Sam Wakefield on How Confidence in One’s Identity Drives Real Sales Conversions

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Enjoy the show. Welcome to Inside the Speakeasy podcast. Today's episode, we're going to learn how you can absolutely crush sales and convert with identity and authenticity without being pushy or using manipulation. I know we all like that. Plus we're going to get into how Sam Wakefield, our guest, was able to actually do 20 years of sales and marketing, crushing his business and without having to spend money on sales, marketing, and doing all through podcasting and other guerrilla marketing tactics. And he's going to share some of his nuggets and big wins Welcome to the show, Sam Wakefield out of Austin.

Yes, sir. Thank you. I appreciate the honor to be in here, man.

Yeah, no, it's great. I love our amazing Austin chapter. So stoked to have you in today. And man, we got lots to talk about. And I know, in fact, we were talking in the green room and you've been doing podcasting for 7 years, 7, over 7 years. And you're now at a 1.5% global, in the 1.5% of overall global podcasts for your Close It Now podcast. Is that right?

That is, yeah, absolutely true.

Damn. Okay. I mean, I just want to plant that seed and maybe open that loop and we'll close in a little bit because I want to hear how you got that podcast going. Seeing as though I'm like episode, I think this is episode, who knows, maybe I got to do a quick math, but probably around mid-30s. So I got a long ways to go here. So thanks for coming in and, you know, I'm hoping to get to that point. So I'm excited to talk about that, but you do a ton in the sales and marketing, but let's talk about your niche. And you've crushed it because your niche, for those that don't know you, is all really the home services category. And you've been doing all your success by, you know, just crushing sales for everybody in that category. And you're one of the leaders in that category. How did you— let's just give you a little background. Like, how did you fall into this world? And I want to get into all the things you've been doing.

Yeah. So that's a great question. It's actually a funny journey. You know, I started years ago, 20 years ago. Married my wife. She was a career, had a master's degree in library science. And when we got married, I was like, I just work jobs, so I'll just move where you are. And got to, you know, move to the city where she was at and established. And I've initially, I got into the industry because I just needed to work and barely starting my personal growth journey. And so I was starting out as an attic rat, pulling ductwork in the hot Texas panhandle, this little teeny tiny 13,000 person town, and didn't know what I didn't know at the time. And so did that for a couple years. I actually almost died in an attic one day. Whoa. Came across a live electrical wire that was just loose in the attic, caught me on the arm, and the guy next to me had to kick it off of me.

Oh my God. I dunno what happened. Is this wire like sit there buzzing and you're frozen or wait, what, what goes on there? Yeah.

Yeah.

So if for anybody, if you've not been in Dunning, by the way, bonus tip. So if you hit a live wire, yeah. What hap— what do we do?

Yeah. Yeah. So electricity, if it's a strong enough current, current, it locks your muscles up and you can't move. And so because it was mid-afternoon, it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, we'd been in a 140-degree attic all day. So it's literally like you jumped into a swimming pool with your clothes on. And so we're soaking wet, sweating. And when it hit me, it just connected right here in the arm. It connected connectivity and I just couldn't move for a second. And thankfully the guy next to me realized, thankfully he was there and realized what was going on. So, you know, kicked it off of me and it was short enough time that no real damage was done other than mentally. And so I transitioned pretty quickly out of the installation segment of that into data services.

Signal, this is not for me. I have something better in store for me.

Yeah. Well, and at the same time, you know, I play guitar, always have, and, you know, it was killing my hands. I couldn't play and all those types of things. So moved in, actually quit the company. The owner called me back a little while later and said, hey, I know that my brother who was doing sales, he's leaving, so I need somebody to do sales for me. Come back. I know you're not going to underbid the labor because you did it. And so it started out my sales training at first was, here's the stack of leads the last guy didn't call. Here's our price book. Go make money. I didn't know anything, so I just started dialing for dollars. And so fast forward into a year later, I actually when I stepped in as sales, the company, Tiny Town, of course, the company went from about $750,000 to $1.2 million strictly by me taking over the sales role. And then the owner was like, hey, let's do something. So I actually bought in and became co-owner. We opened the home performance side of our company. 5 years later, I took an exit from that. That's when we moved to Austin. And then I found a new, new small company to work with. Talked to the owner, became the sales manager, sales trainer there, and we helped him grow it from 2 and a— we were about 2 and a half years old. So we grew that HVAC company from $2.5 million to over $8 million in about 3 years. And this is pre-COVID numbers for anybody that knows COVID was the biggest boom that ever happened in home services and everything completely changed then. So those numbers are a little, little more impressive typically before that. And then he took an exit. And at that time I decided that I did not want to work for the large private equity organization that bought that company. And I'd also started the podcast and started coaching. So I was actually earning more from my coaching than I was from being in the field selling at the time. So I said, okay, no problem, I'll just move on. And that really is where it started my journey into coaching and training and podcasting. And since then, I spent 3 years in solar and came back to the HVAC industry. And from mid-2023, this is 100% of what I do is help companies explode their numbers.

Wow. Okay, that's impressive. I love the journey, and good for you, you know, school of hard knocks, getting in there, grinding in. And nothing better than just somebody— I love talking to people just like door-to-door, they were grinding, they figured it out, they worked those hours, and that's how we started.

There's not a single thing that I train that I don't have a backstory of. This is the ask me how I know moment because I've made the mistake.

Yep. I want to kind of create, paint a picture more macro than I want to get to go in the weeds a little bit. The HVAC industry. So talk us through for context because you, I want to hear sort of the before state and after state. So who are the customers in the HVAC world that you're dealing with? What's typically the world, their world like before they run into a Sam Wakefield and have the skills that you teach them?

100%. Yeah. You know, for context, you know, there's 60,000 heating and air companies across just in the United States alone. And so, and then of course the podcast is listened to in over 70 countries because everyone around the world wants to either, you know, warm up or cool off.

Yeah.

When the temperatures outside get wherever they get. And so when I'm working with companies or individuals, typically what happens in that world, and this is either HVAC or any other home service, And you're not doing just HVAC, and I wanted to make sure the filicons—

so it's HVAC, and then what other types of brands would be closest to line that you're talking to?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's, uh, so it's HVAC, it's plumbing, it's electrical, garage doors, gutters, solar, roofing.

Got it.

Irrigation. If somebody serves a home and improves a home at all, that the conversation is the same. We just change the widget out.

Got it. Okay, good. Thank you for that. All right, so now you're— so the typical situation they're in. Go back to that. Yep.

Yeah. So normally it, especially in that type of world, it's pretty easy to start a company. So what's happened is most owners had an entrepreneurial seizure at some point. They hung out and said, I want to do this for myself, hung out their shingle, and they're good at fixing the thing or installing the thing. So, but then they can only grow to a certain point. So frustration hits, sets in. They've maybe built the team and had these roller coaster of type of experiences, but they know there's so much more. So that's where I step in, help them develop their systems, develop their, an actual process. Most people don't even have an actual process, but how I'm very, very, very different than your 90% of your trainers out there. We focus more on identity and every single one of my podcast episodes, I end with work to become someone worth buying from. Mm-hmm. Because, so in my company we had a full-length mirror by every door with a sign over it that said, would I buy from me today? And if you, when I'm working with these companies, if you can't answer that question with an affirmative, hell yes, I would buy from me, stay home because it's pointless to go out into the marketplace and try to work with homeowners. If you wouldn't buy from you, they're not going to either. So we lead the energy of the conversation by becoming the person of character that the people, that people just naturally want to work with, which is very unique and different in a very blue collar type of a space.

So it's almost like you're starting really more of the personal development side and creating this image of that friend, that person that I feel that trusted authority of somebody that could feel, I mean, it would be, I assume something that people wanna buy from somebody that feels more, you know, let more trusting, more, more relatable.

Yeah, you got it. You know, and the thing, I mean, you know, it's my business is sales training. People, they buy what they want and I give them what they need, right? They, you know, they're here for better, you know, better outcomes, better sales numbers, you know, better close rates, better average tickets. But then I show them along the way that you're only going to be a certain level of successful by learning a script and practicing a script or learning how to handle the your price is too high objection or I'm getting 3 bids objection. You're only going to see a certain level of success until you go to work on the real needle mover, is the internal work. When people come to me with objections, they're like, oh man, I'm always getting this objection. But so for example, if Eric, if you came to me like, man, I'm always getting the price objection, you know, and I'm like, okay, so my first question to you is, well, how do you buy when you shop for things? Do you ask for discounts or do you buy premium? If you're like, hey, I always see the 3 bids objection. My first question is, well, when you do this type of work, how do you shop? Are you 3 bids?

Right.

And so because we don't realize we're literally leading the conversation with our energy. Your energy introduces yourself before you ever knock on the door.

Love it. And it's important to talk and the things that, that we're talking about here, I am imagining is stuff that yes, you're doing it for your industry. But we could do these tactics you're teaching, you're gonna talk about today. I mean, you're on, like, I could already sense that is for any kind of area, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, within our Speakeasy here in Austin, I've done a couple sessions with one of our other members, Jason Hall, for his property management company. I've done a session with, with my digital marketing company that actually built my website. I volunteered and I did a couple sessions with their sales team strictly for helping with that. Because the— any type of conversation, something is sold in every conversation, right? Even if it's an idea. And so when we understand the principles and the dynamics, to boil it down, just better communication skills, because most people don't communicate accurately or effectively. And so as we learn better communication skills, everything, all the results follow after that.

Yeah. Okay. So can we dig? I wanna dig deeper into that cuz it's fascinating. So like you said, the identity. Okay. So looking yourself in the mirror, let's go deeper. What do you teach in that? What do you, gimme some examples.

Oh, so yeah, I, so I love this topic. It's a good talk about this way longer than most people wanna listen.

Okay.

So it all comes back to, you know, my philosophy is sales is not the performance of an hour or 45 minutes or however long you're with that, that person. Sales is the overflow of a life. And so when we start to break down, I train something called, I call it the Wheel of Success. And there's multiple versions of this out there, but there's 6 components in this wheel. And so when we start to dive into this, sales skills, of course, is one of those, but that's actually the least important. And proof of this is we all know those people. It seems like everything they touch turns to gold. And you can take that person, pick them up out of an industry and drop them in another industry they know nothing about. And then you ask 'em, be like, Eric, how long is it gonna be till you're on top of the leaderboard? I asked him, I was like, all right, everybody, everybody in here, who would you point to in this room first glance that's the most badass salesperson in the room? And they all pointed to this one guy and it's like, all right, dude, if your industry went away today, it didn't exist anymore and you had to do something else you know nothing about, how long is it gonna be till you're number one? He's like, I don't know, maybe a month. I said, why? It's because your identity, it's because you know who you are. Your belief in yourself is I'm a closer. I'm a performer. And so it's getting rid of those limiting beliefs. So back to the wheel, the other components are your spiritual journey, which is not about being a specific religion. It's just being, are you doing things in alignment with your core values that you know you should be doing to move your needle forward? And that's personal growth.

I want to make sure everybody gets the message. So what would be an example of somebody doing something out of alignment with their spiritual journey, spiritual growth that you've noticed?

Yeah, for sure. So we'll take, you know, whatever your text in your alignment, how long has it been since you picked up, actually read a book or studied, listened to a podcast, studied something to further your own knowledge of where you are in your journey? Or another example is even an atheist has a spiritual practice. If it's mindfulness, meditation, those types of things, but are you actively doing the things you know you should be doing to move that needle forward in your own life? Around. If it's reading the Bible, if it's reading whatever, are you doing it or are you not?

Got it.

You moving the needle, or you— there's no such thing as plateau. You're either moving forward or you're moving back. After the next one is personal growth.

Okay.

And when I introduce this, always reference the classic Zig Ziglar quote. It says, personal growth is like taking a shower. You can't do it once on Sunday and expect it to last all week, which is the best summation of That's it. Really, even if it's 5 minutes of reading actual pages in a book, are we— drive time is a big thing for most people in my world. So are you using your drive time to just zone out and jam, or are you using that as drive time university? Because there's an interesting statistic.

Yeah.

And this goes for everybody. A 15-year career in outside sales or technician or anything that involves drive time A 15-year career, if you use that windshield time as drive time university, it's the equivalent to 3 PhDs.

Wow. I mean, being business partners with the, uh, the famous Brian Tracy that I am, just, I remember him talking about that all the time. University on wheels, you know, and listening to his programs on the car all the time. That was great. Yep.

In fact, that's where I start people when they come to me, especially if they're beginners in sales. The very first thing I have them read or listen to is The Psychology of Selling.

Oh, I love it. I'll let Brian know that. And it's funny because I remember when I went to working from home versus driving to work, that was like the number one thing that was frustrating. On one hand, you got that, but it's like I missed the drive, you know, getting in the car for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. But all right, so you get personal development. Okay, keep going.

Yep. The third one is relationships. And so that relationships and communication, this is a big one that a lot of people miss because we all know, you know, your performance in whatever your profession is, is directly affected by everything else in your life. So the way I like to explain this, I like to give buckets. Are you the type of person that is, thinks that, well, this is the way I communicate. So everyone needs to learn how I communicate because maybe I rub some people the wrong way, but they just have to get over it. Or are you the type of person that says, you know what, if there's a common denominator here, That common denominator is me. For things to change, I have to change. For things to get better, I have to get better. So take Jim Rohn very much taking that responsibility into, okay, maybe I need to read a book on how to communicate better. Maybe I need to see a therapist on how to communicate better. But taking that responsibility is a huge part of it.

There's a lot of depth in that one as I think through that, because immediately I start thinking of people in my world who sit on the wrong side of that, that, that conversation. That's a really interesting one. Thanks for sharing that one. Okay.

The last two actually tie together. Nutrition and fitness. What are we doing with nutrition and fitness? You cannot be a top performer. You can't be a million-dollar earner and eat off the dollar menu, right? Here you are. It's not going to work. And as we rise in our socioeconomic circles and find more successful people, it just proves true over and over and over again. Cut out chemicals and food is important, or physical activity is important. It releases all these brain chemicals that you can't tap into otherwise. And more importantly, so take fitness, you know, when you create these little micro, you have these commitments to yourself. And when we actually fulfill those micro agreements with ourself that I'm going to work out 4 times a week. And do it, that creates this confidence that's so hard to generate in other ways. So every bit of this starts to build together into this just overall, this high vibrational state basically is what it is.

I was going to say you're a very confident machine who is true to themselves, looks the part, as you said, they look like somebody you want to do business with because they're doing things to take care of themselves. They know how to communicate, as you mentioned, they have the ability to look within themselves and understand and listen properly and have the confidence, like you said, and they're true. They're walking in feeling good about everything they're going in their life. So they have that. That's fantastic. So I imagine you're walking into a company and you're talking to the sales team, and if they're scoring themselves each part of that wheel, it ain't going to be all 10s.

No, exactly. Well, and that's the cool part of it is it's all relative to your own perspective. You know, and that's what I find is the low performers a lot of times think they know everything but have nothing. And the higher performers, they will consistently rate themselves— the number one people in the room— they consistently rate themselves lower on the spectrum than the lower performers. And so, so much of it is adjusting perspective. Yeah, helping them, you know, reminds me of the quote that, you know, as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shores of our ignorance, right? And it directly applies to this. And proof of this, this is the example I always love to use in training situations. I'll introduce this and of course, so many people like, ah, it's all woo-woo. I don't get it. It's like, let me prove it to you. How many of you have ever been in a situation, it's a dinner, it's a gala, some sort of environment where somebody walks, there's no fanfare, there's no announcement made. Somebody walks in, it's like the entire room quiets down and Everyone turns to look to see who just walked in. Then ask them why. Because their energy introduced themselves. They are someone everyone wants to know, right? Because of who is that? All of this is developed to the place that they could influence a room without even speaking a word. Yeah, that's the goal, is that so that's the foundation for working to become someone worth buying from. But it carries through to every element of our lives.

Amazing. You're right. And that, that person walking in that room, you'd be like, I just want to know that person. I wonder who they are. I wonder if they're— you'd buy from that person.

Yeah, exactly. And then to, you know, to bring it home, typically then everybody— we've all met those people. We're looking to buy something and we met this person and we're like, you know what, before we even get into it, you're like, I don't know what the price is. I don't even know all the details of this, but I'm buying from this person because I instantly sense a level of trust that you just can't fabricate. It's authenticity that's off the charts, right?

Right. I love that. Okay, so there's a lot of good things on the wheel. And so where do you find— especially us listening here, and obviously, let's, you know, we're talking a lot of entrepreneurs that are operating, you know, fairly on the— I'd say, you know, they're a lot more confident, they understand a lot of these things we're talking about. Where do you think most of these listeners of today's podcast might be, if you were to do a guess, the one area we're probably off the most, or where would you suggest we start as like maybe one or two, like, okay, if nothing else, try to do this a little more.

So, you know, really it comes down to taking a self-audit, going around that wheel and saying, okay, and just— so the way that I typically discuss this is it's a journey. There's not a— success is not a destination. If it was, just draw a circle on the ground. I'll buy your plane ticket. We'll just fly there and we'll stand in the circle and be successful. But it's not, it's a journey. So it doesn't matter where you are, we can always improve in these elements. So really that self-audit and just visualizing either somebody you know, or somebody, you know, that we know of in your mind, what would be the level 10 for each of these categories and rate yourself against that. And so that's the place. So to really directly answer your question, there's not a consistent one or two areas that I normally see. That are failing, it's different per person, but doing that self-audit and then, I mean, I even use this for my quarterly planning and my annual planning and, you know, all of the things. This is a huge element in how do I want to present myself in the world, right? And then when we train it, so, so it's really not a 1 or 2, but it's more about it because it's all very personal, right? And then my level 10 for fitness is like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Conan the Barbarian, right?

Sure.

I know I'm probably never going to get there because I don't have the same genetics, but if I constantly strive to be closer to my own personal ideal, I'm making progress along the way. And that's all that matters. Yeah.

I mean, like you said, look, if you're hitting your goals and you're hitting that workout every, you know, 4 or 5 days a week, you know, you don't have to be Schwarzenegger, but you know, you're staying healthy and you're feeling good about yourself. And that's part of that area. Love it. Love it. Okay. So I could see definitely this is helpful. I can see this applies to a lot of us. So you're out there and now let's go, let's take a look now, go macro into your business. You're out there coaching, training, getting paid, you know, to go work with these big companies, all the different— how are you getting business? How are you getting your leads?

Yeah, this is a fun question. So I— it's all been very intentional. You know, when I started this business, when I started Close It Now, personal growth has always been a big part of it. But I just read a Gary Vaynerchuk book and, you know, all of these different value-first type of ideas, and I really resonated with that. And so my intention from the very beginning is start the podcast. I started my podcast when there was less than 200,000 podcasts in the world. Now there's like 20 million or something, just this crazy number. And so my plan all along was put out value until somebody raises their hand. And it was 6 months into the show. And actually the podcast started because as I was training my own team in our company, some of the guys in the room were like, dude, this is great stuff. More people need to hear it. And they were like, start a podcast. I was like, okay. So it's funny origin story, my podcast. If people go back and listen to the first 20 or 30 episodes, it's literally me driving in between my own appointments, talking into the voice memo on my phone. You hear the turn signal, you hear rain. One time I remember talking about something and somebody cuts into my thing and I'm like, oh wow, they almost ran me off the road. So anyway, what we were talking about was—

That's great.

And so that's how it started. It's like, just do it. And it, when you have great content, it resonates. And so everybody out there were like, hey, this guy's like me. And so it, that's how it grows. So I've never spent dollars on marketing or advertisement or anything. It's strictly been organic growth through the podcast. And 6 months in, I got my first email from a guy that said, I don't care what it costs. I want you to coach me. I'll throw money at you. And I was like, okay, well, Clearly it's time to open my coaching program. So I did that. And then actually recently now I had the same experience with, in one week I had 3 to 2, 2 or 3 different people reach out to me. I want you to do leadership coaching with me. So, okay, it's time to open that portion of my business. And so I've always built it very backwards in a way that give value first, and then it, it attracts the exact people that I want to work with.

Right. Customers. Okay. So do you mind sharing some of the, your podcasting tips? I mean, you said, as I mentioned earlier, you've told me in the quote green room that you're, you know, peaking in the podcast world in the category of what's the category that you're crushing in right now?

And it's really fun. Yeah. That 1. 1.5% rating, that's for all podcasts globally, which is really interesting. But when you chop it up into categories, it's home service. It's for sales training specifically. It's super under the radar. I'm not like the guy that's like shouting from the rooftops on social media.

But you're niching though, right? People are searching for that content. They see your podcast is up there and—

Yeah, riches are in the niches. 100%. Yeah.

Okay.

As far as podcast tips, you know, I am super— most people who are professional podcasters, they lose their minds when I tell 'em what my setup is. My whole philosophy has been just do it. And so my, you know, my whole setup is literally just one tiny mixer with this microphone running into my computer.

That's similar to my crappy setup over here. Yeah.

That's like a big limiter to a lot of people that want to start, but they don't know. I don't have the screens and the lights and all the things. This is my background. Do I want to improve it? Yes. Have I had to? Absolutely not.

Right. Still going to build that background one of these days after 7 years. I don't know. I'm the same thing. I keep being like, you got to build a Speakeasy bar back here and do something. I'm like, I know. Sure. I'll get to that. Yeah.

I think this is actually a really cool topic because so many people get lost in the minutia. It's like I'm working with companies in there, you know, in fact, I'm a fractional sales director at a company in Dallas. And we were having this conversation the other day, somebody came in and this guy that wants to get mentored by this guy and he's all right, I'm at it. I'm at like $3 million a year now. And by next year, I want to be at like $25 million. And he's like, okay, well, what are you working on? He's like, I've got to get my jingle just right. It's like, this is not going to get you there. So we get lost in the things that It's just noise. It's not signal. It's just noise. And so focusing on the, you know, the things that really move the needle and, yep. I mean, we get lost in the busy sometimes.

I think it's subconsciously us delaying from doing the harder work, right? We don't want to get it going.

Yeah. And success is on the other side of what we're avoiding, right?

Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. Okay. So you're, I mean, podcast tips. Let's keep going. So you're, you're out there, you're doing what? How many interviews a week, a month? Like what's your strategy?

Yeah. So gosh, we're at probably 260 episodes at this point. I've learned a lot along the way about formatting. Uh, formatting's huge. One, initially, you know, I just had an idea and would talk about it. But over time, starting mid-2023, I went, when I went super full on into this for 2 and a half years, I did 2 episodes a week. I did an interview episode and just a solo training episode. And in fact, I've never repeated a topic. So I did that for 2 and a half years. Where I'm at right now is, and so I get this question a lot, how often should we do an episode? What should it look like? All these things. I always say it doesn't matter as long as it's consistent. It does not have to be an interview. It doesn't have to be one thing or the other. I did both of those to get, actually it was my guerrilla marketing method. Why I started doing interviews very consistently is I wanted to get into— so the fun story with that, there was a new big event coming to Austin, a trades event that I wanted to speak at. And so the second that I heard that was happening, I got a hold of the founder of it and said, hey, I want to have you on my show. He's like, sure, of course I'll be on your show. I was like, and we can promote your event. And then after that show, what I did, and he didn't even know it at the time, and he runs a big Facebook group, I systematically went down the list of all of the speakers and reached out to them and said, hey, you're going to be speaking at this event. I'd love to have you on my show. We can give everybody a sneak peek of what you're going to be speaking on, and we can help promote both you and the event. And then I did that with 60% of the speakers, put them into his Facebook group every single time. And I literally titled it Profit Rocket Speaker Series. And after I'd done about 12 of those, I reached back out to him, hey, I wanna speak at your event. He's like, of course, you've been adding so much value and helping promote it. Absolutely, I'll put you on the sales panel.

Genius.

Genius.

And so I was like, okay, so it just builds from there. And that's when I started the interviews. And of course they've continued until now. I actually recently, I cut back to one episode a week strictly 'cause bandwidth, 'cause the company's grown and it's not the main mechanism at this point, but I still have a consistent weekly episode that comes out. I've done a full series on psychology of sales. And in fact, and I talk about the hard things that nobody talks about. The other thing, other tip I would give people for podcasting is don't pull punches. There's a lot of people that do podcasts that'll give you 30% of the content or 40% of the content. And then, well, and to know the real solution or to know more, you've got to join our program.

Yeah.

That BS meter goes a mile high from the people, from the listener side. Give it away. Give it away. I did a whole series on how to sell to the neurodivergent buyer. Nobody talks about that. Yeah. I was like, so we've got to talk about the hard stuff. Talk about the stuff nobody wants to talk about and you create a very, that's how to differentiate in the marketplace.

I love it. I love it. So, so there's two, two final things. One is I know you have something you want to give away. Speaking of giveaways, well, actually we'll just hit that now. Like you said, you had something cool that you think would be helpful for the listener today.

So I just wrote a— I'm huge into guerrilla marketing and the low-cost ways to get to be 5-mile famous, get in front of your communities. I work with a lot of brick and mortars. So I just wrote a guerrilla marketing guide to have consistent leads year-round without spending a dime online. And so that is, that's a cool giveaway. If somebody, if you want to grab a copy of it, it's got great ideas in it. And I wrote it to be a primer to help get your brain running to create millions of other ideas. Here's how to think about, and this is how I train. I don't want to give you the answer. I want to teach you how to think about it, to learn to be able to do this on your own. So if you want to copy that, it's actually at my new company that I just started. The website is Door2DoorInstitute. So that's D-O-O-R, the number 2, D-O-O-RInstitute.com. And it's the first thing that pops up and grab a free copy there.

All right. And editing team, if you could drop that in the show notes, that'd be awesome. Hopefully they're there when you're watching. Are you paying attention, editing team? Maybe not. This is your test.

All right.

You actually hit, you gave me a good segue. You got to just tee me Set me up so nicely for the last thing I was gonna ask you is you're a genius at gorilla tips, at gorilla marketing. You already gave us one. What else? Where does— give us a sneak peek into the 5 that you give away.

Well, one of my favorites is doing things like, there's things people don't normally think about. So when, if you're a company that wants to get into your community more, get that level of engagement, partner with your local donut shop, have a free donut day. It doesn't cost you a lot. And then you show up, you be there. Hi, here's a free donut from us. The donut shop loves it because they're going to come in and buy more donuts. And you get the personal connection because in this era of moving so much more into AI and one-click buying, those types of things, on the macro, what most people don't realize is we're so starved for interpersonal communication. The more that we can build relationship in person, it's dramatic, the difference in our results. And because now they know I can trust you. Another idea is the local pizza place. Offer to buy their next load of boxes and if they'll let you put your logo on top, huh, along with theirs. They love it. You cut their cost and it's not that much by cardboard. Yep. So those types of things, right, are so, so crucial. But it just starts to spring ideas. Now that we go out in the world, it's like, oh, I could do this. I could I could do this. I could do this.

Also, it's funny because I love what you're saying. Sometimes I'll, you know, come up with these and I think people sometimes are afraid just to even ask. Well, you have an idea, why not go talk to the person? Get creative, figure out.

You miss all the shots you don't take, right?

That's right. I mean, step one, put yourself in their shoes. What are they looking for? They look, they want more revenue, they want more, they want to cut costs. Okay, if you're offering a solution for them, it's a win-win. Like, what are they, you know? Yeah.

So yeah, and of course, the, you know, back to the sales training side, the tip there is Anytime that we have these conversations, we have to lead with how it's going to benefit them first. What, W-I-I-F-M, what's in it for them? So here's a super quick actual, this is my favorite conversational piece. I love word substitutions. Language is so important. Most people, when they have a conversation like that, they're like, hey, I got to dumb this down because I'm so used to doing it the right way. Usually it sounds like, hey, I'd love to "if you could help me promote my business, would you be interested?" And nobody's interested. So the easiest word substitution we can all make is replace, get rid of interested out of your vocabulary because no one could be interested in something they didn't know anything about yet. So let's replace it with open. And so, and then make it a question. Hey, Eric, if I could show you how to grow your business, I've got an idea. Would you like to hear it? Would you be open to some more information?

Right.

They're always going to say yes because nobody wants to be perceived as closed-minded. Everyone wants to be perceived as open-minded.

Yeah.

Then your only ask is for information. So, hey, if I could show you how to grow your business, would you be open to some more information? Right.

Yeah.

So you're always going to get a yes and then go into the conversation. So here's my idea. Here's how it will help you. And at the same time, I get the ability to put my brand on it or whatever it is.

Love it. That's just a, that's a great nugget right there. And it's funny, as you say that, I'm like, oh my God, oh, bulbs went off.

You're right.

That's such a great level. Then interested, out, open, in. Love it. Sam, as we wrap up, is there anything I didn't ask today that you're like, ooh, and hopefully you won't say that after the show, but as I'm slowly asking the question.

This is always the fun piece of podcasts. The main thing, I guess really the main nugget is you know, work harder on yourself than you do on your business. You cannot— your business will never grow beyond the level of your own growth. Classic John Maxwell, the law of the lid.

That's right.

And so as we start to work on that, your identity changes of who you are and who— what you believe is possible. And of course, I know that most of the listeners and people in Speakeasy Mastermind, there were all— a lot of them are very much at this level already. But, you know, as far as asking me, you know, we've had Great conversation here. I wouldn't say there's anything that we haven't covered other than really just— that's my message is when you truly find out who you are and step into your power, most people, we present this mask based on how we think other— how we think that we want other people to see us, and that's hiding behind or keeping a real power locked away. And so there's a game that I always love to play with us is you're the hero of your own journey. You are your own superhero. However, you cannot have a hero without an arch nemesis. Your arch nemesis is the very best version of yourself. So when your alarm goes off at 5 o'clock and you hit the snooze button, the best version of yourself is already at the gym and completed their first set. Yeah, when we grab our phone when we should be doing something and go down the scroll hole, the best version of ourself at 10 AM has already made 100 calls.

Yeah, right. They're staring at you, waving, winking, saying, hi, what are you doing?

See, yeah, they've already achieved the things. So the only difference though is if when we decide to show up in our full power consistently on that daily basis and have the mirror exercise. I don't know if for everybody, if you've never done this, here's a massive challenge. My challenge to you today, grab an hour and I challenge you to do this. Have the mirror, look at your own self in the eyes for a solid hour. Whoa. If you can't do that, you're not ready to step into your power yet. The minute that you're able to do that and say, I love this guy, I love this woman, because it has to start there. And if the minute that you're able to do that and truly love the person that's looking back at you, our eyes are the mirror to the soul, and it's going to tell you a lot of stories along the way. Your brain is going to do some wild things in this exercise, but on the other side of it, you're going to find a piece of yourself that you realize that you've never tapped into. And it's a complete game changer.

Love it. Love it. That's a great one. Well, thank you. And the last question is, you've been in Speakeasy, I believe, since more or less the beginning at Austin, I think. What's the experience been like so far? What do you love about Speakeasy?

Oh my gosh, that's my monthly recharge. You know, we get so siloed and on an island in the day-to-day, and I think my favorite part of the Speakeasy, of course, every single conversation I have there, I learn something and nuggets. And I mean, my business has more than 2x'd in It's like every 6 months my business will almost double based on some nugget that I picked up from somebody at, you know, during the conversations. It might not have even been related, but it's like, oh, this is a great idea. But I think my favorite part of Speakeasy Mastermind is the relationships I've built and the level of recharge that I get because as entrepreneurs and as high-level performers, it's very difficult to find a community where we can be vulnerable and honest about things, and everyone understands because we've been through the journeys at the same level. You can't have those kind of conversations to your average everyday relationships. They just don't get it. So that's been my favorite piece, is to have that incredible sounding board and be like, hey, I'm struggling with this, right? And every time somebody in the group goes, you know what, I've been there, let's have a conversation. And man, it's like solving that so fast. And then it's my monthly recharge. Love it. I could refuel those batteries.

Oh, I love it. Well, thank you for that, and I'm glad you're having that experience. And appreciate you, and thanks for coming inside the Speakeasy today.

Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been an honor to be on. I hope I brought some value to the listeners today.

Absolutely did. All right, well, have a great day. And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind Podcast. If something sparked for you, Don't keep it to yourself.

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