This ONE SKILL Will Help You CRUSH Sales | Ryan Stewman

Go out there and fail first. Don't be afraid to say, I don't have the answer, but I can find it. I think resourcefulness is the number one skill that you can have as a human being right now. So it's like, I don't know the answer, but I can find it. And so you don't have to lie, you don't have to be deceitful, especially if you're brand new. You get to say, hey, I'm brand new. I don't have the answer, but I can find it for you.

You know, I want to jump right in. You've done a tremendous amount of, you know, sales and training and customization, all that kind of stuff. How did you find yourself in this, in this industry before it became a niche for you?

It was, wasn't really something that I, I set out to do. I was a loan officer and I always thought I was going to end up owning a bank. I was a mortgage guy and always just like my goal, like not my whole life, not when I was like a little kid, but as an adult, I just assumed that I would own a bank. And I got, ended up getting in some trouble with the law and I lost my ability to originate mortgages. And so I needed to find something that didn't require a license, wasn't really government regulated, and something I could start on my own. And back then one of the cheapest things to do was to start an Internet business. And so I actually started teaching. I was a good loan officer, I did a lot of business and so I started teaching other loan officers some of the things that I knew and that had worked for me. Some of the startup loan officers and you know, mid tier producers in a company that wanted to move up to become top producers, I started helping those guys. And it kind of has evolved in 14 years from just loan officers because that's all I knew. I'm a big believer like don't teach stuff you don't know. And, and I didn't know anything other than how to wash cars. And clearly those people aren't paying for coaching and, and how to do mortgages. And so, you know, I just started teaching what I knew. But over the years I've evolved and learned from other people and things of that nature and, and you know, been able to do something and then teach, teach what I've learned from that and being able to do something else. So I think that's how I got really good at all this stuff is I just took the chance of doing stuff instead of Being the guy that has theories or hypothesis about how things work, I would actually go do it and then come back and be like, well, this is what worked and this is what didn't. And you know, like I said, 14 years of doing that, now I feel like I can do that for anybody.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me ask you this. Like, you know, sales is the highest and lowest paid professional on the planet, right? Some would argue that you're either gifted towards it or you're not gifted towards it. I'm curious on which side of the fence that you stand on, because it seems like with enough practice, pretty much you can get good at almost anything.

Well, true, but, but these. I feel like I could, like I could just sell normally. I'm just very, I can understand and communicate. I'm confident. I've been that way my whole life. My kids are that way. So, you know, I'm blessed that that's in my DNA. But some of the best salespeople that I have here are least likely people you think would be sales. Because we have this idea of this Hollywood Wall street sales guy, you know, suit and slick back, Gordon Gecko hair and, you know, maybe snakeskin boots and a briefcase or something like that. And really, most places you go in America today, the top producers wearing a black T shirt just like me, you know, or dressed in golf clothes and they're doing a deal out in the, on the golf course or whatever. And, and really in today's day and age, the consumer's smarter than they've ever been as well. So you don't have to sell as much these days. Like, like the hard sale and the takeaway clothes and all that stuff that we've had in the past. You don't have to do that as much because most of the time, by the time a consumer is actually reaching out to you these days, they've already made a decision to buy. You just gotta make sure they buy from you. And that just takes two things, empathy and confidence.

That's it. Yeah, no, I love that. You know, my, my son, my youngest son got married what I think may or March of March of last year and moved up to Charlotte, North Carolina, which isn't, you know, three hours from us. And he recently got into a sales role now. He went through a professional car dealership kind of scenario to learn how to sell Fords, for example. And it was interesting to me that, you know, in the early onset of coming out of the gate, you know, he, he, I think he trained with, I think five or six salespeople out of the five or six salespeople, he and one other guy ended up making it past month and month. Number one or number two, he wasn't selling that great at first, but meanwhile his buddy was like racking it up. He was selling like crazy. And I'm curious to know your thoughts on what, you know, at least on the early onset, you know, kind of what's that? What do you think's at play there? When I look at my, that particular environment, it seemed to be a little bit of insecurity, not, you know, like who's, who's gonna buy from me, why would they buy from me? Kind of mentality. I'm curious to know kind of what, how would you kind of train that?

Well, I think a lot of people.

Especially when they're new, I don't know that it's who's going to buy for me. As much as they're scared to make a mistake, they're scared to look stupid in front of the customer or look stupid in front of their new employer or look stupid in front of their new fellow employees. And, you know, I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have is this. And, and I'm not the old guy saying, oh, this new generation's weak. This new generation is full of brilliant people. One of the things that socially conditioned to them is fear of failure. In my generation too, I should just say, like my generation, maybe three generations ago, people weren't so scared of failure. But also three generations ago, there weren't cameras watching every move. I mean, if you go out and you make a mistake and you trip and fall on ice, there might be a camera there recording you. And the next thing you know, you're on fricking YouTube and everybody's laughing at you. Or you're on ridiculousness or Tosh point. Oh, and the whole planet's laughing at you. Yeah, people are scared to make mistakes, you know, and sort of. Right.

And what I mean by that is again, you got the whole world watching you, so you're scared to make a mistake. In the sales world, it's really similar too. It's like, hey, you know, maybe the customer blows me off, but maybe they blow me off. Then they go to Google and they give them a one star review talking about how stupid I am. Then my manager sees that, he fires me, and then he makes sure that Subaru, Dodge and Chevy don't call me or don't accept me into a job either because I messed up with this one client.

Or I could Say the wrong thing and they could take it wrong and think I'm racist, misogynist. Like, there's so many mistakes and delicacies that we've set in place these days that I think a lot of people are just scared to make mistakes. But here's the cool thing. Mistakes are how you learn stuff. Unless you're just stupid, you know, unless you just flat out dumb. Mistakes are how you learn stuff. You're not dumb because you make mistakes. You become wiser when you make mistakes. You're dumb if you make the same mistake over and over again. Right. But if you're making like me, I think that's where. I know that's where I got this wisdom is I've got prolific mistake making behind me. But let's just say, you know, in my 20s and halfway through my 30s, I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of my teenage years, a lot of mistakes. But I never made the same mistake twice. I just made so many different mistakes that now I understand not necessarily the box that I got to get in, but the box that I have to play in in order to, To. To. To still make these mistakes. And. And I'm better at it. But if I hadn't made all those mistakes, I wouldn't be the guy that people come to and pay a lot of money for advice from.

Yeah.

And so, you know, don't. And besides, especially young folks out there like you make a mistake in your 20s and 30s, that's what everybody's expecting anyway. You're not letting anybody down. You're actually meeting.

We.

I'm 43. We expect you to screw up. Right.

That's true. And we're not judging you. We're going.

And when some. You see somebody rib punch somebody else and laugh at you because you made a mistake, nine times out of 10, especially if there's somebody successful, they're not laughing necessarily at you. They're laughing at your pain because they were once there too. And they're elbowing their buddy going, remember when that was us?

Right.

Some so. But people don't think of it. They worry so much. So the way that I'll train is like, hey, go out there and fail first. Don't be afraid to say, I don't have the answer, but I can find it. I think resourcefulness is the number one skill that you can have as a human being right now. So it's like, I don't know the answer, but I can find it. And so you don't have to lie. You don't have to be deceitful. Especially if you're brand new. You get to say, hey, I'm brand new. I don't have the answer, but I can find it for you.

No, I love that. You know, I was telling him we came home for the holidays, of course, him and his wife, and we spent, you know, I spent the Christmas holidays with him and whatnot. And, you know, I kept telling him, I said, dude, just go knock something over. I was like, what is your buddy doing that you're not doing? Well, he's making Instagram videos on cars and YouTube clips on, you know, reels or whatever on cars or snippets, whatever they call them. And I'm like, well, try it. What.

For him? Yeah, yeah, try it.

Like, what do you.

What do you got to lose, right? And the crazy part was, is he, he left the holidays and went back, right? First day back on the job. Since then, I think he sold 7, 7, 7. And it's only been a few weeks, right?

So.

And I asked him. He called me, you know, to kind of like quasi celebrate. Like, he was excited. Like, you know, I sold a bunch of things, right? And they're. And they're good deals. They're not like, you know, no nothing, margin deals. These are good deals. I'm like, okay, awesome. So, you know, what changed? He goes, honestly, my mind, I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, just how I looked at it. I said, you know, I said. He goes. I realized I had been trained, you know, I know, I know the product inside and out. I. I actually care about people. And I just decided to try to super serve somebody. And then lo and behold, they started buying from me, you know, and which got me thinking is like, you know, let's, let's just, let's assume for a second we got a brand spanking new entrepreneur in front of us right now. And, you know, we all know that part of being an entrepreneur is learning to sell. You've got to sell your own goods and services before anybody else will sell them for you. I'm curious to know what kind of advice you would give them in just getting started and getting past that first initial roadblock. Maybe that's, maybe it's the first JV deal or the first door knock or whatever. What are some tactical practicals that you would throw out there?

Well, I mean, I think a lot of people imagine that it's a lot harder to get started than it is. I mean, it takes, let's just call it worst case scenario, a thousand dollars to set up an llc. If you don't know what you're doing and you pay a lawyer that's trying to get over on you, you're going to pay a thousand dollars. You know, it's probably 400 bucks on legal zoom if you want to fill out a template. Yeah, a lot of people think they need a degree or, or a CPA or they got to know bookkeeping or they got to know law. You don't have to know any of that stuff. If you got an idea, you just get to chase that idea. And guess what? Go make a, you go make a sale. Like, like, here's what I did. I didn't even, I, I, let's say I didn't necessarily have the money to start a llc, right? I just didn't have the wisdom at the time. But, but now, in hindsight, I had the money, not the wisdom. But let's say you don't have a thousand dollars right now to start an llc, come up with a concept, go out and make a sale. Now, I'm not saying a concept like, you know, we're mining gold in the metaverse and you don't even have a program coded. But, but like, let's say you want to sell roofs, right? You go out, you sell a roof, and then you'll figure out the rest of the stuff on the back end. You're like, okay, then maybe you take it to a roofing company to help you, or maybe you got a partner or maybe you know, the process or whatever the case may be. But once you get a commission from whatever it is that you sell, then you can go buy those things that you need to protect yourself. You're not going to get sued on the first deal that you do. And congratulations, if you do get sued on that deal and you're broke as hell that you couldn't afford a LLC anyway, you got nothing to lose.

So a lawsuit is only true.

Most lawyers are going to look you up. Any good lawyer is going to look you up and go, oh, dude, this guy's got, or this lady, this person has nothing. Why would you wait, why would I take your money to do so? The second thing is, you know, surround yourself with a team of people that have some sort of success or expertise in the area. So, you know, make sure that you do have a bookkeeper and a CPA that you can lean on, right? Not that wants to charge you every time some fan, it's not in the beginning. Some fancy firm that every time you pick up the phone, the clock's running.

And they want to charge you.

But somebody you can lean on, somebody who's bootstrapping their business too, that you guys can come up together. You know, lean on four or five of your people and allow them to lean on your expertise too.

And when you get.

When you get paid, make sure that you feed them too. Don't lean in with the cpa. And then, you know, when it's time, this person's helped you all year. When it's time to do your taxes, you run down an H and R block, man. Tap in with the people that take care of you. But, you know, so many people think that it's a lot more to it. But I built back in, let's say 2012, I pre sold it. I came up with the idea for a digital product on social media. That wasn't a popular thing back then, right? It's crazy as that sounds like, but 10 years ago, social media wasn't what it is today. I came up with an idea product, made the outline, made the web page for it first, shot the video advertisements for it first, then went and pre sold the stuff, then went and made the product and then delivered it to the people, right? So, hey, give me two weeks to deliver this thing, blah, blah, blah. Bought myself the timeframe to put it together. I literally never even had to buy the programming until I got my first sale in, which covered everything. So it's easier to start than you think. A lot of people, they say, oh, I've got sales, but I can't close them yet because of X, Y, Z, man, you can tap in with people. That'll make that faster with you. Or like I said, then you can go in and make the sale and then deliver it on the back as long as you set expectations. You know, those people were expecting to buy this program and then get access to it immediately. They were expected to buy this program, get it to you within a couple of weeks. That's exactly what I did. So the other thing is there's. There's really only four levels and eight skills that you need as an entrepreneur. And so level one is typically we work for somebody else. We're a salesperson or an employee or whatever in order to escape that and level up. Because we say, hey, I want to level up. But for most people, leveling up just means they're not happy at the level they're on. They don't even know what leveling up is or what that means. There's no definition. Therefore, they never level up because they never really know what level they're supposed to get onto. Right? So level number one is being an employee and an employee. In order to escape that and level up, you got to learn marketing and sales. You got to be able to get your own leads and, and close them. And once you can generate your own leads and close them, you become one of the most powerful things in the marketplace. Because now you, you're like a single fine woman. You don't need no man, nobody for nothing. You can just go out and get it on your own and take care of these kids and everything on your own. And, and, and I say that because.

It doesn't matter what it is that you do for a living. If you can sell it and close it, if you can attract a lead from it and you can close it, you can make money from it and you can use that money to hire the people to do the other stuff from it. So sales and marketing number two is you're self employed. So that's when it's like you and maybe an assistant, or maybe you an assistant and one other person, but you are cheap. Bottle washer, waiter, cook, chef, the whole nine yards. And then you got to mop the place down because you're the janitor when it's over with. At the end of the day. At that level, you've already got sales and marketing underneath you, hence why you went out, started your own business. And you can always get better at sales and marketing. But really and truthfully, there's not a whole lot new stuff to learn. At some point you're going to be outsourcing that anyway. I haven't made a sale myself in probably three years. Just being honest. I have a sales team here that does that stuff for me. Right. And, and so the thing is you got at that level you got to learn hiring and training because you got to be able to duplicate yourself. So you got sales and marketing bringing in the business. Now you've got to be able to have people that can service the business. So that's where you start this hiring and training skills so you know how to scale a business because that's the ultimate balance. So people think scale, they think it's some sort of sliding skill. No, it's a balance beam scale. It's a balance between how many clients are coming in and how employees you have on the back end that can service them and make them feel good and meet the expectations that your sales team set on the front end. Right. If it's a two week delivery, there's a team of people back there ready to deliver that thing in two weeks. If it's an instant delivery, then same scenario. So you've got to get good at hiring and training people. So once you've mastered sales, marketing, hiring, training, go to the third level, which is being CEO of the company, right? I know it says that we're CEO as soon as we file an llc, but we're not a CEO until we have a board of directors, right? Until we have employees, until we've got a couple of years in business there. And at the CEO level, what you're doing is the skills that you have to master are leadership. Because now you're leading all those people you hired and trained. And if you're good at your job, you've hired someone to hire and train people for you. And number two is brand building. Because you got to build something bigger, like my company. Our biggest program is not like Ryan Suman's Inner Circle or Ryan Suman University. It's Apex. It's a brand. It's, it's. Yes, I'm the face of it, but no different than the Verizon man is the face of the Verizon. He, he doesn't run the phones and he's not the person you expect to show up at your house when you go on Verizon, right? He's just the face of it. And so I built something bigger. In the beginning, it was all me. I was that self employed person. I was chief cook, bottle washer, all that stuff. Now we built a brand. And so I've had to master leadership not only for my clients, but for the, you know, 100 or so employees that we have here and all of that stuff. So once you go through sales and marketing, you're an employee, self employed, you need hiring and training. When you're an executive CEO, you need leadership and brand building. The fourth and final level is an investor. That's whether you've sold your company. So you were CEO, you built it, you sold it off the private equity or you sold a portion of it off, or you're an owner, which means that you have someone else operating it. And you know, long story short, you're not working on your business anymore, although it's paying you. At that level, you're not hiring. Marketing, sales, you know, brand building, none of that shit, because you don't have it going on anymore. At that level, you need to learn tax and financial planning so that at that point you're playing with money. And I'm not saying you don't need to learn any of these skills. Until you get to that level. I'm just saying those are the skills that you need. Eight skills, four levels to really beat the game of business. So now what your job is, since you're sitting here listening to this, those of you in the audience is to identify what level you're on right now and start working on the skills that I said that you need to master in order to ascend to the next level to where you want to go. If you're one of those people that's always talking about you want to level up, but you're not really sure where you're going to level two.

Yeah. No, that's so good, dude. So good. Oh, man, there's so much there. Oh, man, that was a master class. Let's. I want to pivot for just a second on products and services. So I think one of the most difficult things that I see entrepreneurs struggle with, outside of actually selling it, is creating a value stack that is so irresistible that somebody practically has to buy it. What kind of feedback would you give us on setting up a strategical value stack that, you know, is easily, I'd say, easier to sell, but it's, you know, it's. It's valuable to the customer. How do you. How do you discover what's valuable?

There is a, you know, there's a fine line on those between, oh, this is. It can't be that good. You can't give me that much. Like, I watched some of the Internet marketer guys back in the day. I haven't really watched anything a long time back in the day. They're like, oh, for this 997 product, I'm going to give you $50,000 worth of bonuses. And you're like, BS add up. Right? Okay.

I'm not the only one.

Exactly right. And, like, you know, there's people that buy, you know, penis enlargement pills and believe in that stuff, which we know is fake. We would all know. We would know, like, our homies would tell us, like, I took. So we know that's fake. Nobody. Somebody.

I mean, we saw Viagra take. We saw Viagra have Catch Fire, so we know what works and what doesn't. So.

So. So what I'm saying is we. We. We know that that's not working. Right. And so what happens is.

People. Damn it. I got a little lost on the on the pill thing comment there. What are we talking about? Oh, with the products, Right?

Yep.

Say it again.

Yeah, just value stacks.

Oh, so with the value, saves too much. Right? Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. So if it's too much, it just becomes unbelievable. So like, for me, I like to say if we're selling a thousand dollar product, we might give away somewhere between 500 and 1500 dollars worth of stuff. But, but I just for me, because I'm a person of integrity and I got to sleep with myself at night, I don't say a product is a is, you know, this is 500 worth of value if I've never sold it. So we don't ever, in our business, we don't just make up names of stuff and throw things together and say it's worth something. We actually get products that other customers bought. Most of the time, tens of thousands of them have bought. So like for example, last month during holiday sale, you know, we've got our Apex program, which is typically $2,500 a year, we ran a special where it was a thousand dollars for six months. And then on top of the thousand dollars for six months, we gave about fifteen hundred dollars in digital bonuses. They don't cost us anything to give them away. Their simple password and logins. And really it ain't even that they're already going to get a password login. All it is is unlocking, you know, two things in the system. And the link does that automatically. Easy stuff that handles what I'm saying, doesn't cost me dime, doesn't take any extra money, and it's a good bonus for them. But it's real money because like for example, the show up and close that we gave away, it's a $500 value. I've sold 1500 copies of that in the last two months at $500. So when I'm saying, hey, you can buy this and we'll give you this for a $500 bonus for free, like it's really a $500 bonus, I think a lot of people are like, okay, you know, I'm gonna put this together and even though nobody's bought it, I'm gonna give it a fancy name and then pretend that it's worth this amount of money, you know, and, and, and maybe some people fall for that. But the real people aren't looking for bonuses in the value stack anyway. The real people are looking like me. I'm not looking for $50,000 worth of bonus gifts. I'm looking for whether it's a seven hours or seven minutes. I'm looking for a solution to a simple problem I have. And the faster and less videos I can watch to get there, the quicker I can get that answer, the quicker I can get to the core of it. Like I, I have, there's been plenty of times where I have sold products and even bought products where they're one or two videos when they're five or $10,000 for that one or two video. But that's all it takes, you know what I mean? Like that, that one video is life changing information that can help you go out and you know, buy a house at the discount, get just all the anything that you're looking for. I would rather something be short. I'd even pay the five grand to shorten it from one video to a Instagram story if they can compress the information in there.

Yeah.

Because it's not about how long we sat in class, it's about what information we got that we can take action on.

Yeah, yeah. I've been telling my team a value stack is nothing more than is it valuable? Like is it going to solve that.

Problem in the sales world? Like the customer will. The customer has propensity to make faster buying decision if price, if value exceeds price, right. So if you think, oh, this thing is worth $2500 and you only got to pay a thousand dollars, when you pair that with scarcity, you say, here's the price is less than the value, right? So you're buying, you're getting money cheaper than you can normally get it basically. And it's this deal goes away. You add a scarcity element that this deal goes away after Christmas, for example. That's why Black Friday works really well. Here's a discount, but this discount is for a short period of time only. Even though, you know we're going to run it for the next three weeks and then a month and it's never going to go away again after that. But they have you believe that sales tactic, right? And so it's the same thing when you throw that, those two elements together. However, it just depends on what you're selling. You know, if you're selling to, you know, the average frustrated individual, then, you know, maybe that does need a lot of bonuses for that. But most people, they, if you have done a good job as a salesperson, you've articulated the value in your core product anyway. Like I wasn't having to, you know, sell a Ford car. Back when I sold cars, I didn't have to sell a Ford car. And then all of a sudden upsell all this other stuff, right? They came in, they knew what car they wanted. I just had to make sure that we got the right deal and the right Price on them.

Yeah. And then, you know, then a whole nother level takes over. The F and I guys take over for their stuff. But I love that. No, that's great feedback. I'm curious, you know, so I owned a few. I own a few businesses now. I've been considering subletting or subcontracting out a full. A full sales team to work with a lot of our. Our thought leadership products, a lot of our live events and things that we host here on our live event campus. And in doing so, I've been around enough salespeople and have been one myself that are really good. In other words, they can sell you on the fact that they can sell. Then you hire them and they can't close. Or you get a rockstar thoroughbred, if you will, that can sell and close. How does someone know what company to partner with when they're looking at subcontracting out their salesforce?

I hear really good reviews about Closers IO Cole Gordon's company. He's one of our apex members, and they've got a really big operation. I mean, the top guys in the industry use them, so they're pretty good somebody to check into. I don't get paid to endorse them other than the fact that he belongs to our network. But I have heard a lot of really good things about them. There's another guy, Tanner Chidester, which is elite sales pros, is the name of his company. They have a really good system there. Tanner's a good friend of mine. Great dude. So there's. There's people out there that I know are good at doing that. The thing is, you know, anytime that you're outsourcing stuff, you're. You got to really trust that person because you're putting your reputation. Because you don't know what those people are promising when it comes to your product, right? So you got to make sure that. That your reputation's on the line. They could be over promising stuff, and you not even know till six months later. They're like, hey, where's my free car that you offered me if I signed up for this thing? Like a free car? What you talking about? Yeah, you got 200 people want free cars, and you're out of business or in a lawsuit or whatever the case, you know?

But the. The. The remote closers, I believe, is the way that it. It's the wave of the future anyway.

And.

And, you know, I have four guys here. Matter of fact, Blake just today told me that he crossed the million dollar mark. He's Done a million dollars in salesforce. He's been here a little less than a year. Drew be who sits right there, he's done over ten for me. Zach's seven and a half million in sales. And Taylor is about. He's. He's newer. He's done about 600, 000 in sales. So I got some experienced dudes here. And the. The thing is that's worked well is Drew me. They all four of these guys started off as customer service representatives. So they would come in and instead of sales training, I know this is going to sound crazy as hell, y', all, but instead of sales training, I had these guys come in and every day they called. We have, you know, at the time when DrewB started, maybe there was 500 members. Now we've got several thousand. So there's plenty. And we have four or five CSRs in training now, but we have them reach out and call 10 or 15 clients every day. Not prospects, but clients. And they've got a series of questions. Things like, how's it going? What's your G code score? What did you stuck with? What's your biggest takeaway? What can we help you with? To where a. We're really serving the clients and going above and beyond for them. That's awesome. No other network does that like we do. Especially it's about every 90 days they're getting a call from. It's from a real person too, not somebody in another country that I outsource. It's from somebody here in the office. Right. And the other thing is. So that benefits the customer, but at the same time, the CSR is hearing the feedback, they're hearing the customers, they're learning the stuff. So now all of a sudden when they turn into a salesperson, they get a product going for them and they go to make a sale. And somebody says something similar to like, well, you know, I'm just not sure if it'll work for me. And they're like, well, Stephen in North Carolina works great for him. I talked to him the other day. Here's what he said his results were. So if you follow that process, I don't see why yours would be any different. Now they start putting social proof together. This person in this area, in this industry, and they've got a whole list of names that they can connect people with and everything else. It makes them a very powerful salesperson. Because in today's day and age, I believe that if you're. And you were alluding to this too, that if you would lean in to serve the client. They'll, you'll end up selling them. And so think about it. These CSRs for 90, 180 days have learned how to serve these clients inside now. So when it comes time to sell them, they know everybody in the network. They know what we provide. They know about going up above and beyond. And that systems, it takes longer. It really does. But it's worked out really good for me because like I said, everybody here is big numbers they put up.

Yeah, well, it's playing the long game, right. It's, it's, it's not trying to get, you know, trying to get out there too quick, you know, without being prepared. I think one of the things you can do really quickly.

They could ruin my reputation.

Yeah. Like overnight. You know, it takes years to build. Right. And you can ruin it overnight. Just might not be able to take, you know, you know, serve a client. I'm curious.

Credit score and never miss the payment your whole life on anything you around and miss one payment by 30 days your will be 550 overnight. And we'll take you six years to rebuild that.

Yeah, it will be jacked up for sure. Sure. Oh my gosh. You know, a lot of organizations will have, will go as far as getting, you know, qualifiers or setters in place to tee them up for a, a salesperson. In some cases. Like I also did the car business back in the day, you know, we would have me as the salesperson. We'd have the sales manager who would, you know, was the closer if I couldn't close. And then you would send them to F and I for them to get their gap coverage and their, you know, insurance and whatever special paint stuff they were doing.

Is there a benefit or what is the benefit to having a setter, someone to set up something for a salesperson to come and knock it down?

I, I, that's pretty the norm these days. A lot of the places have appointment setters and, and that we have appointment centers too, but we just do it with scheduling links instead of having a middleman in between. Just send somebody a link out and have them schedule. But you know, at the, at the car dealership, I, I buy a lot of cars some and, and I've sold a lot over the years, but I bought a lot of cars. The best places I've worked with, one person sits down, they do the whole deal with you. Like they sell you the car, they finance the car, the whole nine yards, start to finish. You're not, I think people really hate the sales guy. F and I Guys, like, there's two now, I'm gonna get by two people today that I'm gonna have to argue and fight with. Like, around here, especially the high end, if you're buying a, you know, an exotic car, obviously, but if you're buying a Porsche or BMW or Lexus or an Escalade, I'm trying to think of Range Rover, all those. I've dealt with one person, and not the sales manager either, like, but one person penciled the whole deal, did the finance, added all the. I don't get gap because I'm not overpaying for them, but you know, all that kind of stuff. And so.

I don't. Let me ask you a question. We'll just. Maybe you can provide a better answer than I can. Would you rather get your problem solved in two phone calls or one?

At this stage in the game, and I've been this way for a while, I want to get the problem solved as quickly as possible. I don't want to go to the dealership and spend all day at the dealership. I would much rather. I would much rather almost buy it on the phone, come over, stroke a check, sign my papers, and drive away in the vehicle. That's what I would more much rather do in this stage in the game.

Yep. Yeah, I bought a tractor two weeks ago. I never drove a tractor, and it's a skid steer. I've never operated anything like that. But I called the dealership. They're like, yeah, we got ones like, wrap it up, send me the paperwork, let's go. He's like, really? Yeah, we're good. I thought I found what I need. That's like, let's waste no time, you know? Yeah. So.

Well, look, man, you got this really awesome event coming up. I'm curious, like, you know, as partnering up with all that, like, what. What does that look like? What. What can we be excited about?

Well, you know, Last year, in 2022, we. We. Every year for. Since 2017, I've thrown something called the Million Dollar Mastermind in Dallas. And it started off as, like, my clients just getting together, and then outsiders wanted to come, so we kind of opened it up and 2020 hit. And I was the first person to throw a virtual conference in 2020. Like, that just wasn't a thing back then. There was webinars, there wasn't virtual conferences. Like, and I just came up with, hey, we can prerecord the sub streaming on YouTube and run a conference. And I gave everybody. I sold this place out, thousand tickets, gave everybody Their money back then bought the show. Right. Was not easy. That's never an easy thing to do. I don't care how rich or how poor you are, that it's never easy to do. Gave everybody their money back and then put the show on for free.

Yeah.

And we had like 30, 000 people on YouTube watching. It was pretty amazing. And probably because people were at home and bored shitless in. In Covet. Right. So it's really good.

They were done with Netflix for a little while.

It was either Watch Me or Tiger King. Damn it. Pick a struggle, you know, so.

So that worked out well. Last year in 2021, the most they would let us have was a thousand people. Last year we had almost 3, 000 people. And this year, last year we had Ed Mylett, Aaron Thomas, Rick Ross, Logan Paul, Alex Rodriguez. Like we had like, you know, top tier. This year we're going. I'm not saying harder because I don't want to on those guys. Those are all pretty elite people. It's hard because I would say this year we're really doing something. Last year.

I know Eric and Ed personally and I know that, I know that they do a good job. So I can't imagine.

Yeah, well, I mean like, you know, I had Goggins there. I'm not gonna have him call me up and go, you say our wasn't last year. I don't want to fight with that guy, you know, so, so, so this year we will equally be raising the bar or whatever. But really, you know, I've always had top notch speakers even since 2017. Really, what's really going to be the, the deal that that makes our events better than everything else is my team and the way that we operate, period. There's just nothing like it. We put a show on it. Experience. You know, you learn during the day, you party during the night and you know you're not going to be required to touch your partners or trust fall or any of that. Tony Robbins. We just come out there and have a good time and lots of thought leaders and maybe even people that, that you haven't heard of. But then you hear them and you're like, wow, I need. Yeah, yeah.

There's always, and there's always amazing up and comers. Yeah.

Anybody can put. I love Ed my light, he's a great friend of mine. But that guy probably spoke 100 stages last year. But there's also other people like Marcus Barnes that a lot of folks don't know about. That dude is brilliant. You know what I mean, and there's. There's guys that typically don't speak on stage, like Adam Weitzman. And you get somebody like him who's a billionaire. They're brilliant. You hear them speaking, you're like, why is this guy not talk? So he's too busy being a billionaire. But.

It'S the truth.

That is the dang truth, though. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we did add my likes book launch this last year, and we put together a heck of a party. But the. I'm always. I always get a lot when I go to events. I don't know about you, but, you know, it's like, I think we're dying for this pendulum swing back to relationship and hanging out and, like, getting to know somebody and spending some time with somebody. You know, if I'm. If I want to go to any event in the world and I'm. And I'm considering your event, how do I know if I'm right for your event?

Well, you know, our crowd is very different. Our crowd is very fit. Our crowd is committed to. A lot of them have things like FYE tattooed on them, which means your excuses. A lot of us live by the G code. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for a system to plug into, and this isn't a pitch fest, like, I don't have shit to sell you. You know, you're going to see our sponsors obviously have commercials that come up on the screen and stuff like that, but nobody's up there pitching a product or a 997 thing. That's not how we roll at this event. It's. It's truly like, you bought tickets. That's. That's the value we plan on delivering, is for the tickets, not necessarily because you come in there to. I hate it when you buy tickets to something and then you're sitting there for three days and all they're doing is constantly pitching you. And look, I'm not against sales. Obviously, I like sales, but, you know, it's. I like to buy shit, not be sold. So, you know, I want to treat my audience the same way. The biggest thing is you're going to learn from the speakers. But let's just be real. You can get that on YouTube. If you want to listen to probably anybody that's up there, you can probably find a video on YouTube of them similar to what they're going to say, if I'm just being honest with you. But the people that I attract, the people that buy tickets to my events, that sit in the audience it might be, I mean, very famous people in the audience. And then there's the unknown entrepreneur that's richer than all of them. There'll be the 2 million person influencers sitting in one section. And then there'll be a guy that owns a roofing company that just made a, a two million dollar check that morning that ain't even worried about it. You know, there's the, then there's the, the, I mean, it is a real audience. Then there's the startup guys, the sales people, the, the female entrepreneurs. So, you know, we have a mixed group of people that are really focused, but they're real people. You know, it's not a bunch because real people don't show up at Pitch Fest.

Yeah, no, you're right.

Pitch Fest, they ain't got time for that shit.

No, they don't. No. That's one of the things I wanted, what I wanted to ask you about is because I feel like there are many, I think there are a lot of events, some famous events that are more pitched than anything else. And at least for me, when I'm choosing an event, when I'm choosing whether to throw, like to put one on or whether or not I'm choosing to attend one, and I like events, I attend as many as I can. The course of a year, I'm looking for something that's genuinely going to level me up. And it might level me up in 10 different ways. It might, you know, I might level up in a couple of key relationships. I might level up with content and knowledge that's tripped on me through the course of the day. I might have, hell, I might have a spiritual experience, you know, be carrying baggage. You know, I don't know about you, man, but you know, fighting through Covet and all that stuff was hard with multiple businesses and multiple businesses having revenue hits and, you know, stuff like that. It wasn't easy, you know, and just coming out the other side of that, just having some other folks that have kind of been through that and kind of walked with it. I was always telling my, I was always telling somebody, recently an entrepreneur knows an entrepreneur. Like you can look an entrepreneur in the eye and you don't have to say a word and you already know they are one because they, they wear, they wear something on their countenance that's not easily seen.

You know, we always say you can tell a man that's dug a hole with a shovel, you know, you can see their, their arms look different than a guy that hasn't really dug that Hole.

You know that. The truth. I thank the truth. Well, look, man, I want to ask you one more question before we head.

Out and real quick, I'll be shameful if I didn't say that you can get tickets to our event@milliondollarmastermind.com so, I mean, we're talking about the event and everybody's like, well, probably going well. Okay, well, how do I get there? This dude really isn't selling anything.

Yeah. No, that's awesome. Well, look, I want to. I guess my final question for the day. I've lost a lot of money without this and I've made a lot of money with it. And that's the followup. How powerful is follow up in your organization and kind of your business? And I mean, what have you seen? Because it seems like you can practically double or even triple your, your overall impact, whether it's resource or people pretty quickly just by following up.

Well, yeah, so we, we're like a cookie, man. We stay with you until you delete us. And that's, that's just how we roll here. And cookie, Internet cookie, for those of you that aren't tech nerds. But yeah, and follow up's huge. We actually have a program that we created, one of my sales guys actually created a couple years ago called Closer Memes. And that's the process we use here. And I think that product's like 20 bucks. It's not expensive, right? But we use memes to follow up with people. Like, you know, and it's hilarious. We'll send texts to people and they won't respond to us. Because here's what happens in my business.

It's.

It's 10 o' clock at night. Your wife just told you, go yourself and you're depressed. And in you, your business is stressed out, it's doing good, but you're not home enough or you're home too much and your business isn't doing good enough. So there's always one side or the other pulling against you. And you see somebody sharing my shit, or you know who I am, or you get an email from me, you're like, fine, maybe this can help me out. Then two days later, you get a big check or your wife gets you laid and everything's fine. And then now all of a sudden you're like, oh, I don't want to deal with that problem that I had two days ago. Because if I talk to that sales guy, I'm bringing that problem back up and I'm scared of that problem. And for right now, that problem's gone. If the problem comes back up, which we know it's going to because it's been coming back up every other day for every other week.

Especially if you have a spouse.

Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about myself. I'm the ideal client here, right? From 10 years ago is the ideal client. So. So that being said, when we're trying to track them down, they're not necessarily avoiding us. They're just avoiding talking about a problem that they, they don't have right now. They got other problems that's. They're dealing with. That one's not a big. And it's.

I like that a lot. Okay.

And whether they've known me for, whether they've known who I am for five years, 10 years, or five minutes, it's.

Like that a lot.

And we'll send him a text. Hey, man, just here trying to help you let me know. Nothing, hey, you know, hey, here's a video, blah, blah, nothing. And then we'll send him a text where it's like the.

The guy in the yellow suit where he's like the black dude in the yellow suit doing his hands like, you know, it's like, hey, man. Looking for you to respond like a freshly.

Like, that's hilarious, man. By the way, you know, I've been meaning to talk to you. I just been like 99.9 of the time. Or we'll send them a, a, a meme that's like Jesus looking through there like that crazy looking Jesus, like Jesus is watching you. And I'm following up, just funny things, you know what I mean? Their attention. And it breaks that pattern. And you know, you're probably listening to this, you're like, well, I'm in a corporate job or my people have no sense of humor or whatever the case may be. We have used it on billionaires and it's worth, we've used millionaires. It's work. We like, like everybody loves memes. If you don't like memes, you are a.

Person and we don't like you. But it's, it's. Very few people don't like me. Some people are really terrible at making them, but everybody likes them.

Yeah, no, that's good. Well, it's a great reminder because, you know, it does interrupt. Not only does it interrupt the pattern, it also interrupts their daily pattern of whatever the hell they're dealing with just in general. Right. And it also comes across as, hey, we're trying to stay connected without trying to like push something on you.

Yeah, exactly.

You know what I'm saying? I like, I really like that idea. I might have to steal that one.

Yeah, if you. And again, you know, you can go to closer memes.com and I, I think that's 20 or 40 bucks. Not very expensive. And we have all the templates made for you. You can just like, literally, even if you don't watch those videos, you know how to follow up. You can just go grab all of our mean templates. You know, you, hell, you make one sale is going to make you 40 bucks or whatever, no matter what you sell.

So that's true. Goodness gracious. Well, dude, man, I've enjoyed hanging out with you. You definitely schooled us on sales. I definitely need to check out the live event and keep things cooking where everybody working, everybody else, finding more about you.

So I'm on Instagram and Facebook and it's real Ryan Stuman on Facebook. I have blue check on Instagram. It's hardcore Closer. Again, blue check. If it's not a blue check, I don't send you a dm. I'm not going to ask you for crypto. I don't sell forex. I don't have a fund. I don't do any of that stuff. So if it's not a DM from me with the blue check, it's not really me. But go over there, follow me, me, shoot me a dm, send me a message, tell me you found me from this show and appreciate you having me on here.

My man. Love it, dude. All right, man. Take it easy. To you.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

Nobody has power over what I choose I'm able to do. And when I'm committed, it's going to happen because it's the character that I've developed that. But if you say you want to go hang a building off the side of a mountain, crazier things have been done. And so it's the audacity and the courage to believe whatever I can imagine, I can do.