Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now.

Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right.

Welcome back to Close It Now.

I am so excited to have this guest back on.

If you caught the last episode, I say episode, I had to split it into two parts because we just, we went on and on and we recorded for three hours.

I felt like we were Joe Rogan for a minute there, but it was perfect.

It was awesome.

And honestly, I'll tell you, go back and listen to those two episodes because I have gotten more comments and more messages about the basically, we were breathing fire into people's lives.

This is Doug Wyatt who's joining us again on this show.

Enough people messaged me also that said, have that guy back on because he's incredible.

So I am and I did.

So we're going to talk about some things today that all of you will be.

If you were the one of those people that said, hey, have that guy back on, you all need to do some more stuff together.

We're going to talk about some things today that you all will be excited about.

And also, of course, he is one of the speakers, one of the main keynotes at the relentless Ultimate Cells Transformation event that is coming up May 6th, 7th and 8th.

So that is one of the side purposes of having him on the show is so you can get a little better feel for for who he is and his message and his vibe so you will know what you're going to experience.

Because I know you have already got your ticket and if you haven't, you better hurry because they are selling out quickly.

If you didn't hear the big announcement is the Bogo ticket price.

The buy one, get one free ticket price has been extended all the way to the event.

So there is now no excuse to not be there.

So go to closeitnowbootcamp.com Grab your ticket today because they will sell Out.

Close it now.

Boot camp.com and with that, now that that plug is out of the way, let's everybody give.

Put your hands together.

Welcome back, Mr. Doug Wyatt.

I wish I had the applause button.

That would be great.

Very nice.

Let's edit that in afterwards.

It's always, what a great introduction, Sam.

And I'm, I don't know, I'm going.

To probably work backwards on some of the things you just shared there, but I don't.

Maybe it's a plug, but man, rightfully so.

This event, the speaker lineup that you have put together is absolutely incredible.

I'm honored to be included in it as I think if the listeners heard us on the first two part series we did a little while back, I'm honored to be on here again.

I think it's a huge testament to be invited back somewhere.

It's always cool when you get invited.

On, but man, do you have a lot of work to do to earn the opportunity to be invited back.

So I think it's, it meant a lot to be on the first time.

It means even more to be invited back.

So I really appreciate that.

And yeah, we've had a lot of.

Feedback, Sam, on our first one that did go long enough to be split into two.

I think today we'll try to keep this to about 60, 65 minutes.

We'll see if you and I are.

Capable of that, see if it's possible.

A lot of synergies between us and.

A lot of things that we believe and get out there and share with our audiences and help to help others.

But I don't even look at what you did as a plug.

I just look at as, as Boston is going to change lives, it's going to change careers and it's not going to be because we're going to teach anybody to be a high pressure, pushy salesperson.

It's going to be the opposite.

We're going to, we're going to share with others how they can influence, work on their mindset, improve their lives and be better in every area.

Not just their life, or I should say their life, not just their career, but their family, their relationships, their health, their fitness, their mindset, everything.

So I'm very excited and thank you.

For having me on today.

I followed your career for well over 15 years and it's truly an honor.

So thanks for having me.

Absolutely, man.

You know, it's fun.

We were reminiscing a little bit before this episode for everybody that you didn't hear the story before, I mean, and go Back and listen.

You know, my very first sales training event I ever went to as this green rookie in the field.

Every master was once a disaster, as they say, and I was a disaster.

The only sales training I had ever done, and I've told this story before, I don't know if you've even heard it, Doug.

My first experience in training is the way I was trained at my company.

The owner handed me the stack of leads that the last guy didn't call and our price book and said, okay, go make money.

And that was my sales training.

And so I realized real fast that for things to change, I had to change.

And for things to get better, I had to get better.

So I ordered.

I was looking in a.

It was in a mag.

I think it was H Vac magazine.

It was like, might have been the Times or something.

And I saw a Brian Tracy ad and so I had to pick up the phone, call his office.

They gave me the address to write a physical check and mail it to.

And they mailed me back a CD set with the workbooks.

$330.

It was the very first time I'd ever invested any money at all, really into my own education.

And that year I gave myself a $30,000 raise with that $330 check.

Didn't see any more leads, just closed a higher average ticket and closed more people that I saw just served on investment.

Sam.

Yeah.

And so from that moment for I was like, oh my gosh, how often can I do this?

And how many times?

And so similar background and.

Sorry to interrupt.

I was just thinking about the way I got into training and speaking, but really something very similar.

I was watching late night infomercials back at 19, 20 years old, and I was seeing people like Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn and even Covey and Tom Hopkins and Tony Robbins.

And the way that you got your hands on those things was you called the number and then you, you either gave them a card or you sent them a check.

And I remember I.

For my first training set, I wrote a check and I mailed.

Gosh, that's back when they even used to do cod.

Yeah, yeah.

For everybody that doesn't know what that means, that's cash on delivery.

That used to be a thing.

You might have to have an education today with the younger audience about what a collect call is.

And I think I sent you a video recently, Sam, of a teenager being quizzed about all those things from the 80s and 90s.

But anyway, yeah, the world has changed.

I will say this though, Nobody's ever bought me a book or a CD set or a cassette tape set.

I've invested in myself.

And it just, it sometimes frustrates me.

And it saddens me when I hear that people that are working for somebody else, that the business owner is going to invest in them and provide training for them, whether it's virtually, whether it's a program, a workbook, a book.

And then they say, are you going to pay me to read it?

You're going to pay me to watch it?

And I just about fall out of my chair and I'm both flabbergasted.

It's probably one of the biggest words I know, or I'm just saddened by it.

That our society or our culture believe that not only should somebody have to pay for us to get us a book or a virtual program or whatever, but then they want to be paid to read it or to watch it and.

Absolutely.

Or they'll, they'll talk to us and they'll be like, oh man, yeah, you know, how much is your program?

Oh, that's great.

Let me go back to the company and see if they'll pay for it for me.

Which is, you know, you could work out.

I help people negotiate.

Say, okay, I'm like, yeah, go do that.

Go back and set up a milestone for yourself.

So if I hit these numbers, will you pay for it for me?

Let me earn it.

That's the way to do it.

But then they were like, oh no, I don't.

But I don't pay for my, for training for myself.

If the company doesn't pay for it, I just won't do it.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

You're talking.

It's your life, it's your own career.

The math on you investing $300 in a Brian Tracy set and then you increasing your income that year by $30,000.

Are you kidding me?

I don't know how long ago that was, Sam, but it was a long time ago.

And you don't look at it, but you got to be getting there.

Yeah.

2010 numbers that would be, see a thirty thousand dollar increase now that's what, ninety, a hundred thousand dollar difference with inflation?

That content has stuck with you to this day.

Oh yeah.

Using that every day the rest of your life with what you earn.

So not only did it, did it net you $30,000 additional in a raise that year, whether that was 15 or so years ago, here you are and that content is still with you today.

And you've continued to educate yourself and build upon that.

So I, uh.

The thing is, when we invest in ourselves, it never goes away.

We.

If we learn that and we internalize it, it becomes part of us.

And so that $300 investment will pay.

A return on investment for you every.

Day for the rest of your life.

No doubt.

No doubt.

And that's why I love doing what we do now is.

And for everybody that doesn't know, Doug's got a really, really, really awesome program which we're going to touch on today because I wanted to make sure to highlight it a little bit, because he does something I don't do.

And that's the beautiful part about our industry is, you know, you've got the trainers out there that everybody's.

They're in competition.

And you see these almost boxing matches happening across, you know, throwing mud across Facebook to each other, and then they'll kiss and make up, and then they're fighting the next month.

And, you know, all the.

All these different siloed, you know, fan clubs to the different trainers, and I'm one.

I'm here to tell you, Doug and I are friends with everybody.

We made this mission to be friends with everybody.

Enemy of nobody.

Because this world is abundant, that we come from this place of abundance, that you could literally multiply all of us by 10, and there still wouldn't be enough of us to help as many people that need help.

And so when we have that mindset, of course, and at the same time, people are going to resonate with you differently than they resonate with me.

So that's okay.

But one of the things we were talking about before the show.

I want to park here for a sec.

Is we were talking about the power of.

So much of what we do is the power of language.

And we, of course, reference Tony Robbins and some different people.

And for everybody listening, Doug and I have a very similar type of journey in our sales training, in our careers.

And used to.

I'll tell you, I used to be a potty mouth.

I would let some things fly.

I drop F bombs all the time or whatever.

And Doug used to also.

And about the same time period, which is really interesting.

I didn't know that the time was the same.

We made a shift in that.

And Doug, I'd love to talk about that for a minute.

Tell the story to the crowd that you were telling me before the show.

And let's talk about the importance of this.

Man, Sam, you're putting me on blast here.

Yeah, of course, man.

You come on my show, man.

It's no Holds barred.

All right.

No, this is great.

And you and I do have so many similarities and synergies in our careers and the way we train, speak and what we believe.

You know, I was doing a live event, and I try not to use too much language, if you will, on podcast and during short keynotes, because people don't really know you the entire time.

It's an evaluation of, who is this guy?

Can I relate to this?

Them?

Do they know what they're talking about?

Why should I listen to them?

I heard you share a story the other day.

We were on a.

On a different call, and you were talking about a story with Warren Buffett, you know, sharing some financial information on a park bench.

And would it have meant more to you if you knew it was Warren Buffett for the first hour before him parting ways and saying, oh, my name's Warren Warren Buffett, and what a great, great thing.

But we're always being evaluated, right?

And so I was, I was conducting.

An event, and when I tend to go into like a three or four day live event, it's kind of like.

Things loosen up a little bit, right?

And you got to keep the audience engaged over a significant amount of time.

Over a three or four day event, you're talking about 30, 40 hours worth of content.

And I don't like anyone feeling like.

They'Re going to fall asleep.

So sometimes it just seems like.

A.

Bit of foul language or a cuss word or whatever you want to call it might hit the spot to really wake the audience up, to really drive home a point.

Well, one of the things that, you know, I grew up in a Baptist.

Household, I grew up in a Christian home, and we weren't allowed to cuss.

I never cussed.

Growing up, the cuss words I learned were on the school bus out in the countryside because we lived in the country and southwest Missouri and the Ozark Mountains, and we were a bunch of rednecks.

And so it was a rough and tough crowd.

Right.

I remember when in that area when, like, the cuss word that came around into the, into the youth groups in the church was when people started saying, man, that sucks.

Oh, I got in so much trouble.

So much trouble.

I was not allowed to say that word.

You could not say that word.

That was a cuss word for sure.

Yeah, same, same.

I actually got sent to the principal's office in the fifth grade for saying bull crap.

And I got.

And my parents were like, you tell me what you actually said, Douglas.

And I said, I said bull crap.

And sure enough, we went down and had a meeting with the principal the next morning.

And.

And, yes, we brought in the teacher that heard me say that on the basketball court at recess in the fifth grade.

And she said, yeah, he said bull crap.

And I just felt like that was a slippery slope.

Well, I still got grounded for a month and got the belt, which.

And everything else, because I had to be taught a lesson to make sure that I didn't go down that slippery slope.

Start saying the other word instead of bull crap.

Literally, the pink slap said that.

The principal said that.

The teacher said, yeah, that's what he said.

And I still got in trouble for it.

So that's how I was raised.

And then as I became an adult.

You know, you get a little loose with your language sometimes for some of us.

And so, on these long events, I've been known to get, let's just say.

Pretty fiery with my language.

Never at somebody, but just in the message.

Right.

And my mom flew out.

We were doing this event in Denver.

This is a couple of years ago.

And she's always said, douglas, when you.

Cuss, it shows that a lack of intelligence, you just can't think of a better word.

And I've always debated this with my mother.

And I. I would say, no, there's just sometimes no better word that will.

Drive your point home.

She comes out to the event, Sam.

And she sits there, and after the event, she says, it was amazing, Doug.

It was the first time she'd ever.

Seen me speak live.

And this just a few years ago.

Especially in an elongated event.

And she said, I loved every bit of it.

You're just so amazing.

You're the best speaker I've ever seen.

You're so inspiring, and I love your content.

And it's kind of like, of course she's saying this.

It's my mom.

Of course, that's what moms are supposed to do.

And then she says, but may I.

Give you some feedback?

And I said, yeah.

By the way, for the audience, I.

Have a wordsmith here.

I never refer to anything as constructive criticism.

I don't even call it constructive feedback.

I call it relevant feedback.

Nice.

There's a wordsmith instead of criticism, because I don't like what that word stands for.

Anytime we're giving feedback to our team, I like to call that relevant feedback instead of constructive criticism.

So she says, can I give you some constructive feedback?

Can I give you some feedback?

And I said, sure.

And she goes, doug, I loved every bit of it.

On and on and on.

But I want to talk to you about the profanity.

And I said, okay, Mom.

I mean, we've talked about this for decades.

And she goes, yeah, but you've changed my mind.

And I was like, really?

And I thought, my mom's going to give me permission to cuss for the first time.

Here we go.

And here's what she said, Sam.

She said, I loved your message.

And I realized that, Doug, I know how hard you've worked.

I know how much you've studied.

I know how many books you've read.

I know how smart and intelligent you are, at least in her mind.

And she said, I no longer think.

That cussing is a sign of a lack of intelligence.

But what I will share with you.

Is I could not concentrate because I found myself thinking every time.

And it wasn't a lot.

My mom was in the room.

But if over three or four days, if it was three or four times, once a day, she said, doug, I couldn't concentrate in the message for the next three minutes or more, was lost because I was trying to figure out what's a different word and would it have meant just as much?

And if he hadn't used profanity, there would.

Would I have been more compelled, more inspired?

Would I have learned more?

And from that day forward, Sam, I've made it a point to never utter a profane word in my training.

I don't do it on podcast.

I really try not to hear me on a podcast.

I would love to go back and beep it out and not do it.

But what I realized, whether I'm doing a keynote, whether it's a man like you, that it's inviting me in to share the stage and speak at an event like ours coming up in Boston, What I realized is it can hurt more than it can help, and that there are ways that we can drive the learning, we can drive the inspiration.

We can.

We can help rather than hurt.

And so since that time, it.

It was like, you know what?

It took me until about the age of 47 or whatever to actually have somebody explain it in a way.

And I thought, if my mom, who, of course, she's going to be my biggest fan, sure, all of her moms usually are, but she still said, as much as I love you and I love your content, and I loved listening to you, and I just was soaking up every moment.

I missed part of your message because.

I was debating with myself, what other.

Things could he have said?

What could he have replaced that with?

And would it have meant more the same or had a bigger impact?

And so there it is for me, Sam.

So anybody who comes to see me live, anybody who hears me on a podcast, anybody who sees or hears me anywhere, you won't find cuss words anymore.

If I can help it, because it's not helping as much as it could hurt.

Yeah, I love this topic so much, and by extension, too one.

It makes me think about, of course, being situationally aware and situationally appropriate where we need to be.

And for everybody that's listening, you all go through this.

Every home is different.

Every situation is different.

And if you're in that environment, a lot of times it feels like we have that full permission to.

We're mirroring.

We're doing all of the sales things we know to do.

And so, you know, a lot of times we slide into that.

But the thought that I want to kind of move off of this with is it could be language.

It could be a lot of the other things we've talked about.

It could be for this, you know, long hair.

It could be earrings.

It could be the things that we have control over.

Is there anything inherently wrong with those?

Absolutely not.

If one out of every 20 people you see or every 30 people you see is turned off by that and doesn't buy because something that's so easily controllable and you lose that $500,000, $2,000, $5,000 commission for your family, for you, for your livelihood, because you have more of an ego because of something like that, Go and go inside, Think about that before you make your final decision on all of the things we have the ability to control.

Because, like you, I mean, I used to let them fly, you know, just whatever.

And then the.

I. I realized that halfway through day one of training, one time, it made.

It was almost the same experience that I had years and years ago at a training that we were both at.

Right at lunch, one of the guys in the room came up to me, and it's like, man, I'm having a hard time paying attention here.

And I said, you know what?

And it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I said, you know what?

Thank you for that.

I take that feedback very seriously.

And from that point forward.

This was a year and year and a half ago in Raleigh, A guy named Justin, he came up.

So shout out to Justin.

I know he listens to all the shows.

He changed the way that I function for that same reason.

So for everybody, think about those types of things.

If it's easily changeable and it's something you can do or not do, but it has the possibility of turning somebody off.

Why would you do it?

Yeah.

In fact, I want to piggyback on.

That if you'll allow me to here.

Of course, I love that.

And, you know, I think it just goes to show that a lot of times wisdom does come with not just age, but it's because of the experience.

Right.

And even though you felt like you were doing the thing and maybe relating to the audience or you were having more of an impact by being a little more edgy or waking people up, whatever it was that was driving that behavior or that speaking style, all of.

A sudden somebody said, hey, I'm loving this, but I'm having a hard time paying attention.

And so all of a sudden, at whatever, however old you were a year and a half, two years ago, you decided to correct course and say, I can be even better, I can do.

It a different way.

I can reinvent myself in a certain way.

You also mentioned beards and those sort of things.

And I know there's a lot of debate within the trades right now about facial hair and those things, and it's kind of come back up.

It was really a 1970s thing.

And I've seen a lot of the same posts you have.

I also know that there was one, and I think I saw you make a comment the other day and I was getting on a plane and I forgot to go back and comment, but our friend Brian Burton from Waste no Day made a comment and somebody was saying, I just closed a job in shorts.

And we're talking about the trades here.

We're talking about maybe a technician or a comfort advisor.

And I'm sure they were probably in a hot part of the country, maybe in the south.

I love Brian's comment.

Brian's comment was something to the point that you may have closed that sale, but you'll never lose a sale by being dressed professionally.

You may close a lot of sales by not wearing your work shoes, your work boots.

You may close a lot of sales in shorts or by having having a scruffy beard.

But there's never been a sale that's been lost by being a true professional.

And I agree with Brian on that.

We were chatting about a mutual friend of ours, Andy Habaika, down at Habaika Services in Phoenix.

You'll like a Habiko.

Give a shout out to Andy Habaika because he's one of the best that's ever done it.

And I know that you're probably going to be having him on the show here sometime in the near future.

Yeah, we Are guy I was down at their facility in the, I think it was like November or December somewhere.

I was down there and he said, hey Doug, come by the facility, I want to show you around.

And I got to meet Chase Cottam again.

The GM down there, they're just doing amazing things at Habike in Phoenix, but they've got a mannequin when you walk into the building, like many of the most professional companies around the country, a liberal mannequin, though not a cardboard cutout.

And this mannequin has his hat on perfectly.

His shirt is buttoned up, he's tucked in, he's clean.

And so every day that you walk into Habaika, you got to make sure are you emulating exactly the way the Habaika mannequin looks.

And so also on that same trip over at Brian Burton's facility at the Ben Franklin in Scottsdale and they had the cardboard cut out with this is exactly how we're supposed to look.

And so what I can share with you is as we won Lennox partner of the year at my company twice up here in Denver, is that I would say to a team member when they came on board, I would say, listen, I have a vision for what my company and our brand and the way we're going to go to market, the way we're going to serve people.

And that vision includes us showing up every day like it's our last, meaning that it's going to be like prom.

How do we look on prom night?

Right?

Even if we're normally not all dressed to the 9th on prom night, we get dressed up because it's prom.

And you know what I also say, what did you look like on your wedding day?

Even for those that have never been in a suit before, most of us men, no matter how rough and tough we are, we put on a three piece suit and we wear the funny little shirt with the whatever you call that tuxedo thing going on, the little tiny button and the little T. And we do that because it's a very important day.

And so what I would share with my team, Sam, is I would say every single day that you put on our logo, wear it like a badge of honor.

Dress up, show up, act the part, speak the part, smell the part, brush your teeth, trim your beard.

It just has to look, remember this word, intentional.

Don't ever show up with a collar or a uniform that wasn't pressed that looks like you've been wearing that same uniform or that same outfit or those clothes for the last seven days.

And it's filthy.

We're going to serve every customer.

We're going to answer every phone call like it is the next most important phone call or the next important lead or the next important service call or install.

Because you know what, Sam?

In my company, it is.

It is.

Every day is like our last.

But every day has got to be like our wedding day or our prom day, prom night, because that next call is the one that matters the most.

And it does become a slippery slope, Tom.

It does become a slippery slope.

And while I didn't like it in the fifth grade when I got the principal's office and the belt and the switch and everything else and grounded because I said bull crap, what I did take from the countryside is that you know what?

The details do matter and that there are slippery slopes.

And if we stop wearing our badge or we stop tucking in our shirt or we stop getting lathered up and ready for the next phone call, the next sales lead, the next service call, then guess what the slippery slope is.

Before you know it, we look disheveled, we look haggard, and we don't serve that next customer the way that they deserve to be served.

And it's not just the way we look is going to determine the way that we act.

So my team, when we would show up in the facility, they weren't wearing sweats.

We got to where, you know, back in the day, the Broncos were good, and my gals got to wear a Bronco jersey.

There you go.

One Friday a month during football season.

One Friday a month.

And football season only lasts a few months.

I mean, think about it.

You're into the playoffs, into the super bowl, as we get into January.

So we're talking about, okay, we.

We start the real season at the end of August, beginning of September, four months.

That means four days a year.

Sam.

They got maybe given an exception if they make the super bowl, right?

That's it.

I'm telling you, man, you walk into my H VAC and plumbing company, and you would see people dressed like it was prom night.

And I'm not saying that my gals had to wear heels every day, but a lot of them chose to.

Because I'm telling you, when you dress up and you look the part, you act the part, you smell the part, you're prepared.

I'm telling you, you're going to go out there and you're going to serve people better, and they're going to get a different impression because energy is transferable.

And people are going to know by the way you make Them feel whether or not you're trustworthy or where there's a lot of risk.

Oh, this is so good.

I think every bit of it matters, Sam.

I think every bit, every detail matters.

And you know what?

For those of us listening that say, man, Doug's.

Doug's a little too strict on this.

Or listen, a person that doesn't want to tuck in their shirt, that doesn't want to rep my logo like a badge of honor, or make sure that their newly wrapped truck is perfectly pristine or that their inventory is perfect or that their.

Their time cards are turned in on time, I will say this.

I honestly, and I mean this with every ounce of my being, Sam, I don't believe it makes that person a bad man.

I don't think it makes them a bad father.

It certainly doesn't make them a bad technician.

It doesn't make them a bad salesperson.

What it does, beyond a shadow of a doubt, make them, Sam, is a bad fit for me and my vision in what the way I want to represent a business and a brand and take care of people and go into market.

So maybe not a bad person, but a bad fit for somebody who has a really big vision for the way they want to serve.

I love the success.

Leaves clues, everybody.

This is absolutely a thing.

And it's really interesting too.

And I love this because I've, you know, working what I do, I work from home, right?

You work from home.

We've got our home offices where I'm.

I'm recording from home right now.

I know you are too.

And what I find is the days that maybe I just don't feel like it, you know, get y' all wear shorts or I'll, you know, go to work in my sweatpants.

And like, Covid days, you throw in a nice shirt, nobody knows you can have a, you know, have your bathing suit on in the bottom and, you know, whatever.

But the days that I know I need to get a lot more accomplished, and this started because I had a meeting one morning and I came back and I was still dressed.

I had a nice shirt on.

I had pants on.

I had gotten cleaned up for the day.

And I got so much accomplished that day.

And it just was that big dawning moment.

It's like, okay, just because I'm at home doesn't mean I don't need to do the same thing.

Because how you do anything is how you do everything.

And it.

You said the right word.

You said energy.

It changes your energy.

The energy that surrounds you and your resonance completely changes and your own work ethic changes.

And by extension, it affects everybody that you interact with.

And so when you see your.

And you feel yourself and you see yourself as the professional, then by extension they do as well.

Because we lead.

We were leading the people.

Every time we're training our people how to buy from us, we lead the energy.

You and I are so similar.

There is.

There's truly so much synergy between us.

I used to speak in ease, and I still do with my team.

The letter E. Words that start with B.

You just named one.

Energy.

I'll tell you another one.

That's one of my favorites, and that is effort.

And my thing is every single day, when you put on that uniform, when you get behind that wheel, when you answer my phones, if we're going to be the best, and we're going to.

If we're going to be out there commanding a premium price not to rip people off, not to sell them things that they don't need, but we're going to command a premium price because that is the only way that we can build a premium company.

We can't pay for training, we can't pay for new trucks.

We can't pay for great inventory.

We can't pay for the best software, the best marketing, the best website.

If we don't go out there and command a higher investment so that we can pay a 401k and do a 3% match so we can send people to Mexico as the employee of the year.

What I can share with you is that I would share with my team is that effort and energy is what matters to me the most.

We're going to raise.

Here's another E. Our expectation, the enthusiasm for us, for our business, for our brand, for our customers, for our servitude.

I mean, listen, guys, we're talking about a lot of work with a lot of liability and lives are at stake.

We're talking about sealing flue pipes properly.

We're talking about refrigerants highly controlled by the epa.

We're talking about companies that do and don't do a nitrogen purge.

We can talk about filter dryers.

We can talk about a proper installation.

But you hire a company to come out and put a man or a woman on your property that isn't properly vetted, properly background checked, that can't drive that van, that you wouldn't trust in your own home or with your own family or your own child, that's serious business.

And people do die in our business.

And people do get sued by people to get hurt.

On properties.

And so I look at this and I go, you know, we're in a very serious business.

So if you can't bring the energy or the enthusiasm, if you can't show up to a training on time, if you can't show up with a notebook and a pen and you're not ready to learn, you're not a good fit.

Bring the energy, bring the enthusiasm, because lives are at stake.

We're going to raise our level of expectation.

Just because it always used to be done and the trades a certain way.

Well, that's not the way you work towards greatness.

Right?

You want to be great, you want to be excellent.

There's another E. Raise your energy, raise your enthusiasm.

And what I can tell you, if I got a guy sitting in.

In my facility, in my training room, and he's leaning back in his chair and he's got that hat pulled down, it's not going to be a good fit.

Nope, it's not going to be a good fit.

And so if that means that you got to put down the bottle the night before, it means you got to get to bed early.

You got to ask the wife or.

Or the spouse or the significant other, whoever, with help with the kid, the night before a meeting, you do whatever you need to do so that you can bring that energy, that effort, that enthusiasm, your cause for excellence.

Raise that expectation.

And that's why I said talk in terms of a lot of ease, Sam.

Love it.

You can't get on board with the ease.

You know, this is fun.

This reminds me of a good friend of mine.

His name's Ed.

Edmund Catan.

He owns Kumquat Solar.

And he.

We were in the same solar company for a lot of years.

He used to say it is our job to be a professional, to.

To inject and infect them with excitement and enthusiasm so they don't reject you out of their home.

And I've.

It's just stuck with me for all these years.

And so.

Typing it up.

I'm typing it out right now.

See, you learn something new every day.

This guy sounds quite, quite.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Edmund, it's what?

Yeah, it's our job to infect and inject excitement and enthusiasm into our homeowners so they don't reject you out of their home.

And so it.

Yeah, it's powerful, powerful, powerful stuff, Sam.

But I'll tell you this, when I hear something like that, I'm like, I think I got it.

I'm gonna write it down.

I'm gonna study.

I'm gonna practice it.

Somebody else will hear me saying this someday and I might not give credit to the man that gave.

That you just gave credit to.

I'm giving credit to Sam Wakefield because I heard it from Sam on Close it now.

And I can tell you this, the next time when I say infect and inject enthusiasm so that we get what we expect, I'm going to say my buddy Sam Wakefield shared that with me.

Word.

Love it, man.

Ah, this is so good.

So let's get into.

This is not even what we planned to talk about today, but anytime we, we chat, it's fire.

So I, I know that somebody is going to get a lot out of this episode, but the one thing I really want to dive into is, you know, you do things differently, I do things differently.

We don't do things the same way.

Clearly we're doing.

We've on different paths right now, sort of in a way.

But you have realized the power of leverage in a way that is different than a lot of people in the industry.

A lot of, you know, when, especially when it comes to training and it comes to coaching and helping more people, you know, the traditional mindset is, well, I just need, I'm only one person, so my bandwidth is limited in order to reach more people, I just need to hire more trainers and train them to go out and train people.

But you took a different approach, which is creating the power and of course, having our ability to, you know, and with that, of course that means people have to go to, you know, block out a whole day, go to an event or sit on a virtual session for an extended period of time, which you've done all of that.

But I really am intrigued by what you have been working on behind the scenes for a while.

You've been in your beta launch for a couple years and now we're working on 2.0.

But tell us a little bit more about the power of using the platforms that you've built, the Synergy system, and kind of dive into that a little bit.

And the reason you came up with it, because I know that there's a lot of people that would like to have this type of a resource and don't even know it exists for one, so one, it's exposure, but two, how can it be used?

Why'd you do it?

And what's the purpose here?

If you're listening, you can't see how I'm smiling.

Sometimes smiles can come through an audio.

But I'm telling you the thing that Sam just asked.

Number one, what I'M not going to do is.

Is just make this some type of sales presentation for what we've created here at Synergy Learning Systems.

But what I do want to point out is that Sam and I are in a competing space.

And Sam just asked me to describe a program that I've invested a lot.

Of time, a number of years, and a lot of resources and capital.

In fact, everybody.

So super quick.

I do know the number, and it's giving me permission to share.

For everybody that doesn't know Doug, what we're about to kind of COVID a little bit is Doug's put over a million dollars of his own money into this program.

So anyone who invests seven figures into something, you know, my ear.

My ears perk up.

I want to know what it's all about, you know, even if it's a direct competition to what I'm doing, which is not.

But even if it was, you know, I learn.

I'm a lifelong learner.

I learned from everybody.

So I want to know more about this.

I don't mind that you shared that, Sam.

I mean, that.

That sounds like a lot of money.

And it is, but I think that even.

And you and I were talking about that a number of months ago when we were just kind of talking about the different things that we were offering the marketplace and what we were working on.

And now just let the audience know.

Sam and I are talking about some really big things in the background, and we're working on some things to do.

Together, in addition to the relentless Close it now event coming up in Boston this May.

I think the cool thing, though, is, Sam, here I am on your podcast, and you're asking me about a training platform that I've created that isn't in direct competition to what you do, but if somebody has a limited number of training dollars, they could certainly choose you or me.

And so for you to open it up on your platform, it's pretty cool.

It just shows your abundance mentality rather than having a scarcity mentality.

Even having me on your show in the first place shares with me, and I think everybody listening that Sam's just out there to do whatever he can to add value.

And I think that's really cool.

Sam.

Yeah.

In regard to the.

The training that we've created, I also don't want to have this come across as not only me not or taking a shot or not promoting anybody else, because I think there's a lot of great trainers out there, both in the trades and out.

You and I have been big fans and We've learned from.

You mentioned Brian Tracy earlier and I rattled off a bunch of other ones that you and I have studied from, from Jim Rohn to Tony Robbins to Tom Hopkins and Wayne Dyer and some that, some, a lot of other people probably haven't ever heard of.

But I think I, up until just about three years ago when I started making those investments, I had an experience once and I'd never really felt the way I felt that day or really, maybe at least really dove into what I just experienced.

But I was at a venue for like an expo type event.

I was at my booth.

So I had a booth, I had a speaking engagement there in a breakout session.

And I saw one of what I considered a friend of mine, a client.

And this client had come through a three day training event for a tech program.

Then it was so good.

At the end of that event, he turned in his feedback form.

10 out of 10 across the board, amazing event.

Said this is the best content I've ever heard.

You're, you're changing the game.

Everybody says there's nothing new in training over 30 years.

This is the freshest, newest content.

That gentleman then proceeded to send people back through our call center training, our sales training, our leadership training, and those were all live events.

And at the time I didn't have any type of follow up program, Sam.

So that's, that's the distinctive thing that changed the game for me.

Well, fast forward a year later after him sending everybody in his company through three day events to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars and all tens on the feedback forms.

And I saw him coming down an aisle.

He didn't know that I saw him, but I thought he kind of looked up and then he turned down an aisle and I thought, oh well, he'll come back by the booth here in a bit.

And then about half an hour went by and he never came.

And I thought, oh well, he'll find me here at this conference.

Well, by the time I got on a plane and went home and he never came by, it really, really hurt.

And I thought, wait a minute, I thought he loved me.

I thought he loved the content.

What did I do to rub this guy wrong?

And so I reached out to him and it was kind of a ghost situation.

And I reached out again and finally I said, hey, if there's something I did to upset you, I really want to learn about, I want to learn from this.

And then I got on the call with him and he said, Doug, you did nothing wrong.

I've been avoiding you.

And I said, why have you been avoiding me?

Yeah.

And it hurt.

I can feel the emotions.

Well, we were friends, man.

Thought we were friends.

And I thought you loved the stuff, and I thought it was going to change the game for you.

And he said, doug, when I came to your event, I was so inspired, and I knew that your stuff would work, but I got busy.

And then my team pushed back because they didn't want to do the additional work that it would take to change what they were already doing.

And kind of felt like good was good enough, and I was inspired to become great, and so was my team.

But then the emotion of the events faded, and then we kind of went back to what we've always done.

And so I made a lot of big promises to you a year ago about how many trucks I was going to put on the road and how I was going to change things and.

And revamp our brand and our raps and everything.

And you know what, Doug?

I didn't do it.

And when I saw you at that event, it reminded me of the failures that I had promised you I was going to do.

And it wasn't about you.

It was about me and Sam.

At that moment, I started not trying to schedule any more live training events.

I started not trying to be all things to all people.

And I said, you know what I'm going to do when people say to me, doug, we liked your training, or we think this will change the game for us, or we're going to do this.

We all have these challenges, whether it's in our business, whether it's in our relationships, whether it's in our fitness.

We start things and we have the best of intentions and we find a program that we believe is a good fit for us, a good fit for our character, a good fit for our.

Our community, our family.

And then you know what?

We just get caught up.

And I remember Tony Robbins said an event.

I remember I hear like yesterday it rung in my ears and he's like, you can't get caught up.

You can't get caught up.

And it always been in my head.

And I was like, you know what?

My friends, my clients, my people that are saying this is great, are getting caught up because the next unhappy customer, the one star review, the five star reviews, the newest software, the newest AI technology, the newest onboarding, the newest recruit, the newest uniform, that whatever it is, or maybe it's just trying to keep the, you know, the bridge that we've already built from crumbling and falling apart.

So we have to maintain this business, business in general is hard, Sam, but the trade business is really, really hard.

And I've been on it twice now.

And I can tell you this, what I decided a number of years ago was that I was not going to stop until I had put all of my content, all of my training, all of my role plays into print form in giant workbooks and then put giant, you know, video training together with small, manageable, bite sized chunks with an online management system.

And I said, how was I able to have such an impact with a company that I joined that was 18 years old that had no discernible brand, a couple of white bands being dispatched off Yahoo calendar with two sons and no website and no marketing and no CRM and, and really not much, but they were good people.

What did I do?

And I can tell you what I did was I created small, manageable, bite sized chunks for everybody, every person, everybody in that organization, Sam, where every week we didn't try to learn at all, we didn't master an entire sales process, we didn't master an entire call center process or leadership training or our service process in a day or a week.

What I did realize that every man and woman in that organization and everyone that we onboarded and everyone that we trained could, with energy, with effort, with a higher expectation and more enthusiasm, say, you know what I can do?

I can figure out three things a week.

I'm going to work on part of my mindset.

I'm going to work on the way that I think, the way that I show up, the way that I treat my spouse or my kids, or the way I speak.

I can also work on part of my process, whether that's how I answer the phone or how I asked for the order, how I asked to schedule.

I can work on my call ahead.

I can work on my door knock, I can work on my entryway conversation, I can work on my, how do I describe my diagnostic or getting the homeowner to the kitchen table or sitting down or explaining my accessories or my club membership.

And then every single call, phone call or service call or sales lead, Sam, we have to ask for the order.

And homeowners have a fiduciary responsibility to get the most for the least.

And so they're probably in most situations, no matter how good we are, they're going to say, yeah, I like you, I trust you, I'm going to use you.

And then they're going to, with that three letter word, but.

And then it's the objection.

And maybe sometimes they're going to Vomit all of them at once.

And that would sound like this, yeah, I like you, I trust you, I think I'm going to use you.

But.

And then they're going to sound something like this and maybe a combination of all of them.

But we were thinking about a different brand and we're not quite ready to move forward and we were just shopping right now.

We got a couple of other bids coming this weekend but I can't imagine anybody would do anything as well as you guys do.

And you know, your price is a.

Little bit more, the price is high.

Or what we budgeted for, we don't have that kind of money or we weren't planning on this because they wanted to buy the new car and they wanted to buy the new fire pit and they wanted to build a new deck and they wanted to do all that stuff.

They didn't want to invest the money on a new furnace or air conditioner.

They just wanted it to work right.

And so what I said is every week we're going to work on something to do with our mindset.

The way we show up for one another, the way we show up for our family, the way we show up for ourselves.

We're going to start to work on those things.

So there's one assignment every week.

What are we thinking about?

What five pages are we reading or what book are we talking about?

Or, or what, what thing are we doing?

What YouTube video we watching at Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar or, or Jim Rohn or something like that.

And then each week we're going to work on two parts of our career.

One is process, one is closing.

And so what I would do is I would select in each department whether you were an install sales service or leadership, what is a small bite size manageable chunk.

This is how we became Linux partner of the year in less than 16 months.

And that ragtag company that we took to a, to a national power.

Every week we work towards mastery on small manageable bite sized chunks, three of them.

Mindset.

And then we also worked on process.

And then we would get to the end and say every time we're on the phone we've got to ask somebody to schedule the visitors.

Got to ask somebody to get on the schedule.

We've got to some sort of call to action.

A call to action.

So we had to work on what happens when you do ask?

That's part of the process.

What happens when they say, oh yeah, well, how much is a water heater?

Okay, let us call around.

We're just calling Right now, sometimes people tell you their basement's flooding and you give them the price on a diagnostic and they'll go, oh, we were just looking for somebody that could do it for free.

And so we've got a handle swimming underwater here.

What do you mean you're looking for somebody to do it for free?

Come on.

I go to these live events, I'm on these zoom calls, and I say, what do you say when somebody pushes back in your call center, to your call center rep or on your service call or on your sales lead when somebody says, okay, we're just calling around, or we got to get additional bids or we're not familiar with your brand, or I got to think about it, pray about it, sleep on it.

I got to talk to my spouse or my handyman or my neighbor about, or my call my dad about it.

What do you say?

And if they can't tell me like that, like we talked about in part two on the other podcast that we did, Sam, we got challenges.

We got real trouble ahead.

We got trouble brewing, because it can't be enough that just the we, as the owners of the leadership, know those things.

Our team has to know it too, all the way down to the person sweeping the floor.

They also need to know how to set their goals in positive, present tense.

They need to know how to write them out.

They need to know how to work to become whatever they, whatever it is they want in their life, all the way up to the ownership, the leadership in the company.

So we created assignments and I just.

Here's the key, Sam.

I got one week ahead of our training.

And so here's the key, Sam.

You and I have chatted about this before at live training events.

I've worked really hard to become great at sales and role plays.

But if I was in your event, Sam, you being one of the greatest to ever do this, and you had a little bit of a different way that you wanted me to handle the bids or the brand or the stalls or the price or the objection of the spouse or whatever.

And then you gave me like a three minute role play and then ask me to come to the stage in front of a group of people, Sam, I'm frustrated.

I don't like it.

What I want, Sam, is I want you to be able to at least give me a little bit of chance to script that out, write it down, let me record you.

Give it to me on audio, give it to me on a script, so that now I'll put the energy, I'll put the effort into it, but give me an hour, give me 10 minutes, give me a day.

And what I said to my team is, I'm going to give you everything that you need, everything that I expect and I expect the effort that over the next seven days when you walk back in here at 6:30am on Tuesday morning, that you have been able to share with me what you learned from our book of the week or our book of the month or whatever chapter we're working on about mindset or servitude or empathy or seek first to understand whatever that mindset portion is.

Then we are going to break into groups and we're going to role play.

If you're in the call center, you're going to role play how you answer the phone, you're gonna play how you go through our rare listening sequence, you're gonna role play part of your process and we're going to take a small, manageable, bite sized chunk if you're in service.

We're going to role play this next week how you dock on the door, what you say when you step in an entryway, or how you put on your shoe covers.

And then we're all going to get down to the end and we're going to ask for the order and we're going to have somebody give us an objection, what I call an area of concern.

And then we're going to make sure that this week, and this is the one, we role played on part two, if you want to go back and listen to it.

So I won't, I won't invest our time here doing it.

Let's just say somebody says, I got to think about it, sleep on it, pray about it.

Well, what do you say?

We've got about 30 different ways we can handle that, but we're going to start out with the one on part two of your first podcast with me and say we delivered a 60 second roleplay.

And so that's all we would do every single week.

What I absolutely expected was that if I gave you an assignment when you came back in next week, you had seven days to work towards mastery.

And what I found, Sam, is that by getting one week ahead, and this goes for everybody, whether you ever sign up with Doug and Synergy and what we've created and invest that large sum of money that Sam outlined is that we've not only put everything in scripts and workbooks and built the template of how you don't have to feel like you're in a straight jacket, but we've also filmed them and we put them on audio so that we can listen to them in our truck.

We can listen to them in the shower.

Our shower time university.

Drive time University.

We can listen to them behind the windshield and in front of that wheel.

We can listen on the way in, we can listen on the way home.

We can listen between calls.

We can listen early in the morning, we can listen late at night.

We can put earbuds in as we sleep and start to learn, suggest that's the only way you do it.

But whatever it takes, tell me how.

Yeah, program the subconscious.

And so what we did, Sam, in our program now, we've created thousands of videos, small micro Learning segments with 52 weeks as a guided path to mastery, where not only do you get all the core training virtually so that you don't have to wait till I'm speaking at a live event and go see somebody like me or Sam or any of the other great trainers.

You can start today.

And then here's the key.

I'm going to bring it all the way back to why I created in the first place.

It absolutely devastated me when a man told me that he avoided me, ghosted me, because it was internal guilt that he didn't keep good on his promises that he made to me.

And I said, what I can no longer do is look these people in the eyes without some type of consistent, regimented follow up, because we're all going to get busy.

And so what I said is, what is the best exercise program?

The best fitness and health program is not a program where you go for two days and learn about it and then go back and start eating pizzas and drinking sodas, right?

A regimented exercise program.

Like I just did 75 hard for the first 75 days of this year and I was already in pretty good shape.

And somehow, some way, Sam, turns out I wasn't as good shape as I thought I was because I lost 26 and a half pounds.

I am in better shape, getting ready to turn 50 in a few months than I've been since I was playing college basketball.

Now I'd been working on my health over the last few years.

Overall, I've lost 82 pounds.

But you know what?

Turns out there was another 26 to absolutely get shredded in Alex Hermosi's 75 hard program.

It turns out I was able to push myself a little bit more that because every day for 75 days, I was now working towards mastery in my health and fitness.

If, if you go to church once, does that, does that make you, you know, the best?

Whatever your Religion is, does it make you able to then go and be a missionary overseas and, and train others to be that?

If you exercise for a day, does that make you a master?

If you exercise for three days you're going to be nothing but sore.

Yeah.

Zig Ziglar said you don't just bathe once and be good.

Can't take a shower on Sunday and expect it to last all week.

We don't just eat once and then, oh, we don't need to eat again.

When it comes to training, when it comes to the mindset, when it comes to mastering our process and mastering our closing sequences, Sam, we have absolutely got to make an ongoing commitment.

And what I found is, listen, this is a lifelong commitment.

But what I've also found is I was able to prove it in one year.

To go from a ragtag group with nobody wearing uniforms and dispatching two white vans with no systems, no processes, no marketing a website, and we won Linux Partner of the year within 16 months.

Now how is that possible?

Small, manageable, bite sized chunks work to master three different things on a weekly basis.

And I can share this with everybody on this call.

We don't lose £52 in a day or a week or a month, at least not in a healthy way, but can most certainly make the small manageable decisions every single day.

And what we put in our body and the amount of time that we do, breathing exercises, a little bit of cardio, maybe a little bit of health, a little bit of fitness, a little bit of weights, whatever it might be, and if we just reduce our calories by 3500 a week, that's £1 over the course of a year, we will have lost, if we had them to lose.

Some of us don't have £52 to lose, but you'll be much healthier, you'll be much stronger, you'll be having much more energy, right?

If you have 52 pounds to lose, you can lose it in a year and you can do it healthy, you can do it over time.

It's going to pass either way.

What are we doing with it?

Same thing with our relationships.

And I'll shut it for a minute, Sam, because I can feel myself going on a bit of a rant.

But the thing is, for all of us, if you're not happy with where you are in any area of your life, my suggestion recommendation, what's worked for me and what's worked for others that have implemented this is number one, we got to get clear on what we want.

Then we've Got to write it out and then we've got to review that daily so that we can get recommitted on a daily basis.

And then whatever we write out, we just got to remain consistent.

That does not mean that you can't have a cheat meal.

It also doesn't mean that you have to train and you have to study, you have to watch videos or, or role play every single day of your life, would it help?

Of course it would.

But you can also face burnout and we don't want you to burn out.

And that's why I say I didn't hold my team accountable to mastering my process the first week.

What I did say is if you're the right person and you truly care about this brand and our company and our vision and one another and our, and our, not just our company, but our customer and we know lives are at stake, then if this is a good fit for all of us, then you will find the time to master three manageable bite sized chunks a week.

Now, when it comes to leadership, Sam and I'll finish with this and I'm sure you have some questions and we can go further into this as much as you want.

Now let's talk about the leadership program.

And if I said, okay, you got a guy that tells you he's not going to tuck in his shirt or he can't show up on time, or he's not going to wash his van or he won't turn in his time card on time or whatever those things are, he's not going to close, he's not going to figure out a way to ask for the order in a professional, respectful way that'll still get a five star review, but be able to ask for the order four or five times without being high pressure, sleazy scumbag sales guy, if that guy says I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to ask the order.

Well, now you have a decision as a leader and there's a lot of decisions that we teach in our leadership program because I've been a 7 habits leadership instructor through the 7 highly effective people for 15 years.

And so we also have customized leadership training for us in the trades to say, what do you do?

How do you move the needle with somebody who says I'm not gonna get dressed up, I'm not gonna tuck in my shirt, I'm not gonna wear my name badge, I'm not gonna wash my van or turn in my timecard on time or I'm gonna, I'm gonna hang up on the call center, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be rude to the dispatch or, or vice versa.

Dispatch is also rude to the techs.

What I'm saying is we gotta solve all those things and that.

That's not gonna happen overnight either.

We can make some hard and fast rules, the way we're going to treat each other, but becoming an effective communicator, lowering sales resistance and eliminating conflict in our relationships, at least reducing it drastically, those are things that are going to take time.

And I don't believe without some systematic, consistent follow up.

Sam.

I believe that one day, two day, three day live events can be incredibly impactful.

But I also think they tend to lose their fizzle over time because we are humans and we are creatures of habit, and we go back to doing what's more comfortable and what we were easily able to do without a lot of effort.

Absolutely.

That's where I stand on.

Oh, I love this.

You know, I heard an expression years ago, and this was, oh, my gosh, years and years and years ago at a.

It was in a church youth group and we had a speaker come in and it was one of the big fiery preachers.

You know, we come from a lot of the same, you know, church background as well, and, you know, the guys that comes in and gets everybody fired up.

And then he said something that I've carried to this day.

I think I was probably 15 when I heard it.

He said, I don't care how high you jump tonight.

What I care about is how straight you walk when you land.

And, man, that's exactly what's going on.

Because there's power in both things, you know.

Yes, you go to an event to get in a room with people to see what's possible.

We get our vision expanded, we break through our ceilings, be like, oh, my gosh, this person is just like me.

Or even crazier is when, you know, we have those experiences where somebody's maybe speaking from the stage, or we meet somebody at an event and say their numbers are, you know, 5x10x what ours are.

But then you have that thought of, this guy's a. Oh, my gosh, this guy's a caveman.

How in the world does he do that?

Yeah, I'm so much smarter.

I'm so much more disciplined.

All of these things.

What is the difference, right?

Because we've all had those thoughts, like, if they could do it, I can do it.

But that's the point of an event.

To break through those mindsets and those barriers.

But then just like you said, we go back and it's like, you know, learning from a fire hose.

We get all of this information which, you know, we the better trainers, of course, like you and I and Scott Bell and Doug Brown, the people that are going to be at my event, you know, are excellent at giving the information in a way that it's memorable, that can be implemented immediately so they don't lose it.

However, we go back and you get in the line of fire, you go back and somebody wrecks a truck, you go back and, and, and, and, and then life happens.

And so what I love is that consistency over time.

Who is going to hold you accountable to do the things we know we should be doing?

Because they're easy to do and they're easy not to do.

Right?

And so that's why I love so much, what I love so much about your the Synergy program is this online.

I'm just going to, I'm going to tell everybody exactly what it is because I've looked into it after everybody, Doug gave me the logins and so I got the chance to look through this thing and it is fire.

It's this online program where you can, you can dive in.

It's like literally has these.

For example, you've got a service manager that's, you know, you've got, you're working with your say a selling tech and they call you after an appointment like, hey, I had this situation, how would I handle this?

And so of course you can, you know, you can have a quick conversation and then you can go grab a resource like one of the videos in Doug's platform and send them this, hey, here's the seven minute piece.

Watch this between now and your next appointment and then give me your feedback.

Then let's debrief again after that appointment.

And then the coaching hat goes on for your, you know, because the leadership training, teaching people how to be that leader, the coaching hat goes on.

And then they say, can you, now that you've watched this video or call me right after the video.

Okay, now that you've seen this, can you see how if you'd have done this instead of what you've done that your results may have been different.

And then that is real.

That's almost like just as good as right along in the field because now you have that real time, immediate third party training.

And I heard something else as well.

I have a similar background in some other industries like network marketing.

This is where I get a lot of this stuff.

It's like I heard one time Use the tools, don't be the tool.

And when we have the tools to use, it makes our life and our job.

It's already built for us.

And so I just love the program.

I love the platform.

Thanks.

I appreciate you sharing that.

Sam, I'm going to give you a network marketing quote that I heard a long time ago, and I've also heard other speakers use it, but I first heard it in a network marketing event when I was 19 years old, and they said, if you continue to do what you've always done, you'll continue to get what you've always got.

You find someone who has what you want, you do what they do, you'll get what they've got.

It's almost like I studied it.

I could also recite John 3:16 from the Bible.

Right.

Why is that?

Because it's a script.

And we had to memorize those Bible verses in.

In.

You know, back.

Back in the day when we would go to.

I would go to church.

Sword drills.

Yeah.

Sam, I'm curious.

I know we're gonna run out of time, but I. I know that you're a guy that's ultimately prepared.

You have such a tremendous amount of pride.

And I. I know sometimes I try to stay away from that word, but that's the only word I can think of when it comes to you and your professionalism.

You have pride in being a true professional, being ultimately prepared and knowing your craft and.

And you do know it, unlike hardly anybody else I've ever met in my life in any industry.

What is your feeling on scripts?

Because I know there's a lot of stuff out there, and if you can't see me, I don't act like I'm in a straight jacket.

And I often do keynotes from the stage.

I go.

People tell me all the time, doug, I don't want to be scripted.

I don't want to sound like I'm on a script.

And I do this thing, I'm in a straight jacket, and I'm like, do a script.

I don't want to be in a straight jacket.

I just want to be me.

So, Sam, I'm curious from a guy like you who has mastered this stuff, what are your thoughts for me or for the audience on scripts?

And I'm kind of surprising you with this one.

We definitely.

Oh, yeah.

I love this question.

This is one of my favorite questions, my favorite things I talk about.

And actually, I'm going to go to a couple of different things with this one is, you know, I'm a musician.

I'VE played guitar forever.

And you know, when you're learning music, you, you learn scales, but nobody, you don't turn on the radio, you don't go to a concert and you don't just hear scales.

You learn the scales so you can forget them so you can make music.

And that, that's what I'm going to, you know, reference, you know, love him or hate him, one of the greatest movies of all time, inspiring movies that was ever made in my mind is Braveheart.

Love Braveheart.

You know, there's this iconic scene where Mel Gibson rides out right before the main, the big main battle.

And it's this 20 minute monologue, 20 minutes from the horse.

And just talk about one of the most inspiring, fired up speeches ever heard in my life.

And my question to everybody, when I talk about this in the trainings, my question to everybody is, do you think he got up there and said, I'm just going to wing it?

No, of course not.

We all have seen inspiring movies, all these things.

What did they do?

They hired the best screenwriters.

They paid millions of dollars to people to write this script.

And he made, I don't even know the number, I should learn the number so I can have it as a reference point.

But millions and millions and millions of dollars to replay the part.

But no one but feels like it came across as a script.

Why is that?

Because he went over, he learned it and he internalized it and he spent, he put the reps in.

He spent hundreds and thousands of times going through this thing until it became part of him, until he knew it so well he didn't even have to think about it.

All he had to do was think about the delivery and how it's landing on the people he's giving the delivery to.

And it's the exact same thing when we have a script.

And you know, have I developed my own scripts at this point?

Yes, but I will tell you, I 100%, I had the flipbook, you know, the flipbook that I got from the training that you and I did years and years and years ago.

And I mastered the script.

There's been so many CDs over the years.

I can, when I was learning a script, I would put that sucker in it.

Did not leave my CD player in my car for my drive time university until so.

And here's the ninja trick, everybody.

When you want to learn a script, record if, record yourself.

Or, you know, I need this, actually, this is a good motivation for me.

I need to record these things into a script form which the cool part is Doug already has this done in his platform.

But play your script in your drive time university and adjust the volume on your radio to where you say it out loud.

And work on the tonality and the pauses and everything so many times that you cannot hear the radio any longer.

Even though it's loud enough, if you stop, you can hear it.

So you can't distinguish the difference between your own voice and the voice coming out of your CD player or of course, downloads at this point still, you can't distinguish your own voice from that that's coming back at you.

That is the only time you're allowed to stop practicing it.

Every single day, over and over, hundreds of times a day.

There's not a single person that is a top percent performer that hasn't worked on their scripting.

Thousands.

I usually ask people, how many times a day do you think you should work on this?

And they're like, I don't know, maybe 30.

I'm like, try 300 a day.

Yeah, until.

Until they're like, how long?

Until the answer is until.

Until you get the top 1%, the same results as the person who wrote the thing you're not done.

That's the kind of work it takes to do this.

But at the same time, the second you hit that level of mastery and I've, you know, I know you've done it.

I've done it with, you know, this program and then the next one, and then the next one and the next one to the point where now, you know, you and I, we can rattle off a brand new script at a moment's notice.

That's impactful with the right tonality and everybody's, oh, you just invented that.

No, we didn't.

You're looking at 20 years of over.

It's a 20 year overnight success here.

Right.

You put in the work, the consultation.

That you just gave, the coaching, the consultation, what you just shared over the last, whatever it was, five or seven minutes, invaluable, worth millions of dollars.

The challenge isn't now knowing, it's now doing okay.

We hear that and we go check.

Got it.

Repeat it not 30 times, 300 times, 3,000 times, whatever it takes.

But how many people are going to do it?

How many people are going to turn off the Netflix?

How many people are going to turn off the third football game of the weekend?

How many people are going to do that?

But what I can impart to you, and I think what Sam is sharing here is once you've got it kind of like your Brian Tracy, cassette tapes that we started with in that flip book that you got in Lubbock, Texas all those years ago when we were together.

You made it you because you studied it and you repeated it and you practiced it and you role played it.

My challenge to everybody listening today is if you have a let's say that you're in leadership, I'll start at the top.

If you're the owner of your leadership and you have a team that is not on board, we have to get better.

We have to think about our ability to inspire.

We have to think about our ability to empathize and figure out what's driving that person.

Because it's not one size fits all.

We'd like to just be able to bring the hammer down and say, you're going to do it because I said so.

Well, how's that been working for us?

And again, I'll go back to my quote.

If you continue to do what you've always done, you're going to continue to get what you've always got right.

So on leadership, we got to say, what are the biggest challenges that I'm facing?

Is it that I can't find good people and I believe that's the labor market, or I've proven time and time again that I can have a stack of resumes on my desk within a matter of months because people start to get word and you know who the stack of resumes is?

It's the people that are gainfully employed that have started to hear about our products, our service, the way I lead and the way I grow and the way we take care of customers.

And so only A players need apply.

So I got a stack of resumes of A players just waiting to fill that seat.

What that also do is does for my B's going to A's and my ones that are already A's, keeps them on their game, keeps them practicing, keeps them making sure that they're respecting the call center, that my call center is respecting the text, and that we're all working team.

So it raises the performance of all of the A's and the B's working to become A's that are currently with you because there's no they know there's people waiting in the wings.

If you don't have that experience right now in your business as leaders and business owners, we got work to do.

Then we go into the field staff and if the field staff, if I say that it's to you, what do you say on a call ahead?

What do you say on the Door knock?

How far back do you stand?

When do you wave?

What do you carry in your hand?

When do you step into the home?

How do you step into the home?

Do you ask?

Do you start?

Do you put on your shoe covers before or after?

Once you what do you say while you're putting on your shoe covers?

How do you listen to the homeowner?

How do you seek first to understand?

How do you put their mind at ease?

How do you lower conflict?

How do you get to the job site?

Whether you're on a sales lead and you're looking at equipment or you're on, on the service call, Are you having a conversation before?

Are you empathizing with the person?

Are you just there to do your job?

And it's like a robotic type of thing.

Because I'm not talking about robotic type of things when I'm talking about script.

And then everything else that I mentioned before, so I won't repeat them now, but everything from the diagnosis to do you take pictures?

Do you bring them to the equipment if they can't make it to the equipment because of a handicap or they're older or they have bad knees and they can't get in a crawl space, how do you handle that?

There's got to be a system in process for everything and that should be role played.

And then when we get down to the end after all of that, how are we recommending our club memberships?

What are we doing in regard to our maintenance agreements?

What are we doing with accessory sales?

What about, what about optional repairs?

What about optional accessories?

What about all those things that we can use, not to just get our tickets up and have higher commissions, but to serve people better and solve serious indoor air quality, water challenges, electrical challenges, all those things.

And then we get down to the end and we fully expect I, this is the mindset again.

I fully expect that no matter how much anybody loves us, my team, whoever, that the homeowner is going to say, okay, sounds great, I like you, I like your company.

Yes, but.

And then price bids, brand stalls.

And so if you don't have a plethora, at least five ways to handle those major objections, we got work to do.

Yep.

And what are we doing on our follow ups?

What are we saying in our text?

What are we saying our emails?

Wait, wait a minute.

What do you mean follow ups?

Nobody follows up.

What are you talking about?

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, you obviously do a whole episode on just that sarcastic.

There's people out there that say you should never follow up.

And I'm like well if, if I just believed in that, yeah, we can be one call closers and Sam and I both teach you one call close.

But it also doesn't mean that we don't get to the point where we ask for the order two or three, four or five times remaining respectful, still being able to walk out of the with a, a five star review.

But I'll also say this, our organization, as we went to Linux partner of the year, we closed tons of followers, closed tons of one call closes.

I kept a, I think across a 10 year, 10 year time span, I kept a 58% close rate on marketed leads and I tracked it.

50% of my closes came after this, after the kitchen table, after I left.

Yep.

I mean every single year I had to.

But in the last, probably three years I was in the field, I had two to three hundred thousand dollars that came from Pipeline from previous years, not from the same year, from previous years.

So I am, I don't believe that if you leave the house and you don't close it, you're not getting it.

And so Sam, we have to have a process.

And a process is another word for a script.

And so I want to share a few things here before we wrap up, but I'm going to go back to your Braveheart conversation if I can for just a moment.

I think I've got the right movie here, but when I think about all the movies, you know, when we think about the way our brain works, memories are tied to emotions.

If you think back right now, if you close your eyes and you say, okay, think back to your earliest memory, maybe it's when you're three, maybe it's when you're six.

Most of it's around, you know, I don't know, somewhere in that range.

And then if I say think of a memory in high school, think of a memory in college or when you went off to trade school or when you got your first job, when you went to your very first interview, those were very emotional experiences.

We either happy, sad, we were very anxious, we were, we were fearful, something.

And that memory, if you think about that memory, anything you can think of, I can remember that principal's office, I can remember getting the belt, all those things.

And that's just the way we grew up.

You know, I'm not faulting anybody for that.

Oh, I was telling somebody yesterday about, I'm remembering getting paddled in fifth grade.

I used to get paddled in the principal's office.

Same.

And that was just the way our culture was not Saying it was right.

I'm not saying it was wrong.

I'm just saying, hey, we've changed.

So anyway, you go to jail for that.

Now, the.

The thing is, especially if you're a principal or a teacher paddling, they don't think you can get away with that.

And we're just talking.

Shout out to Mr. Finley.

Here's the thing.

You may take our lives, but you may never take our freedom.

That's Braveheart, right?

If I said, let me ask you a question.

Now we're talking about Pet Detective and Jim Carrey.

If you.

I said, what do you want?

What do you want?

Now we're talking about the notebook.

So we can get your ego's writing checks your body can't cash.

Right.

So now what is that?

The firm.

That's.

Wait, firm.

Few good men.

Yeah, Few good men.

Right on the stand.

Right.

And so here's the thing.

Every single one of those was scripted.

Every single one of those was a performance.

Every single one of those.

Not only did they do everything that you talked about with the screenwriter, the screenplay, the millions and millions of dollars of production, they then had tryouts, and they had the people that could perform a script and memorize the script and perform the script and make it emotional.

They hired those people.

And now those people are called Robert De Niro and Mel Gibson and Jim Carrey and.

And, you know, Angelina Jolie.

All these worth.

Yeah, I don't care what you think about them, by the way.

Don't.

Don't get caught up on the political stuff of whatever you believe about Hollywood.

What I am saying is those people have gone out and made millions and millions of dollars because they've been able to elicit emotions that resonated with us.

And the crazy thing is sometimes I hear people say, oh, I don't want to be on script.

And I go, okay, well, tell me how you would say it.

And every time I ask, tell me how you would say it.

Usually they say it differently.

And so what happens for everybody listening today?

Why Sam is saying, practice this 300 times, 3,000 times, whatever it is.

When we work towards mastery on something, we no longer have to think about what we're going to share.

We think about how we're going to share it.

And that comes down to what Sam was relating to when he talked about the cadence, the pause, the tonality, the way we voice, inflect all those things.

If you're so concerned about what you're even going to say in the heat of the moment when the money's really on the line or the.

The whatever it is you're.

You're trying to market or to sell or to promote, to influence, to persuade somebody because you believe it's in their best interest.

If you're trying to think about what you should say, you cannot also master how you're going to say those things.

So I think that the main thing I'm trying to get across to here is once you do it right, like, I've hit a couple of different scripts.

Like even the one that I learned at 19, I heard somebody say it, I wrote it down, and I just loved it so much because it resonated with me.

If I continue to do what I've always done, I'll continue to get what I've always got.

And then the next part of that is, if you find somebody that has what you want, you do what they do, you'll get what they've got.

Whether it's grammatically correct or not, I don't know.

But it doesn't matter.

What I do know is the premise of if I keep doing what I've been doing, I'm going to keep getting what I've been getting.

And so what I say is, you know what?

I could say that fast, I could say it slow, I could make it emotional, I could slow it down, I could go fast, I could go high.

I. I could do whatever with that script, along with a thousand others that I've invested the time to memorize, to perfect, to master, if we will do that.

Here's the thing I want to impart to the audience.

And Sam, you may have something else you're thinking here.

I obviously.

You obviously are a big fan of scripts.

Why?

Because scripts are about ultimate preparedness, and they're about being able to perform the heat of battle, even like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

But guys and gals, listening, here's the thing.

When you work towards mastery, you can always get a little bit rusty.

But if you truly were a master at one point, you can go back and knock the rust off very quickly.

And now you put in all that heavy lifting.

Let's say that you.

It takes you 3,000 times, both reading, studying, writing, saying it out loud, listening to it, doing what Sam described.

And you're doing that early in the morning on Saturdays before the kids get out of bed.

You're doing it late at night after everybody goes to sleep.

You're investing, you're sacrificing that time.

You're putting down the TV remote.

And I'm not saying I've got Balance.

And then you're listening in the shower, you're listening behind the steering wheel.

You're doing those things, and you do it 3,000 times to where you could nail whatever script for bids, brands, stalls, spouse price.

And you had 3,000 times on each one.

I don't care if you step out of the, whatever the sales role or whatever you're doing, you could come back 10 years from now if you mastered it, and within one day knocking the rust off, you'd be right back to where you were.

But what I'm trying to impart is do the heavy lifting.

If I lost £82, could I put the £82 back on?

Of course I could.

And I could do that in one year.

But I'm not going to do it because now I know how I got there right shape.

And I'm now getting older, and it gets harder to lose the weight.

It gets harder to build the muscle.

And so now I'm committed to like, okay, I can have cheat meals, I can have cheat days.

I don't even have to work out every day or every week.

I could take a week off.

I could go on vacation.

But you know what?

I can get right back to it.

I can lose the excess weight.

Instead of getting 82 pounds overweight, I maybe get 88, 8 pounds overweight, and I lose 8 pounds, right?

Maybe my bench press goes down from call it 225 or whatever, and all of a sudden I can only bench 185.

Well, a few weeks in the gym because that muscle had already been built, I can get right back to 225 lifted.

Knows that you can grow the muscle that's already been grown once and you can do it much faster.

It is no different in our lives, in our verbal communication with our sales and our influence and our leadership.

When it becomes a part of us, even when we get out of shape a little bit, we can get right back in shape with our effective communication.

What we did, Sam, in that core training you referenced, we lined out seven foundations of effective communication.

Number one, the first foundation is the ground rules.

We're never going to lie, cheat, or steal.

We're going to treat people like our very own family.

I call that the grandmother rule.

A grandmother that you love dearly.

Don't recommend it to anybody, that you wouldn't recommend it to your grandmother.

But base it on how it's going to serve them, not on what you assume their budget is.

Recommend the best solution for the challenges you've uncovered as a true professional.

And then number Two, we're going to start to think about our mindset.

And the mindset is, hey, we're going to be excellent.

We're going to bring the energy, we're going to bring the enthusiasm, we're going to put forth the effort to be a true professional.

Because you know what I used to share with my team, if you have eight hours that you're going to put that logo on and you're going to rep this brand, give me your best.

Eight hours, Give me your absolute best.

Don't half ass it.

Don't give me a partial.

Give me your best.

If it's one hour, give me your best hour.

If it's one minute, give me your best minute.

And so that's the mindset.

How do we start to solve a lot of the biggest challenges that continue to bring up or arrive in our lives?

And then number three, now we get into the communication.

If we have the ground rules that we're not going to lie, cheat or steal, we're not going to manipulate, we're going to persuade on what we believe is best.

We have the mindset that we're going to be consistent and we're going to truly be professionals and perfect this stuff.

Then we go into, what are the words that we choose?

And I believe the words we choose to share matter.

And I call that becoming a wordsmith.

That's foundation three.

Foundation four is becoming a rare listener.

It's an acronym that we've created that helps us stay in the game and help people to feel like they're getting that psychological air, like they're being heard and understood and listened to.

So that's the rare listening sequence.

And then we go into generalizations and transition statements.

Foundation number five is where we don't want to hit people head on and create conflict by saying, you should do this.

I don't say, you need to do this in your home or you're going to die.

Never going to speak like that, right?

I'm going to say, you got to.

Hate the trainers that say that.

I don't hate the trainers.

I hate when I come across training that teaches people to do that.

It make.

It grosses me out so bad.

Terrible.

So we say, you know, one of these little simple examples, and I'm just building your script for you saying there's actually a reason what we do.

But the generalization and transition statements, or somebody says they got to think about it, we're going to rare listen.

It's going to take the right mindset.

I'm going to have to Study this ahead of time.

And instead of me trying to overcome the objection right away, I'm going to breathe a little life into it, give them some psychological air, let them know I'm listening.

I'm going to say, it sounds like it's a big decision for you, Sam.

You're not quite ready to move forward.

Maybe you have a few concerns now.

All I did was repeat, rephrase, acknowledge his emotion.

I didn't try to close him on it.

And then Sam's gonna go, yeah, Doug, whatever.

What would you say, Sam?

I think we did a little bit of this on part two before.

Like, oh, yeah, you know, I do.

It's.

I've got XYZ that we've got to take care of first.

Or, you know.

Yeah, part of my script is now Foundation 5 go into a generalization, a transition statement.

Deflect the conflict that most of us create here by telling somebody what they need to do or what you think they should.

And I just deflect that conflict.

And I go, oh, I think I see where you're coming from.

I don't say, I understand.

I say, I think I see you're coming from.

And then the generalization is, you know, typically when homeowners have shared something like that, most of our customers in similar situations have shared with us.

They boom, boom, boom, plug in, whatever, There we go.

Herd mentality.

And then six.

Foundation six is let's leverage the principles of persuasions that people like Robert Cialdini and John Maxwell and Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn and everybody else have already figured out for us, along with psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, all of it's there.

But if you, if you plug into somebody like Sam with close it now, you don't have to go out and read 2000 books like we have.

You can start relating by using the scripts we've already created, because we've practiced and we've read and we've tested and then we've customized for our business and our industry.

So that's the principles of persuasion and really goes down to the science of influence.

And then to finish up, it's not just a script, it is a template.

We get to seven.

And this is what you were talking about listening 300 times, 3,000 times.

Sam, I call this foundation seven the EKG method of performance.

Because while the words we share matter, in the script that.

That Mel Gibson was.

Had crafted for him, that he performed on horseback with the blue streaks on his face, I can see it like, I watched the movie and I haven't seen it in 10 years, but I recalled that line.

That was a script.

But he didn't say, well, folks, these people may take our lives, but they're not going to take our freedom.

Nope.

No, he screamed it on horseback, and he had his flag or whatever, and he's riding up and down.

Right.

And they probably filmed that 30 times, maybe 300 times, to get it just right for the cinematic delivery.

And that's what I call the EKG method of performance.

That's our tone, that's our cadence, that's our pause.

That's our up, it's our down, it's our fast, it's our slow.

And so if we find a script that we can believe in, we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

If we find a way that can reduce conflict, if we find something that we can work towards mastery every week.

If you find a trainer that resonates with you, then my encouragement to you, whether it's me or Sam or anybody else, my encouragement to everybody listening is dive deep and just keep going deeper until you work towards absolutely master mastery.

And when you've mastered it, nobody can take it from you.

Nobody can take what I know about sales or influence or psychology or.

Or empathy or listening from me, because now I know it.

And nobody can take it from Sam, because Sam invested the time to know it.

And now it's not that you couldn't go out there and close business at the kitchen table today, Sam.

It's not the.

Oh, those that can't do, teach.

Yeah, sure, there's examples of that out there.

This whole industry about all the gurus and whatever.

I'm sure there's people out there.

But you know what, Sam, I'll tell you this.

And maybe you've had a different experience for all the.

The bashing of the.

The term guru and gurus and all these people coming in the space.

Yeah.

I've never met a single one of my counterparts, men like you that have.

That are just trying to fleece a business owner, a contractor attack or a call.

I've never met one.

Every person that I personally know in the training space believes in what they're sharing, what they're teaching, what they've created, what worked for them, and now they're just trying to teach to others.

Some are better than others.

Yeah.

We may not agree with what they're training, but they have the best of intentions.

They want to honestly help people.

There's nobody that I know that has gone out there and tried to get a few thousand bucks or 30,000 bucks or whatever it might be from somebody that they didn't think that that program could actually help if they implemented it.

So I encourage everybody listening to this, whether you're skeptical of me because you don't know me and Sam's your guy or, or anybody else in the space.

Every single time I hear somebody speak, I learn.

And sometimes I learn what I don't want to do.

Yeah, but I don't.

I don't think they were trying to teach me something they didn't think would work.

I don't think anybody says, I'm going to go get $10,000 from this company and then I'm going to disappear into the Fiji Islands for the rest of my life.

Because that's all I need is 10 or 30 or even 100 grand.

I think everybody believes their stuff is worthwhile and worth investing in or they wouldn't be out there selling it.

I'm also going to say this.

As tough a business as it is to be a tech or a comfort advisor, a design consultant, a service manager, a member of leadership, a business owner, a call center repair, I can tell you this.

One of the most difficult professions I think that has ever been created is that of instructor.

It is not easy.

Agreed.

It's probably why we get a bad name, because so many people come and go.

But the reason I think we come and go is not because they didn't have the best of intention or good content or something they believed in.

It's a tough business because I think.

They beat their head against the wall long enough that they realized that they just burn out.

They got tired of something else, need to do something else.

They just get tired of either people not believing what they're saying or trying to create their slides or create their website or hire other people or get on planes and go out and serve others.

To then look up one day and have somebody go, yeah, it was great, but we didn't do it.

That's really hard.

I got to tell you from personal experience, this is why I created the virtual learning system, by the way, with full reporting, so that we know every single thing that we assign.

If they watched or they didn't, how long, how often, how many times, and what their score was on the quiz, all of that's tracked.

We invested over a quarter million dollars just on the back end reporting structure so we can measure it and not be duped.

But Sam, it gets very frustrating when you pour your heart and your soul and your life into this and then people love it, but then they don't do it.

But it's human nature.

So this happens at the speed of implementation.

One of the things I love.

Yeah, I agree.

Speed of implementation, Sam, one of the things I also have to give you kudos because you've said a lot of nice things about my ongo training and our platform and you've logged in, you've been watching it.

You also have a follow up program and you don't just lead people to their own devices that you don't just do a live event.

You provide opportunities for people to invest and get direct access to you.

Both the ownership, the, the teams in the field, everyone you're training.

You provide opportunities to not be a one and done.

You are a guy who believes in solving that challenge of implementation.

Like I do to say I'm not just out there to make a quick buck on a three or four day on site.

I'm going to come in and deliver the goods and then I'm going to provide an ongoing follow up program for my clients.

And Sam, it's one of the things I respect about you most is that you do have an ongoing component that is available for you and your business.

And it's one of the reasons I love you, man.

It's like you truly care about the client, the customer and make them friends.

Yeah, Yep, absolutely.

You know, and it's so powerful to.

You know, I've never done a training on an on site where, you know, get people get vulnerable.

You know, when you get really good at creating a container that's a safe space for people to be able to open up and expose the things that they need to work on.

And this, and this applies to, in fact everybody.

The podcast I just released this week is about creating the container in your sales appointment.

But it's the same thing in training.

You know, you can, you can hold the space in a room and make it vulnerable.

I mean, I was up in Pennsylvania and There was about 30 people in the room and you know, a third of the room had tears when I went through this one section.

Not because I'm, you know, making people cry, but the best trainers allow people the space to process what you're saying and go inside and find the things that they know they need to work on.

And that is when that happens, that type of transformation happens.

That's part of what makes the ongoing easier.

Because now they can't go backwards after that in order to go backwards.

That's why I like awareness moments.

In order to go Backwards, they have to intentionally do it.

And then they have cognitive dissonance happening, keeping them from moving backwards.

So it makes it easier to move forward with the accountability.

And so then when you roll in an ongoing program, it's more like, hey, remember this when you're reminding them of what, okay, here's what we're working towards, here's the goal and I'm throwing it right back to you.

That's why I love that you've mapped out a stinking 12 month program, you know, which is incredible.

It's kind of like putting bumpers on the bowling alley.

It's not like putting bumpers on our life.

We as service managers, sales managers, business.

Owners, call center managers, and then everybody else that is a team member, we're going to get busy.

The challenges are never going to stop coming in our life.

We're going to have relationship challenges, we're going to have financial challenges, we may have a health challenge, we may have a spiritual challenge.

Those challenges are never going to stop coming, Sam.

And just like in a health and fitness routine, we're going to have days where we're all on top of it and we're ready to conquer the world and we're going to have days where we just can't get out of bed.

We're going to days where we get the flu and we get sick and we literally can't do it.

The key is going to be what is it that helps us get back on track.

And you just mentioned it, and I know most of your listeners probably are familiar with the term cognitive dissonance.

I'm going to explain that in the most simple way I've ever heard.

And that is, let's just say that you want to lose some weight.

And so you make that determination.

You get committed to your why, why you want to be healthier, the way you want to look, whatever it is, and you write that out and you get really committed to it.

That's partly cognitive distance.

But if you really want to know how cognitive distance works, tell your spouse that you're going to quit drinking, you're going to quit smoking, you're going to quit eating red meat, or you're going to quit eating bread or sugar, or you're not going to have any more candy, or you're going to not eat dessert for a year.

Now that's cognitive dissonance.

Because you know what most of us do, we won't actually verbalize that out loud and tell our significant other or our kids, hey, I'm no longer going to Drink soda or why, why do you tell them I'm not going to eat fast food or whatever?

Because the next time you pull through that drive through or order that 44 ounce soda or even 12 ounce can of soda at dinner, they're going to go, dad, I thought you weren't drinking soda anymore.

I thought you said your spouse is.

You know, dessert's gonna come and nobody else promised they weren't gonna eat dessert.

And you guys are at the Cheesecake Factory and now you're gonna get this giant piece of cheesecake and you're sitting there and you're like, well, one won't hurt.

So that's why we know those moments are gonna be coming.

So that's why two months before, when we decide to get fit, we don't tell somebody, I'm no longer gonna eat dessert.

Now, I'm not saying that you should say that because it's tough to be that regimented and I'm not.

And you'll suffer burnout.

What I am saying is that's cognitive dissonance.

So it's not just committing to ourselves that it starts there and we got to write it out and then we have to review it, right?

But now if you can create a support group, that's why AA is so popular.

That's why going to Sunday school and going to church every Sunday and some go Wednesday nights, those things are all considered a circle of influence.

And we become those who we hang around most.

And so if we want to stop drinking and we're in aa, which I've never been, but I've talked to a lot of people who have, and I've studied tons of ways to create new habits and break old.

The biggest part of aa, because you can argue with a number of different points and how that program works, it's the support group of a community and people who are encouraging you.

And so that's how cognitive dissonance works.

And so imagine Sam coming back from one of our events and let's say the business owner wasn't there, or only the business owner was there.

And they get excited and they come back and they try to implement this.

But their circle, their techs, their field staff, their sales, whatever wasn't at the event, didn't hear what they heard from us for three or four straight days.

And now they try to explain all these new things that they're going to do.

And then they're outmanned, they're outnumbered, and they go, oh, we don't want to do all that.

That won't Work here.

That may have worked in Austin or it may have worked in Denver, but it won't work in Orlando.

Oh, that might work in the big city.

It won't work in the small town.

And if I.

Well, this was in the small town.

Well, it might work in the small town, it won't work in the big city.

I've heard it all, Sam.

So have you.

Oh, that might work out in Colorado.

Work in the Northeast.

Oh, people won't sit down for that kind of time.

You know what else I've heard, Sam?

Oh, well, we're out in the countryside in Kansas or Oklahoma.

People don't.

They won't sit down and listen to all that sales mumbo jumbo.

And then the people in New York say, oh, ain't nobody gonna sit down.

We're busy.

We don't listen to that.

And you know what?

Everywhere they implement our stuff, Sam.

It works everywhere we go.

Here's your mindset part.

There's your implementation.

That's it.

People are people.

Sorry, go ahead, Sam.

What were you saying?

I'll say it, that you're right.

No matter where you go, humanity is humanity.

The brain works the same.

Doesn't matter what their pace of life is.

It doesn't matter what their background is.

The brain science is the brain science.

And once you've, you know, once we've.

We've.

We've figured that out for everybody, nobody else has to study the.

I mean, I could literally out of my backpack.

Well, the monster NLP book I'm reading right now, but nobody else has to read that.

We did it for them.

That's what I love.

That's.

I love that stuff and being able to break it down.

So now we got to go.

I'm going to play both sides of the line here to share one more thing here.

Based on what you just said, I thought you were going to say, how did you toe into that very first line there, Sam?

Do you remember?

You said, see, my memory's failing me right now.

Good question.

I'll think about it here in a minute.

But the toe of the line is no man is an island.

Yes, I've had things go my way.

I've had things go against me.

Yes, humanity is humanity and brain science is brain science.

The brain works the same no matter who it is.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I was going to say what I thought you were going to say is no matter where you go, there you are.

That's the old adage of the mirror.

If we truly want to solve complex challenges in our life and our business and our career and our bank accounts and our relationships and our families, we're going to have to.

And this is the part that's hard for most of us to hear, but it's what you and I have been willing to do is do the hard work of working internally and not blame anything else, because I share all the time at my live events.

If we believe the challenge is out there somewhere, there's nothing we can do to fix it.

If we believe the economy, the interest rates, whoever's in office, if we believe the stock market, whatever is going to keep us from being successful, we're right.

But if we likewise believe that the way that we attack these challenges, the way that we don't give up, the way that we are relentless, then we will also likewise be right, that we can impact those things in a positive way.

We can change our life.

But it has to start from within.

Because no matter where you go, there you are.

The person that we have to start with is in the mirror.

Nobody's going to do it for us.

Nobody in this life is coming to rescue us.

Not on this planet.

Maybe in the afterlife, but not on this planet.

And so I encourage everyone to say, whatever your challenges are, dive deep, look internally and say, just keep digging.

Because finally you will find.

Even if you've been wronged, if somebody cheated on you, if you had a terrible boss, if you weren't invested in.

My challenge to you is just keep digging until you find your responsibility in the matter and then say, how do I start fixing that?

And if you fix that and you work till you master it, it might take a month, it might take a year, it might take five years.

But as long as you start now and you never give up, you will get to the destination that you imagined.

Excellent way to wrap it up, man.

Well, before we go, let everybody know how they can get a hold of you.

How can they learn more about this platform that we've been talking about?

Very gracious of you, Sam.

I'm glad.

I wasn't even thinking about that.

I thought we were going to exit right There, stage left.

Synergylearningsystems.net It's.net Not.com Love it.

Closeitnow.net Synergylearningsystems.

Net There must be a success.

I'm going to do the same thing.

Just in case you haven't listened to the other ones on Closeit.

Now, I mentioned foundation number three, the Wordsmith program.

It's some of our greatest content and right now we're even revamping all of it.

If you go to the Contact Us form on the synergylearningsystem.net website, there's tons of free content on there.

But in addition to that, that fill out that form in the Contact Us, you'll see the dropdown that says, you heard us on Sam Wakefield.

Close it now and then you can get a video set.

Right now it's 12 in the next month, it's going to be over 30 of the wordsmith.

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It's how I became Linux Partner of the Year, one of those pieces.

So that's my gift to the listening audience here on Close it now and join us.

Join Sam and I in this path to mastery that both he's working on with his clients and that we're working on with ours.

We are creating a movement here.

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This is more than just life change.

This is a movement of making an impact in our industries, starting first with us in our families, bigger impact for our families, our communities, and then by extension around the world.

So we are doing, we are doing something really cool, everybody.

And I'm so glad you're on this, on this journey with us.

Come see us in person.

May6, 7, 8, 2025 at go to CloseItNowbootcamp.

This one is.com CloseItNowbootcamp.com get your ticket.

If this episode resonated with you this week, honestly, we were just kind of bs, shooting from the hip and having a conversation.

This is what our conversations are like.

If anybody that's ever heard Doug and I on a phone call or seen us in a video call, if you were just in the room, this is what our conversations are normally like.

So come to the event and let's deep dive and actually have some transformation because it will change your life.

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Come to the event, get in the coaching program, come sign up for Doug's platform.

There's, there's so many resources and tools at your fingertip.

There's no excuse to say to live another year the same way that last year was.

So I'm going to sign off with that.

So thanks for being on again.

Appreciate it.

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