Sales Without the Sleaze: How Rich Boggs Built a $40M Vision-Driven Empire

Part of the difference with me is I grew up with a grandmother and a dad that were consummate Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale trained salespeople, and they believed one thing first and foremost, that selling is serving. Find a problem, fix a problem. And if you can't fix a problem for somebody where what they're investing is worth less to them than the value that you're bringing, pull back and don't sell them anything. It's not about you. You know, you're the message. Like a missionary.

Welcome to the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters, just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. All right, what is going on, Rich? I am so pumped. Hey, we're gonna have some fun.

Good to see you, brother.

You as well. You as well. We got a lot to talk about today because I mean, you're covering a category that somehow, you know, sales, you know, has sometimes it has this connotation of, ooh, icky. And I don't want to be sales. I'm an entrepreneur. And sometimes it's the hard thing and you have created an incredible system and you guys, you, especially you and the team, you've gone from $40,000 to $40 million, built several multimillion-dollar organizations on the sales side. And I want to get into that and talk about some of the things you've done there. And, you know, you've dropped some amazing sales nuggets at our mastermind in San Diego, because you are in our San Diego mastermind group. Go team San Diego. But before we do that, Mr. Boggs, one of 4 siblings we're going to talk about as well. I want to do a little backstory. And before we get into that today, does that sound good?

Sure.

Because a lot of people don't know. So when I first really got a chance to talk to Rich, it was on a bus, the old school bus back in the day. And we got to hang out a little bit at an event we were at. And you were sharing with me that before you were Mr. Like sales genius guy, you actually were on television and you are this, I mean, cuz you are a beautiful guy. I mean, so I mean, let's look at this here. You got that handsome face all the more.

Thank you.

But yeah, you were on TV with that mug and you did some cool stuff and I know you did some acting and I wanna hear a quick story on that. Like how'd you go from that and then how the hell you go from that into the world you're playing now?

That's a really good question. My wife of 31 years will tell you that I'm a sales guy and I sold my way into an entrepreneurial experience with different companies, and I sold my way into a 10-year acting career as well. I'm really just a sales guy. I grew up with a grandmother that ran a real estate company in Beaverton, Oregon, and my dad, her son, was a consummate, well-trained door-to-door sales professional. So grew up with sales, went to business school at Portland State University after almost flunking out of San Diego State my freshman year. Moved down to San Diego. Yeah, almost flunked outta school. All I remember, 1986, is a blur of Corona, beer, jet skiing in the reservoirs of Palm Springs, and just a lot of partying. So went back to Portland with my tail between my legs, went to Portland State, and I wanted to start my own advertising agency. That was the dream back in the day. I got an intern at Wieden and Kennedy during the summer where they came up with Just Do It for the Nike account.

Oh wow.

Um, over a long weekend. And so that was the dream, you know, kind of Mad Men in the '80s. Oh yeah. And I started doing some Shakespeare in college just to satisfy my arts credits. And that rolled into doing some theater in Portland and getting an agent in Portland. And I was Dennis Quaid's stand-in for a movie he did called Come See the Paradise.

Okay.

Um, about the Japanese internment camps after World War II. I'm making like $100 a day as Dennis Quaid's stand-in. I read for a small role as a soldier and got it, but I'm the same size as that guy. And so they gave me this 2-month gig, and I just caught the bug of, wow, this moviemaking thing is really cool. And I got a sitcom on tape. My agent submitted me for a sitcom and I got it. And so I moved to LA in 1990 with the sitcom, which got canceled immediately. And so I never wanted to be a starving actor. I had a lot of really great friends still to this day that kind of make ends meet in between acting gigs, and that's not much of a life. And I'm a business guy and a sales guy, so I started a little real estate commercial leasing company in Santa Monica, California in 1991 with two friends. And we just matched up business owners with office space. That's all we did. And it exploded. We got very lucky, built that up, sold it, started a financial services firm in my thirties, which we had a rocket for about two years and then it totally crashed and burned. I have a great failure story about that experience. And I started a third company in 2003, financial services firm, ran it up for 8 years, sold it in 2011. And then Matt Boggs called Brave Thinking Institute with our mom, with Mary Morrissey. And I had never worked with my mother before. I would always, you know, I've always been, you know, very interested in what she has done in her, you know, 40 years of being a globally renowned spiritual speaker, teacher, coach. And so this version of her work, she launched with Matt doing all the marketing back in 2008, 2009. And they had leads coming in. So Matt's like, hey, come here.

So hold on, hold on. You're jumping too fast for me because I think you're not really taking care of the listeners here because you're skipping some juicy stuff.

I skipped the acting stuff.

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's just get, I mean, 'cause you know, we all get excited by the celebrity side, at least a lot of us do. So who did you, you said you did some virtual green room here.

I played Paul Rudd's roommate. So I did a lot of small parts in some big movies. I did some big parts in some really, some great films. I did some big parts in some really shitty movies. Most of my work was in some stuff that went right to DVD at the time, but Paul Rudd did a movie with Reese Witherspoon called Overnight Delivery, and I played Paul Rudd's roommate in that movie.

Oh, okay.

So you can see that.

That's where we might see you for that one.

Right. When I joined SAG back in 1990, there was already a Rich Boggs, and back then you couldn't have the same name. And another last name in our family is Cody. So if you look up Richard Cody on IMDb, you can see all the stuff I did. I was in the show Charmed. Okay. Uh, with Shannon Doherty. I was in Diagnosis Murder with Dick Van Dyke.

Okay.

They played a great Senator's assistant in silk stockings. I gotta murder a bunch of people in silk stockings. I played the bad guy in that.

All right. And, um, do you take any of those like murdering skills into the, like, like why wouldn't you call it murder? But like if somebody just needs to get off the sales ladder, like, you know, anyway, I know how to take care of business.

Let me tell you, I learned that as an actor.

That's right. Well, out of those, and we'll get off the acting a second, 'cause I know, you know, but just curious of the big names, the big sort of celebrity names, who did you find that was actually legitimately behind the scenes a cool guy or gal? Like was Paul Rudd, you know, like, you know, the Paul's great.

Paul and I were fast friends on the set. Paul's the real deal. As nice as he seems in person, he was very much like that behind the scenes and in front of the camera. Very generous actor. You know, you're off camera for most of the work you're doing on the set, giving the other actor the line readings they need. And Paul was a very, very generous guy. Got it. I'll say that I— of all the actors I got to know, Tom Hanks and I had kids at the same school for about 5 years in a row. So I didn't work with Tom. But I gotta hang out as a fellow dad with Tom for a whole bunch of time over the years. And that guy is so nice. You almost wish, cuz he's a two-time Oscar winner, he would be a little bit more, you know, of a cocky kind of, you know, what you would expect that kind of A-lister to be. And Tom remembers your kids' names, what your kids are doing, what you're doing for a living, all of those things.

That's really cool.

And I found in the industry, this was my experience. The higher up you were able to reach out and meet people at the highest levels, the nicer they were.

Interesting. Interesting. That's good. You probably, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of things you learned there that even took into your other career. And then one more thing before we're going to sales. I know this, you talked about, you said Matt Boggs. Now here you are entering a call from your brother. You got mom. Okay. Instantly, you know, the spidey senses go up and say, wait a second, you're going into business with mom, brother. I know your other brother, your sister. I mean, I know we haven't gotten there yet, but I know all the siblings are involved. All 4 of you. Plus mom. Talk us through that because there's probably people that are very nervous. I mean, yes, you heard the stories of being in business with your spouse, but we're talking about family members now and the warning signs of that. How's that going? And then I really wanna jump into what you've really crushed in sales and what we can teach some of the audience here.

Well, thank you for bringing up the fact that the family business I have found can be the best or the worst.

Okay.

In my third company, the financial services, we did a lot of tax work and tax resolution work for small businesses. So we probably helped about 1,000 family businesses over 8 years as part of our clientele. And 90% of those family businesses that we got in and got in with their finances to help 'em, you learn, you know, the nitty-gritty, the skeletons in the closet financially. You learn all that. And 90% of those clients were just a nightmare. The levels of toxicity and arguing and bickering to try to help them to weed through. Wow. One of the reasons I sold that business was because we were working with so many small companies and family businesses that were no fun to work with. But 10% of those family businesses were the best. Wow. Like the dream. And so when Matt called and said, hey, you know, come into business with us, help us run BTI, and you can head up the sales team. We need a sales team. We just, they had like 2 part-time salespeople in 2011. I said no at first. I said no. I said, I'm good. You guys are great. We love each other, man. And I'm not looking to test it. You know, I'm not looking to butt heads. And I was gonna go start my fourth company, which was a smaller kind of boutique financial services outfit. But we kept the conversation going and I felt the pull when Mary finally called and said, we had sort of the heart-to-heart where she said, look, Rich, not only, what if not only is it not toxic, I think that's a pretty low bar for us. What if it's amazing? What if by working together, not only do we build something with the Brave Thinking Institute that maybe our grandchildren's grandchildren could be a part of if they want a legacy piece. But what if as adults in business together that are also related, what if it's amazing? What if we grow even closer? What if things get even deeper? What if we work toward that? And how can you say no to that? Especially when it's, you know, your mother, you know, the first salesperson I learned from. Yeah. You talk about vision-driven selling.

Yeah.

Which is our brand of selling. That's Mary Morrissey, right? So I came in as a sales director on a 6-month contract.

And just so everybody visualizes, now Matt's your younger brother, right?

Matt's my younger brother. Matt's 10 years my junior.

So he's the youngest. So young brother comes calling, like, to older brother.

Young brother with mom on speakerphone. They come calling. My younger sister was part of that too. Jennifer was actually the one that first was the one that told Matt and Mary, because Jennifer had worked for my third company. Jennifer was our number one salesperson for like 5 years. My little sister is a monster. Salesperson. And so some of the systems we use to this day are all grounded in her original steps that she used to sell financial services for my company. So when we talked early on, Jennifer was off doing her own, she's a health and wellbeing expert in her own right, has her own work in the world, and she was doing that. John was the sales director of a huge hospitality company in Mexico that he had built up to $60 million a year. He had a 20-year career down in Cabo, so he was working with us just as a consultant at the time.

Okay. John's the oldest brother.

John's the older brother. So John's a couple years older than I am. So it was Matt and myself and Mary in 2012 and 6 other people running BTI, mostly doing live events in person. You know, all the meetings were on Skype at the time.

Okay.

Maybe Omnovia. We kind of graduated to Omnovia for a little bit.

Yeah. But BTI, just for everyone listening, is called Brave Thinking Institute. Yeah.

Brave Thinking Institute.

For those that don't know the amazing Mary Morrissey, your mom, tell us, just take a minute to talk about that and we can get back into, just, I wanna make sure everybody understands who we're talking about here.

Yeah. Mary Morrissey has been a globally renowned spiritual teacher for over 40 years. She started this work in the '70s when we were little. She got interested in transformation when she had a kidney transplant. She survived basically a death sentence, nephritis, back when she was 17 years old.

Wow.

And it was a chaplain praying over her before her surgery that taught her the power of her thinking. In one moment at 3:00 AM that led her on this adventure of initially healing from fatal kidney disease to then getting everything she can get her hands on in regards to transformation. And so she became a minister, a teaching transformation, spiritual principles, because back in the '70s, that was one of the only paths. There was no coaching industry back then. You asked, you know, you told someone you were a coach back then, they would say, what sport?

That was it.

And so she's had a few different works in the world, but she's written 5 bestselling books. She facilitated 3 week-long meetings with the Dalai Dalai Lama in, you know, healing the globe.

Wow.

And she's that kind of person. And so she started this version, the professional speaking, teaching, coaching version of her work back in 2008.

Okay. Thanks for taking me down that path. Now we come back to Matt, your sister, you guys get this going. The team was 6. You started building it.

Yeah. 6, 6 people. Then Jennifer came back in full-time. We recruited my older brother to be our CEO at the time. We laughed, like, are we really recruiting our big brother to be our boss? Yes, we are.

Cuz now you have more siblings on the call to make that phone call. One, one more.

So we're recruiting, you know, and it was always an invitation. It is there's something in our family called FINO. That's a personal acronym that means feel invited, not obligated, because we have a big family. So whenever there's a barbecue or a 4th of July or, you know, something that's not like a wedding or, you know, like a 70th birthday, but something that's, you know, all my kids are in the school play this weekend. It goes out in a text that's titled FINO, feel invited, not obligated.

Amazing. That's cool.

And so you all can borrow that if you want. It really helps with family, right? Like no guilt trip and you gotta mean it. Feel invited.

Yeah.

Not obligated.

Small but genius. I like it.

Fino. And so that, those, that was the invitation from originality with Mac and him calling me. He said, feel invited, not obligated if you would love to come work with us. And so I came in on the 6-month contract and now it's been 13 years and time flies. Same invitation for Jennifer, same invitation for John. Okay. And we both have, you know, we all have other work in the world. So this is really a fun time where we're all working together full-time. We have no plans to go anywhere else, but you know, time is limited. So who knows how much longer it's gonna be this way, but right now it's been a dream. And to build this up, when I came in, the company did about $400,000 that first year.

Okay.

With 6 people and a lot of live in-person events. And these days we're doing $40, $45 million a year. Wow.

You went from $40,000 to $45 million.

We went from $400,000 a year, $400,000 to $40 million last year.

Jesus. Okay. Wow.

Okay. It's been slow, steady growth except for when COVID hit. One of the hardest times in Brave Thinking Institute's history is when we're, we have a coach training coming up March 2020. We had just finished Dream Builder Live, which is our big in-person public event that we did 3 times a year. We did LA in January, we did DC, Washington, DC in May, and then October in Dallas. Every year, 3 Dream Builder Lives a year, 1,000 people in the ballroom. And Mary Morrissey in the faculty teaching the art and science of building a dream. Okay. The Dream Builder program is our flagship digital program, and Dream Builder Live is the flagship event.

Okay.

We certify about 500 life coaches a year in our Dream Builder coaching program, and that was also in person over 6 days at the LAX Marriott. So we just finished Dream Builder Live in LA. It's February 2020. COVID hits.

COVID hits.

And we have a whole calendar of hotels booked and live events booked for the rest of the year, and we are finding out all that's shut down. And other personal development companies are already kind of signaling they're probably gonna go outta business, right? Because they're heavy live in-person events.

Oh yeah, I remember that vividly. Yes.

And so yeah, we were all in this boat together. And so we got together as a leadership team and made a decision that the mission and the message is more important to us than anything else. And how could we— there's a great book called Beautiful Constraint, and it teaches you in these moments when you're feeling like this can't be done, the questions are, we could if— okay, we could if— and so we leaned into that question. Well, we could put on a coaching certification that's just as powerful as the in-person coaching certification if We could do it on Zoom, and if we could create these breakout rooms where we could make it highly interactive for these coaches to learn the same things they're learning if we were in person in a ballroom.

Right.

And so that started a really wonderful, we didn't really realize at the time, but a reinvention.

Yeah.

For us.

Yeah.

And going from this in-person live event company to a virtual live event and coaching certification company.

Amazing.

And so we revamped the coaching certification, put it up on Zoom. We built, we spent a 7-figure sum to build a professional studio in Orange County where we could broadcast kind of our own Zoomzilla, where you could broadcast these Zoom events from.

That's interesting. Okay. Because you're facing a spiral, a downward spiral, and you're saying, let's go virtual. And on top of that, not only, you know, I like the question you're asking, but then you're saying we're gonna double down and invest millions of dollars. Like at what point, like what was the company doing? Like were you already getting some success or did you guys have just faith that this would actually work? Let's actually double down and put money into a studio.

At, in that moment, Eric, we had almost no experience other than running company meetings on Zoom. We had never done a live event on Zoom, and we had to learn from scratch. And so we're big proponents of the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Yep. And in Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill is repeating the power of the mastermind and the power of specialized knowledge. You don't have to know everything. You bring in the experts. And so we hired people to come in that had already been doing events on Zoom pre-pandemic to come in and teach us, here's how you do this. Here's the platform you need. Here's all the Zoom rooms you need. Here's how you hook 'em all together. It's not rocket science. Here's how you test it before you go live. Here's the tech you need on the backend. And then we also had other experts come in and teach us how to run the sales on Zoom and how to run back of the room sales virtually.

Interesting. Okay.

It wasn't perfect the first time we did it for our coaching certification. We had some bugs that we fixed, but we fixed a lot of those bugs. And when May Dream Builder Live came around and we weren't gonna do it in DC like normal, we were gonna do it on Zoom. Instead of having 1,000 people in the ballroom, we had 6,000 people on Zoom. Oh my God.

Yeah.

Wow.

You're like, whoa, we have ourselves a business here.

Yeah. We were so excited at the cost savings of not flying our team out to DC. And then just the consulting bill for DreamBuilder Live, we spent the money, you know, we invested in that studio and that consulting team to help us build this thing and build it right, as right as we could the first time leveraging all that expertise that was already out there.

Yep.

But the coolest thing about that reinvention is today we have life coaches and we have VIP clients that are in Shanghai and Sydney, Australia. And Tokyo, you know, and Quebec, they would've never flown to LA for our coaching certification or flown somewhere for Dream Builder Live. But because we were, you know, basically put our money where our mouth was, built the studio and brought in the experts, 2020 and 2021 were our two most profitable years to date.

Wow. So, I mean, I mean, really the takeaway there too, like I was saying earlier, is that you guys, rather than a lot of companies were feeling defeated, didn't know what to do and you just said, we believe, and not only that, we're gonna put our money where their mouth is. Like you said, we're gonna double down. We know our mission and our message and our product is so valuable to anybody. We have to stay, we have to keep going and do whatever it takes. And you guys did it. And it's incredible on that.

It comes from having a meeting format where at the beginning of every meeting, Eric, and all throughout the day, if we're on Zoom and 3 or more people are in the meeting, we start with our core values. And we have 5 core values that we recite at the beginning of every meeting. They're not core values on some plaque in someone's desk, but they're core values that if you're an employee of Brave Thinking Institute, you have to memorize our core values within 30 days of being an employee. And when we speak them, core value number 1 is one person, and then they throw it to another person in the meeting for core value number 2, 3, 4, and 5. And then we ground the meeting with that mission. Okay.

So now I'm gonna, you know, die to know and share, because this is something that's clearly got your company from, you know, where it's gone and that plus sales stuff we're gonna get into next. I mean, what are the core values?

So we start right now with our purpose, vision, and mission. And so the purpose of Brave Thinking Institute is that we empower people to create and live lives they love living. Our mission is we are the world's premier center for transformational training and coaching, and that's our vision. Our mission is 1 billion dreams achieved. We remind each other we don't have to know how we do these things to know that we are the company doing these things. And then we just focus on the next step. What's the step we can take today to move in that direction? And so we do this work with 5 core values. Core value number 1 is we believe in people. We know that each one of us is far more powerful and contains more potential than any circumstance, situation, or condition. Core value number 2 is we believe in love and care. We bring sincere love and care to every interaction. We delight and surprise each other and our clients by anticipating wants and seeking to exceed expectations. Core value number 3 is we believe in integrity. We live what we teach, right? Deliver what we promise. Number 4 is we believe in fun. We create joy, laughter, and fun in all aspects of our work.

Nice.

And core value number 5 is we believe in growth. We grow by achieving our goals and exceeding our best.

Love it.

And then we finish it by saying, and so it is.

So it is.

Send it off to the universe.

Let's go. So it is. I love it. Love it. Okay. I'm going to talk now about some stuff that you teach and you drop some nuggets in our San Diego meetups quite a bit. And in fact, I remember even just Orange County, we had you up, we did a special launch of the Orange County chapter. You came up and presented these things and I was sitting there watching like some ballers in that room, just so impressed. They're all like, oh my God, this is amazing. They're all hitting you up and wanted to talk to you afterwards for their organizations. We had Kevin and Garrett and some great people out there. So you guys have coined something called, you've taken the ickiness out of sales, right? Everybody's like sales, who can I, you know, I'm afraid to do it. And, you know, oh my God. And I, you know, do I wanna pick up the call? But you've really coined, um, figured out a way to make it feel more heart-centered by having something called vision-driven selling. And that's something you guys have now looked back and said, wow, we really do have a system here for vision-driven selling. And now you're gonna sell that system as well, which is amazing. But, you know, please share, like, tell me more about it. What kind of nuggets or systems parts that can you share today?

Sure. I share all of it, Eric. Let me just say that it's been a real tangible value piece for us to be in the Speakeasy Mastermind. And we're in lots of extra minds. You know, John and I right now as CEO and Chief Sales Officer and co-founders, we make the time to be in several masterminds because they bring so much value. And at the top of that list is Speakeasy.

Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you.

And it's so much fun to show up where you know that you're sharing some gold nuggets because you're receiving 10 times that every single month that we show up. And I mean that just the AI stuff alone in the past 6 months has been, you know, a game changer for our business.

Yeah.

But not just that, you know, someone will share a new recruiting platform that they're using to keep track of their recruiting. Someone will share a new virtual assistant company that they're using that's just crushing it for them. So, I mean, every month people are coming in with real-world, tried-and-true answers for their businesses that they discovered through trial and error so that you don't have to spend so much time and money figuring that out. And a lot of masterminds promise that, but Speakeasy has been the place where it over-delivers every single month.

So, oh, awesome.

I'm really honored to be a long-term member of the San Diego. Good. It's been great. And I love seeing it just makes my heart sing, man, to see this is, you know, one of your dreams. And so to see Austin and, you know, St. Petersburg and these LA, these chapters start to pop, you know, 2024, 2025, maybe earlier than that. But, you know, every time I see a new chapter doing well, you know, excuse my French, but I'm like, fuck yeah. You know, that's awesome. 'Cause they need it in Austin. They need it in, you know, Tampa. They need it in Portland.

Everywhere. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah, we need it. Doesn't matter where you are.

We're dream building ourselves over here. That's right.

Big time.

Yeah.

Big time.

Thank you for that. But yeah, I appreciate that.

I will, I'll talk about vision-driven selling. Part of the difference with me is I grew up with a grandmother and a dad that were consummate Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale trained salespeople, and they believed one thing first and foremost, that selling is serving. Number one. Find a problem, fix a problem. And if you can't fix a problem for somebody where what they're investing is worth less to them than the value that you're bringing, pull back and don't sell them anything. It's not about you. You know, you're the message. It's like a missionary.

Yep.

And so that's the way my dad was trained when he sold World Book Encyclopedia door-to-door. That was one of the first global trainings where they taught the salespeople this value-based selling. The conversation is all about what are your biggest challenges right now in the house?

Mm-hmm.

And can World Book Encyclopedias be 10x, you know, the value that you'd be spending to have us in a World Book in the house? And so I memorized my dad's pitch going door to door when I was little. And when I was 7 years old, somehow I developed a debilitating stutter. And to this day, no one knows where it came from. Nothing happened, you know, in my personal life, I just came out with this stutter and I could barely talk. It was sort of this spiral of a lack of confidence. I was a 7-year-old. Okay. And speech therapists couldn't fix it and all the things my folks tried weren't making it any better. And so on weekends, John, my older brother and I would rotate going door to door with dad to sell World Book. And this is in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon in the late '70s, early '80s. And so it's like raining half the time we're out there, you know? And one day my dad knocked on the door and then pushed me in front of the door and said, this one's yours. And he knew I had memorized the pitch. And I think something intuitively knew, he knew this would help me. Ah, and he's willing to burn a few leads to help his kid overcome whatever it was in me. He just, as a dad, he knew I was ready for this. Looking back now, of course at the time I'm petrified. And so I'm standing in front of the door, I'm like 8 years old. Guy opens the door, you know, and it just came out. I said, hey, my name is Richie Boggs and this is my dad Haven Boggs, and we're official World Book Encyclopedia representatives. And have you ever been dreaming, you know, or wanting more information about a famous sports figure or an exotic animal or a foreign country and you don't have any of that information at home and you don't wanna leave the house and you're super frustrated? 'Cause it's 1981 and Google hasn't been invented yet.

Yeah.

Is that you? Yeah. And that guy didn't buy, but he was very gracious and he was impressed. And he shut the door and we're walking to the second house and my dad grabbed my collar. I remember, and he kneeled down and he said, hey, you didn't stutter.

Ah.

And I didn't realize that I hadn't stuttered. And it's about the power of having a really good script and knowing these words work to help solve a problem. If you've got these challenges, you need a set of World Book Encyclopedia.

Yeah.

And so when that's the way you approach it, there's never a feeling of pushy or slimy or salesy. And you're talking to a guy that grew up in the '80s. So I left, you know, when I started my companies, I am guilty of being a sales bro. I grew up watching Wall Street and, you know, all the movies, Boiler Room. And so my financial services firms were We were aggressive, you know, we were pushy when needed. But I learned over the years that there's a way to do this work that is of high integrity, and there's a way to do this work that is easier on the skillset and harder to sleep at night.

Yep.

There's different ways to do it. And one way leaves you really feeling like you're changing the world.

Right.

Um, it's harder. It takes a more advanced skillset. To sell in a way that is vision-driven, where you're selling them a vision. You know, people want results. They don't want the product you're selling anyway.

Yeah. Right.

They want the result. And so there's a way to sell the result that's authentic and honest where you're really making a connection and solving a problem.

Yep.

And overdelivering to every customer, which means you've gotta figure out a way to underpromise even by a little underpromise what you're gonna deliver so that you can overdeliver on that.

So that's part of the step. So I like the selling is serving, and now you have the under Even a little bit.

And there's lots of vision-driven trainings that we give our sales team. And the first one is that it begins and ends with them, right? Be the client you wanna attract is the most important thing. And the first thing we teach all of our new salespeople, be the client you wanna attract. Here we're selling personal development.

Okay.

And so we require all of our team members to go through a certain amount of personal development training with us. Every month as a company, and we encourage each sales team member to invest in their own personal development outside of BTI.

Interesting.

In ways that really serve them. What other masterminds are they in? What other events are they going to where they can say to every client they're speaking with, when they say how powerful it is to invest in yourself, it falls pretty flat. You know, if you're saying that to people all day long for a living, but you're not actually doing it.

Right.

Right. Versus being a person of integrity when you can say, I've been to this seminar, here's the stack of books that I've read this year that really helped me show up as the best version of myself today. Right. And so ways that we can be, you know, the type of client that we're looking to attract is one of the most important things that we teach.

Love it. Cool. Tell me more. Keep going. So that part of, is there like a formula? Like what can we share today that gives a few nuggets or a couple takeaways?

I mean, I could pull the curtain way back and just show you, this is Conversations to Close.

Okay.

So this is the program that we teach any heart-centered entrepreneur who's selling high ticket. Yeah. Or any business owner that has high ticket products they're selling. This is what our sales team trains in.

I love it.

This is the same program that we give. We've certified 6,000 life coaches, and so we give the life coaches this digital program that teaches them.

Keep that up. So for those that can't see, it's a wheel. And we have 7 parts. We have 1 connection, 2 pain pleasure, 3 reveal the gap, 4 yes, I need help, 5 good fit revealed with a, and there's a couple of stop signs in there and then stop to wait to, I'm sure you'll tell me about that in a second, 6 the offer, and then 7 the close. So that's the wheel they go through and your stop signs in there, I assume is have stop, wait for them to respond and see if they're interested or things that are vision driven.

Processes that get baked into this cake so that you're never in a position where it feels like you're pushing someone to do something that they didn't tell you was gonna lead them to where they wanted to go. Got it. You're never pushing something on someone where they're like, this guy's just trying to sell me. But we start with connecting with the client, finding common ground. We immediately then go into what's the vision, what's the goal, what do they really want, and ways to help them really open up. And really reveal with you what it is they really want. What's the problem we're looking to fix? Because we're looking to get here. What's the vision? And then the contrast. What would you change first if you could, that's gonna move you in that direction? Mm-hmm. What's the problem we're solving? Solution, problem, helping them get emotional about both.

Love it.

And helping them really imagine if this vision had come true today, what does it feel like? What does it look like?

Oh, I love it.

So we spend a lot of time This is the heavy lifting in our sales processes.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

This is the vision-driven piece. The heavy— I can totally see. Yeah.

You're putting them, you're trying to get them to visualize a state that they want, the desired state, and just feel how— yeah, that's great.

And when this problem is solved, how does it feel? What are you doing? What's the value? What does it lead to next?

Yep.

And then the contrast is, you know, if you could have already done this on your own, you would've already done it. So what's in the way?

Yeah.

You know, what would you fix right now if you had a magic wand? That's the pain. And helping them see the contrast between the two.

Yep.

Today, here's the pain I'm in. Tomorrow, here's the solution I would love. They see the contrast. Yeah. Then that reveals the gap, which is number 3. Naturally, you feel the gap in between the two, and if you could have bridged the gap already, you would've.

Right.

And then number 4, automatically number 4, would you love some help? This is almost a rhetorical question, right? Would you love to fix this problem? Would you love some help? If you knew help was available, would you love it? You're making it an easy yes. If they don't say yes, they would love some help. We stop the call.

Got it.

Otherwise, if you move on and you don't get that, it can feel salesy. Right, right. So 99.9% of the time they say, yes, I would love some help. And then we get into what we do as a professional and what they're looking to have done is a good fit. Right, right. It's again, kind of rhetorical, but we're getting this good fit revealed idea out on the table that what I do and what you need are a good fit. So let's move forward. If it's not a good fit. We stop the call and then only then, yes, I need help. Yes, your vision, what you need and what I do match. Only then do we make the offer.

Got it.

And the offer is very specific. Again, people buy results, not products or services. They're looking for the results. So it's 80% of the offer is conversation about the result.

Okay.

Where you're gonna be, how it's gonna feel.

Yeah.

Only 20% is the, you know, the how many weeks the program is, what are the details, what are the bells and whistles? They don't really care about that. We like to get all, you know, deep into it's 1 hour of this, it's 30 minutes of that. It's all these bills.

You're saying such an obvious thing that we all mess up on. I love it. You're right.

It's, yeah, we care about that. They don't really give a shit. Yeah. You know, we just want the result. So they do need to know the basics. So 20% of those basics, 80% on the value. And then we stop and ask a third rhetorical question, which is, does this program just in and of itself sound like something that's gonna help you create the result you're looking for.

Yeah.

But does it sound good? And of course they say, well, how much is it? And we say, besides that, we'll get to that. Besides that, does the program sound like it's gonna meet the needs? Is the value here? They always say yes. And then we move on, or 99% of the time if they don't, if they say no, I don't think that program's gonna help me meet my needs, then we don't even discuss the price.

Yeah, exactly.

So we save the investment for the very end. Once they say, yeah, the program sounds great. Then we reveal the investment and all the ways to pay. At that point, we have found with this process, way more people end up just saying yes right here in step 6 than in any other sales training.

Yeah.

But if they don't, then we move into step 7, which are just different ways to help them make a decision on this call. And we teach that closing the deal is simply closing the loop. That's why this is in a circle.

Ah, okay.

Because all you're doing is closing the loop. You're helping them come to a powerful decision. and a powerful decision is no, I'm not doing it. That's okay.

I love this. I mean, to me, I just love the fact that you're creating a system that feels good and feels right and is trainable. And that's really what, and ultimately you attributing, you were sort of doing this and then made it, I mean, you were kind of doing things. Now you actually put, you made it tangible, the system. And is this really the big, what you're attributing to how you got to $40 million? A big part of this to see the—

it's, I would say that it's one of 5 systems that I implemented over you know, in the first couple of years that really helped us scale. Having a system that your salespeople can trust.

Yep.

And can rely on that you can continue to train on. It's a framework where, you know, Bruce Lee said, I'm not scared of the opponent that knows 10,000 moves. I'm scared of the opponent that has done one move 10,000 times. And so we're teaching, you know, sales is a craft and an art and a science like any other. And if you have the ability to make hundreds of thousands, if not more a year in sales, is it worth really leaning into a system that you know is gonna help you do that where you can get really good at closing high-ticket deals in a heart-centered, vision-driven way?

I love it. I love it. And I think you've even offered recently in our community, I noticed you did a post about how you're willing to take people and show them a little bit of the system. And, you know, people that are interested, you guys are now starting to take the system we allow others to kind of check it out, right? Tell me more about that a little bit.

It's really a fun time. We've kept this in-house for all these years. And just in this last quarter, we've got the sales team. I've got the sales team. It's 42 people strong.

Oh, wow. Okay.

At a place now where I'm still the godfather, um, over the team. I've got some really wonderful leaders now that are running the day-to-day, but I've carved out just enough time for the first time to take a handful of clients that wanna build a sales team. Or wanna start their sales team and help 'em do it. You know, you talk about, you know, a learning curve. Yep. You know, not only have I spent 13 years in the personal development arena doing this, but we've spent, you know, tens of millions of dollars learning how.

Jesus.

Yeah. That's, you know, what to level up, what not to level up over the years to build the sales team we have now. And so we've got recruiting, vision-driven recruiting systems. Onboarding systems, training systems, how to run your daily meetings, the strategy session calendar, how to run your calendar, how to overbook your calendar in a heart-centered way so that if you have clients that aren't getting a strategy session at their given time, what to do with those people to turn them into paid clients. And maybe the biggest move that we made that helped scale was we separated out the teams so that we have appointment setters, which are a separate onboarding training. It's a separate person and personality and skillset that does the appointment setting versus your top closers that just close deals all day. The separation of those two teams that I did back in 2015 made all the difference.

It is amazing. So you got, yeah, a couple thoughts. So first of all, anybody, once again, I've known Rich and his brothers quite a bit, and if you wanna talk about anybody who's some of the most kind, generous givers, and that's a big part of the, what we attract in our community. You can just hear in his voice and the amount of information that I've seen Matt share, Rich share, John share. I mean, if you're any questions around sales or these systems, please reach out to Rich. I mean, he's got so much info and he's so glad, you know, helpful, wanting to share as is his brothers. And you know, one question I'm thinking about as you're going through this is we have so many members at different stages in the organization. I mean, you say we got 42 salespeople doing this and a lot of people are like, okay, I got 3 people, I got 10 people and maybe some have 0 people and they're trying to make that decision. So kind of a two-pronged question is number one, and I'll answer them, ask them both. Let you answer one. Is your system work for people at all levels? Number one. And number two, for those that are sitting there trying to decide, well, what do I do? Do I build in-house? Do I get a team? Do I just pick up the phone and study Rich's program and do it my— like, when do I build a team? Like, do I outsource? Like, just how would you answer those questions?

That's a great question. You know, you need a sales team. When you feel that you've been doing your own strategy sessions, or you have, you know, one part-time person or one full-time person, and you know in your bones you're not scaling the way you know you could be scaling if you had a top closer where all they were doing were taking sales calls all day and closing at a level that you were happy with. Anyone that's got high-ticket programs, product services where it's like $5,000 and up.

Okay.

Where they know that a 30 to 90 minute strategy session would really help them convert more deals. They are not serving their communities by not having a vision-driven sales team just running like a Swiss watch.

And you said $5,000. Is that a magic number? I mean, what, you know, what if I have products that are $2,000, $3,000, $4,000?

You think $5,000 is the magic number to start? That's a great question. $5,000 is a 100%, Number. And then we have found that under $5,000, we're able to sell $2,000 and $3,000 just with a marketing team and with direct, you know, VSLs and opt-ins, you know, and some customer service.

Yep.

But once we got to $5,000, we found that the conversion at least tripled when we were able to bring on an appointment setter to warm 'em up and edify And then a top closer to really take them through the 7 steps in a powerful way.

Love it. Love it. Well, fantastic. This has been so helpful. I think anybody again, watching, listening, and can see, you know, hopefully gets frankly excited about selling again and understands how powerful this could be if done the right way and how good it could feel. Cause you're ultimately, as you said, selling is serving and we're there to serve others, you know, as part of the process. Is there anything I missed? Any questions I should, I might've forgotten to ask you?

Just one of the things that we talk about as founders of the Brave Thinking Institute is this idea of being vision-driven, period.

Yeah.

Right. And, you know, yes, it's vision-driven selling, which could sound, you know, a little cliché, but at the end of the day, it's about living this life where you're driven by a vision. Yeah. And so it's not just about having a vision-driven sales team while the owner's over here, you know, living life in another way. Yep. It's about top-to-bottom leadership and leading by example, where the most powerful thing that Mary keeps talking about is she'll, you know, interact with our sales team is it reminds her to be a vision-driven leader. And that starts with her selling her again today. I've got what it takes. I can do this today. I'm gonna make today count. I'm gonna build, you know, my dream today and do what I can today from right where I am with what I have. I'm gonna take advantage of today. That each one of us, the first thing we do, Bob Proctor talked about this incessantly. The first thing that we do is we gotta sell ourselves.

You know, it's interesting you say that. It's like, again, it's fundamentals you guys are doing over and over again. I love it. I mean, I think we all intuitively know as entrepreneurs, like, yeah, we gotta share the mission and vision, but like we do it once or twice and just don't talk about it again. And then there's no way people pick it up. Like I've found so many times in companies I've worked with, it's just like, well, what do you mean? They should know the vision already. I gotta say it again. Like how many times? You just gotta say it all the time and like, and the more you say it, the more people will start to, yeah. I mean, I love that you're, it's, again, it's fundamentals. I forget to do it. I'm sure a lot of people forget to do it and it's genius.

It is. It's easy to get complacent. Totally. Napoleon Hill talks about the true experts are students first and students always. One of the things that reminds me to avoid or the dangers of getting complacent is I'm a pilot. And so I have my pilot's license. I fly on weekends for fun. We fly to Catalina for lunch and things like that. Nice. We fly up to Santa Barbara for ice cream.

Wow.

My wife says that's an expensive ice cream run. It's too much fun. And I had a dream of flying since I was in high school, a dream I put off for 30 years. And it was when my son was 8 years old begging me to get my pilot's license because he wanted to be able to fly around in small airplanes that I got my license. And so today, after flying for 14 years, the most dangerous thing as a pilot, they talk about hazardous attitudes that you literally get trained on as a pilot. As part of your ongoing education to stay current. And one of the things they drill in the most is the dangers of complacency.

Oh, wow.

I had great instructors and I still have great instructors in my pilot hobby. And they'll tell you every single time you fly, you know, if you land at Catalina and just have a burger and you hop back in the plane, if you fly with a pilot that doesn't jump up on the wing and check the oil and check the fuel with his fingers, don't fly with that person. You know, it's crazy. And it's easy to talk yourself out of it. We just landed, we just got a burger. The plane's fine. If, yeah, yeah. Jump outta the plane. And I've told my son, you know, and my son's a pilot as well now, that if one of us isn't jumping out of the plane to check the oil and to check the fuel with our fingers in the tanks, we shouldn't be flying anymore.

That's cool. That's cool. I love it. And then on that note, I think hopefully everybody gets a chance to really get to know you and have met you that don't know you like I do. And you can just see just through those stories how amazing Rich is. And I certainly encourage everybody to check out some of the materials, some of the opportunities he's given those that wanna reach out to him to learn more about selling.

Reach out to me on the, the Circle app. Yeah, I'm happy to hop on Zoom with anybody and talk about kind of what we do and how we do it. I was the recipient of so much of this kind of value when I first came into this industry in 2012. Bob Proctor was such, God rest his soul, such an amazing mentor for us and for my mom. And Arash was his sales director for 12 of the years that I was, or maybe 11 of the years that I was sales director here. And they were so generous.

Wow.

Bob just gave you everything he knew, everything he had. And so I feel like me doing that here, Eric, and in the masterminds we're in is me just paying it forward.

Oh, I appreciate that. Well, thanks again for your time and so cool to connect and share and I'll see you in a few weeks.

Yeah, I'll see you at the mastermind.

That's right.

All right. All right.

Have a great day.

Thanks, Eric.

Thanks. And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, Don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.