fitness businesses. Or something like that. And so a coaching company came up very similar to what you do for docs. And it was specifically around the fitness industry. Got on a call, ended up buying the sales coaching program for $1,200. And back then it was a weekly course that you had to go through each week. It was a 6-week course.

Who was it?

Do you remember? It was NPE, Net Profit Explosion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember them.

So I ended up working for them about 3 years later. But so it was $1,200, put it on my credit card, max it out again. And I told them, I was like, can we condense this 6 weeks into maybe 2? Because my credit card's due in 4 weeks and I need to pay it back, that $1,200. They're like, yeah, go ahead and go forward.

Yeah.

And I did, I studied it. The first consultation that I had, and it was completely different than what I'd learned before, it was, yeah, somebody would come in, I'd be like, okay, yeah, what do you want? I'm looking at personal training. Great. Well, it's $60 a session. You buy 10, I'll give you the 11th for free. So it's $600. You wanna do it?

Oh God, that's horrible.

Exactly.

That's, that sounds like what the doctors do when they, it's PRP or it's functional medicine. Do you want it or not? Right?

Oh, and it's, and it's 3 grand, right? It's like, oh God. Yeah. And no wonder I went broke in 6 months. Yeah. No kidding. It's 'cause you're one person outta 10.

I'm surprised it took you that long to go broke. I would've said you would take any 3 months.

Well, I had an existing client base, so. Okay. All right. There you go. Held me afloat for a little bit. Yeah. So it ended up that I had a scripting with good questions to ask, to find out what the problem was, and then to present my solution. And I remember the first person I went through is this guy, and he went through, he didn't buy, he was an idiot. Anyway, the second person that came through, Sharon, uh, I remember her to this day and she was great. So she sat down, we had our consultation. I had the slideshow up, showed her, you know, this is a 5-step process that we go through to get you into healthy habits. And these are your problems. This is how we're going to fix it. And then I said, in my, in my professional opinion, in helping hundreds of people just like you, I'd recommend our 100-session package. Now you could do it with our 50-session package, but I really recommend our 100-session package. This is great.

You had, you had like, did you have 2 offers or 3 offers?

I had 3.

Yeah, good, better, best, right? Yeah, that's exactly what we teach.

Yeah, it was. And it was— I named it very committed, committed, and kind of committed.

Kind of committed. That's a cool—

That was the 3-month.

Oh my God, that's brilliant. Okay, keep going. This is awesome.

So I was like, these are your options, which would you choose? And then I just zipped it up because that's what they told me, is that once you tell them the price, give them a choice, shut up. Don't say anything. And in my mind, I was thinking, Oh, I should have offered the $50. No, the $25 session. I should have offered the $25 session. Oh wait, she's not gonna— she's not making a decision right now. What's she doing? Why is she thinking all this? I should have just given her a free session, right? I should have just gotten her in here, right? She says, ah. And then I kept silent and she said, okay, let's do the $100 session.

And how much do you remember what that sold for?

$5,500.

And what were you selling the 6th? The other one was $600.

Like that, $600 for 10 sessions with the 11th for free. Can you get— can you get results with somebody in 10 sessions as a personal trainer? No.

Well, that's like the same conversation I had with functional medicine. Like, I just want to do 3 months. I go, why?

Why?

Yeah, like, they'll sign up for a year. Yeah. So what did— like, when she left, what was going through your mind?

Well, the best part was when she did say yes, I think I actually verbally said, are you sure?

Oh my God.

I know. I was like, oh. But she's like, yeah, yeah. Handed me the card. I was shaking. I took the card and I was like, please go through.

Please go through.

Please go through. And ding, $5,500 in my bank. I was blown away. I was like, how is this possible?

Wow.

Going from $600 to $5,000.

And there was no resistance? No, let me think about it.

And I, and I felt good about it. I didn't feel fake, cheesy, salesy, needy. I didn't feel like I was pushing her to do anything that she didn't want to do. Yeah.

Because people, when they hear sales, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I think probably people are expecting to have like a plaid jacket on or something like that, right? Like, you are the most— you and I are very similar from a selling standpoint. I'm like, here it is, right? Like, here's the value prop.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which one do you want to do? Not do you want to do it? Which one do you want to do?

Right. Because there's— they're in front of you. They're interested in doing something.

They're not there just to kill an hour. Right, right.

Yeah. They're either— you're either selling them or they're selling you their excuses.

Tell me about that. Oh, yeah, they're selling. So what do you mean?

Yeah. So in that situation, you're selling them the idea of working with you and they're selling themselves on the reasons why they shouldn't spend $5,000 working with you. And so you have to change the balance of that.

Right.

So that they're like, oh no, the problems that I have far outweigh the $5,500 I'm gonna spend over the next year to solve that problem.

Right. Bill Glazer, one of my mentors, said you're selling money at a discount.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah.

Right? I mean, 'cause what's the cost of not spending the $5,500?

Right.

Okay. So you sold that one.

Yeah.

Tell me. So she leaves.

She leaves.

What did you do?

I think I did a little dance. I did a little happy dance. I was like, this is incredible. And it just solidified in my mind that anybody can be good at sales, and especially an introvert like myself.

Yeah.

Who doesn't like to ask people for money. Like, if friends borrow money from me, rarely will I ask them later, hey, do you have that money back?

Hey, by the way, can I borrow 10 grand?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, thanks.

12% interest. And here's a contract. He gave me a contract.

Your dad gave you a contract?

Yeah.

I think my mom did the same thing with me when I had to borrow money from her. Oh, God.

But I tell you what, I paid him back in 6 months in full because I learned the skill of selling and selling at a way that felt natural to me and felt natural to them, the prospect as well.

When I, so I worked for, in corporate America golf industry. I was a general manager, head golf professional. There was no real selling that went on. Right. And I left and I started, well, I hadn't left yet. And I started a side hustle where I was buying and selling pre-foreclosure property.

Oh, cool.

And I learned from a guy by the name of Jeff Kaller. And Jeff was known as Mr. Pre-Foreclosure. This was 2004, right? 2000, no, 2003.

Oh, wow.

2 or 3, because it was post-9/11. I think it was 2002 now that I think about it. And he had this system where you did these sales letters.

Okay.

The Dan Kennedy tile sales letter, big headline, highlight a couple of areas on it, sign it personally, right? Put it in a number 10 envelope. Make sure the envelope was colored.

Yes.

Handwrite the address, life stamp, no return address.

Right.

And I'm like, this is the stupidest thing in the world, right? Like, I'm coming from corporate golf, right? I'm like, this isn't going to work. But I followed the system and it's like, you do it, you do it every 5 days or every 6 days. And we had this whole system and we get a fresh list twice a week and there'd be like 50 names that are in foreclosure. And we're in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I'm sending them out. And about 10 days later, I get my first phone call. Like, I'm calling from your letter. And I'm like, Wait, what?

What letter?

Wait, what letter? Oh, right. I think I had a separate cell phone and I was at work in my office at the country club.

Okay.

And I'm like, oh yeah, hey, just hang on one second. Put 'em on mute, scurry through. Happened to have the, the script. I read the script, I filled out the sheet, I followed the words at the end and I said, okay. And you know, I just need to come out and look at the house. And then what we'll do is we'll take over the house, I'll negotiate with the bank and whatever the script was. And you know what they said? Okay.

Okay.

I went, what? And I'm like, they're like, when can you be out here? I think it was like 2 o'clock. I'm like, 5:30? And they go, can you make it 6? I'm like, yeah, I can make it 6. And I had none of the contracts printed. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, right? And all he had was a checklist. And there was this packet and you had this sheet on top and it had all these checklists of everything that you had to sign. I had no idea what they were signing, right? documents, power of attorney, this whole thing. And I printed this thing out. I walked into their house, I followed the script in the checklist, and they're like, here you go. I made $65,000 on that house in 35 days. Oh my gosh. And I remember I, and I did 3 houses like that in 90 days.

Wow.

One I made 10 grand on, another one I made like $15,000 to $20,000 on. The other one I made like, I made like 90 grand in 90 days. Right. And all I did was follow the script and I knew nothing about real estate. Like I got a D- in contract law in college, right? The only reason why I passed was because my instructor would come into the bar that I worked at, bartended at on Wednesday nights, and he didn't have a bill the entire semester, right? You know? So he's like, you're really bad at contract law. I'm like, thanks. Can I get you another beer? Yeah.

It's like, well, and that's the power of a process.

Isn't it though?

Process and a script together. That's a proven process. And that's where I find, Frustration in my coaching with practitioners and others is changing the process.

Why do you think they do that? Why? I mean, because like if you and I were going to go do surgery, don't you think you would follow the checklist?

I absolutely would.

Right? Like yeah. Would you change it?

No. Maybe after a hundred surgeries.

Right.

Maybe finding something.

I'm talking your first one. Like your first one.

No, I'm following the directions.

You're following the checklist.

Yeah, checklist directions.

So why do you think? Why do you think, especially doctors, why do you think they have a hard time following the process?

I think it has to do with my program is special and different than everybody else's. And I was this way as well. You know, my program's a little bit different than this other program. And it's really not.

No.

Our programs get a result that solve a problem. I mean, if we want to go totally macro on this, 60,000-foot level, We are solving problems. That's what sales is. You identify what the problem is and you solve it, right, with your program. And I think doctors and, and other practitioners that don't have formal sales education and training think, well, but we do these extra little special things that make our program even better and get better results.

Cool.

Awesome. But at the end of the day, what are you doing? Getting results, right? Solving a problem, right? So let's not overcomplicate things. Let's find out what the problem is, and then let's fix it.

Yeah, because you now you've worked with a number of our clients: Dr. Gapin, Dr. Duffy, a couple of others. Schachter's. I'm just going to see the Schachter's on Thursday. Oh, awesome! Have them on the podcast. Cool. One, how did you wind up working with practitioners? Because like, I mean, if you want to pick a more difficult group in the world to work with.

No, they aren't. They are not the most difficult.

Oh yeah?

Fitness people are the most difficult.

Really?

Well, we're very, you know, it's the macho, like, I lift weights and I know what I'm doing and I don't need help. That, that type of mentality. Um, luckily I got over that very quickly. But yeah, from the, from the fitness world, from that, you know, we all think that we know better and, and what's what, what we should be doing.

Right.

You know, I had an attorney that was a client and he kept saying, well, shouldn't I be doing shoulders today? Or, Chad, I really like— I was like, okay, um, do you need me to help you practice law or do you want me to be the professional here and help you?

Right.

He's like, oh, okay. Yeah, I got it. So we have to kind of stay in our lane. Right. What we do.

Right.

What we know.

So how did you wind up with doctors?

Oh, good question. So I, I had a, a call center. That I started in 2020. Again, me starting businesses—

I was gonna say, brother, can you just pick, like, did you start it like what, in the end of February?

January 1st.

January 1st?

Yeah. And, and I was specifically going for fitness centers.

And were you in Houston then?

I was living in the Philippines, but we were—

Okay, so at least you weren't like, you know, at least you— yeah, okay, you weren't going to be in a place where they were going to completely shut you down.

Yeah, well, fitness, so fitness pretty much all my clients got shut down in March of 2020. And one of the partners that I was working with who's a, a marketing, marketing guy, he marketed both fitness centers but also had functional medicine doctors. Okay. And he was like, hey Tom, you might want to pivot to functional medicine. Um, they are very up on technology, they're willing to accept the help, and they're willing to pay for that help as well. I was like, cool, that hits all my boxes. So I quickly— he made me an introduction to a couple practitioners. They signed up for my appointment setting service, and then that's how I got into the functional medicine space. And then I connected with a couple of coaching companies that I sponsored their events and then got, you know, the bulk of the clients from that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, I have always said the most— yeah, the most important position in any medical practice is not the doctor.

Okay.

It's not the med tech. It's not the front desk person. It's the person that is answering the phone and booking appointments on your calendar.

Yep.

So what are some of the common mistakes you see people make when it comes to hiring that person or training and/or training that person?

I think on the training side, they're not doing the training because it's almost like the blind leading the blind, right? How are you going to give a script to somebody if you don't know how to create a script?

For answering or even understanding the importance of a script. Exactly right. Yeah.

Or just allowing that person to kind of figure it out on their own, even if they're a seasoned appointment setter and you get somebody that has experience in appointment setting, you still need oversight. You still need coaching them and managing them on a regular basis. So that's the number one, is understanding the whole process and being able to master it yourself at some point.

Right.

Now, I don't suggest that doctors on a regular basis set appointments for themselves, but I think you should probably spend a day doing that.

Yeah.

Doing some calling.

We, we used to make that in the Yeedi clinics. Everyone that got hired, they had to master the front desk before they could go on to the next phase. I love that. And we had, I had this lady who was no BS. She was from like the Bronx that ran the front desk for me in Raleigh. And she was a taskmaster. And so I hired a new doctor and Gibby comes to me and he's like, you know, I've worked in ED clinics before. I'm like, great. So we have a separate process here. You have to go through, you gotta learn our values, our culture, all of that. And then you have to master the front desk before you can treat a patient. He goes, but I'm a doctor. And I said, right. And you're at my practice, my facility, right? Facility. 'Cause I can't, gotta be careful 'cause I couldn't technically own the practice, right? Oh, right. I was a gentleman. I was a, management company.

Yeah.

And I said, we have a very specific process. And the reason why you're going to work the front desk and you're gonna follow the script and learn how to answer calls is I never want you saying those people up front don't know what the hell they're doing. Because once you understand how difficult that job is, you'll never complain about it again. So you're supposed to work the front desk for a week and you have to get signed off by the lady that was running the front desk. And she was a no BS lady. Right? And we had a rule that if at the end of the day this job wasn't for you, you can quit and we'll pay you $1,000.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

I like that.

At any time, we'll pay you to quit.

Oh.

He comes into my office at the end of day 1. He closes and goes, can I talk to you? I'm like, sure, come on in, Gibby. And he sits down and closes the door, sits down and he goes, please, please, please don't make me work the front desk ever again. I will never complain About the front desk ever again. I had no idea what they were going through. The script, I don't know how they do it. Everything that they do. He goes, I will never complain. And I said— and I called the front desk lady and I'm like, how'd he do? She goes, he did okay. And I said, this is what he wants to do. And she's like, okay, but if you ever fucking complain again, I'll cut your fucking balls off.

That's what she said.

And I looked at Gibby and I go, she'll do it.

She will do it.

He complained. He was complaining one time, one time about the front desk about a month later. I go, do you want me to tell her? Because she'll come and cut your balls off. He goes, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. Because it's really hard. It's hard. Like, people don't realize how hard that work is.

Well, and it's juggling as well. You have a patient coming in in front of you. You have somebody ringing you. You have leads stacking up on your computer that have come in overnight or whatever, you have to juggle it. And that's why I, one of the reasons that we're successful as a business in setting appointments is because that's all my agents do is call and set appointments. They don't have to worry about somebody in front of them, the next call or anything. It's just, I have a call in front of me right now. That's what I'm dealing with.

Mm-hmm.

And that's, and if, if you can afford to have a separate person just for setting appointments for your business, that's the way to go.

Okay. What do you pay somebody like that? I mean, I know you don't live in the States anymore, right? But like United States dollars?

Yeah. United States dollars. Like $25 an hour. Yeah.

Yeah.

Bonus? With, with commission.

Yes.

Okay.

So walk me through that.

So what I— so, you know, it depends on the area. So it could be $15 to $25 an hour and then it could be $15 to $20 or $25 for setting the appointment that shows. That's the big thing.

Got to set the appointment that shows.

That shows. And then if they buy, then they get a bigger bump.

Okay. So what kind of bump would you give?

So I would double it at least.

Okay.

If not triple it.

So $25 an hour, $25 an appointment that shows, $25— double that if they buy.

$50 if they buy.

$50 if they buy. Yeah.

So then total of $75 for that appointment that shows and buys.

So what would that person make in a year? Like, what's the comp plan?

It could be $50,000, $60,000.

See, I tell doctors that and they're like, what? I just hired somebody for $15 an hour. I'm like, they're going to last 2 weeks and they're going to tank your business. Like, yeah, I'm like, I always say, like, the person who sets the appointment, $50,000, $60,000, $75,000 a year. I mean, I'd be happy to pay somebody $75,000 a year as an appointment setter.

Yeah. So that appointment setter, let's say they set 20 appointments a week or let's do on the conservative side, 10 appointments a week. And 5 of them turn into patients.

At an average rate of $5,000. Let's make it— Yeah.

$25,000 a week. And we're worried about paying that person $75,000 a year?

I'll do it all day long.

All day long.

Right. I think it's just hard because people, especially in the medical field, they don't see that person as, as skilled.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So talk about that.

Well, one, it's, it's the first person that's going to have contact with a prospect whose first impression of your business is that person and how they handle the call. Are they friendly? Are they outgoing? So if I were to hire somebody, I hire completely on personality. I don't care if they've had experience calling people before, setting appointments. That you can train.

I don't even care. I want them to know nothing about it.

Exactly. Early on in my— when I set up the appointment setting service, I called it a call center as well. So I hired a lot of existing call center employees. Disaster. Because they were trained by AT&T, Comcast.

Yep.

To handle complaints.

Yes.

Yes. And you read the script word for word.

Yeah.

There's no room for empathy or feeling or connecting with that prospect if you're reading words and not really listening to them. So I had to break them of that habit. And finally, now if they have a little bit of experience, that's okay. But preferably I want somebody that has a really nice voice and cares about people and wants to help people.

You've got to have great energy, cares about people. Yeah.

Yeah. And not afraid of rejection.

I, again, back to the ED clinic days, and I had about 5 different doctors that worked for us throughout the 3 clinics, and one of them was my main doctor. And he'd been with me for about 8 weeks. He comes in my office and he goes, I need to talk to you. I'm like, okay. And he goes, I want to be involved in training the front desk people and the salespeople. Okay, so why do you want to do that? And he goes, well, they don't know anything. And I go, what do you mean by they don't know anything? And he goes, well, they don't, you know, people are asking technical questions and I feel like they should be answering them. And I go, why should they answer them? He goes, well, you know, because people want to know. And I go, no, they don't. They're coming here for one reason. They want an erection so they can have sex. Like, that's the only reason why they're coming here. Like, was they can't get a hard-on? Now they got a hard-on. Like, that's about it. Like, this is a really simple business model. Like, they don't want to know the science. Like, it's they just tell them it's a vasodilator that it opens up the blood vessels. That's all they need to know.

Yeah.

It's like, well, they got to know like all the technical stuff, and I want them to spend a day with me. And I'm like, absolutely not. Hell no. You will screw the. And I think actually one of my managers at one of the locations. Actually, the doctor had the same conversation with him and he's like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I went in like 2 weeks later, I'm looking at it because I'd get daily numbers, right?

Oh yeah.

How many inbound calls? How many closes? How many shows? Right. And how many conversions?

I'm like, tanked.

Oh my God, did it tank. We went from like, we would book 50 appointments per week per location. Wow. 150 appointments a week. Of that, 70% would show.

Okay.

And of those that would show, 50% would buy. Okay. So we were doing like $225,000 a location per month.

All right.

This is like 8, 9 years ago. Okay. And all of a sudden this location went from 50 to 60 and they were doing really well, like 50 to 60 appointments a week. Then they went to like 40. And I'm sitting there and I'm going, hmm. Okay, we're gonna— an anomaly, right?

Yeah.

Don't overreact. I think the next week they booked 25.

Okay.

And their close rate was like 22%. And I'm like, what are you guys doing?

Yeah.

Oh, Doc had a really good idea, and I think it's really working. He decided, like, you know, he wanted to teach everybody, you know, teach the staff about what we do and the medicine and all that. And they're great. They're having a great— like, they're explaining things to people on the phone. I went, if you ever do that again, I'll fire both of you unceremoniously. I'm like, have you looked at your numbers? Like, Well, you know, I just figured it was a bad week. I'm like, you ever do that again?

Yeah. Well, I would, I would imagine if you listen to those calls, a lot of the people were probably going, oh, you know, let me think about that.

Yeah.

Because they're confused.

Well, they were talking about, we're going to put medication in your dick?

Or a shot?

I think sometimes they were saying it was a shot. Like, what guy?

Yeah. No, thank you.

I don't care. I don't care if they haven't had a hard-on in 5 years. Like, You know, like, no.

Yeah.

No.

Well, and that's, that's one of the mistakes as well, just in sales in general, is— and practitioners are famous for this as well because they love to share their knowledge with people. And that's awesome. Share your knowledge with people, just not in the sales conversation. That's the absolute worst place. After they buy, I tell them everything, you know, about it. But And I learned that the hard way. I had an advertisement at Kroger and it was on the shopping cart for my fitness business. And it was me with my shirt off after I—

Are you going to take your shirt off now?

No, I'm not going to do it. Okay. It was right before I did a bodybuilding show. So I was just ripped, you know, and I was like, oh yeah, people are going to be like, really want to come and see and work out with me because I'm ripped. And it cost me $9,000 for this ad campaign. And I got zero off of it because I talked all about the benefits. I'm sorry, not the benefits, the features. It was like 24/7 access, plenty of parking, new Cybex equipment, like workouts, you know, unlimited workouts. Nobody wants to work out.

No, people want to have a donut and a cup of coffee and they want to get in shape.

Yeah, they want to feel better. They want to lose some weight. They want a result. Not— they don't want the process and they don't want to know the process. And I tell this to the fitness people that I work with as well, that they take people into the studio, they give them a free session, let them experience the work. Oh, they need to experience a workout. And I was like, I had sales consultations where I sold 18-month programs and they never saw the fitness floor.

Well, okay, so that's Amy Duffy.

Yeah.

I mean, Amy Duffy's model is webinar.

Yeah, right.

She's going to be on the podcast soon.

Good.

Webinar.

Yeah.

To a free discovery call.

Yep.

On that discovery call, she sells a lab package, $2,500.

Yep.

They get the lab results back. They get back on a webinar, back on a Zoom call, I should say, with the person that's sold them the $2,500 thing. Amy's done like the analysis of what package they should have.

Yeah.

And, or her PA, and they sell a $15,000 package all on Zoom. They've never walked into the facility. Yeah. Now you're involved with her, right?

Yes.

So, so you tell me, how do you— what role do you play in all of that?

So we help her with her webinar funnel and setting the appointments. So most webinars, you're going to advertise a webinar, you get all these leads from Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and you have the automation set up, send emails, send text messages, whatever, and you'll get a 20% show rate on the webinar. We add in a warm phone call to everybody who registers. And we, we have a little secret question that we ask, and I'm going to share that with everybody. And that is, what would you like the doctor to talk about on the webinar? Or do you have any specific questions that you'd like to have addressed on the webinar?

Brilliant.

Gets them involved. They're now like, oh yeah, well, usually they say no, you know, that inflammation and belly fat, that's exactly what I want to learn about, or menopause or whatever.

Right.

And great. Awesome. What that question does, it gets them involved in the webinar so they're more likely to show up.

So what kind of show rate do you have?

35 to 45, sometimes 50%. She had a webinar yesterday. I think there were 400 registrants, 186 showed, 56 took action.

Jesus.

She could— and many of those that took action, meaning they hit the button to schedule a call from the webinar, we don't know if they scheduled because it blew up their scheduling. They couldn't fit any more people in there. They only got like 30 of the 50 people that wanted appointments.

Wow.

To schedule because they completely maxed out. So what we do then on the back end of every webinar that we work on for anybody is then we'll call everybody who attended the webinar and we'll ask a customer service question. What did you like best about the webinar? One, did you watch it? And 2, what do you like best about it? So it gets them in that positive frame of mind about the webinar. And then we go into, oh, by the way, I'm not sure if you saw this, but Dr. Duffy was offering a free discovery call to get your questions answered. I can go ahead and get that scheduled for you now. Do you like mornings or afternoons? And then we book them in for another consultation. That adds another 10 to 15% booking rate. Plus anybody that got to the scheduling page and then got distracted, they didn't— right, right. We're going to hit them.

They started crying.

Yeah, yeah. We're going to hit them.

I'm sure you have people say, well, I don't want to be that pushy.

Yes, all the time.

Okay, so what do you say about that?

Well, first of all, it's— I take a Dan Kennedy quote from that.

If you're not— Did you go through a lot of Dan's stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan was great.

Great.

Yeah, he was the most chauvinistic. Oh, like, yeah, it'd be a room of like 99% of it would be like guys.

Yeah.

And like the 1% of women there were just like alpha males, or they just got dragged along. Alpha females, but they just got— or they just got dragged along.

Yeah.

But Dan was brilliant. I learned so much from Dan. We'll talk about that.

Yeah. No nonsense guy. Just like, no BS.

Just boom.

Yeah. Not, not a great personality, but—

No, I mean, I was in private client group and he treated me like, you know, like I was toilet paper on the back of his shoe. But I made a lot of money from him. Yeah. Spent a quarter of a million dollars. I, I probably made like $20 million off of what he taught me. So if not more, I mean, way more than that now.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So he says, if you're not pissing off at least one person a day with your marketing, you're not marketing enough.

Right.

Yeah. And when, when I, when I hear some practitioners, they, they come in— I actually had this last week— practitioner comes and says, Tom, you got to stop your phone calls to the post-webinar people. I got a 1-star Yelp review. Okay.

It's amazing. I, I had somebody where people are complaining. How many? Well, I don't know, but the front desk says people are complaining. Yeah, it's one person.

One person.

Yeah.

And so I had to do the math for her. Like, okay, so one person complained. You have 13,000 people in your database right now. So 1 divided by, or 18,000 divided by 1 is what?

0.000007%.

Is that a problem? Are you gonna— and the rest of the review was like, the first part of the review was, you know, it was all like just to get you onto a sales call and I could see through this. And, you know, you can always tell those 1-star reviews that are like 20 paragraphs.

Mm-hmm.

That it's, you know, somebody just That, right, they didn't like me. And like the fourth paragraph, and they called me 35 times. I'm like, one, I don't have the resources to call everybody 35 times in a week.

Yeah.

I mean, could you imagine the number of appointments we'd have? Maybe you should do that. Yeah, maybe. But it's like, one person complains, you're going to change everything about your practice and potentially not help a ton more people because one person complained.

Yeah.

Even if you say, well, yeah, one person is vocal, but 10 people are also disliking it, but they're not vocal about it. Okay, multiply that by 10. 10 people out of 13,000.

Well, and that shows that you're actually doing something right. And I think that's so hard. I know that's so hard, especially, you know, doctors are— they're healers. Right?

Empaths.

They're empaths. Oh my gosh.

They feel everything. Right? Yeah.

And, uh, well, unless— and then in some cases their heart's been cut out of them, right, in residency. And so they're just in their mind the whole time. But if we can get them— if we can get that heart reattached. Um, but yeah, um, they— it's like that one little— they don't want anything to ever go wrong.

Right, right.

Their whole training is don't fuck up. Yeah.

Don't kill anybody.

Yeah, if you screw up, somebody dies, right? Right. Which, you know, at least that doesn't happen in your business.

In my business, no, you haven't killed anybody. No, not that I know of.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, maybe a small heart attack when I dropped the price, but other than that, nobody's died.

Yeah. So you're calling, and I mean, this is what you do. You work primarily with doctors. Yep. Practitioners. Work with some dentists as well. Yep.

Right. Lawyers too.

Lawyers, they're an interesting crowd.

Yeah.

But I mean, this is— that's it. Like, you just are— this is all you do is help people. Would you say that you also are helping people just kind of break through their belief systems about sales and money?

100%.

Yeah. All right, so talk about that.

So I, I had to do that work on myself in terms of getting over my own mindset of what a salesperson is. Okay.

And what did you believe that that salesperson was?

Sleazy, out to get you, and to be fought.

I'm looking over your shoulder at Christine because she started working for me just over a year ago. And I'm like, I looked at her, I'm like, she's a natural salesperson. And she's over there nodding. You're nodding your head, aren't you? That's exactly right.

Yeah. And do you know where I got that from?

Where?

Mom and Dad.

Yeah.

They, you know, going in to buy a car, it was like going into battle.

Yeah. For my father. Yeah.

He was like, did his research, you know, made sure that he wasn't going to get screwed out of anything, had his number. He's ready to walk away and go in, go in for battle. And I was like, yeah, yeah, let's go. Let's win. And I was like, now I look back, I'm like, boy, that's so one-sided in terms of they're just here to help us. There doesn't need to be like this back and forth and this whole like one, it's a zero-sum game.

Right.

That a lot of these salespeople and people in general think that sales is all about. And so I had to overcome that. In fact, I had this experience where I wanted to help the family out. You know, we didn't have a lot of money growing up and, you know, we had enough for what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted. So we had these old steak knives and they were just, the wooden handles and the rivets were coming out and they weren't that great. But I saw this ad in the local paper that said, get a free set of steak knives.

Did you just sell for Cutco?

I, well, that I did, yes. But that was years later. But this was a free set of steak knives if you come in, if you invite us over for a demonstration. So I called it up and I said, yeah, we'd like to have you come over for a demonstration and do all this. I'm surprised that they didn't ask me like how old I was on the phone. How old were you? I mean, 10, 11, something like that. Maybe 12. But, you know, they're like, yeah, I'm setting up this appointment. They must have thought I was like the dad or whatever. And so the guy shows up and I told my mom and dad, I was like, hey, we have a special visitor tonight, so just be prepared. Okay, that's weird. What's it all about? Oh, you'll see, you'll see. I have a special surprise for you guys. And so this guy shows up with his vacuum cleaner. He's a Hoover sales guy. And my dad just looks at me. I remember that look. I was like, ooh, I'm in trouble now. Because he is gracious. My parents are very gracious. So they invite him in and, mm-hmm. But I could just, I just could tell Dad was just like, this is not good.

I don't want to spend the next 45 minutes with this guy.

And, you know, he, the sales guy puts dirt onto the floor and vacuums it up. So there's one clean spot on the floor. And my mom's sort of, oh. And Cleans one of the cushions on the, on the sofa as well. Like, look how good this cleans. And the other one's dirty. And then we end and, you know, and I was like, okay, where are our steak knives? He's like, oh yeah, here are your steak knives. So we got steak knives out of it.

There you go.

But, you know, I was in trouble. I was grounded for a week.

That's a great way for you to think about sales. You were grounded for a week. So now you've got it that they're sleazy, they take advantage of people.

Yeah. And I don't want to disappoint mom and dad either and not have them be proud of me for being a salesperson.

So how did that programming— how did that hurt you when you started your fitness facility?

Well, 6 months I almost went broke. Yeah, because I didn't want to push, I didn't want to pry, I didn't want to do all this stuff.

So what got you over it?

Well, it was the coaching. So the mindset.

Yeah, but I mean, like, what was it about the mindset that got you? Like, like, what, what was the thing that you kind of Worked through that first sale.

That first sale.

The first sale of $5,500, which was 12 years ago, 13 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's like 10 grand a day.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a, it was like a switch. You just flipped. After that, I had a 95% close rate. Every time that somebody came into the office, my staff was like, oh, they're in for it now. Like they'd see somebody go in, they're like, oh, we got a new client. I say, hey, I haven't even printed the contract yet. Come on, guys. And then 5 minutes later I'd be out and printing the contract. They're like, yeah, go time. And the business, I quadrupled the business in that first year, year over year.

You know, I find we do a whole session on money. Yeah, we do. You know, we do quarterly sessions in Q2 and year 1. We do a whole segment of the new wealth, the new story of wealth.

Good.

And one of the things we, we've noticed, and I've, so I've worked with doctors 10 years, right? Since 2014. So 10, 11 years.

Good.

And the thing that I've noticed is they haven't— I've never been around a group that has such aversion to talking about money. Now, there are some exceptions, like Dr. Tracy Gappin. He's not normal, right? Right. Like, I'm like, how did you make it through med school? Not 'cause you're stupid, but like, you should have been an MBA. Like, you know, I, I mean, he's a great sales guy. He's a phenomenal sales guy. Yeah. He's— I'm interviewing him 2 days from now as well.

Awesome.

So, uh, it's like the Tom Jacobs Show, right? That's right. Just kick the— and I was supposed to interview Amy and she canceled, uh, 'cause she has a flight issue. But you, like, when we talk about this new story of wealth, what we do is we talk to them first and foremost about what you can do with your money.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Because I think that there is a natural belief that if you have money, you're evil.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

The root of all evil.

Money is the root of all evil, which is bullshit.

Yeah.

Right. That's not really like, I'm pretty sure that's not what it says. Right. It's the love of money.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's the root of all evil.

Yeah.

And what we find is they are, the doctors are so locked in about this belief system that they're not to ever talk money with the patient. Like it's some kind of taboo. And like if we can get them, we start talking about what you can do with the money. Now we have doctors that charge $15,000 for a back PRP, back beam back, the whole thing. But they take some, a portion of the profits and they help people that are less fortunate in their market to have that same procedure. And they pay and they, They do it for, from, for free because they've made so much doing the other ones.

Yeah.

Right. So what do you like when you just in general, in your, your long-term, you've been an entrepreneur for 15 years, you know, you've coached people. Talk to me about that money block of like how people, how that hinders people. What are some ways that you help people get through that?

I, you know, I still struggle with it, so it's, it's hard for me to sometimes to help other people 'cause then, then I have that whole mindset as well.

It's like, really?

Yeah, it's still a struggle. It's weird. And I constantly work on it. I was actually at a seminar a year and a half ago, and the facilitator had us break out into groups, 2, 2, or in pairs. And we were— one person would observe while the other person talked to money. And so he had us have a conversation with money. How do we feel about money?

Really?

And it was really interesting because it was like, You know, I love you, money, but when I love you too much, you run away. When, you know, it's like I'm always chasing money.

That's interesting.

Yeah. And so that whole realization, then I was like, oh, what am I doing subconsciously to spend more money? When I make money, I spend money.

Yep.

And how, how is that? Where did that come from, number one? And how can I change that? And, and find money as a resource, not as a controlling of, of me. And so I think that's the, the key is when I'm talking to people about raising their rates, charging what you're worth, they're like, oh, but my market won't pay that. I say, well, such BS. Yeah. What's, what's easier, selling a $97 product to 100 people or a $10,000 product to one person?

Yeah.

Well, I don't know. I've never sold a $10,000 product. Well, let's try it out.

Never mind the constraint of trying to service 97 or 100 people at $97 a pop.

Exactly.

Because you don't have the space and the bandwidth to be able to do that.

And to provide a value of $97 to them.

Or to provide an outcome.

Yeah. But if you're working with one person one-on-one, $10,000, you're gonna do a lot for that person.

Yeah.

Not only that, now you can take that $10,000 and help a lot more people. Yeah. Whether that's through your charitable giving, your, you know, providing services for people at a discounted rate, whatever that might happen to be. But you can't do that if you're just scraping by.

You know, we do this whole thing where we talk about what if you viewed money as the divine feminine? Okay. And it really is like you were just talking about it, like when you spend a lot of money, you feel like money leaves you, right? Well, if money is energy, right? I mean, I know you're single and everything, and, you know, as I always say, you probably shouldn't take marriage advice from me. 2 divorces. Um, but I have learned a few things, right? I've learned one or two things along the way.

Good.

But like, if you think— because I've struggled with money too, right? Like, I grew up in an Irish Catholic family from Chicago. I mean, you know, my dad was a lawyer, but he had his own law firm. It's not like we were And he died when I was young. And, you know, my mom had to go back to work like she was— there was no life insurance, right? And so I always watched my mom really struggle and just have this really effed up relationship with money and like being angry at it all the time.

Yep.

But what if you had— yeah, what if you had— what if you had an energetic relationship that instead of chasing money, you were that lighthouse for money to come to you?

Yeah.

Right. So I see you smiling.

What—

why does that make you smile?

Well, because, you know, we think about sales as you know, that, that magnet that if everything just went completely wrong with life and my business and everything like that, I still have that one skill that I know I can transfer to anything.

Yeah, you'll never go— you'll never go hungry.

I'll never go hungry. Yeah, when you have that skill of sales and, and, and that relationship then with money and opening up and saying, you know, money comes, money goes, No, no biggie. I can always make more.

Right, right. But that always make more, though, it almost treats it like— this is not the greatest analogy in the world, but I'm going to use it. If you treat— I have found, because I have that belief, I can always go make more.

Sure.

It's kind of like being single going, so that didn't work out, even though I really liked her. I can always go find somebody else.

Right.

Versus how do you create that environment Where the money feels safe. Not safe from a standpoint I'm investing it in T-bills, right? Right. You know what I mean?

Safe coming to you, right? Yeah.

Like, because money is energy. That's all it is, right? It's a lot easier when you have it.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's—

yeah, you know, not having money is like just finishing a 4-day bender in Las Vegas where you slept 3 hours a night and you're hungover, right? Having money is like being at the Ritz-Carlton and I don't have to worry, care, right? So that, like, to me, money is— I think this block around money is one of the things that holds people back the most.

Yeah.

And I don't care if it's doctors, I don't care, because so many people have such a horrible relationship with money and they have a horrible programming of money.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Have you done anything like, like books that you've read or anything like that? Or like Yeah, to get through that, like, mostly like investment books, but like, it's really—

I feel like I need to go deep inside and just do that deep work to figure out where the block is actually coming from.

So how do you do that? How do you do that? How does Tom Jacobs do that?

I do a lot of meditation. So in my medit— and it's not the traditional, but after I work out—

I mean, you have the haircut for doing that.

Well, exactly. And I have a little bowl where I collect vibrations.

Hey man, you know, we were in, we were just in, uh, Christina and I were just in Mount Shasta a couple weekends ago, right? Which is Northern California. It's like an energetic portal, right? So we go to Mount Shasta and we go into this sound bowl place. So you'll love this. You know the sound bowls I'm talking about, right?

Yeah, yeah, I have one at home. Okay.

It's like buying a custom suit. Like, she's like, oh yeah, she's got this awesome place.

What frequency do you need?

Yeah, you, it's like, I'm how long? So if I want to get my own set of sound bowls, she's like, it's 4 to 8 hours. And I go, how much will I spend? She goes, anywhere between what, $3,000 to $7,000, $3,000 to $7,000 a bowl. And I go, how many bowls will I have? She goes, 5 to 6, depending on what it is. I'm like, I'm gonna drop, I'm gonna drop what, like $35,000, $40,000 in the bowls? And she's like, yeah, people do it all the time. I'm like, God bless you. That is awesome.

It's amazing. Right?

It's like buying a custom-made suit. At the end you're like, I guess I'm gonna spend 35 Gs on the bowls, right? Like, I can't—

Wear them every day.

No shit, right? It's like when I bought a set of custom clubs and I finally did the whole fitting thing and I dropped like $15,000 on a set of golf clubs. Yeah, I better go play more golf.

Yeah.

But like that, that, you know, this whole thing of around money and like, I think that it just hurts people so badly because they just, they, they look at it through their own wiring.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. And it gives a, there's an upper limit then.

Okay, talk to me about that.

You'll make a certain amount and be like, okay, that's cool. And then you'll stop because there's like, I shouldn't make more than $200,000 a year or whatever that internal limit is.

And then you approach that and then you hit the ceiling and then you go back down, go back, hit the ceiling, go back down. I had this conversation with Trev Buccieri, client of mine. He's in one of the podcast interviews and we were having this exact same conversation. So he had gyms, he had like 6 gyms.

Okay.

And then the pandemic hit and he's like, pre-pandemic I made just shy of $1 million. That was more than I've ever made, like ever made in my life. He goes, within like 2 years I was making whatever, $100,000. Like he, like the whole, the rubber band just snapped.

Yeah.

So what's, so how do you break through that limit then? How have you broken through that limit? I know you say you meditate, but like give me an example of how you've broken through that limit personally.

I don't know if I've kind of done the deep work necessary to sustain that because it— the limit keeps changing for me.

Okay.

And then you're like—

So you'll be at $150 grand, let's say, and then you push the limit to $250, right?

And then it'll, it'll come back down. Okay. Like, why is it coming back down? Oh, I have that relationship with money. So it's that realization and seeing the pattern. I think that's the first step. And with any problem, right, you got to recognize the problem. Yeah. And recognize the pattern.

There's a pattern. There's a problem and a pattern. Yeah, right. Their pattern is very, is very, once you look at it, it's very clear.

Exactly.

Okay.

And now that, so I have a recognition now and I have a knowledge now that there is a problem and I see the pattern. And so now it's when I see that approaching, it's like, okay, we're going to keep letting it go. Let's keep that lighthouse. I like that analogy or the magnet. Let's keep that magnet alive. Let's keep it alive. Let's not focus on that number so much and let's focus on what it takes to fulfill those clients and give the value for that money that's coming in. Maybe there's some imposter syndrome. They're like, oh, I don't deserve that.

I think we all have imposter syndrome. Yeah, I think everybody has an imposter. I mean, maybe— okay, so maybe like Larry Ellison at Oracle doesn't have an imposter syndrome anymore, anymore at $500 billion, right? Yeah. Or whatever he's worth now.

Or—

but I think everybody has an imposter syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so you got— let's say you get— you've managed big sales teams, or like sales teams, people. Okay, so let's talk about this because I find this fascinating. You have somebody that's killing it, right? Salesperson that's killing it.

Yeah.

And then they're not.

Yeah.

What's going on there? Why does it— is that part of it? Do they have the imposter syndrome?

It's not imposter, it's lazy. I, I, I consider it laziness. Okay. Or, or what do you mean by that? Resting on our laurels.

Okay.

So we— it's like, oh, and it's happened to me.

I got it fucking figured out.

Yeah. Oh, oh, I got— I had 100% close rate this last month. Like, you get on the call, you don't do everything that you're supposed to do to make sure that that call goes perfectly. You don't do the pre-work. You're like, I can just wake up in the morning and just get right on that call. If I wake up 5 minutes before the call, I can just hop on Zoom and everything's going to be great.

Hmm.

Well, it's not because you haven't done your research. You haven't looked at that, what that person's issues are. You haven't devised a strategy for that call. And then when you're on the call, you just go through the motions, or you're like, you know what, I don't need to do that whole part, that mirroring part of the script. I don't need to do that.

That doesn't really— yeah, I can, I can cut this down in like 20 minutes and go watch my fantasy football.

Exactly. Is that— I got an appointment here I gotta go to, or whatever, and they're like rushing through it versus sticking to the basics. A lot of that too, like It's boredom. You know, sales is a process. When you follow the same process over and over again, you might get a little bored with it.

Well, and you generally hire people that like peaks or just peaks and valleys in general, right?

Yeah.

That's me, right? Like, I'm a very good salesperson, right? But I'll have my peaks and valleys.

Yeah.

Because I get bored.

Yeah.

Or I don't want to do the— I, you know, and I, I consider myself pretty disciplined, right?

Yeah.

But then in that case, I'm like, like, Fuck off.

You go off the rails a little bit. But, and, and what's really critical, and I see this as a problem for a lot of salespeople, they don't track their sales. They don't have really good metrics. And I think that's what got me to the level of sales that I got to, is because I tracked meticulously every conversion point. And I went back at the end of every week to look at my numbers. Where, where did I miss? Where can I improve? And that kept me, you know, when I saw that pattern of, oh, you know what, I'm not going through the whole process. That's why my close rate went down that last week. Let's reset, go back into it.

How much— how important is it from a selling standpoint to have the person or the thing that you are selling be viewed as the authority in that market?

The thing itself that you're selling, I don't think is important.

Okay.

You're selling the transformation.

Tell me about that.

So the person comes into you, they have a problem, you have a solution. They don't really care what the solution is. They care, are you gonna fix my problem? Are you sure?

Are you sure you and I weren't separated at birth? I mean, aside from the fact that, you know, I have hair and you don't. Well, right. I have more hair than you, but I'm still, you know, struggling with it. Like, I swear to God, folks, like, he did not read like the Gillogly Manifesto on like how to do this shit.

Okay? Like, but yeah, I mean, I learned that the hard way. People want a result. They don't care.

They don't give a shit what's in the black box.

I mean, I could have told, like, I could have sold people our fitness program will, you know, you'll lose 20 pounds in 12 weeks. Great. What do I have to do for it? Oh, you have to stand on your head for 30 minutes and that's it. Like, and that's, or you have to do burpees for 30 minutes, whatever. It doesn't matter.

I'm not doing burpees for 30 minutes.

I wouldn't either. It doesn't matter what it does. Does it get the result that they want?

Yeah.

If it does, they'll sign up.

I tell our doctors all the time, your patient is coming in. Here they are. They're in pain and they want to walk out of your office and they're not in pain.

Yeah.

And in order for them to do that, they have to go into this black box. Now, the prospect doesn't care what's in the black box. They don't care if it's shamans, unicorns, midgets, pixie dust. PRP, BMAC, whatever. Yeah, they just want to go into the black box, and when they come out of the black box, they want to be pain-free. Yeah, right, quote unquote. I'm putting air quotes around pain-free because somebody's gonna be like, you can't guarantee they're gonna be pain-free, right?

They want to be fixed.

Yeah, they want to go for a transformation. They want to go from an 8 in pain to a 4 in pain. I mean, that's a massive shift for a lot of people.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. And I just see them all the time talking about, droning on about the machine and the hertz and the cell counts and Like nobody cares.

Yeah.

No one cares.

Yeah. But see, I like when doctors use the lab results.

Oh, I love that.

Which is great for Dr. Duffy and the sales process because now you have empirical proof what's going on with that person in labs. And now you can say, these are the problems that we are going to fix. And like, you know, some of them, you know, these are the first 3 problems that we're going to fix. And this is all we're going to work on are these 3 problems. And you just go through those problems with them and they're like, great, yeah, let's do it. I want to fix those 3 problems. How much is it? $12,000? Great.

Yeah. Yeah. And then when you bring them back in 6 months later and you show them the progress, like, I think the best tool you can have in the functional medicine space is the InBody.

Oh yeah.

Right. I have one in my house.

Like, get on it every morning.

Uh, body fat's off 1.1% today, right?

Oh no, I gotta go to the gym.

No, no bread for me today, right? Yeah. It's like Give me some extra creatine and no bread.

Right.

So like, but when you get on that machine, you can show them those results of what they're doing. That's to me the greatest, like in the functional medicine space, longevity, having a tool like that is gold.

Yeah.

Because you can show the progress of how their, their body is changing and confirm their bias of what they think they're seeing.

Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest frustrations I had in the fitness industry was Doing those weigh-ins with clients, or they were— they would weigh themselves, not doing the body fat comp. Because I always did body fat comp with them, never really relied on the scale weight, because we all know that if you're losing fat and gaining muscle, you're not gonna lose weight.

Yeah.

You might even gain some weight. And I had lots of women that were— I had this one woman, a client for like 10 years, and we did like— she went, I really want to concentrate for these next 12 weeks and do all this. And for the first 6 weeks, her, you know, we did the weigh-ins and this one weigh-in, it went up a pound and she just burst into tears. She's like, oh, this is not working. I was like, but how are your, how are your clothes fitting? Oh, they're super loose. And like, yes. Does it matter what the scale says or how things are fitting and how are you feeling? And that got her over it. But yeah, when people are, the weight itself, they don't know, like, is it actually working? And so you need all those data points to help them realize that the results are actually happening. Yeah.

I find the psychology of sales and marketing and the process of sales and marketing to be one of the most fascinating things in the world. Isn't it?

Me too.

Yeah.

Like human behavior.

Isn't it fascinating?

So interesting.

Humans are such— they're so predictable.

Yes.

And they are so fascinating.

Yeah.

Aren't they? Yeah. Like, do you watch politics? I know you don't live in the country anymore, but do you watch like politics and stuff like that differently now?

A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I look at it from a sales point of view, but I also like to go to events where they're selling something. Yeah. As well, just to see and observe and see if I can pick up anything. I actually had the, the opportunity to see Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street, in person in London. And it was a 3-hour event where he was pitching his point, Turning Point or whatever. I forget what the name of this program was. And it was the most awful sales pitch I'd ever seen. And I was—

Really?

I was so excited to see this. And I was like so disappointed because he completely effed it up. It was un— he went— it was so awkward. Like he would do his teaching and then at the end people You know, started leaving because, oh, it's over. Kind of over because he went into the pitch really awkwardly and people started leaving. And he was like, wait, this is the best part, guys. Why are you leaving?

Desperate.

Desperate.

I hate it when salespeople get desperate.

Yeah. I mean, he's still like, I don't know, probably 100 people still bought his program. He still made $20 grand that day, but I'm sure he's wishing for a $2 million payoff with 3,000 people in the audience. Wow!

I learned so much from Kennedy about front of the room sales pitch. Yeah, like I mean I learned from him. Do you remember Ted Thomas? No. Okay, so you when were you in planet Dan Kennedy as we like to call? When did you start following Dan?

Like in 2009, 2019.

Yeah, so Ted Ted was this old school guy that did like pre-foreclosures and tax liens. Okay, he was real like he was really sleazy. Yeah, and I've known Ted since like. God, I've known Ted forever. And I learned from Ted. I learned from Bill Glazer. I learned from Dan Kennedy.

Yeah.

I learned from Dave D, front of the room pitch. Like, Dave and I came up through the program at the same time. And I got— I'm really good at— I'm really good in front of a room. Like, I've learned from the best, right? And I remember Dan. I remember Dan eviscerating me at a mastermind, right? So we're in his basement in Medina. Ohio, having that shitty tuna salad and the fucking cutout tomato that was just awful. It's just the worst food ever in my life. You pay $25,000 a year and he's— it's like, it's like some guy with 2 missing 2 fingers from the VFW hall was making lunch. I mean, it was just, it was awful. Fried sauerkraut balls with like French's mustard. Like it was just, oh my God, it was just awful. It was like, guys, like first event I'm at, guys like had their own food. I'm like, why are you bringing your own food? I'm like, oh, you'll see.

You'll see.

It's like it was just so bad. So anyway, so I learned from these guys and I'm in Mastermind and I had sent an audio of my recording to Dan and he goes, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about it at Mastermind. Okay. And I go, so did you listen to it? He goes, no. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, I couldn't get through it. It was so bad.

Nice.

And the thing I learned from what I've learned from selling in front of the room is presence and confidence is everything. And if you miss a step, I go, why don't you continue to listen to it? He goes, because you fucked up the setup. Because he didn't swear. He would swear occasionally, right?

Yeah.

But he's like, you totally screwed up the first 10 minutes. You lost half of the room.

Wow. Yeah. And I was like, okay.

And then Ted Thomas started teaching me, and Ted would sit me down. Ted is this old gravelly guy. All right, what are you gonna do is you're gonna get on a plane, you're gonna come down to Orlando, Florida, and we're gonna write down here. You're gonna meet in your hotel room and we're gonna break down. And we would— he would hit play and he goes, what you're gonna do is I'm gonna stop, I'll hit pause, and you'll say— I'll ask, is there anything there that you would change? If you say no, I'm gonna hit play, we're gonna keep going. If you wanna know my point, what you do is say, Ted, I'd like to know what you would do. And then I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. And then like, then, you know, we'll, we'll talk about it and then we'll go forward. And he kept hitting pause like every like minute and a half.

Oh, wow.

Every minute and a half. I still have the recordings to this day.

Oh, wow.

It's the, the best 4 hours. Like I did it like 4 times with him, like 4 hours, like just pure poetry in motion. He broke down every segment of my freaking pitch that I became so good in front of the room. It wasn't even funny.

Yeah.

And I, what I'm, what reason why I'm sharing the story is like, Well, you paid a lot of money to be around Dan, right?

My— the owner of the business did. I did not.

Right. Like, but you invested a ton of money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it was personal development stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it was worth every single penny. Like, I learned so much from those guys. Yeah. You know, you had to get past that. They were kind of, you know, a little odd, you know, crusty. Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. Who are some of your favorite folks that you learned from? Let you— who are some of your, your top mentors that you've learned from?

So my, my business coach from the NPD days, Camille Ruth, she's been my coach to this day. So over 15 years that we've known each other, great friends. So her and her pragmatic approach to selling and just coaching in general has been absolutely phenomenal and life-changing. When I started doing speaking, from the stage and selling from the stage. The, the first event was in Loughborough, England, and I had 60 fitness people in front of me. Did my whole like sales pitch, gave them everything, I handed out the forms.

Crickets.

Walked— yeah, exactly. Zero sales.

Oh God.

The, the owner of the business, he was like, Tom, what's going on? I, I flew you all the way out here to London and you can't even fucking close a you know, adore.

I'm like, oh. How to make a grown man cry.

Exactly. He did. Actually, I did cry that day. Not in front of him. So he said, we're gonna fix this. So he set me up with Dan Bradbury.

Oh yeah.

And so I had an afternoon with Dan. I've, you know, drove up to, you know, he's this outer, you know, outside of London, like a couple hours. Sat down with him for 4 hours. And it was, In the morning I saw him do an event and then in the afternoon, then we— he worked one-on-one with me through my presentation and it was like night and day. I was like, oh, I was giving away way too much stuff. And then the close was a little awkward. The next day I had another event, had only 11 buyers in the room for a small event, sold every single one of them $35,000 that day.

Isn't that amazing?

Amazing.

It's like the greatest feeling in the world.

It is.

Yeah, it's about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.

Right, exactly right. And, and to know that it just— it, it felt great. They are going to benefit from the coaching and the program that they bought, the people that bought it. It was just— it was wonderful. It was so great.

And I think that's something I want people to really get, is like, they're gonna benefit. Like, for every patient that doesn't buy, you're actually hurting our country.

Yes. Yes.

Right.

Well, I tell people that all the time. I was like, you have a duty and obligation to sell that patient or that prospect into your program, because what's going to happen to them if they don't? They're going to go out, they're not going to do anything, and they're going to die early. And it's going to be your fault. You just killed somebody.

Yep.

And you're not supposed to do that.

I believe we can save $4 trillion in healthcare expenses over the next 10 years. I've done the math.

Okay.

I believe we can save $4 trillion in healthcare expenses in the United States alone by raising up a generation of doctors that don't participate in the insurance scam.

100%.

But they need your skills.

Yeah.

So if somebody doesn't want to learn, like, because you do all this, you do a lot of done for them, right? Like you do—

Done with. For the sales coaching, do done with.

Okay.

Obviously, because they need to be doing the sales or their staff needs to be doing the sales as well. But we'd also have the appointment setting service as well as a done-for-you.

So what are you working on now? What's— you said you were working on a book, like what's— so you have a book now, right?

You have a book now. Heart-Centered Selling with Heart.

Selling with Heart.

And thank you.

Thank you for shipping one to the house. I didn't get a chance to read it yet because I'm never at the house.

Okay. No worries. And it's, it's an acronym. HEART is an acronym. So it's H period, E period, A period.

What's the acronym stand for?

Hugs, Engage, Ask, refer, testimonial. And those are the 5 steps. And you think referrals and testimonials, how's that in the sales process? Absolutely.

It's in the sales process. Yeah. Yeah.

Now you don't ask for a referral at the time of sale. That's like caveat number one.

I did that.

Oh, fucking hate that. You'll see my story in the book. It's quite funny. And then the testimonial you get at the same time as a referral, but the hugs is the rapport building. Engage is the questioning, the mirroring, and the presentation of your solution. And the ask is them asking you how to enroll in the program, not you asking them.

Why is that so important?

If you do the, the H and the E right, the engage, you ask the right questions. And this is where a lot of people fail, is they aren't asking questions or making statements to people what their problem You need to ask them so that they realize that they have a problem and they verbalize that problem. A lot of times this will be the first time that they verbalize what their problem is to somebody and it'll become emotional.

Right.

And that's where you want it. You want them to get to an emotional state. And once you do that and then you present them with your solution and you connect the dots, and this is the critical piece in that people mess up all the time. They have their presentation. It's a rote presentation. They do it for everybody. It's not going to cut it. You have to connect your solution to their problem specifically. Remember when you told me that you had this problem with that? Yeah, this part of my program is going to fix that. Can you see that working for you? Yeah, absolutely. Next problem fixed. Next problem fixed. So what do you think? Is that the approach you're looking for? Yeah, here's my credit card.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the way it should work, right?

Like, right?

Yeah, they were sold When you were asking the questions.

The power of the question is what leads to the sale. Absolutely right.

Yep.

And if you can ask more questions during the sales process, more likely or not, you're going to get the sale.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 80% of that conversation should be them talking, not the salesperson.

Absolutely.

Yeah. The presentation should be 5 minutes. People like, no, I need a lot more time to explain my whole— oh no, don't, don't explain anything.

No more than 5 words on a slide.

That's right.

Like No pictures of cells.

Yeah.

No, no, no machines.

No machines. No, we're gonna fix that knee.

No Nibbus 2000s. Yeah, we're no, we're not doing any of that stuff.

Yeah. Oh God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's, that's the first book. So, so you're working on the second one, right?

And now I'm working on my second one. It's a follow-up to Selling with Heart. It's a business fable book. So think about, you know, uh, The Go-Giver.

Mm-hmm.

The—

Love The Go-Giver.

Or, um, any one of those who've moved—

Who Moved My Cheese. Who Moved My Cheese. One Minute Manager.

Yep. So it's that type of a—

Little, yeah.

Guide.

So when is that gonna be out?

Good question. Uh, it is fully written. I'm going through the editing process right now. So I'm, I'm hoping end of the year, beginning of the, of 2026 to have a good full rollout of that book.

Oh, oh, you're, you're gonna beat me out cuz I just finished my manuscript on my book.

So, okay.

On Sunday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah.

All right.

Now we're in editing phase.

You know what? I think the editing phase is the hardest part. Yes, absolutely.

It's my 3rd book. It's, it's gets, it doesn't get any easier.

Oh, great. Good to know.

Yeah. No, because you get, you know, you just, you want to make, you now, you know how to make it better. Yeah. Right.

And I've actually fallen in love with this, but I've cried several times, like reading the words on the page because it just brings back a lot of those emotions that I had when I was Doing my fitness business and failing because I wasn't helping people. I was like, ah, I really hope this touches people at a level where they want to make a change and allow sales to be a part of their life.

Yeah. Yeah. And sales is such an important part, right? You can be the greatest doctor in the world, but if you don't know, if you don't have a team around you, and it's not that they have to learn how to do it themselves, right? Right. But they've got to learn how to develop that team. I forgot to ask you, what do you pay salespeople? What do you tell your doctors that they should pay? Not the person who's setting the appointment, but the one who's doing the closing.

So commission-based and offer levels. So it could— it depends on how the leads are coming in. If, you know, and it should be anywhere between 8% to 14%, right? Just depending on like volume, where the lead— are you paying for the leads? Are they getting leads? Like that, that becomes very important as well. But let's say, just say 10% commission. And then just a small base. Yeah, yeah, cool. Like a $40,000 a year, $50,000 a year base. Yeah, just enough to get in. And, and really, if you ask the salesperson what they want base to be and they say, I don't want a base, I want to be fully commissioned, hire them straight away.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

I would always— now if I were to get a sales job, I was like, don't pay me a base, I want 100% commission. And I want— well, not 100%, right?

Right.

I want my pay to be 100% based on commission, and I want that commission to be higher because I'm not taking a base.

Right.

And then it's the— and no limit.

No limit on how much I can make.

Yeah, because that's what happened at the other business that I had. I became their top salesperson. I sold $4 million in 3 years of their— in selling from the stage. And my last day at work, I was told that my commission was going from 12% to 7% because I was making more money than the CEO.

It's the stupidest move the CEO can ever make.

I was like, do you, do you know math? Do you know percentages, how that works? The more I make, the more you make.

That's like, raise the prices, your commission goes up, and then you have more to pay the CEO. Like, yeah, yeah, I want my salespeople to be making more than me.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

It makes my life a lot easier because a great salesperson is not just worth their weight in gold, they're worth their weight in titanium, platinum, silver, gold, pick a metal, diamonds, rubies. So I don't care because it's so rare when you find that professional that is actually going to get the job done.

Yeah. So, and be consistent with it as well.

So any final thoughts on, uh, the industry that we're in, this medical space? What do you kind of see as the future? What do you see going on?

Yeah, concierge medicine, cash pay practice, that getting out of the insurance is a must for doctors if, if they don't want to be hamstrung by the insurance or being told how to practice and all that, which is just bonkers to me.

What do you say to docs that are like, oh, I don't know if I can do this?

Why not?

It's a great, great question.

Yeah.

What do you think holds them back the most?

I think it's their education.

How smart they are?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That, well, you know, I'm smart enough, I should be able to figure this out on my own. Yeah, it's different.

Yeah, I think that's by far the biggest hurdle is they're so smart. Yeah. And they've figured out so many things.

And a little bit of ego comes into that as well. I know the ones that we work with, they've kind of gotten over a lot of their ego and they're really open to change. I think that needs to be maybe the first thing is Ego Is the Enemy is the book to get everybody to read.

So here's my test. You want to know my test?

Yeah, please. Okay.

So when we get on the phone and I'll say, so do you want me to call you Dr. Smith or is Alex fine? You have to call me Dr. Smith. I'm like, okay, call's over. Why? Because you're not going to be teachable. I have literally said that. Well, what do you mean?

That's—

I, I've earned that. And I go, I know.

Yeah.

And you're on this phone because your business sucks. And if you're insistent upon me calling you doctor, we're gonna have a problem. Yeah. And I've— of the hundreds and hundreds of calls I've done, I've only had 2 people that I've like, wow, ended the phone call in like 2 minutes.

That's awesome.

Isn't that great?

I love it. Total fucking bummer.

I did it with this lady out of Long Island. She was so pissed off. She then— she kept messaging me saying, I can't believe— like, who do you think you are? I earned the right to be a doctor.

I'm like, yeah, you did.

You did. Absolutely awesome. And I earned the right to not do business with you.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Straight. How do people get in touch with you, Tom? What are some, you know, you got some free resources. Yeah.

So, uh, I, I play a lot on YouTube and Instagram, so you can find me, you know, Tom Jacobs, J-A-C-K-O-B-S on YouTube and then Impact Pilot on Instagram.

Okay.

And then, um, yeah, I actually have a script training course that I'd love to give to your audience.

Yeah, that'd be great.

If you're interested in that. So I'll, I'll give you the link, but basically it's go.tomjacobs.com/script-training.

Okay.

And that'll help them script with heart.

Say that again. So go—

go.tomjacobs.com/script-training.

Okay, perfect. And we'll put that in the show notes.

Yeah.

Um, look, folks, I'll tell you, like, our people use Tom all the time. I, I mean—

And I love working with your folks.

Thank you. Yeah, they, they rave about you. Dr. Gapen, Dr. Duffy, Dr. Schachter. I know there's a couple of others that you work with as well. They rave about the work that you do and how much you've helped them and brought in more leads. So, you know, and you know what's really cool is I can just, you know, when we first connected, I was like, oh, this guy's got like, he's the real deal. Like, you're not— I mean, I talk to a lot of people, but yeah, I mean, I can tell you really care about your clients and you really care about the results that they get. And you do an amazing job. Your team does great, great work. So.

Well, thank you.

Pass that along to your folks.

I will.

All right. Well, Tom, thanks for coming, buddy.

Thank you.

I'm glad you could be in the States to come by.

Me too.

And because Tom lives more— lives out of the country. He lives in Taiwan. So, um, but yeah, it was great. You're here in LA, you're here in the Southern California area, so we were able to make it work.

That's awesome.

Awesome. Thanks, brother. Good to see you. Yep. If this episode got you thinking differently, hit follow and share it with someone stuck in the system. Please leave a review. It helps us grow. Want more? Visit mavericksprofitsystem.com to schedule your free discovery call and explore how far your business can go.