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.

Wow.

All right, Close it now.

Sam Wakefield here, ready to rock and get in action.

I've got some rules for you today.

We're going to talk about what it is like to be a team player and to have a code of honor in our industry.

So we're going to talk about that today.

I'm excited to bring this to you because it's a great reminder of some things, especially as we're starting to drift a little bit into the in between right now.

This is the time to reset.

This is the time to get your mindset right.

This is the time to train.

This is the time to focus.

This is the time to sharpen the axe, to get ready for the next big wave of business.

So let's go this episode.

I want to start with a quote, and it's not actually a quote from a person, but quick little story.

It's here.

A couple months ago, I took a trip to Houston.

My parents live in that area and we went to NASA with my kids and my partner.

My kids are 11 and 13.

And it was an awesome experience at NASA.

The last time I was there, I was a teenager and now I'm in my 40s, right?

And so wildly different perspective on.

On life and on business and on all these things that we talk about and on quotes and sayings and those type of things.

So when we got there, I realized that I started looking around and we were looking at the gift shop and of course, we look at all the exhibits and man, if you haven't been to NASA in a while, they're doing some really cool stuff.

So we were in the gift shop and all of a sudden I start seeing this expression over and over.

It's on stickers, it's on caps, it's on shirts.

And I realized that the NASA mantra Is failure is not an option.

And it hit me so square between the eyes and on the heart level that, of course, I grabbed a sticker for my water bottle.

I've got a cap.

And I really adopted it as just the mission, right?

When you dive into something, when you choose to do a.

Say you choose to get into sales, especially in the trades and in what we do in home improvement, you've got to go all in.

That's the biggest.

So let's camp on this for a second before we really get into this episode.

Because the biggest, most important thing.

If there was a magic bullet in sales, let's say it this way.

If there was a magic bullet in sales, I would tell you it has nothing to do with your sales process and your sales system and your.

The words you say and all of the things that we talk about.

If there was a magic bullet, it's bigger than that, it's higher than that.

If there was a magic bullet, it is every single person that is a top performer in any industry.

Let's step away from sales for a minute.

Anytime you see someone that's wildly successful, I can guarantee you, guarantee you, they burned the ships, they burned the bridges.

They went all in on what they're doing and decided that failure is not an option.

They went back to, you know, classic Yoda, do or do not.

There is no try, right?

So one of the biggest mindset things I can communicate to you because I've gotten a lot of messages from people just starting into H vac sales or into plumbing or electrical or wherever you're at.

Window sales, when we're just starting, you know, first year, two years, three years, four years, or people who've been technicians for a long time that have just changed over into more of a project management type of a role, or they were given the ability to now also do sales.

One of the biggest questions I get is, how do I get better faster, right?

How do I get better faster?

And in conversation, one of the things that I always uncover and talk to them about, a couple of the questions I always ask is, what's your plan B?

And that's.

That's really the whole point when they answer with a plan B, basically, I'll tell them that this is exactly why your success is slow, because you have one foot in and you have one foot out.

You've not fully committed to learning your craft.

See, what happens is everybody steps into sales and thinks, well, sales is just talking.

Sales is just talking to people.

You got to be friendly.

Boy, I was born with A, you know, the gift of gab.

And I'm just good at meeting people and building rapport.

That is not sales.

Yeah, some people will like you.

But what truly drives people who are successful, who are the top performers, are the ones that said, you know what?

I'm going to choose to learn the tools, learn the skills, learn the mindset, focus on myself to be better.

Right.

Because sales is, and this is a cool conversation because, you know, when you're a technician or when you're, you know, whatever you're doing, let's take, you know, we'll stay in H Vac for a sec.

You know, when you're a technician and when you want to improve some of your, you know, what you do as a person who turns the wrenches, what do we do?

We go from our analog gauges and maybe we upgrade to a, you know, a nice kick ass set of digital Bluetooth wireless gauges or something like that.

Right.

We start upgrading our tools.

We start upgrading our, you know, our power tools.

Are you a Milwaukee person?

Are you in the Dewalt camp?

What camp are you in?

Right.

So that happens.

And when you're doing the lab, and I want you to understand this comparison when you're doing the work, right, when you're the technician, when you're working on something physically like that to upgrade and get better.

Yes.

One, it's through repetition.

Because the more that you do that task over and over, the more that you troubleshoot, the more that you diagnose.

And we have no problem investing in training and going to trainings to learn how to maybe troubleshoot better or this is the fall.

So we're taking classes right now how to better recognize failed, you know, failed heat exchangers in furnaces, that kind of stuff.

Right.

So we constantly are growing and improving what we do as far as that side of things.

But what we don't understand is when you step into the more of a sales role, whatever role that is, when you're asked to sell things to people or your income is dependent on selling things to people.

And I know I'm using sales a lot.

Yes, it's helping people.

It's serving at the highest level.

Everything that we talk about.

But when you do that, what are our skills?

What are our tools?

All of a sudden when you're used to having the ability to buy a better drill or buy a really awesome new set of magnetic nut drivers, you're upgrading your tools, which will in turn lead to faster, easier, easier, more productive work.

But then we step into sales especially all of you that came from that.

More of a manual fix it background from the technician background from doing the labor part of it.

When you step into sales, all of a sudden we're stripped away from all of our tools, the hand tools.

And initially, when you first get into sales, there's like this huge journey that we go through.

There's the.

In fact, I'm going to do a whole episode on what's called the Valley of Despair soon.

But when we get into cells, we come from that place of having all the resources and having all the tools, and we step into cells and we're like, hey, this is great.

All I do is walk around and talk to people, and it's awesome.

And then we wonder why our numbers suck.

Because you have to recognize and you have to understand that your tools in sales are your communication.

It's your language, it's the word tracks that you have learned.

It's your.

The way that you learn to communicate with people.

The getting very uncomfortable.

It's learning to sit in a silence that is uncomfortable for most people.

But if you're going to be a top performer in sales, you better get good at it.

It's learning to ask better, clearer, clearer questions.

And if you're going to be in cells, you have to get good at those things.

So there's just as many tools and skills and muscles that you have to build in cells as there are becoming a technician or any other thing that you do.

But so what we have to do is, first of all is understanding that and the awareness of moving into that.

And once we understand that a little bit, y', all, you get literally can make.

We make doctor lawyer money and more.

I want to share something with you.

Did you know that most general family doctors across the country barely scrape by making just over $100,000 a year?

Did you know that you need to.

Did you know that most attorneys, especially the bulk of attorneys, the family law attorneys, and all these kind of things that are everywhere, they're barely scraping over 100,000 a year.

Maybe if they got experience and years in the practice and growth, then they'll start making a little bit more and earning a bit more.

But you need to understand that, because I remember growing up, I was thinking doctors and lawyers and oh, my God, they're so wealthy and so rich.

You know, I may never be able to make that.

But then I got into sales and realized that our income makes them look.

Their numbers look really silly.

And we get to help people, but on a different way.

And it's so cool.

So understanding that now let's walk that through a comparison.

You know, those dudes go to gentlemen and women, men and women, of course, go to school for, you know, how many years to become a doctor or a lawyer and their hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to get out and maybe make a couple hundred thousand a year.

And then you get into the trades and you realize, oh, that's possible for anyone.

All I have to do, and they're gonna pay me to teach me how to do this, and all I have to do is learn how to communicate better.

So you get paid from day one and you get the ability to create this incredible life for you and your family and your community and to give back at the level that you've never been able to and to serve more people that you've never been able to and you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to do it.

Now this is the other part of this is self investment in your own education.

And that is why it's so important, so important to choose to set aside a percentage of your income every single year to invest in your own education.

Don't expect your company to do it for you.

Take radical responsibility for your own life, your own education.

Don't care what anybody else thinks because they are not putting money in your pocket.

You are.

And with the skills that you are able to improve upon and grow into in our industry, in sales in general, if you stay within your industry, if you change verticals that you change to a different industry, do something totally different, the skills that you learn will carry through with you for your entire lifetime.

And we're literally talking about millions of dollars of income across your lifetimes, different and improved every single time you invest in yourself and improve your communication skills and all of the things that we do here.

So first of all, huge congrats to you for listening to this podcast.

Because I tell you what, this Drive Time University, it's everything.

Using your windshield time and outside sales or technician as education time will change everything.

So with all of that buildup, let's get into the rules, right?

So this actually came from my journal from a few years ago.

I ran a few, several.

I was running door to door boot camps, right?

We bring, we were doing blitzes.

We bring a group of people in and teach them how, we're literally teaching them how to create whatever level of income that they want based upon the effort they put into it.

It's incredible when you start to really break these kind of things down.

So I was teaching these boot Camps and one of my business coach at the time.

These were the rules of the boot camp.

In order to be involved, you had to follow these rules and agree to them, of course, in commitment.

And I wanted to bring them to you and I want to share them with you because they're incredibly powerful.

There are 10 rules.

It's basically our.

This is the code of honor to work with if you ever want to work with me on a professional level.

This is the code of honor, right?

This is a huge portion of it.

I've modified it a little bit from a few years ago, but let's go through them because I feel like this will be extra valuable for you if you are the owner and you're working on establishing some sort of employee handbook, which you should have your code of honor, your vision statement, your mission statement.

Every bit of this is crucial in setting up your company.

Or if you're an individual and you starting your company, this is very, very high value for you to pay attention to and model the way that you build what your expectations for your employees will be.

This also if you.

And if you're neither one of those and you have a position, of course, these are awesome rules.

Live by these standards and you will see a difference in your life.

You will see a difference in the way people respect you, the way they interact with you.

When you live by these standards and you refuse to compromise on them, your life will move into a faster pace of improvement and success.

Because success leaves clues.

You cannot take the actions that successful people take and not get the results that they're getting.

You will start to follow those results if you do the same actions and habits that the highest successful people take.

So let's go through the rules.

Number one is code of honor, right?

We have a stack here.

We have our mission.

Whatever your company mission is.

Mission first, team, second, individual third.

That's our code of honor for being within the organization.

Number two, everyone must sell.

Celebrate all wins, right?

So everyone must sell.

We love, love, love.

Every single conversation is a sales conversation.

Something is always being bought and something is always being sold.

Everyone, if you interact with the public at all, you are in sales.

Sorry to break it to you, that is the true game.

Here is communication in sales.

So number two, everyone must sell.

And then the second part of that is to celebrate all the wins.

It doesn't matter how large or small, we celebrate the wins in our organization.

We don't focus on the negative.

We celebrate the positive.

Number three, do what you say you will do.

Sometimes more, never less.

Do what you say you'll do, sometimes more, never less.

That's really huge.

My life philosophy forever has always been give more value than you take.

Right?

So that was number three.

Number four, never abandon or disrespect a teammate.

Never abandon or disrespect a teammate.

This is crucial, right?

What we're talking about here is culture.

We're literally talking about how an organization functions in culture.

Is it competition and negative, or is it positive and building each other up?

It's up to you to decide.

And if you're in an organization that is not what you want it to be, obviously you have choices.

But I would suggest to you, instead of just quitting and moving, trying to find another company, I would recommend first, look inside.

Be the leader that you wish you had.

Be the fellow employee that you wish you had.

Be the teammate that you wish you had.

And being that leader and not allowing negativity and all of the condescending talk or whatever else, be the leader and focus on positivity and progress and improvement.

And I will tell you, people around you will notice.

They will either follow suit or it will be a very clear picture of what you need to do next.

If the people around you don't.

If you don't see a shift towards the positive.

So that's what I would tell you.

Be the leader.

Be the person that you wish you had around you in those roles.

Be that leader.

So that is number four.

Number five, be on time by being early.

Be a walking demonstration of what you teach physically, emotionally, financially, and professionally.

This is.

Again, it's.

Be the leader.

Be the person that you want to attract to your team.

Right.

Number six, take ownership and responsibility.

Do not lay blame and no justifications for things.

Take ownership and responsibility of all of your actions.

Do not lay blame and do not try to make justifications for things when you know that that's not how it goes.

So that's number six.

Number seven, when in doubt, always take action.

If there's a place where you don't know what to do, and obviously it's not a decision that is mission critical to the specific project, you know, for this one, we're talking about more of, you know, if you're in a slump or if you're.

You're.

You're.

The biggest thing I can tell you about creating momentum in your cells is action.

If you get stagnant, if you stop moving, if you stop trying to do more, reach more, talk to more people, you get into this place of complacency and stagnant and that will not get you into momentum.

That will only go the other direction.

You cannot sit still.

You're either moving forward or you're moving backward.

So when in doubt, always take action.

The best way to get out of a slump is do more work, right?

Go get some wins.

Number eight, do whatever it takes legally, ethically and morally to win.

Do whatever it takes legally, ethically and morally to win.

There are no rules in cells.

There are these like weird, bizarre stories that within any industry that we tell ourselves in our own head of what we think other people are going to think about us.

And it's so wrong.

It's so wrong because if we truly knew how little they thought about us, we would not care.

And at the end of the day, like I said, they do not put money into your bank account.

You do so do whatever it takes legally, ethically and morally to win.

Be a winner.

Winners don't lose.

They do what it takes.

The choice is yours.

Number nine.

Deal.

Direct.

Be willing to call it and be called out.

This goes with everyone, right?

So this, this is definitely more internally.

But listen to this, right?

Be direct.

Be willing to call it and be called out.

Communicate any issue to the appropriate person who can do something about it.

So step one, so when we go direct like this, so this is for you leaders as well as for everyone.

As for non leaders, go direct to the person who has the.

When there's an issue, go direct to the person can do something about it.

What that also is saying is don't just go start talking to everybody else around you and griping and bitching about the situation.

Bitch, be an adult.

Don't gossip.

Go to the person who can do something about it.

The next, of course, past that is when we're, especially as a leader and anyone else, it doesn't even matter if you're a leader or not.

We're going to criticize in private and we praise in public.

Do not criticize in public.

And you lose so much of the effect when you praise in private.

So if we're going to be critical about something, you do it privately with an individual.

And if you're going to praise them for something, celebrate the wins, do that publicly and that will keep the culture of your organization intact.

Every single one of these is crucial for that.

So that will keep the culture and the integrity of your organization intact.

And it cuts off the ability for a lot of the.

Just the gossip and that kind of stuff.

And then number 10, this is the big one also.

They're all big ones.

But number 10, be honest in all transactions and communications.

This is important, this is crucial.

And I know that you already are or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast.

But how many of you know that person or company in your market that just is out there telling very intentional lies to just to sell the job and then move on?

You've got Chuck into trucks that do this.

And I mean it's what's given our industry such a black eye for the last 20, 30, 40 years.

And I'm sick of it.

Let's just be honest with people.

The ability to help people on such a grand scale is so incredible.

And the opportunity in home improvement so incredible.

We don't need to make stuff up or tell lies or do any of that kind of crap.

It doesn't matter.

The opportunity is too great.

There's no need for that.

So have integrity, integrity, legal, moral ethic.

As long as you're good there, there are no other rules.

Just do what it takes to close the deal.

That's the important part.

Okay, now let's shift gears super quick because I would love to highlight one of the coolest reviews we've gotten in a minute.

And this one is from Luke Strange.

If you didn't know this and if you've ever gotten value from the Closing now podcast, I would love and appreciate you forever.

Hop over to Google and leave me a five star Google review.

And also over on Apple podcast you can leave a a five star review and on Facebook you can leave a review there.

So I would love, love, love it and this is my request if you would leave me a five star review if you've gotten value from this.

In fact it'd be really cool if in your review if there's been a big aha moment or you had some sort of result or improvement, whatever your number improvement is for your sales numbers or whatever that you've seen in your life because of a lesson that I've taught that you've implemented and seen an improvement.

It would be really cool if you could mention that in there as well.

So this one is from Luke strange.

This is 3 days ago 5 star review and he said Sam provides invaluable insights into communication and sales skills.

His podcast is a must listen for any home service technician or business owner looking to improve their approach.

Sam's focus on ethical low pressure sales while delivering top notch service and solutions to customers sets him apart.

Highly recommend his podcast and any service he offers, exclamation point.

Thank you Luke.

Dude, I appreciate that so much.

Rock it out and he did the coolest thing ever because Google loves pictures.

If you put up a picture with your review and message me, man, that's awesome.

I love it.

Google will find it more.

And then if you hear me on this podcast, we talk about that, that if I read your review on this podcast and you hear it, message me and we'll do a free coaching session.

We'll see if we can get you unstuck from anything, any friction points you might have or if you just want to chop it up, pop me a message.

Samoseitnow.net and you can also go to closeitnow.net to check out the different courses and the trainings that we have.

Just kind of dropping this in the ether.

I will be hosting a in person, three day sales, just summit, immersion, whatever the words that you want to use.

But it's going to have a lot more details about it.

But it will be spring 2025.

I know we're doing at least one of these and it's going to be up in the eastern seaboard, probably somewhere in Massachusetts so far with the planning that we have.

So look forward to that.

It's going to be really exciting.

It will be one of the, it will be the most impactful event in our industry for the person who wants to improve their sales.

I can guarantee you that I will absolutely have gone all in on this.

And if you've listened to me for very long, you know I don't lose.

I have gone all in on this and I can guarantee you you will love the results from when you come to this event.

So be on the lookout for that.

Go join the Close It Now Facebook group.

All you have to do is search Close it now on Facebook.

We have an awesome group on there.

There's a lot of it's totally positive and we do a lot of training in there as well.

That's how you can stay connected.

Hear about the different programs we have, hear about the news, the upcoming events, all the different things and join the community.

It's a community of really, really, really positive people.

Top performers, business owners.

It's a killer network because when you start to speak the same language with people, what happens is when you can combine forces and get so much more done than if you did it separately.

So go join the Facebook community.

Email me samoseitnow.net to hear more about our coaching.

We do one on one virtual coaching.

So from wherever you're at, we hop on Zoom one time a week and that's the content portion and then you've Got a coach in your pocket the rest of the week.

You literally have my cell phone or whoever your trainer is, you've got their cell phone in your pocket so you can debrief calls, go over like bizarre ones.

When you're coming, you know that you're coming up to how would you handle this, situations, questions about things and really have somebody holding you accountable to implement, to get results.

That's the difference when you coach with.

Close it now.

So we've got the virtual program.

If you're an individual or you've got a say you've got a company, maybe have one, maybe two people, smaller company that you don't have, maybe the funds or you don't have enough components in place that would be prepared to get us out for an on site visit, then the virtual program is for you.

Our goal is to help you grow to the place and grow to the point where we can come out and help you on site.

Because there's a lot of impact you get from that as well.

There's massive value from virtual, there's massive value from doing on site in person training.

And then when you start to combine them and get the hybrid of that across time, it's awesome to see the results and how the results change.

So message us you can to learn more about the one on one coaching.

If you want to coach with me or my coaches directly or when you're that owner or if you're connected in a PE group or some private equity, some that type of thing and you're in a network there, reach out to me.

We are putting together a very special program specifically for those organizations.

It's not a different training, but we are like really hyper focused on helping those organizations be consistent and have a consistent system across all of their locations.

So be paying attention to that if you are within one of those organizations.

Because a lot of times what happens is as these groups start to buy up the different companies they're not always the best at, they'll have great systems for back office and accounting and bookkeeping and all the different things, the components.

But then the most common system that gets skipped is the sales system, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing.

Because nothing happens until something gets sold.

If you don't have revenue, you can't change, you can't use any of the other systems.

So connect me there because we have a.

We've put together something specifically for PE groups for the on an enterprise level to be able to scale that out a little bit as well.

So that's everything that's going on currently.

Lots of new stuff coming up.

Be on the lookout for news and announcements.

Go join the Facebook group and email me samoseitnow.net go check out the website closeitnow.net everyone, go crush your fall.

Go spend time with your family.

Take a breather, take a moment.

Sharpen that axe.

It's time to invest in some training.

Because this next, this winter coming up, who knows, right?

We don't know.

We do not know what it's going to look like.

But I would be willing to wager it's going to be similar to what the summer was like.

So unless you decide to get better, take control of the things that you can control, right?

When you're taking control of the things you can control, that means everything else becomes secondary.

Stop blaming others.

We're taking that radical responsibility for ourself and our business.

That means we get to do some training.

Let's sharpen the axe, right?

And I don't care if you pay me money.

Listen to the podcast.

There's, I think we're at coming up on 180 or so of them now, so tons of free content and just go out there and keep doing what you're doing.

Changing the world one heat stroke.

Save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Save the world one frostbite at a time.

We're truly changing lives.

So, everybody, thank you for listening.

I appreciate every single one of you.

Until next time, folks.

Be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time, covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure to, like, rate and review.

We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website@closeitnow.net find us on Instagram @thereal closeitnow and on Facebook closeitnow.

See you next time.