96. Chris Smith: Author of The Conversion Code

Chris, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you feeling today?

I'm feeling great. I'm excited to chat with you guys.

Yeah, we're excited as well. We've got Nick and Luke on the Book Thinkers side today. So before we kick off and start asking you some questions about the book, I'd love to have you introduce yourself to the Book Thinkers family for those that aren't familiar with you or your work.

Sure. Yeah. My name is Chris Smith. I'm a blue-collar guy from Polk County, Florida. I grew up wanting to be a basketball player and then an actor, and I ended up in sales ultimately. I was great at it. My dad said when I was growing up, if I could get paid to talk, I would make a lot of money. I am getting paid to talk and I am making a lot of money. So I've always sort of had the gift of gab. I've always been an entrepreneur. I sold Blow Pops. I sold mixtapes. I've sold just about everything. And throughout that experience, I just really was always inquisitive and took a lot of mental notes and kind of file, save as I was going through those experiences. And I just started to see, as I had worked with more and more companies and sold different products, that like, wow, a lot of this stuff is the same actually. Selling a mortgage might not seem the same as selling some type of business software, Which might not seem the same as selling books, but you know what? It's all sales. It's a person and another person, and you've got to figure out if they want what you sell. And so, yeah, I love sales. I've worked for billionaires. I've worked for billion-dollar companies, and my book now is featured at Johns Hopkins University. I've been a guest lecturer at NYU. It's been translated all over the world, and it's because cracking the lead conversion code is tricky. You know, you have people that are great at marketing, you have people that are great at sales, you have people that love technology. And my argument in the book is that when you overlap those 3 things, if you're an AAA, you're going to go to the moon. A lot of organizations have an A in sales and an F in marketing. Or they have a C in marketing, a C in sales, and a B in tech. You need to be a straight-A student because if not, the amount of inefficiencies it creates and opportunities that are lost is tremendous. And most people are willing to admit they've got a few leaky holes in their bucket that, you know, their funnel has some people falling out of it. And so I help people basically fix that.

Well, I'll be the first to admit that the Book Thinkers sales funnels have a lot of leaky holes, you know, things in our bucket. We've got a lot of people falling out of the process and that's because we don't have straight A's. So we'll use Book Thinkers as a business today to apply some of what you teach in the book. You know, I think I said this in the video review that I did for your book after I read it, but I typically have a rule which is that I'll only implement the 20% of my takeaways that can lead to 80% of the impact, which is typically a handful of things in every book that I read, max. But after I read your book, I mean, there's 100 things notated in the book at least that need to be implemented. It's going to take a while, but I'm very happy that it was so action-packed. I mean, did you write it with the intention of the book being full of action?

Yeah, I think it's just an extension of the things I have been teaching You know, prior to becoming an author. So I have always, like, when I get paid to go to an event and speak, it would be like the 10 best mobile apps right now, or it would be 7 Facebook ads that, you know, generated 1,000 leads. Like, everything I've ever done from day one, just because that's the kind of stuff that I like. So when I'm looking on the internet, when I'm browsing social, I'm drawn to practicality. I'm drawn to actionable advice. And so if that's what I love and that's what I go seek, then that should be obviously what I put out there in the world too. And so, yeah, like it's a textbook, you know, I like to say it's a textbook that's sort of written with a little bit of humor, a little bit of swagger, a little bit of personality. It's not kind of a boring teacher. It's not a history book per se, but at the end of the day, I, Did crack the conversion code. I did turn my social media following into a $10, $12, $15 million per year business. I'm getting the $30,000 speaking gigs. I'm getting the multi-book book deals. You know, I'm getting the investment opportunities. I'm, you know, so for me, it's like, wow, that is where everybody wants to be. And so my company was able to do it. I did it with my personal brand. I've done it for a lot of my consulting clients. But the thing that you said is absolutely right. It's not going to happen overnight. You know, I didn't build everything in the book overnight. It's just if you did start over and you said, okay, I need to, I need to just throw everything away and let me try this again the right way. You know, that was kind of the way I tried to let it unfold. You know, if you're starting from scratch or starting over, go get a website, get some landing pages, establish your lead magnets, figure out what your blog content's going to be. Okay, cool. Send traffic from Facebook. Now send people from Insta. I just kind of went down the line of all the things that I do that I know at least work for me, you know, in my case study of one. And then I put a lot of work into the research, Nick. If you read each chapter, you know, you probably don't realize I'm doing this to you as you're reading it, but I'm trying to convince you through data and statistics that what you're about to learn even matters. And that I think is where a lot of social media people, a lot of digital marketing people, they actually kind of skip that step. They skip the step that says blogging isn't stupid. They skip the step that says Twitter's not a waste of time. Let me prove it to you before I give you the little tip. So I tried to do a lot of that because of the academic world embracing the book. I figured, well, let me be a little bit of an academic myself, do the homework, do the research, vet the sources, and then I designed everything to look beautiful and make it easy to understand.

I think most authors skip that step in every subject that they teach. They don't position the information before they teach it. Now, before we go into some more of the content from the book, I mean, Tim Ferriss is one of my favorite podcasters and he always says, listen, if you're gonna start a podcast, make sure that you apply the questions that you're asking to your actual real life scenario so that if nobody listens, there's still a benefit to the author and there's still a benefit to you as the host. So before we get into that stuff, I told you before we pressed record that the Book Thinkers family is often looking for relatability. They wanna learn a little bit more about who the author was before they became uber successful.

Sure.

We know you're uber successful. So you mentioned when you were younger, you were selling a lot of stuff. You were also into basketball. Could you expand a little bit about what life was like before you became an entrepreneur?

Sure. So I grew up in the South in a very segregated city. It's called Polk County, Lakeland, Florida. And right before I went to high school, they drew a line down the middle of the city and they said, if you live on the left half, you're going to go to Kathleen. And if you live on the right half, you go to Lake Gibson. Lake Gibson was like 2 miles from my house, but it was across that line. So I was actually bused a half an hour to a formerly all-Black school, you know, in a poor area, in a poor neighborhood with high crime. And so that right there was just like such a culture shock coming from the burbs, you know, a white guy named Chris Smith from the suburbs. My dad's a cop, like boring, pretty boring existence. And All of a sudden, I fell in love with hip-hop. I fell in love with Jordans. I fell in love with basketball. I fell in love with culture, you know? And so it was such a great experience. I also understood very quickly that you can learn a lot more from people that are different than you than you can from people that are the same. And I embraced that right out of the gates. And I had a friend, his name's Freddie Mitchell. He actually went to the NFL. He's a first-round draft pick. Biletnikoff finalist at UCLA. He went to the NFL. He went kind of to Hollywood at such a young age that I knew I wasn't as athletic as the other guys on my team. You know, I didn't have scouts banging down my door, but what it showed me was that it's not about your skin. It's not about your, you know, color, your gender, your sexual preference. Like, if you put up numbers, You're going to the league. It's about the 40, 4.2. They don't say a white guy ran a 4.2, a gay guy ran a 4.4. It doesn't matter. It's about the numbers. And sales is very similar. That's why I think I ended up there because it's a sport. You know, they even will say sales is a contact sport. You know, the more people you contact, the more money you make. So for me, it was sort of this mix of like diversity, but then seeing like talent can help you rise above that. So, basketball, I had the passion, not the talent. Went to college, I thought I wanted to be a business person. I didn't have the focus. I failed out of business school. Then I'm like, okay, I'm going to go to Hollywood and be an actor. Tried that, was terrible, but had the passion, was willing to take the risk, moved out there with my car packed up and drove across the country. Failed at that too. Tried to open a business, a big idea at a young age with a multimillionaire, failed miserably. Next thing you know, I'm 25, I'm back on my parents' couch. So I took the risks. I had the swagger, I had the confidence, I tried and I failed because if you're not extremely talented, you know, you're not going to break through. And so I just was like, I'm going to find something I'm great at. You know, I want to be good at something that I also love. And that's when I fell into sales. I was at my lowest point. I had no money, negative money, living on my parents' couch, hating it, did not want to be there, and got a job in a boiler room in Orlando for a sleazy sales guru named Lou Pearlman, who is the guy that actually ended up discovering the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. And he ran this boiler room where we would sell vacation packages to people that wanted to become famous. And I really understood that because I had already moved to LA. I knew how hard it was. I knew that like becoming famous isn't easy and it may be helpful to come to an event like this to kind of bypass the red tape. And so I learned in that boiler room so much. It was literally Glengarry Glen Ross, The Wolf of Wall Street boiler room. If you've seen any of those films, that was the environment. And it's very heartless. It's very cutthroat. It's very sleazy. It's very unethical. I get it. That's why people hate salespeople. But if you just think for one moment that, okay, you know, if you teach me how to pick a lock, I could go rob people, or I could become the most famous magician in the world. With the same exact skill. So I just always looked at kind of like, I, I, I was able to look past the shadiness of it and just look at the sort of X's and O's of what we were being taught. And it was insanely effective and it made sense. And so I wasn't able to stay in that environment for very long because it did rub me the wrong way. I got another opportunity. I went off and opened another business. I ended up going to Quicken Loans doing sales. And so I just come from that boiler room background, and that was where I started. And then in '08, I started on social media and YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. And from day one, I was using those tools to build my brand and my business. I, I never got on Facebook because I just like thought it was cool. Like it was a business strategy from day one. I had a page. I probably ran ads before like 99.5% of people ever ran an ad. I ran an ad. This is a crazy story that no one— I don't think I've ever told this. I ran an ad in the first 6 months of my Facebook page. It was called Tech Savvy Agent. That was the name of the page. And I worked at realtor.com, huge company, billion-dollar company. Well, our biggest 2 competitors were Zillow and Trulia. So I was like teaching these classes about how to target by employer. So I'm like, you know what? Let me just run an ad and like just target Trulia and Zillow employees. And in the ad I said, "Will Zillow or Trulia hire me first?" Da da da. And it got seen by so many employees that it ended up on the desk of the CEO, and I end up getting an email like, "What's up, man?" What's your goal here? So it was sort of like, oh shit, this is real. This actually works. And so anyway, the sort of social media part of it from day one for me was like, I did it because I wanted to build my business and my brand, but I also did it the way I did things my whole life, which was coming from contribution, actionable, practical, enthusiastic advice. And it worked, you know, and for the people that basically only ran ads their whole life and only did kind of like traditional marketing and newspaper ad, TV ad, radio ad, direct mail, there was no content marketing, Nick. There was, that wasn't even a word. So I just kind of like right at the right moment started creating content that was the kind of content that ultimately won. The content that's the best, not the content that's the best ad.

Yeah. I think Luke's got a question, but first I want to ask, was Lou in the boiler room the same guy that would give you the 20-minute like pep talks before you would start calling for the day?

No. So that was his general, that was the president of— so this company was called Fashion Rock and it was, you know, a shell company that was just for the events. It was sort of isolated. One of the things that was funny though is there would be failed boy band members that would end up like, that would be their backup job was to come to the boiler room. I remember this kid Jacob, he comes in and it's like, he looks just like Timberlake, the earrings, the hair, like it was just like on point. And he was just in one of the boy bands that just ultimately got dissolved. You know, for every one that Lou Pearlman made that did well, there's a few that did poorly. But it was a guy named David. He was the coach. He actually, and I didn't know this until when I started actually researching, writing the book, he went to jail in the '80s for telemarketing fraud. And so he was so good at this that he went to jail for it. And then he served his time, he got out. Now he's at Lou Pearlman's company. He was kind of in the twilight of his career. I actually felt blessed to work for him because he was probably like less than 5 years from being done done. But he, he just had so much knowledge. And the wild thing is, and I wasn't there on this particular day, but Dateline, it, it might've not been Dateline, but a Dateline type show. Actually busted into the boiler room with cameras and were trying to find scripts and show how it was nefarious activities happening in this boiler room.

Oh, man.

It was wild.

Yeah.

But it wasn't Lou himself. We would see Lou around the office, but it was kind of like— He's just an odd guy. If anybody wants to go down a weird rabbit hole, just Google the Lou Pearlman story. It's wild.

That's— you've, you've had some wild experiences. I have more to unpack, but I gotta tap Luke in. I know he has a question.

I have so many questions, so many questions. But, um, the, the big thing that I was gonna ask is, how did you keep going? Like, you were in that point where you're at your parents' house. Like, what kept you— what kept you going? Because so many people at that point, that's when they just decide, I can't do this. I'm a failure and give up. So what kept you going? Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna be really honest with you guys. I really disliked my stepmom tremendously. I mean, we were enemies. And since then, our relationship has gotten better and she's been actually a pretty damn good grandma to my kids. So I wanna throw that out there too, that people can, can change and Things can heal. But at the time, we were bitter rivals and every day was miserable. And so I just had to get out of there as soon as I could. In fact, as soon as I got my first check from selling, I called my friend Sam that lived in Orlando and I was like, hey, can I sleep on your couch? He had like a futon in the, uh, had a kind of like a living room and a family room. It was a futon. I said, can I sleep on your couch? I'll pay for your utility bills, your cable. It's like, sure, you know, we're best friends in college. So, I couldn't even stay on the parents' couch very long. And so, it was like, okay, I'm done with this couch. I'm on a better couch, but I'm still on a couch. So, I still got to get off the couch. Why did I keep going? Besides the fact that I didn't want to live in my parents' house, I kept going because I knew that I was capable of doing something excellent with my life. And I just wasn't going to take no for an answer. And so, I found this out later in life that I'm bipolar, and people that are bipolar have grandiose ideas of what they can accomplish and pull off. That's sort of the good side. There's a bad side, so I have to put that out there. But the good side is you have endless energy. You are Blindly optimistic that you can change the world and impact it. You think that you're going to be a legend one day, and so you just like operate as such. I can't say what percentage of that comes from my mental illness versus what comes from my DNA. I don't know, but I know that those traits are the traits that led me to where I'm at today. They were the traits of thinking big, Putting out there to the world what you're going to do. I told every friend in college I was going to be a famous actor, every single one of them. They used to laugh at me. Well, I'm not a famous actor, but I'm close, right? In fact, I'm actually glad. I'm way more glad now that I'm a businessman, an entrepreneur than an actor. What do all the actors want to be, Nick? What do all the influencers want to be? What do all the basketball players want to be? They all want to be business guys now. They all want to be entrepreneurs.

Yeah. There's that K-Swiss ad that Gary Vee did back in the day. All entrepreneurs.

Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah. I actually say entrepreneurs are the new athletes and we are. And so, you know, ultimately, I just, I don't know that I'm wired to be able to give up, but I'm also not wired to be content. So, throw that out there.

Not quite.

The yin and the yang. But yeah, that, that comes to mind when you ask why didn't I give up? Because I was just dumb enough to think that I could do something amazing with my life. And I still think that, you know, today, as far as where I'm at now compared to where I want to be, there is no mountaintop. Nike's first ad, there is no finish line. Once you realize that, It gets way more fun. Um, and, and a little bit of gratification can kick in too, because you know you're never going to stop.

Yeah, I love that. And I will— I'll let Nick ask more questions, but I love how you said, I knew, I knew. And I think there's a difference, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think there's a difference between knowing and just believing, like, oh, I think I can get there, I believe I can get there. But when you know it with your full being that you're going to be something, I don't think that there's anything that can that can stop you. So that's, that's awesome. That was a— like I said, I have so many more questions, but I'll, uh, kick it back to Nick.

Well, I'm curious, uh, suffering from bipolar disorder, number one, how often do you fall into the negative side of your mental illness? And what recommendations do you have for people that might be listening today that suffer from some mental illness? Maybe it's not bipolar disorder, but I know there are a lot of people who feel anxiety or depression in different ways, and they might allow that to hold them back from becoming a successful entrepreneur like you.

Yeah, Kanye is giving us a really bad name right now. I have to say, this is sort of like not a good time to be bipolar. I don't know if it ever is, but I always joke that we have Winston Churchill, you know, he is also bipolar. You know, my favorite artist, Van Gogh, which, who did have a tragic ending, you know, it's It's a mixed bag. Number one, how often does it affect me? Every day. I mean, it affects me every single day because I never feel normal. Like I've never felt normal for one day of my whole life. So I would have to say it affects me every single day in that sense. I can relate to depression for sure. When you have a manic episode, the crash is really, really, I mean, there's commercials you probably see, like if you have bipolar depression, like The crash is really bad. And what I found is that you trick yourself into staying in bed as the mecca. So, what I would do is I would tell myself, like, I have enough money and I've done enough stuff in my life where I don't need to get out of bed. The whole point of doing all that was that I could sleep all day and I could stay in bed all day. And you start to tell yourself this. When it's 11 o'clock and 11:30 and 12 o'clock and you still haven't gotten up. Everybody else is the sucker. I got it good. That was what I did for my own depression. I was just telling myself that, oh, I'm winning. And the thing that helped me the most, 2 things helped me the most. Number one is medicine. Medicine helped me a lot. The other thing is, and this is, I don't even remember where I heard this from, but You have to focus on your activities, not your emotions. And that's the one thing I see a lot of people having a challenge pushing through. So, my daughter has mental health, my mother has mental health, and it's genetic. So, long story short, if you don't have anything to do, you are not going to do positive and healthy things that are going to make you feel better. You have to focus on your activities and the outcomes and your actions, not your feelings. And what I found is that when you do that and you kind of just force yourself to do something specific, then all of a sudden, it kind of like it works. You know, it allows— like, as an example, and I'm not saying play video games all day, but if I'm playing video games, I can't think of anything else except the FIFA match that's happening. I play on world class. I'm really good. You cannot think about anything else or you're You're going to lose. When I'm cooking, I'm dialed in. I love to cook. You know, when I cook, I'm in the zone. I'm not stressed out. I love walking my dog. So I just kind of came up with what are the activities that what I'm doing 99.9% of the time, I'm in a good mood. And then I just try to do all of those. The other thing that I think is important, somebody said this the other day, I heard you can't control your first thought, but you can control your second thought. When I wake up, and I don't have a lot of life hacks, I don't even like giving life hacks, but something that has helped me is I don't judge how I'm feeling when I wake up. I judge how I'm feeling after I finish my morning routine. I just assume I'll wake up grumpy. I'll assume I'll wake up negative or in a bad mood, and most people do, to be clear. Eric Thomas, Tony Robbins. I don't care what they say. I bet sometimes their first thought is, "Ay ay ay," you know. Here we go. So the for me, it was just sort of like I'm not gonna figure out how I feel today until I get out of bed, make some coffee, walk my dog, take a shower, and make my bed. These are not complicated things. But that little routine is probably 30, 45 minutes, maybe almost an hour total. And what I find is that by the time I just check those boxes and I'm kind of finishing up my shower and I'm wrapping up the routine, I don't even need to ask myself at that point, how are you feeling, Chris? You feeling better? It doesn't— it just sort of goes away. So, that for me is insanely helpful because I'll tell you, when I was the most depressed I've ever been, The first thought in the morning is how you feel. And if you feel bad the second you wake up, people give up on the whole fucking day. They will just punt the whole day. They'll just give up on the whole day. And it's like, well, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. Maybe if I sleep a couple more hours, I won't wake up bad tomorrow. And that sucks. That is a terrible feeling that from the first moment you wake up, To put yourself into a bucket that you're going to have a miserable day, you got to figure that out. And so for me, the way I figured that out was get out there and just do these sort of basics of getting the rust off in the morning. And at that point, I usually feel a lot better. Wow.

I, before you jumped on, Luke and I were talking about your book and he said, I think we could talk to Chris for at least 4 hours about just the book. And still not run out of stuff to talk about. And we're not even into the book-related content, and you're already providing a ton of value. And so, if anybody in the audience is suffering from any type of mental illness or lack of motivation, it sounds like the discipline to perform that morning routine gives you the space to reevaluate how you feel. And that happens after the routine, and you're getting sunshine. You're getting Some exercise endorphins walking the dog. You're getting a little boost of caffeine from the coffee, and then you're showering and sort of refreshing yourself. You get to look in the mirror. You're all pretty. You could have been an actor, by the way. You've got the face for it.

Thank you.

I thought so. I'm just going to do the acting part. But yeah, you're dead on. You're dead on. And everything you're saying, they all kind of add up. And I'm also not waking up asking myself to do anything. Daunting. These are all fairly elementary tasks that I'm trying to get through.

Yeah.

It's a conversation that doesn't happen. I actually, I was in rehab. I had a manic episode. I had to go to a facility and it sucks. And the whole time I was there, it's so funny when I see your books behind you, Nick, this is an Easter egg. I was still manic when I went to the facility. They had about 2,000 books and I spent like 7 straight hours organizing by color the way that you have yours behind you.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

I literally took every single book out, every board game, every pack of cards. I put— took them all out, separated them all by color. I just wanted what you have behind you. And so anyway, man, when you've been in that spot, you know, it's like, I love Eric Thomas. He says, once you're in the wheelchair, you'll do anything to get out. But some people won't do anything to get in. You know, they won't avoid getting in, but they'll do anything to get out.

Yeah.

And that's kind of how I feel about bipolar and mania and mental health is, You'll do anything to get out when you're at the lowest low, but you it's probably a little bit more about doing those little things every single day to keep from getting down there. Yeah. But anyway, I think the I started an email when I was there, bipolar businessman. I was like, okay, well now I'm bipolar, so I'm going to be a bipolar influencer, and I'm going to be the most famous bipolar businessman in the world, and I'm going to talk about mental health at business conferences because it's not being talked about. So that kind of just shows you like how my brain works. Okay, cool. I'm not doing sales and marketing anymore. Now I'm doing bipolar business advice. Let's go. Um, that's just how I'm wired. So—

Do you— I'm so curious on this subject. Um, do you think that identifying as bipolar and being comfortable saying that on a podcast that's going to be listened to or watched by thousands of people over and over and over again— I'm sure you do this every week— Do you think that that helps you step into it, be more productive, be more comfortable in your own skin? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people listening that like can't speak to the word.

Yeah, there's a lot of shame. There's a lot of shame. There's such a negative association with being bipolar. So, but what I'll say, Nick, is I don't talk about it all the time. I just talk about it when it comes up the way it came up. I don't even know how we brought it up today. It was sort of relevant to the conversation. I think you might have asked like, why did you push through? You know what I mean? And I was just like, well, because I'm crazy, that's why. But so yeah, I don't purposefully bring it up unless it kind of comes up in the flow. But yeah, I was really ashamed of it. But you know what? We had to address it. I had to make a public statement about it. We had to make a public statement from my company. It was like, hey, here's what's going on, just so you guys know. You know, you're not going to see Chris for a while. He's going to go work. And like, I had to do that because I was a public figure. I mean, people would've thought I got kidnapped or something if we didn't say what happened to me. I was like posting on social media for 12 straight years, had tens of thousands of fans that watch every video, comment on, you know, just like you guys at Book Thinkers. I got a great community. So we had to address it. But I would say the, the, to answer your question, Nick, it does help. It does help to say it out loud for sure. And I didn't say a word about it for almost 2 years. So just so people understand, I had so much shame. And what happens is everybody says, how you doing? And it's a very fair question. And I know they're not trying to trigger me, but I know what they're really asking. And I don't care about sympathy. I hate sympathy. I love gratitude. That's why I do what I do. And so, I suck at sympathy. I just suck at it. So, that's why I don't really put out there as often as even maybe I should that I go through this because I don't want anybody's sympathy. I think people have it so much worse than me, so many people. And so, I love gratitude. For me to be kind of the weak one needing the other people to lift me up, it took a while. And it sucks when your wife says, how you doing? When your friends, how you doing? Your coworkers, how you doing? You know, they're basically saying, man, that was crazy what you just went through. Are you okay? And I don't like— I'm used to people saying, what are you working on? What, you're going to do another book soon? Like, that's the conversation I'm so used to. So when it just got 180'd back at me about how's it going? How you feeling? I hated it. I was miserable. So, I didn't bring it up because everybody else did, to be honest, Nick. And so, then after a year, year and a half, 2 years, I got myself back out there. I started grinding again. I kind of got back to being my old self, and now it doesn't come up. Now, what comes up is I love the Chrysalis. Now, what comes up is your book's amazing. I never do more than one thing from a book. I did 100 things from your book. You know, that's my happy place. So, maybe that'll help somebody get out of a tough spot is just that you don't like the sympathy, but it's also unfair to expect people not to check on you.

Wow. You know, as you were talking, I just want to express gratitude to you for sharing. You know, I struggle with depression, anxiety, and it's really, really cool. to see a person that struggles with bipolar mental disorder that is so successful. That's like, it's so encouraging. So thank you for sharing that, and I know that others will get a ton from that as well. Um, I kind of want to like, I don't know, we'd be remiss if we didn't start mentioning the book a little bit. So we can maybe start, uh, steering it towards the book a little bit. I want to ask you a question. You know, you shared, I think it was in chapter 1, some really crazy stats about like 90% of people don't answer the phone when you call. 3%, I think it was 3% of people trust salespeople. And then there was like 40% of people, I forget the age range, but it was like, are constantly online, just to name a few. And, you know, I'm thinking about all these mental disorders along with that. And I'm wondering like, how can a salesperson, how can they stay positive with like seemingly overwhelming odds against them? How can they stay positive and keep making those calls? What are your tips for that?

Yeah, it's a great question because everything we sort of talked about up until now is about not being depressed. And that for me was not the solution. I want to be happy. I don't want to be not unhappy. That didn't feel like a big win to be not unhappy. I want to be happy. And you have to be. I say in the book, you have to be like a Labrador, like a puppy. Like if you think about a dog, My Great Dane is a good example, except for the fact that she accidentally bit me on the face. My dog, when the doorbell rings, goes nuts. She gets so excited, she can't help herself. Her tail's wagging. She has no clue what's at the door. It could be a package with her favorite food. It could be somebody serving me a subpoena to be in court, and she's sort of equally excited. Right? And that is what the best salespeople do. Think about athletes, back to sports. When you miss a shot in basketball, you're already playing defense right away. So, the idea that you would be dwelling or sort of down and sort of mad at yourself for missing the shot, you're going to expand the problem because now you're also not focused on playing great defense. So, it is very challenging to stay positive. Because you get told no so often, deals fall apart, you barely miss your quota, you kind of regularly see people talking crap about your profession and that you're sort of unethical, like you mentioned with the data, the, you know, some, one of the least trusted professions is sales and marketing.

Yeah.

So, for me, a couple things come to mind. How do I turn that corner? Number one is what I call human caffeine. I have a group of people, probably 5 people that I can just call anytime I need to and just rift about an idea, about a challenge. Like, I have a speech coming up on Friday. It's a huge speech. So I need somebody to talk through that with. And like, my brother is somebody that I lean on heavily. My co-founder Jimmy is somebody that I lean on heavily. One of my best friends that I grew up with, Blake, he's an attorney. I lean on him. So, I would say I have like this group of about 5 people. And the key to this is that you don't need to typically be in a good mood to be in a good mood on a call like this. So, once you get going and you're having a conversation, Typically, it's easier to be in a good mood if you're getting told no in the boiler room 90 times, 99 times a day. It's hard. But then you look at your commission check and then it's like, well, there's maybe that's why, right? People think sales is about, you know, being slick and making money. And it's like, no, it's about basically compartmentalizing failure. And continuing to keep your head up despite of it and understanding. And this is why it's so important that you work for a company that you love and you sell a product you believe in. Because if you can find that spot, like great company, great product, great comp plan, it's so rare. And so when you find that, it just gets way more fun because Like it, it isn't necessarily that you're mad when someone doesn't move forward because you understand that they just made the wrong decision or they're just not the right fit. The other thing I would say that's so important about marketing is if you really want your salespeople to be in a better mood, generate better leads. It really is that simple. The salespeople at my company were always in a good mood. Because the leads are like, hey, I read Chris's book and I've been watching him and Jimmy on the water cooler for 2 years, and I need to learn a little bit more about Curator.

How does it work?

That's a great job. You know, you do that, you make a quarter mil and people love it, and then they sign up and you actually deliver on the, on the promise of why they joined. It's a great feeling. So the best way to be in a great mood as a salesperson is to have constant wins. I would say you got to put yourself in a position where you can at least book a quality appointment or get a deal every day. The thing about the boiler room is high volume. So I knew at Quicken Loans that I could write a loan every day. A lot of times it would happen in the first morning from 9 to 11, from, you know, 7 to 9, somewhere in there. But a lot of times it would be at that 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 6:15. It wouldn't come in until the end of the day. Sometimes it wouldn't come in and I'd get 3 the next day. But at a minimum, I was able to do, you know, write a loan every day, have a win every day. So if you're in high-volume sales, that's possible. Sometimes when you're in B2B, or let's say you're a realtor, not everybody's buying or selling a house right now. You may not be able to get a win every day as far as an actual deal. So, you have to say, okay, what's the new win? What is a win that I can get every day? Because I would call a win 5 meaningful conversations with people that might work with you or might send people your way. You know, I would consider booking an appointment to talk about what I do a win. So you gotta have wins because you're gonna have losses.

Yeah, it's amazing. And kind of moving into chapter 2, you tell a story about swallowing your pride and hiring your first website designer, professional website designer. And in a way to apply this to Book Thinkers, I read that section of the book and I looked at our website and I said, our website's garbage. I made it.

Yeah.

So I'll admit that it was garbage. I'm not a website designer. And so we went out and here's an example of how I applied the book. I hired a professional website designer, we did, and we're going through the process of building a professional website. And now I have 100 things to look for while building it, little things. But can you tell that story for everybody, your version of your hiring of a professional website designer so that Everybody can kind of understand the importance of this.

Sure. I was just pulling up your website. So for the video audience here, this is the current site, correct?

It is.

Yeah.

Don't hold back.

No, I'm not going to hold— you already pulled the trigger.

I volunteered.

What are you going to do?

Yeah. Oh no.

You'd be surprised. A lot of people might say that this website's better than theirs. I would say one of the things that's missing for sure is books are so visual. Right? So if I'm an author or if I'm, you know, interested in books, this is the page about working with you. That's not very compelling, you know, if it's only copy. You know, if you want me to book a strategy call, maybe show me some of the strategies that you've already executed for others. And it's actually better for you, Nick, because then they see your work, they read the case study, They see the examples of the videos you've helped people make and the reels you've helped people make, right? And then when they become a lead, it's a sale. It's just about terms. That's where you want to be. You want to get to the point where it's not about getting a deal or not. It's about should you do a deal and can we get the terms to work where it actually makes sense for both of us? And that gets tricky when you're doing, you know, big deals.

Yeah, it does.

It's a little tricky, but Yeah. When I first, I did what you did. Did you build this website yourself, Nick?

I did.

Okay.

And that's what most people do and that's what most people should do. So I was using WordPress. I had a theme called Thesis. This is for like OGs on the internet. I had a theme called Thesis because it would allow you to kind of do some changes on your own, but I end up having to go in the HTML sometimes and End up, next thing you know, I got a teal website with black font, like not a teal logo with black font, a teal website. Like the whole thing was teal and the words were black, and I thought it looked great. There's no one that wasn't just trying to be nice to me would ever say it looked good or choose those colors. It was terrible, but it was all I could do. I can't tell you how many hours I spent like trying to figure out when you hover over a navigation option, how do I get it to like invert like the colors? You know what I'm saying? Stuff like that. And I would just spend weeks and weeks in there and I, but I love doing it. It was fun for me and I would get traffic and I would get clicks and, you know, I didn't really, I was more so into Facebook and YouTube and so I wasn't sort of that worried about my website. But the blog won a couple of awards, you know, the most innovative blog in real estate. And I got a, it was a People's Choice Award for the most influential person in real estate. I was picking up some really good accolades. And so I invested, I doubled down. I doubled down on what works. That's what you're doing, Nick. Your idea worked. Your business and brand and community are doing well and growing. And so now it makes sense to invest in a much better website. You know, there's levels to this, right? And by the way, a custom website investment for some people might be $2,500 on Upwork or Fiverr. Maybe it's $5,000. Maybe for some people it's $10,000. I built a website that was $30,000 recently. I just did. You know, so it kind of depends on where you're at and what your budget is. But I would say when I invested in a designer, not a design, and I gave him some freedom to do what he did best, because he couldn't create content like me or videos like me. So I'm like, okay, well just put some lipstick on my pig over here. Like, My stuff's good. So yeah, I got triple— I tripled my traffic in the first day with the new design. And it was all this stuff that you would never think about, the navigation, the layout, the buttons, the colors, the menu. It was stuff that I never would've even thought of or put a lot of focus into. And you know what's funny? That website looks great today. And this is '09, 2010, somewhere in there. But that custom site, it was $5,000. It was a huge investment for me at the time. I wasn't even monetizing the brand. It was blowing up and it was growing and I was making good money in my day job, but it was a big decision to do that and I never looked back. I literally have designers on payroll nonstop. I am obsessed with design. I think it's one of the things that you can do as a small business, as an entrepreneur, as an author, It's one of the things you can do to punch above your weight. You know, people say people marry up, right? Well, you can design up. You can actually look more successful than you are. The problem is most people look less successful than they are because they don't really make it a big focus and priority.

What an amazing lesson and story, and it's being applied to book thinkers right now. A couple of things that you said that I want to comment on, and then I want to kick it back to Luke.

Sure.

So number one, in the book you say that judgments on a company's credibility are 75% based on a company's website design. And I think the only reason that Book Thinkers is growing and is successful in its current form and continuing to evolve upwards is because the design on our social media is good enough that people don't have to click over to our website. But I think one of those leaky holes in the bucket is when people click over to our website. And so—

You know what they call that at Google, Nick? They call that the zero moment of truth because think how many things they saw from you before they did that. That's a high intent click, you know, because they can get it on Insta, they can get it in the feed, they can watch the stories, they can watch the reels. You ain't forcing anybody to go to your website. So when they do, it's almost like they walked in your store. And then your store is like, oh, I thought the store would be nicer. Yeah, because everything else was so good up to that point.

No, that's true. Well, have you ever read something and then you start spouting it all over the place as if it was your own thought, Chris? Because I do it all the time. Maybe you do it, Luke.

Yeah, I would say I do it, but I try to always give credit if I do too. Yeah, but yeah, all the time. That's one of the— actually, one of the skills of a great salesperson is to be able to incorporate things that they're learning almost in real time. We used to do coaching where we would be able to hear the call and the caller, but they couldn't hear us. And we would be listening to the call and we, we would literally be able to say this and they would say it and they'd be like, interesting.

That's cool.

Yeah. And there's actually software that you can do that where it throws random words at you and you have to think on the fly. But yeah, I don't even remember what you just said there that made me think about that.

But—

The reason I asked is because after I read in chapter 2 that content is king but that design is queen, I found myself saying that a lot and I give credit where credit is due when it comes to mine. I've got to do that more often, but I think it's true. And that's the reason that we're making this investment is because when somebody moves from social to our website and eventually when they move from an ad to our website, Yep. Or a referral to our website, we need to have that cleaned up. We can't let people drop out of the funnel, you know, at such a basic level of the game. So that's just an example that I wanted to share with all the listeners today of something that I took action on immediately after reading this. But Luke, let me volley it back to you unless Chris has any comments on—

Well, I was trying to find the Tech Savvy Agent website because we talked so much about it and it's not up and running anymore, but I did find for the YouTube audience here, that was the site.

Okay.

Yeah, it looks pretty cool. And even to this day, it doesn't look terrible.

Yeah, there's so many things. There's so many things that we could do. And I know like someone like me, I was reading through your book and to be quite honest, like I felt pretty overwhelmed. I was like, oh my word, there's so, I have so many things to improve upon. I'm doing this wrong, that wrong, that wrong. With that in mind, with people like me being overwhelmed, is there something, do you have any advice for what we should focus on to like just to start, to start at whether maybe it's just start with your website or start doing your social media better? Let's say you have the business piece, you have the product, it's going well, but what should somebody do just to kind of level up their overall business? What should they do?

Yeah, well, it's a great question. I would ask you back, You know, where do you think you are, call it doing the best and worst right now? You know, think about all the different platforms and types of content. Where do you get an A and where do you get an F?

You know, I think Nick knows and it's like the website was one of those things that we were getting an F on. So that's why we started to put resources towards that to upgrade it and make it look nicer. I think that's a big portion of it. And then also probably where we're not doing so great in is continuing to get leads and then following up with them and keeping them like kind of in the funnel. Like that's, we're not doing too great at that either at this point.

So nurturing leads, email marketing type of a follow-up campaign.

Yeah, I'd say that's probably, I mean, Nick might have some more opinions on that, but that's where I see it. Yeah.

So that's where you start, right? You start where you think you need to fix The thing you just mentioned, 2 very, very, very specific things. So like now go into a cave and only fix those before you do anything else and just forget the whole book but that, you know, just those sort of nuggets from those, just those 2 things. The other thing I would do too, though, is there's a, there's an F and there's an F that doesn't bother you.

Yeah.

Okay. So I'll tell you what I mean by that. A lot of realtors are an F on TikTok and they don't care. It doesn't bother them for one second. But meanwhile, their website's like a C and it bothers them that it's not an A. See what I'm saying? So if your website's bothering you and the nurture campaigns are not there and it's bugging you and you know you need to fix it, then clearly go focus on that. But another thing that I advise people to do is like, what if you just got way better at the thing that you're great at and you don't feel the pressure to add all these other channels or platforms? So, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Book Thinkers is basically an Instagram hub. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So Instagram's the hub. So if Nick does a post that performs 50% better than average, because he comes up with some cool hack or trick or tip, or just stumbles upon something people love, well, 150% of 100,000 views is 50,000 more views. Meanwhile, he may be over on Twitter struggling to get traction and he can't quite figure out what to do there. And, but meanwhile, like maybe, maybe it's okay that he isn't doing anything there. A lot of it depends on your resources, your time, you know, how much you can invest into it. But the way that I make that choice, A, what's bugging you? Fix what's bugging you. That, that's always a smart decision. And then B, what do you like the most? Like, where do you log in? Like, I, I log into Instagram every day. All day. I don't need anybody to prompt me. I would do it. I love it. I love stories. I love reels. I love everything about Instagram. I'm also on TikTok a ton. And so, so for me, it's fun and, and easy to figure out what to do there. If you're, let's say you're some B2B realtor, you know, you sort of hire price point service business that every lead's not buying something right away, you know, if you're only on LinkedIn, that's okay. I mean, if you never use Instagram ever, if you never use TikTok ever, then I think it's okay to understand that if you never use it, you can still be insanely successful. One of the big changes I've noticed on the internet in the last 4 years is it used to be create syndicate, right? Create something in one place and then how do I post it everywhere else? You know, and then it was sort of, well, how do I post it everywhere else and make it a little bit different? But there, there's really been this obsession to be everywhere. And I'm guilty of it too. I mean, you just mentioned it's like 18 chapters in the first section of the book. They're all places you could be spending time, but at the end of the day, you're only going to have so much, not time. You're only going to have so much great content in you. Not everybody's great at every platform. So I'll give you an example, Charlie D'Amelio. Charlie D'Amelio blew up on one platform for one reason. She's, she's young, she's cute, she does dances on TikTok. That was it. She got 100 million followers from that. Go look at her Instagram, go look at her Twitter, go look at her YouTube channel, go look at her Hulu show. Like, like, she didn't need to be everywhere. She just went all in on TikTok, and because she did, she became so known for that, that people will follow her around anywhere else. So I think that it is so hard to come up with ideas for content that click and kind of work, that if you've been able to do that in one place, don't be so desperate to figure it out elsewhere. Double down on the place that's already doing well.

What do you say though, that you don't own your own traffic if it's Instagram and Instagram could shut down tomorrow and then all of your hard work's over? I mean, people mention that to me as a risk to watch out for all the time.

And— How big is your email list, Nick?

Not very big.

Not big enough, you know?

Not big enough.

Right. And so that is the sort of weatherproof social network is email and text.

Yeah. That's part of the new website build is we're going to buff up email, really start it over again.

Yeah. And, you know, do some ebooks, give people some great content that's worth downloading, you know, come up with a good email newsletter every week that people can't wait for and that they look forward to. Yeah, that's very possible. But I have been through this, Nick. I left a publicly traded company. And they made me sign over all of the rights to all the accounts that I started and grew while I was there. And it sucked. I had, I don't know, 50,000 Facebook fans, tens of thousands of YouTube followers. It sucked. I mean, this is actually before Instagram even existed, but I had to sign over those accounts. Because I created them on company time. They were kind of related enough to what I did for the company that they claimed the IP rights. So I had to sign it away. So it sucks starting over. And the thing that I think is, if you were to say, I'm taking everything but one thing, I would actually keep my email list for sure because As soon as the next day that Instagram, let's say Instagram shuts you down, but you start like, it's not like they ban you, they just delete your account and now you have zero fans. The next day you'll have another couple thousand fans from one email. You know, that's the thing that allows you to build it back up. So for me, once I lost my social media following and I actually interviewed a guy and it, it went viral, I think it might, it was in the first edition of the book. I think I removed it from the second edition, but long story short, he had 100,000 fans on a Facebook page, and this is in like 2011. Okay? And it was called the Official Real Estate Referral Group, the, it, but it was called the Official Realtor Referral Group. 100,000 fans, vibrant, blowing up, easy to monetize. Just people sending each other referrals all day long. Like, Could have killed it. He had put the word realtor into the URL, and you can't change the URL at this time once you choose it. And realtor's a trademarked word registered by the National Association of Realtors. So they went to Facebook and said, this can't happen. They turned it off. I interviewed the guy the next day. So it does suck when that happens. It's one of those things that Probably you don't plan for until it happens. But at the end of the day, for me, the email list and the SMS list, email, phone number, you know, those are the 2 things that are sort of weatherproof, foolproof, not all the way, because you could also get marked as spam and blocked by all the email providers too. But if I had to keep one thing, I would keep email.

Yeah, we've talked about that email list quite a bit. So, it's something that we're probably gonna, after this call, be like, all right, let's go, let's get this going.

Well, back to your point, like, what should I start with? You should start with the stuff that you should have already been doing. I mean, if you don't have an email newsletter in 2022 and beyond, like, go get that. You think about like blocking and tackling, right? Like fundamentals, the fundamentals of digital marketing include email marketing.

Yeah, we had one that went out every— I think it was weekly for years, like 2019, 2020. And then it— I don't even know what happened to it, honestly.

Instagram blew up, that's what happened. Yeah, way more fun. It is.

Yeah, I know we're kind of starting to run a little bit short on time, so, um, maybe we can, we can start wrapping it up a little bit here. I literally, I wrote down so many I think I had more questions for you than I've ever had for any other podcast guests that we've had. I just wrote down, wrote down, wrote down, wrote down. And then as we're talking, I'm like writing down more. But what's also great about you is that the questions are in my head and you answer them. I found that in your book as well. Like, I was reading through it, I was reading through it in a page, I had a question, and I was like, 3 pages later, oh, he answered that question. It is amazing that you fit so much information into like, what, 250 pages? I was blown away by it. So, um, thank you for all the value that, that you gave in that book. It's, it's a, it's tremendous and incredible.

I'm glad you like it.

Yeah, no, I, I loved it. Like I said, it was a little bit, uh, difficult for me to get into just because I felt very overwhelmed, but man, full of so much great information. It's like so highly recommended. Um, it's gonna be a book that I will continue to give out to people if they're struggling in any Part of the process when it comes to conversion. We all, um, we all struggle with something, right? Um, so yeah, our— I mean, Nick, do you have any, do you have any, um, other major questions that you want to ask before—

Yeah, let me, let me just, let me just ask this for anybody that's still listening today and they're kind of on the fence, you know, hey, Chris seems like a really cool guy. I'm happy that he talked about the bipolar mental disorder. I'm happy that he shared some of these tips for sales and marketing. I'm happy that they audited a little bit of the Book Thinker stuff, but what are some of the major takeaways ways that readers come back to you and they say, hey, here's what I learned. And can you just list maybe 3 or 4 of them so that the audience can make a decision if this book is going to be a good fit for them?

Sure. Yeah. One of the things that the readers love is there's a design throughout the book that's easy to spot. It's kind of designed differently and it's called Do This Right Now. And it's these just really easy things to do that you can actually do them right now. Like you were saying earlier, there's so much to do, it's going to take forever. I get it. So I want you to have like, maybe like win a few battles while you're fighting the war so that you stay excited. So that would be a place people should go because it, I, I try to think of it almost like a magic trick. It's like, hey, ask this question on Facebook and then check back in a few minutes and I bet you got more comments than you've ever gotten in your whole life. Or it will be send this email or one of his, like you, You, there's templates where if you want to set up a phone call with somebody that you're connected to on social, you know, just copy paste, send it in a DM. 95% of the people say, sure, let's chat. So the do this right now stuff people love, they come back to me quite a bit. The other one I would say, it's so funny, we talked about email marketing. There's a strategy in the book called the 9-word email. And this is actually something you could do when you're in a situation like yours. You know, you've, let's say you've neglected your list, or let's say you have a list, but it's like a lot of older leads. You don't know if they're relevant anymore. They kind of ghosted you. You know, most people have way more leads like that than they have like new, good, high-quality leads. So I teach people to just filter your leads by the ones that have never responded. They're not responding. They're unengaged. And send them kind of a Hail Mary, like, quick question, are you still thinking about buying a home soon? Question mark. Send. Like, cut to the chase, right? It's not this big email newsletter. It's just, hey Nick, are you still thinking about buying our consulting services? Question mark. Send. And that unbelievably Creates tons of opportunities for people and they can't believe it because it's like, oh my God, no one has ever responded to any email I've ever sent, meaning a mass email. And my inbox just blew up because we wrote the message with that as the goal. So I call things built for social. That would be like the comment getters. Built for email, that would be, you know, built for response. That would be the, you know, optimizing messages for replies. So yeah, if somebody's on the fence, I'll give 'em another reason to get off the fence. Anyone that buys the book that doesn't like it, I'll give their money back. I'll be happy to give them a refund. You know, obviously I would like you to read it and put some time into it or listen to it on Audible, but we will do a money-back guarantee for the Book Thinkers community. I've never offered that before.

I love that. Well, thank you so much for that. I tell you what, pretty easy to do because there's so much content in this book that is so incredibly valuable.

Well, this is what's so funny, Luke. I literally can show you like a 1-star review on Amazon that says, zero practical advice. Like, how could you say that about my book? Like, I get it if you're like, yeah, he mixes in a couple You know, mentions of his company or, you know, he's a little cocky or I get it. He curses a couple times. That's fine. You put it in there. But the idea that you would say the conversion code doesn't have any practical advice in it is just, it just makes you realize you can't take that stuff too serious. You can't let that—

Must have been an ex-girlfriend or something.

You know what?

You cut them off in traffic.

On Amazon, they have the fake username. So you're right. It might have been.

All right. Well, I know Luke had a million questions and we didn't get to all of them. So maybe there's another conversation coming soon about the conversion code. How about this?

We will do, let's do, I think we can tie this all together. Let's do an email together with like 7 tips from the conversion code and we'll get it out to your new list once you've got it up and running.

There we go.

All right. I'm in. I like it. Well, for people that want to learn a little bit more about you, Where should they go? What should they do?

Instagram's great. It's theconversioncode.com. That's easy to remember. Amazon, Audible, The Conversion Code. My handle on social is Chris_SMTH, no I in Smith, and Insta, Twitter. Those are the places where I'm on every day, tweeting, posting, messaging with folks.

Well, I tell you what, thank you so much for the tremendous value that you've given us today. I think, man, so many people are going to listen to this and walk away with some crazy good value and life-changing things, which is awesome and always exciting. So very grateful for your time. And I'm grateful that you took the time to write this book. I know how daunting that, that is even. You're, you're an amazing guy and just grateful, very grateful for this, this conversation. So thank you so much.

No problem.

Thank you, Chris.