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, welcome back.

Today I am happy to have a return guest.

I don't always.

Not everybody who is a guest on this show get asked back.

As you all know.

In fact, there's been a few recently.

I went back and actually pulled their episodes down because where they're, you know, where they are now in life does not align with the core values of Close It Now.

But this gentleman is not the case.

I am so happy to have him back on the show.

If you caught the last episode, if you didn't catch the last episode, make sure to go back and Listen.

This is Mr.

Doug C.

Brown.

He is the founder and CEO of CEO Sales Strategies.

And so the last episode we really dove in on follow up.

So make sure to go back and check out that episode.

He also has a really incredible product that he has developed that is constantly in develop.

It's a.

I'll just give you the super quick nutshell, everybody.

And personally, I bought it for my business and it's been a game changer.

It's a AI driven CRM follow up program that is unlike anything I've ever seen.

So it's really cool.

It's being developed and it's got some incredible features.

So if you don't have a CRM for your company, reach out.

It's called Vibitno and it'll be in the show notes here.

And happy to get you connected to Doug to talk about that.

But today we're going to give you all a little bit of a sneak peek of this gentleman is going to have 90 minutes at the relentless the Ultimate Cells transformation event in Boston that is May 6th, 7th and 8th.

For most of you listening to the show, there's a good chance that will have happened before you hear this episode.

So you will have missed out.

But be on the Lookout.

I'm sure this is not the last thing that this gentleman and I will do together, but super quick highlight reel.

He has had a massive, massive history.

He's taken so many companies to exit.

I think that the official Number is over 30 companies that you've grown and sold.

Is that correct, Doug?

Well, I haven't sold them all.

I mean, I've been involved in 36 companies.

Some actually crashed and burned Sam in the process.

But that sounds like a whole nother.

Episode we can do on the pitfalls of what happens, right?

What do you do when you crash and burn?

Yeah, but so founder of over 30 companies or at least been involved in, you know, that many in some level of management and over and ownership and just so such an incredible person.

His time is insanely valuable.

So I'm grateful that you join us on the show today and just want to give everybody opportunity to hear more from you and to learn more about what you're doing and, you know, give them the opportunity to dive in if there's they resonate and something that you can help them with.

So welcome back to the show.

Well, thanks for having me, as always.

I'm grateful.

Yeah, absolutely, man.

So let's.

So we were talking before this episode here and you mentioned something to me that asking if I thought that people would be interested in hearing what we were talking about.

So take a second and just introduce what we were talking about basically the same way that you introduced it to me.

Nice and nonchalant, as if this wasn't a big needle mover.

So when everybody's listening, when you hear this, you'll know what I mean by that.

Yeah.

So thanks.

I hope I can do it in the same capacity.

So, you know, I'm getting a little older now, right.

And I start questioning life and say, well, you know, what do I really want to do when I grow up?

Right?

I mean, when you said, you know, that many companies, I actually just got involved in, in two other companies that, that were doing that I have ownership in.

And you know, as I get a little older, I.

I just look at what's going on in the world and I'm like, all right, how do I do my part to make it a little bit better, right.

Or a lot better for people.

And what I'm really, really, really, really good at is helping people make money through selling right.

And doing it in an ethical win, win, you know, place.

So I was driving down the road the other day with my wife and I said, you know what I really like to do?

I'D like to take people, anybody who's selling or they want to sell, if they're currently selling, or they have sales team members.

I said we can help them in almost every case.

It really doesn't matter.

I've worked in over 300 industries.

Excuse me.

We can help them make an extra $100,000 in income per year.

Right.

And, you know, if we screw up and they make a couple hundred or quarter million, I mean, you know, that's great.

Right?

I mean, you know, and.

And I say this not from a place of arrogance.

It's just we have a system to do it.

If I don't cough all the way through this episode.

I'm sorry.

No, you're good.

Yeah.

But, you know, and so, Sam, I.

I mean, I literally, like, my, My big one was one time, the epiphany.

The Guy went from 140,000 a year in sales commissions to 2.1 million in sales commission in his first year.

In a single year.

What a serious.

Yeah, that's.

That's more than 10xing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I don't, like, I don't subscribe to the 10x philosophy like that people have because, you know, they get all pumped up about their own 10x.

And I'm like, well, let's say we went to the gym and you can bench press £200.

And now I take and I throw £2,000 on the bar.

It's probably not going to work.

But I do believe in incremental growth.

So we can get you from 200 to 205 to 210, you know, and so on and so on.

And in time, we can get you to 2x.

Sure.

Maybe even 2 1/2x, you know, for, you know, the, you know, if you want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in your early days and, you know, or some power lifter.

Right.

Word.

It's been my mission lately.

But.

But what I realize is for most people, and what's really bothering me in the world is, you know, inflation keeps going up and, you know, the average person now that starts to get up in.

In age, you know, and wanting to retire or whatever, their.

Their income once it ceases and they go into retirement, liquidating their home, everything.

In the United States, they got an average of 8 to 12 years before they're out of money.

Oh, that's rough.

And so what are you gonna do?

You retire at 65.

By the time you're, you know, 74, 75, you're, like, broke, right?

So, yeah, then you're Walmart at that.

Point, that's not retirement.

That's not good.

Right.

So.

So I started thinking about, well, what if I help those people?

And many of them were professionals in life, whatever, but if I teach them how to sell, they can sell.

And what if I could, you know, help them?

Like, so I, I called, like, 32 CEOs of companies that I've worked with in the past, and I said, look, I train these people the right way.

If they know how to prospect, they know how to sell, they know how to close, they know how to do all these things.

They're, they're.

They play win, win.

They won't be a pain.

You might have to treat, you know, teach them your, you know, you know, your.

Maybe your roofing company or your medical supply company or you're.

Whatever.

You're gonna have to, you know, teach them the discipline and train them, because you don't need that much in order to sell certain things, Right?

Sure.

Would you.

Would you hire them?

And they go, absolutely, I'll take as many as you can give me.

And I was like, okay.

So, like, I don't want to be a recruiting company.

They're like, it's fine.

I just want to help these people.

Right.

And so what I realized is they're paying 20% to recruiters, to recruit people.

And then the average recruiter coming in doesn't really work out well.

And like, you know, I can, you know, if they want to pay me for it, I was like, well, cool.

I get a little extra money.

Right.

But I can help these people.

Then I started thinking, what about the kids coming up?

Sure.

You know, my daughters are in their 20s, and their friends are getting into jobs, and they're like saying things like, I gotta move out of this community to move into this community in order to, you know, there's two of us in this apartment now, and there's gonna be three of us in this apartment in this other community.

And we got to do it, because that's how we can survive.

Yeah.

It takes multiple incomes just to exist for most people at this point in.

In.

In life.

Yeah.

And one of their friend.

One of their friends is in sales, and she's, you know, making about 70,000 a year.

And I'm like, what happens if I can get her to go from 70,000 to 170,000?

Yeah.

What a life change.

Yeah.

And by the way, some of these communities they're moving to, you know, you wouldn't want your children living in those communities.

Sam.

I know you well enough to know.

Right.

And I certainly wouldn't want my daughters living in those communities.

Right.

Because there's a high crime rate in these places.

So I just came, I just, I just drew the line in the sand the other night and I'm like, this is what we're going to do.

You know, I can help corporations.

I can help all that.

And I have, I, you know, I mean, you know, I've worked with Procter and Gamble, CBS Television, Intuit, you know, the name goes on.

Right, right.

But I don't, that's not my mission in life any longer.

My mission is to help the, the solo entrepreneur or help the people who are in.

Like, if companies have sales teams and they want their whole team to, to grow, I'd be happy to do that as well.

It doesn't mean I won't do corporate work.

You know, if they call me, obviously, I'm not dumb.

You know, they pay me enough if.

If there's, if there's enough zeros, that's harder.

Yeah, exactly.

That'll get my attention.

Right?

Because believe it or not, at this point in my life, some of those zeros now go to the kids and then to the grandkids eventually.

And I, so it's like I don't get it anyways, but I get the pleasure of getting them.

And so, yeah, that's, that's what we do.

And we, we, we affectionately called it the 2x method.

You know, 2x sales revenue growth.

Sales method.

And the difference between what we teach is it's not about just sales training, it's about how do you grow your revenue, how do you do it predictably.

Right.

And, and how do you do it?

That it will take effort, but you're doing it in an effective way that's efficient.

And so it's a whole system.

And then, you know, it's all based on metrics and math as well.

So it doesn't lie.

You can figure out where you are and what you know where you need to go pretty quickly by just measuring all these things.

There.

There's two words that you just said that really stuck out to me.

One is predictable and the other is efficiently.

Because like so many people, until they start learning some of these processes and methods.

And I know that I'm going to learn a ton today as well, so I'm really excited.

I've got my notepad ready.

But the old idea and the old concept is, well, you have to work harder to make more.

And it's learning the difference between growing and scaling.

You know, if I Just double my number of hours.

Will I double my income?

Well, yeah, but at what cost?

And then we just max out, and then there's nothing left.

And so I love where you're headed with this.

So for everybody listening to.

I have no idea what we're about to cover, so I'm just as excited as you are.

Well, I don't either.

So let's.

Let's figure it out.

Right?

Let's go.

That's how we like to do so.

Yeah.

I mean, predictable predictability comes from mastering the metrics and measurements.

So, like, I'm the one of the companies I'm working with right now that I.

That I'm become part owner in.

I'll give you an example that they're generating a boatload of leads.

I mean, 10,000 leads a month sometimes.

Holy moly.

Right?

And then I'm looking at the conversion rates and the close rates.

Close rate's not too bad.

The conversion rates way too low.

So the conversion rates.

So those who may not know how many leads you're producing to how many sales.

The close rate, how many conversations to sales.

Sure.

And so when I started digging, I'm like, all right, so what's happening is they're getting a ton of leads coming through.

Then they basically have a setter SDR type process that goes into that.

And the setters are getting a bunch of these leads, but the offer to the setter is off.

And so people are coming to these calls, going, I thought I was getting this.

And now you're talking to me about that.

And that now leads to another phone call.

They're like, I'm a little confused.

You know, like, I'm confused or like.

So some misalignment there for sure.

Yeah.

And so how do we find that?

We look at the metrics.

Right.

So it's like, how many leads come in to how many people are showing to appointments or not showing to appointments?

How many people are showing to appointments or moving to the next stage of that appointment?

And when we look at all these metrics, it starts to tell a story.

It's like, wait a minute.

There's way too many leads going into this thing.

Getting stuck in some capacity, not moving to the next stage.

So then it's like, how do you know?

You know, through the math.

And then what do you do about it?

Well, you investigate it.

Right.

And I've done this for very, like, even famous companies or famous people.

Like, and, you know, I mean, never, ever, ever is wrong.

And I.

I mean that not because I'm Braggadocious or arrogant.

But when you look at the numbers.

Like, well, the numbers don't lie.

No.

So I'll give you.

I'll give you an extreme example.

Like Chet Holmes.

He wrote a book called the Ultimate Sales Machine.

Chet was a really nice guy.

Funny you mentioned that.

I literally today started that audiobook like 2 hours ago before we hopped on this, on this call.

Well, most of that people in the book are friends of mine or, you know, I know them pretty well.

But the in chat, I was Chet's because Chet eventually merged with Tony Robbins, actually came in and bought into the company.

So I was their president of training and sales for seven years.

Wow, that's incredible.

And so when I first came to the company, I started looking at all the metrics.

And Chet would come to me in the beginning.

He would say, by the way, he's an awesome guy.

He was an awesome guy before he passed away and very smart.

And he would come to me and he goes, look, we're 27% on the front end of this machine.

Our leads are costing this.

And by the time we get them through this, and then it's like, I'm like, okay, so 27 loss.

I'm like, well, how do we tighten that up if possible?

So I looked at all the metrics, and one, glaring things.

Two things actually stood out to me, but the big glaring one was he had.

So they were driving him from radio ad to a paid training and what people would call a master class, but they were training on that.

It was really good content.

And then from there, they would make an offer to bring them into coaching and ongoing training.

And it was a 15.3% refund rate on the paid training.

Ooh, refund rate.

Yeah.

That's a metric.

I didn't expect you to say, actually.

Yeah.

Well, again, we got.

So, like, when we're figuring out numbers, like, I'll step back for a second.

Like when we're in a sales capacity and we're saying, hey, we need 100 sales to actually hit our number, let's say.

Right.

We need to figure out churn return rates, refund rates, cost of sale.

Because let's say that that was 15% combined.

Right.

Which, by the way, would be super low if it was 15% combined with cost of sale and all these other things, then we would actually need 115 sales versus 100 sales to actually hit that number.

Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

Because you have to make up for those.

Yeah.

And if I said to anybody, look, we're going to take.

I Don't know.

What do they call those kite things, Sam, that you get in there like, and you take a.

Like a kite ride, right?

Like.

Oh, like a parasol or.

Yeah, yeah, something like a parasail, but that's with a parachute.

But whatever.

They.

Hang gliding.

Hang gliding, right?

If I said to people, look, let's.

I'm going to be your hang gliding pilot, jump on here.

We're going to jump off this, you know, 3,000 foot cliff.

We're going to go sail around.

You're going to have an amazing time.

And I may have calculated correctly to get you to the ground, or I might be 15% off.

I don't have much confidence in you at that point.

What do you mean you're not coming with me?

What?

You know, but.

Right.

And paying me for the ride, it's going to be exhilarating, right?

That type of thing.

It'll be thrilling one way or another.

But so many companies do this and so many people selling, they don't calculate the numbers.

And so they, they're 15 or 20 or 30% short of the Runway, right?

Or they're not calculating the altitude correctly of the mountain, you know, and whack, you know, and so they get there thinking, man, I'm going to make 150 grand.

And now they're making a hundred and whatever because it's 15, you know, 135 or whatever, you know, the number happens to be.

So they're short of the Runway.

But that, I'm telling you, 15% is inexpensive.

Those numbers are small.

But in his case, he had a 15%, 15.3% refund rate.

So again, you look at the numbers, you figure it out, right?

How many people are coming, how many people staying, how many people are refunding?

All of these numbers tell a story.

So then I started digging and I was like, okay.

And so I started calling some of the clients and asked them, why'd you refund?

And they told me, and I started listening to the past recordings.

And what I realized was that in the presentation, they actually were inviting the refund.

So here's what happened.

They.

They had this presentation and they were saying.

Because they guaranteed it and they were saying, right in the presentation, listen, if you don't think that we earned our money today, I just want you to call 1-800-get refund, whatever the number was, right?

Huh?

And if you don't think we've earned our, earned our keep, if this wasn't, if this did not exceed your expectations, you know, beyond your wild teams, we'll we'll refund your money, call 1-800-get a.

Refund at least they didn't have a double refund offer.

Yeah, that's true.

And so 15 of the people would call in and they'd say, hey, I just didn't meet my expectations.

But, but then I was like, wait, wait a minute.

These people were actually getting really great results.

But we're refunding.

So all I did, and this is why I'm trying to teach people about predictability is all I did was I looked at that and I said, let's make it.

Make a messaging change.

So what we did is we then we got to the end of the training and we said, hey, why don't you go take three minutes now, go back through all the training and figure out over the next 12 to 24 months, if you did these things that we talked about, what you would be getting in return financially into your company.

And then I would say something like, hey, Sam, what'd you get?

And you would say, I got $767,000 on this call.

And then I'd go, hey, Margo, what did you get?

I got 1.27 million on this call.

Hey, Ron, what'd you get?

I got 300,000.

Hey, Barry, what'd you get?

I got $14.3 million on this call.

Right.

And we would go around the room.

Sure.

And so then I, we would add them up.

I would have the presenter add them up and then the presenter would say something like this, okay, guys, we found $72,637,014 on this call.

Everybody go, woohoo.

Because, you know, we were involved with.

Tony Rob celebrate it.

And, and so they would go, woohoo.

And then, then the next line was, well, I think we probably earned our keep today.

What do you think, guys?

And every one of them go, yes, yes, yes.

Right.

Within three days, the refund rate dropped from 15.3% to under 1%.

Now why is this predictable?

Well, because now you got 15% of the people who are dropping out now moving to the next stage of the funnel.

Wow.

The mid funnel, where they were being sold between $1,500 and $12,500.

Sure.

So not only did you recoup the loss of what was happening, the churn there, then we moved on to the next stage for the continued customer journey.

And so now we start talking about the lifetime value of a client, which is a whole different conversation.

Absolutely.

Wow.

And if you, if you don't get them from stage one to stage Two to stage three to stage four, and so on and so on and so on.

Say 5, 6, 7, right?

Depending on how many steps there are in the customer journey, then you're having fallout happening within your life.

So what, what does that mean?

Means you're working harder.

You got 15.3% you got to make up on, right?

But you have a cost of sale to that initial and you have a cost of refund.

So if you're taking a credit card, spending 3.5% or 3% and then 3% paying it back, you got 6% of that 15%.

You get the numbers, right?

The numbers start stacking and never mind what it cost you to put this person on to, to, you know, make the sale initially.

And now they, you know, all these things factor into play.

So from a company perspective, when you have a sales team, it's like it starts adding up really fast.

From an Indo individual perspective, it adds up fast too.

And so the second metric that I found was follow up what you started talking about, right?

So I was looking at the front end numbers and I'm like, wait a minute, these numbers don't make sense.

They're saying that they have a 21 conversion.

Like it's 21.92, I think, percent conversion rate.

It doesn't make sense.

I'm looking at the numbers.

So I got a 12, 0.6% conversion rate.

H.

So I'm looking and then on the close rate of the front end of the sales team.

So then I look at the numbers and I go back and Sam, sure as heck, last year 17,000 leads had not been followed up on.

Oh, oh, that's painful when you say it like that.

At $13 a lead.

Geez Louise.

And so.

Oh, it got worse when you went back over the last two years.

Oh, no doubt.

Yeah.

But so then I went and I talked to the sales manager and I said, tell me how you're qualifying these leads.

And then she told me how they were qualifying the leads.

And I was like, that's not a qualification process.

You're basically dumping leads and creaming the best leads to get the highest conversion rate.

What about all these other leads?

So then I put a stop to that.

And then when we were bringing salespeople in, new salespeople, they had to call through all those leads and get two sales out of those leads.

And Sam, some of these leads were turning into like 35 to 50 thousand dollar purchases.

And so what ended up happening was then we trained on what the sales team needed to do on these Right.

Instead of a 12% ratio, we got up to 22% on the close rate.

So metrics will tell you your deal.

So for an individual, we want to track the metrics that matter.

There's dozens of metrics.

I mean, it could be hundreds.

Vanity metrics.

And the ones that truly matter, which is.

I love that you're diving into this because so many times, especially in home service.

And sorry to cut you off there, but it just makes me think, especially in home services.

So many companies out there, and I've been on a terror about this lately, actually.

So many companies will put up these crazy vanity metrics and not expose what's going on behind the scenes either with, you know, hey, our salespeople do these crazy numbers, or maybe the company overall, here was our volume.

But they're not saying, well, yeah, but, you know, we only took home 2% net, so I could earn more working for somebody else than what I pay myself as an owner.

But boy, we did 30 million this year.

It sounds great.

We've got 800 trucks on the road.

Yeah.

And all this stress and all this stuff going on, but I don't have what I'm looking for.

And that's not what I got into business in the first place for.

Right.

Just on the sales level.

We have a mutual friend.

I won't mention that friend's name on this, but this person was just telling me that a goal wants to sell $4 million a year on the personal and having trouble hitting the goal.

But close rate is 70 plus percent.

So that's solid.

Really good.

Right.

And I said to this individual, I said, why aren't you.

Are you getting enough lead flow?

And stated back to me, no, I'm getting a certain amount of lead flow.

What do I do?

I said, tell me about the company.

And the person did.

And I said, so they have a new sales manager and a new executive and the owner.

I said, go to the owner and ask the owner how many of the other salespeople are closing at 70%.

Yeah, no joke.

And he said, what?

I said, yeah, go do this and tell the sales manager this and the executive manager this, but go to the owner, because the owner's gonna care.

I'm not saying the sales manager won't care.

I'm saying just gonna care differently.

Sure.

Right.

And the sales manager's new, so there's no history.

So go to the owner and ask that question and then say, you know, from a business perspective, I want to ask this question, not to be rude, but don't you think that if I'm closing at 70% and so other people are closing at like 18, that you'd rather have me working the leads than those people.

And I've got a goal of $4 million, but I can't hit it this year because I'm stuck without the leads.

And, and you know, the company policies don't go out and get their own leads.

They, they farm the leads for the, for the people.

Right, sure.

So that's an example of looking at a metric.

And so we've got to measure our metrics.

And so as an individual, you want to measure things like how many outbound touches are you making with people?

You know, not physical touches, not creepy stuff like how many outbound, you know, you know, leads are being touched, if you will.

How many reach outs?

Yeah, reach outs.

Right.

So how many reach outs are we doing?

And then what's the, what's the connection rate to those reach outs?

Right.

Coming back out of the connection rate, how many responses are we getting?

How many responses are negative, positive and neutral?

Yeah.

Right.

So we can measure things like that out of those responses.

How many appointments are we getting?

How many appointments are actually being kept?

How many abandoned appointments?

How many are being kept?

Right.

How many last minute cancellations?

You can measure all these metrics.

They will tell you a story from there.

And I'm just giving some raw metrics.

So from there it's kind of like what's the close rate from the appointment set?

Because if you are really good and you're getting like, you know, a hundred appointments set and your close rate is 2%.

Right.

That tells me that either A, the lead quality is really bad.

Yeah.

Atrocious.

Or B, the person taking the leads really needs training, training opportunity.

And so then what's the follow up close rate?

Because most people don't even pay attention to something like this.

Right, true.

And then, you know, what's the increased transactional value or the increased buying frequency?

The increase, you know, through our, our response.

How, how many referrals we getting?

I.

E.

Are we expanding the sale?

Right.

And you know, we can just keep measuring metrics like this through that process.

And as we continue to keep measuring these metrics, it will tell us a story.

This is how we work more efficiently.

Because doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

You know the old definition, right.

Of insanity.

But doing things over and over that are working effectively and you're being efficient, but you're doing more stuff that isn't.

And it's pulling your time Away.

Now you could take that time back and put it to the more efficient, more effective methodology.

Right.

Then we can learn how to automate it.

Right?

Spend 80% of your time in the 20% that moves the needle the most.

Exactly.

Right.

And so we can't do this without, with predictability, without measuring that.

And folks, those things that get measured, get paid attention to, you know, people respect what you inspect.

That's why every morning in the military, when I was in the morning, we went down for inspection, right?

You'd stand there in the same thing, do the same thing.

They'd ask you the same questions over and over and over and over again.

But I can tell you through repetition of process, you know, I mean, we, we used to carry M16 rifles and I could disassemble that and assemble that and, and record breaking time in a snow lightning storm.

Right.

Probably blindfolded too, I'm sure.

Blindfolded, yes, without question.

Because it's dark, right.

And you could just, you just know how to do it.

And guess what?

They just didn't leave it alone.

They still kept the inspection.

So it's, it's the same process.

So metrics are the first step of understanding.

Well, firstly, a truthful goal is the first step.

Then applying the metrics to that.

Then the next step of this would be how do we become a master prospector?

And the master prospector, Sam, will always outsell the master closer.

I love this conversation.

It reminds me of one of the very first training way back in the day when it was, I was just out of cassette.

We were on CDs at least, but it was an old Zig Ziglar.

What's a cassette, Sam?

I don't know what you're talking about, man.

For all the youngsters out there.

In fact, my first work truck, there was no radio in all it was, was radio.

And so I literally carried my boombox with me in boom.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm.

I'm again dating myself, but had the CD player next to me in the seat.

So I'm cranking it up, driving down the road.

It was an old Zig Ziglar and it was.

The entire recording was on prospecting and the power of prospecting, which so many people now, most people nowadays don't even know what prospecting means.

Yeah, they just think marketing and advertising on understand prospecting.

Right.

So the, the for those who don't understand, I'll explain because it's, it's a very important concept to understand.

Right.

So marketing is creating awareness.

Prospecting Is think of it as direct sales outreach to get something going.

Right.

Marketing is.

Can.

There's all kinds of marketing.

Like, there's branding, there's this, there's that.

So analogous to the military marketing is when you, you send your troops out into the field.

That's prospecting.

Marketing is all the air coverage prior to them going out into the field.

It's.

It's the scare, the scare, the.

The enemy.

Right.

That this is coming.

Right.

It's like boom, boom, boom.

Right.

And so marketing is, is really the brand.

Marketing is, is the awareness to create brand and to create positioning.

So if you folks aren't out there in the public square and nobody knows your company name, nobody knows your company reputation, nobody knows anything, they've got to have a really big problem in order to say yes quickly.

But if you're in the trades business, for example, and people see your vans going by all the time.

Right.

You know, I won't name names, but here we've got one, you know, that goes by all the time.

I see them all the time.

Right.

And it's like, oh, I need plumbing.

Let me call that one.

Right.

Or whatever.

Right?

Yeah.

It's a sticky in your, in your brain because you can see it and it's recognizable.

Yeah.

So if you're.

If we're not in the space in place of the people and we're consistently creating that touch point, then we're going to have less effective marketing.

So marketing is out there creating that awareness and that understanding of who we are.

Now, doing a, you know, a talk, for example, you just go to, like, I don't know why more people in the trades business don't go to like, the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club or just something like that.

That's so easy.

They're looking for speakers all the time.

Tell me about it.

I think at one point in time, when we moved, I didn't.

I didn't know anybody.

I joined five different networking groups and led to others.

Yeah.

I became famous in the area.

Anybody that knew me knew that exactly what I did.

And so I got referrals all the time from people.

And you don't go.

If you're an H Vac company, you don't go to the Chamber of Commerce and go, oh, I'd like to talk about heating and air conditioning.

Right.

I mean, it's like they're not interested in what helps the members of the chamber.

Right.

And then as you're doing that on whatever subject I've done, I've done subjects on things like, how do you, you know, reduce the stress in your life through understanding these three simple concepts?

Right.

And you know, I am.

I'm Doug C.

Brown.

I'm the founder, CEO Sales Strategies.

We're a company.

Now today we would say this.

We're a company that helps anyone who wants to be in selling or selling to add an extra, you know, $100,000 in income, whether they're on a sales team or the whole sales team or whatever.

And I'm here to teach you how you can reduce your business stress today, within the next 20 minutes of this conversation.

So, you know, just something simple like that.

Like, it doesn't have to be like, perfect, but then people come up to you afterwards and go, my gosh, that was helpful information.

I really appreciate that.

What, what, what do you do again?

Right?

Or, you know, you know, I've got a sales team that, you know, is 14 people that I would love to have them increase that.

Because when I win, they win, right?

They win, I win.

So whatever it is.

But if you're an H VAC company, they're going to ask you, what do you do, you know?

Well, I do, you know, we help people do this in the H vac company, you know, and you collect cards and you, and you follow up.

That's prospecting.

The F word, the dirty word.

I heard the best description of prospecting one time.

It was from actually a guy who was training a door knocking team.

He said, prospecting is looking for the most likely buyer right now.

And I was brilliant because it's so different than sitting back and waiting.

Everybody complains, oh, the leads are down.

Nobody's calling.

Okay, well, so go find them.

What else are we doing?

I mean, we're sitting around brainstorming.

Well, let's just go do it.

Let's just go get business.

And that definition, I actually wrote it down because it's really a great definition, the most likely buyer right.

Now, the reason that people don't do prospecting is because of what we call the ideal right fit buyer.

Right.

They, they don't know who the ideal right fit buyer is.

So the whole idea is to get six new marketing, I mean, sorry, six new prospecting methods working at a high level over the next 12 months.

If you have six methodologies working at a high level, you're going to have more business than you know what to do with as a salesperson.

Sure.

And the key is working more efficiently.

And working more efficiently is understanding who the right fit buyer is, because those are the mark.

That's the Prospecting you should be doing too.

Part of the challenge with, with, with door knocking per se, is you just don't know who you're knocking on the door.

Right?

So it might be like, surprise, there's a murderous clown behind the door.

Or it might be like, surprise, my goodness, I just needed a roof and thank goodness you walk through the door.

A solar or whatever.

Right.

And, and so if we can identify those things, like I was saying to that individual that we know well, I said, well, if you can convince them to allow you to go get your own business and generate your own leads, maybe they'll pay you a little more because you're self generating in prospecting versus just taking leads.

Right.

And so what do you want to do?

Who look through all of your client base?

Who bought the quickest, who bought the most, who bought the easiest?

You can just start with those three little, you know, thoughts and, and then it's like, okay, where do they come from?

Well, they, you know, in his case, they came from, you know, an affluent neighborhood.

You know, they, and they had the parameters around that.

And I'm like, so now you want to prospect in affluent neighborhoods who have those, those characteristics.

Right?

Birds of a feather flock together was the old statement, right?

Absolutely.

People know people like themselves and so start there, ask them, hey, who do you know we can help.

That's right, because you can now generate, if they're not interested, you can generate a referral to somebody who's usually in like mind and like, you know, state or stage.

And so then they make the referral and then it's, you know, and we all know that, you know the best referrals, when they up the phone and call them and they say, hey Jerry, I've got Doug here.

And you know, he's saying a lot of great things about, you know, xyz and I know you need you.

We're looking for xyz.

Let me put Doug on the phone with you right now.

Thank you.

Right.

And then boom.

So, you know, we want to get prospecting and prospecting and master prospector will always outsell the master closer.

And you know, eventually we'd like to get these methodologies on automation if possible too.

Right.

So you can have six different ways working on automation and then you can do some other things that.

Because it's freeing up your time.

I will tell you this.

If you do what we're talking about on this thing right now, Sam, the if people did what we're talking about, they will have so much business coming in, they won't be able to handle it by themselves.

They'll have to have junior reps or other reps that they're passing this off.

I did this in the telecom business.

When I was in the telecom business and I was in the corporate environment, I had 62 incoming calls a day coming in for business.

Holy moly.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna again, I'm trying to be an arrogant, braggadocious.

I was the number one rep out of 300 and whatever it was, 333 people or whatever it was to the point where the CEO would personally call me from this company which was, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars at that time and asked me how I'm doing and what can I do to help and all this other stuff.

Because what I was doing is my.

We had teams of nine.

I was outselling all nine combined.

Sure.

Then when I got to a place I would then start pushing the leads off to these people and they were closing and they were paying me a small percentage of an override.

And then our little team of nine was outselling like states of like New York, the whole rest of the company.

Sure.

I mean we're in New Hampshire.

Who's in New Hampshire?

Right.

I mean we have 1.2 million people in the whole state.

I mean we're outselling all of New York, you know, five, six teams in New York.

And then so it was, it was just, we were getting recognition off this process and it was all.

Because what I'm telling people right now to do and then what was happening is somebody knew somebody who knew somebody and they introduced me to like this one company called Edwards and Kelsey.

They sold I think a few years ago, but they were like the 11th largest engineering company in the United States or something like that.

They did all the lighting for Chicago O'Hare and Airport.

They did all the like, like train stations.

They did huge projects.

And I happened to have a friend that introduced me to this company and they liked me.

And then they're like, well, hey, why don't we build a soccer stadium for your company and we'll co brand together.

I mean it was crazy, right?

They're like, wow.

They're like, why don't we, we're going to connect one airport to another airport.

Why don't you guys take all the telecommunication services for all you know, we're lighting up this building with 450 different businesses in it.

You take it all.

And I'm like what, pinch myself, right?

Yes sir.

No problem.

So you just don't know where it's going to lead.

I mean, I ended up with NASCAR as a client because what I'm telling people right now.

Sure, no doubt.

And so, you know, so you become a master prospector.

Then you understand the ideal right.

Fit buyer.

You understand what the messaging is that you're supposed to have what they want.

It's all about what they want, not what about we want as a sales entity.

And then what we do is we move in from that into, okay, how do we become now a master closer?

What's the conversation that we are going to be having?

You know, and most people are making this so complicated, you know, because they're trying to be a master closer and they don't understand what the people want.

So I'll be a master persuader, focuses on handling objections.

Your objections don't even come up if you do the rest of the part.

Right.

There you go, brother.

Right.

I mean, it's like if you.

If you understand how to be a master communicator and a master closer, you know, you might get an objection here and there, but you'll get them far less.

I just did two calls for that business I was telling you about and closed both of them.

And I got one objection out of each call.

Sure.

And frankly, I didn't know as much as I should know because I'm just kind of new into the process.

But the reality is that it was one objection per call because I know what the other objections are because I was learning about them and I was heading them all off, and I'm like, oh, this is a new one.

And it came up twice.

Metrics.

Hello?

And so now we put that in.

Into the setter process.

Right.

And the setter process heads that off before it even gets to.

So all of this stuff really is holistic, and as you said, you know, it does.

Objections sort of melt away.

But being a master communicator is also learning how to.

To do objections.

And, you know, we teach that right in the process.

And Sam, as you know, I wrote a whole book on this, right?

On the psychology of the objections.

Right.

Because I want to take one subject that people were struggling with and, like, teach them what.

What is an objection?

Like, nobody really knows.

It's.

It's fear.

It's a fear manifesting itself into something that's emotional.

It is.

They're scared to make the wrong decision, or they're scared that, you know, all these things that the stories they tell themselves from bad experiences or past or what somebody else said that they don't have the Actual experience of themselves yet all these things.

And in the trades business especially, and I mean not to be disrespectful, I mean I grew up as a, you know, my dad owned electric motor and machinery repair.

We worked as electricians.

Like I, you know, I had a landscaping company of my own.

I, you know, I, I even dabbled in the roofing business for a while.

So I'm going to say this from, from experience.

Most people selling in the trades business don't understand who their ideal right foot buyer is and do not understand how to convey value in the way that the buyer is looking for.

What do the buyer want?

Need, feel, fear, desire.

Who are the influencers are in the process?

They don't understand these basic concepts.

And so what they're doing is they go in and like, yeah, I'll throw a proposal out.

And then guess What?

They're calling 12 other people folks or five other people or whatever.

And so now they get five or six proposals and they all look the same.

And then the next stage that we teach people is, you know, never ending and personalized, meaningful follow up.

Right.

They're not doing that in the trades business.

So what's the common denominator?

Proposals?

Price.

Because there's no established value other than that.

Well, maybe I like this guy or this gal who came through a little bit more than others.

So I'll give that person a little more, you know, 5%, 10%, you know, but the worst thing is like I really like this person and she or he never even followed up.

So I would have gone with her or him, but I, I don't have that now.

I got all these people I don't know.

And it's like, okay, everything looks blue, everything seems to be blue.

What do I, what do I, you know, Price, convenience.

Right.

They're going to revert to those two things.

And then so, and the trades business is like, okay, well my roof is $40,000, let's say my home or whatever.

And then somebody comes in at 45,000, you know, 38,000, 34,000, 29,000.

Well, hell, I'm going to talk to the one who's doing the 32 and the 29.

I want to see what, what's the difference between the roof, right.

Then you find out they're using the same shingles and it's like, well, okay, I don't know anymore as a consumer.

So here you go, 29 grand, bam, done.

Yep.

And so they just commoditized themselves and didn't even realize.

Yeah.

So you Know understanding the art of communication and how to do it as a master communicator, master closer.

And then the follow up components that need to be on in the process.

And follow up is just not after the sale or it's continuous.

It is the glue that holds relationships together.

Love this.

It is.

This is so cool.

In fact, everybody.

So I'm going to plug your book real quick because is.

It is in the.

So after the Boston event, after Relentless, I'm starting back up the Close it now book club which so everybody listening makes sure I'll have plenty of information out there and we'll have some signups to get everybody.

It is for everybody in home services or anybody else who just wants to focus on business and sales and mindset and personal growth.

But.

So Doug's book is called Win Win Selling Unlocking the power of collaboration in sales, everybody.

So go.

Unlocking the power of profitability.

Oh, I'm sorry, yeah.

Profitability.

My bad.

By resolving objections.

Yeah, yeah.

Unlocking the power of profitability.

Yes, correct.

And so everybody go grab it.

You can get a sneak peek and read ahead, but it's definitely good.

It is in one of the probably first or second book in the list as we get back into the book club.

But.

So he literally did write the book on power of profitability and sells everybody.

We're not just making stuff up here.

The gentleman who did the Ford for me was Russ Whitney.

And some people may or may not know Russ Russell.

Billions of dollars, you know, I mean, like big, big, big numbers, right?

He owned brands like Rich dad, Poor dad as a training company.

Right.

Things like that.

And when I brought him the book because I know him, he goes, not another sales book, right?

He's like that, like.

And I'm like, russ, I just wrote it on this one thing.

He goes, well, that's interesting.

Let me read it.

And I read it and he called me back and he goes, I didn't know you could write.

He's.

He's forever harassing me.

Right, sure.

We're very good friends now.

And he goes, doug, you know, when I read this, it actually I learned a lot.

And this is a really well written book.

When I first read it because it wasn't very long because you can read this book in like, I don't know, a few hours, right?

It's not like it's, it's.

He's like, I, I first thought maybe it was going to be a report, but it was thicker than a report.

And he's like, this is like the real Deal information about the psychology and the philosophy.

And so I wanted to teach people how things happen.

Not just, hey, when somebody says this, say that.

Because 100.

When you, when you do that, you don't know what the, what the, what I call the real it.

As, you know, in the book, like what is the real thing that you're trying to resolve.

And if you just say the wrong thing, then you push more fear or more anger or more what?

Right.

So, yeah, so objections are part of what we call in the master conversation, the communicator side of the thing.

And you just, you hit on the last one.

I've got to send you some money here because you like, just frame the last one for me.

I appreciate it.

And it's really around mindset, right?

Not really around.

It is mindset.

It is really about conditioning our brain to accept larger up, you know, thoughts.

And, and, and we all have these frames that we have when we grow up, you know, whatever it might be.

You might have grown up in a family that said, you know what, don't expect to be much more than, you know, whatever.

Right.

And, and you know, we all want to serve the master template of love.

So we start buying into this stuff.

It doesn't grow on trees, money, you.

Know, don't argue with anybody ever, you know, and it's like, you know, children to be seen but not heard, you know, all the old crazy stuff.

And it, and it hit me one day where somebody grew up in an environment where it was always be the peacemaker and saying this crazy story.

I don't know if I've ever told you this.

So listening to this real estate agent, this sale on this home is like $2.7 million at the time.

And this was back in the, in the 90s.

So I can only imagine that that.

House, easy at this, whatever it is, right.

Commission at that point was the, the, the house, they actually listed it so it was 6%, if I remember correctly, at that time.

And so basically the real estate agent would get 3% and then a split of that.

So let's just call it 2%, right?

On $2.7 million.

So we're talking of.

That's solid money.

Yeah, 47, 50 grand.

Right.

On this commission.

Right.

And husband and wife are in the, in the, in the thing.

I'm listening to this company asked, you know, shadow, and they're going back and forth.

The wife wants the house.

I mean, there's no question.

She was an attorney.

They had children and she came out to, you know, raise the two Kids, the kids are little and the husband was doing quite well as well.

And, and she's selling him like crazy on this house.

Like, honey, listen, look where the pool is.

We'll put your grill right here.

You can have your friends over.

The kids will be swimming in the pool.

Yeah, right.

Well, that's pretty vision.

Casting their life forward.

Oh, God, I mean, it was crazy.

Up, up into the bedroom they go, honey, look at the view.

That looks at the mountains here.

You know, imagine what we're going to be feeling like sitting here.

I mean, she's pouring it on like, like crazy.

And he's going, I don't know, it's, it's a lot of money.

And then she says these words, the, the wife, she goes, sweetheart, I'll tell you what, the mortgage should be something like this.

We'll throw 20% down.

The mortgage should be something like this.

I'll go back to the law firm part time and we'll, we'll have, you know, your sister or whatever, we'll pay her to come in, watch the kids for, you know, the period of time I'm working.

I'll be at the house and you know, we'll get a caretaker here for, you know, our kids, a nanny, whatever.

I'll pay for that out of my money that I'm getting out of there.

And I'll cover the mortgage and everything completely.

Wow.

Like, how much more do you need?

Like, it's a no brainer at this point, right?

And he's going, huh, that's a very interesting proposition.

And then the real estate agent is listening to this and you could see her like kind of cringing through the whole process because the husband and wife are going back and forth, back and forth.

And he goes, well, hon, that, that could work, but I'm still a little concerned that, you know, you're not going to spend enough time with the kids and the real estate agent.

These words, you know, guys, this is a super important decision in your life.

And I hear you going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

I want to make a, a thing.

Why don't you guys, you know, think this over and you know, go out to dinner, spend a couple days, think it over.

You know, I don't want any, I don't want any stress or contention in your relationship.

I want to make sure that this is the right thing for you.

Oh, and I swear, Sam, if I kicked her, I would have kicked, you know what I mean?

And, and I'm like, oh my gosh.

This thing's going to like, hey, tell you guys, why don't we do this?

Let, I will call for catering, we'll bring it in.

You guys sit right here and overlook those mountains.

You can sit right here at dinner and just visualize what it would be like so you get the experience of what it'd be like in this house.

House, yeah, that's where my brain went.

Yeah, of course.

You know, and I, by the way, I'll have them pick up swimsuits for the kids.

Yeah.

Anyways, here, here's what happened.

Two days later, the real estate agent follows up.

No, no return, no return call.

Of course not.

Right.

Keeps following up, keeps following up, keeps following up.

Finally about a week after the two days, so that we're talking nine days now.

Sure.

They get the people on the call, they get the people on the phone, they go, hey, what happened?

Oh well, you know, we've been, we talked about it as you said, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay.

We loved the house, it was amazing.

And, and she said, well, okay, well if you love the house, it's been time, why don't we just wrap this thing up?

It's still on the market.

They said we, we can't.

And she said, well, what do you mean?

And they said we already bought another house.

Really?

Where?

Oh, like on Topanya Canyon Road, you know, in the same general area.

Sure.

We found this house.

And she's like wait a minute, that's more, that's kind of a more upscale neighborhood than what we were looking at.

And they go, yeah, and, and, and yeah.

She goes wait a minute, what's the address?

And she looked up the address, she goes guys, that house was listed for $4.2 million.

And they said, yeah, we bought it.

So she had a guaranteed 2.7 million dollar sale because she internally had a frame that she had to be the peacemaker.

Yep.

And they went out and actually bought, got a 4.2 million dollar house that somebody was getting 2% on or 3% on.

Right.

Who made, I mean $80,000 in commission.

Now they're pushing them a six figure commission.

Right.

And, and it's like this is what happens when we don't work on our, on our brain, on our mindset.

Because if we're got things that are tripping us up as we go along, you know, if you grew up in a place you don't like rejection and you're going to go door knocking, that's what you're talking about, Sam, you ain't gonna last long in the door knocking if you don't adjust what the association to what's going on.

Right.

Is.

And so we're constantly, consistently, I should say, working on all these triggers with people.

Because that guy who went from 1.14000 to 2.1 million, that was a big part of what happened.

Because he would tell fabricated stories.

Oh no.

It's one of the first tenets of sales is don't lie, cheater, steal.

He was doing a lot.

So we did a.

Just a very quick exercise, very easy, over a couple week period.

And he came back to me and I said, how you doing with this?

Right.

Because I knew he was reporting his numbers, metrics.

Matrix.

Matrix, folks.

And he said to me, he goes, doug, I've come to the conclusion.

I said, what?

He goes, I'm an effing liar.

Well, awareness is step one.

And not only was he lying to his clientele and they were.

He was lying to himself, he was lying to his spouse, he was lying to everybody in his family.

And when we got to the root of it, it was fear.

And the moment he stopped doing that, he became his authentic self.

And he's a lovable, likable guy.

And so now it was like people would ask him questions and he'd tell him the truth.

He's like, listen, you know what?

Will this absolutely work for me?

Yes.

But I have some concerns.

And here's the concerns I have where it won't work for you.

Right.

And so if these aren't considerations, you know, that need to be had and you're going to do your part and we do our part, then I don't have any consider, you know, concerns that it won't work.

But I do have these three things.

So let's talk about it.

And so he was closing more business than he ever thought of.

Just ultimate transparency.

Yeah.

And so that's kind.

That's the, the system.

Right.

The process of how to predictably grow your.

Your.

Your sales revenue and how to predictably grow your income and how to do it more effectively and more efficiently.

And it.

I've never.

The only.

Without question, the only place I've not seen it really work great.

It still worked, but not like I have high expectations for people.

Right.

So but is maybe like in the place that people aren't reaching out to, having conversations with people so like an E Comm business that they're just kind of staying behind the curtain or whatever.

The metrics work great.

We can dial things in, but it's not.

It's not as Effective as the, you know, the other types of businesses.

Sure.

Anything where we have to generate business that's not just attraction style.

Yeah.

But even an econ business, like you can generate business on an E comm business, but when it becomes more of a value complex sale, they got to talk to people.

So it works great in those businesses.

But I'm talking about the ones who are selling like $100 items or you know what I mean?

Like it's, it's not buy my $20, $25 t shirt.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

There are other things.

Metrics work great for that.

Right.

The metrics are amazing.

And if, if you own an ecom business and you're not tracking your metrics or you have a sales team or you're a solo seller and you're not tracking your metrics, man, there's so much bleed happening in that process, but they work amazingly well.

But the whole system together works great.

Especially with people going outbound or having conversations with people.

That works the best.

This is so good.

So good.

I know that we could talk about this forever.

And for everybody listening, this episode is releasing.

You'll hear it on May 2nd.

We're recording today on May 1st.

So it's going to release tomorrow, which you'll hear it on May 2.

So you do still have time to get to Boston to the event where Doug's going to be diving in.

He's got 90 minutes on this.

He's going to dive in and give some very actionable steps here.

I know you're putting me on the spot here.

90 minutes.

I got to teach a lot of good stuff for 90 minutes, right?

Absolutely.

Let's make it worth your while here too.

So if everybody that if this, if this makes sense to you, if you've resonated with this, you know, reach out.

So first of all, how can everybody get a hold of you?

Because I would love to get some, some individuals and groups connected.

Because it doesn't matter what industry you're in.

It doesn't matter if you're in H Vac or plumbing or electrical or garage doors or solar irrigation.

You name it.

What everybody that's in, in this group, Doug has worked with your industry more than likely for the most part, or something very, very similar.

And, you know, it really carries through.

It's the mindset, it's the principles.

When you replace one widget with another, it doesn't really matter.

He's helped people sell everything from sandwiches to race cars.

So how can people get a hold.

Of you, Doug, like, and that's true.

Actually, I work with Jason's Deli.

Right.

And we got a, we got a really good bump for Jason's Deli.

So yeah, we did, we, we did sell sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and, and I did work, you know, with NASCAR and others.

So.

And certainly the trades that you mentioned, I've, I've definitely have worked in all of those.

And some, some I'm under non disclosure, I can't say.

But I mean it's some very well known brands and in that industry as well.

And I, I think, Sam, I'll give my contact.

They ought to come to the event 100%.

Right.

Because it's not just like if they love this conversation, there's so many other people that are going to be just conveying so much information that is all practical and usable.

So.

But if they want to reach out to me directly, they can just shoot me an email at Dougceo sales strategies dot com.

Love it.

And you know, we do some master classes as you know, on like follow up and we do some master classes on predictable revenue as well.

But I would, I would absolutely recommend that people come.

And by the way, the weather is cherry.

It's beautiful here now.

And you know, I'm fortunate that I don't live that far from, from where you're doing it in Boston.

Right.

So it's like 45 minutes.

But I can tell you that, you know, people are out and they're sunbathing and it's not too hot, it's not too cold.

It's, it's like perfect weather.

Beautiful.

And I hear there's a Texas Rangers and Red Sox game on Tuesday night of the week of the event.

Oh, no.

Oh no.

That's gonna be.

I had to, I had to list the Rangers first since I'm from Texas.

That's, it's a good time of year to go to baseball.

But we can't because you'll be at the event.

Right?

So.

Well, there's a whole season, there's only three days of this event.

That's funny.

Yeah.

So, you know, that would be the best.

They can check me out at Doug Brown 1, 2, 3 on LinkedIn or just type in Doug C.

Brown revenue growth.

There's tons of, you know, I'll come up on I don't know how many pages, but certainly the first six to ten pages you can.

Absolutely.

And for everybody, that doesn't really give everybody your Instagram handle as well.

And then I'll, I'll emphasize why here in a second.

Why don't you give them my Instagram?

Oh, yeah.

Here, let me just look it up real quick.

I want to make sure.

Because the re.

The reason I bring this up, everybody, is I want you to understand the magnitude of the guest that we have on today, because there's a.

His history is so incredible.

He does have 1.1 million followers on Instagram.

1.1 million.

So that's the magnitude of who we are so honored to have his time on the guest today.

His Instagram handle is super simple.

It's Dougcbrown.

So Doug Seabrown underscore.

He does have a blue check.

Of course, anyone has over a million followers had better have a blue check.

And so the amount of value that this gentleman brings, and if you've never listened to his I was a guest on CEO Sell Strategies podcast.

Make sure you listen to that show as well, because they're nice and short.

They're usually about 30 minutes or so.

20 to 30 minutes.

And the get.

The level of guests that he has on his show are incredible.

I instantly became a fan of the show and I've.

I don't know how many episodes I've listened to at this point.

And I learned something every single time as well.

Yeah, and so do I, Sam, like, when I do them right.

So I want people to understand that no matter what level you are, like, you know, I know billionaires, like, you know, people like, I mean, we had the guy on who founded Deloitte on our podcast, right.

I was like, it was called Braxton industries, Thomas Doily Jr.

And I'm like, I'm at awe that, you know, that this gentleman wants to get on.

I mean, we had the founder and CEO of 1-800-got junk on the.

On the podcast.

Right?

And so, I mean, how can you not learn things from people like that?

And the crazy part about this is, and I think it's, you know, this goes back to mindset, and I want to just keep drilling this part home.

You can do all the mechanics and everything.

Right.

But if your mind is not open to this expansion, then what ends up happening is we end up kind of self sabotaging that expansion.

Yeah.

Like, I never imagined that when I first started out that we'd have 1.1 million followers on fall on that.

We have like, I don't know, something like, like 800 or something thousand on Facebook and you know, like, oh, I'm sorry, Meta, don't sue me Facebook, you.

Know, or whatever they call it next week.

But exactly, it's.

But.

But here's the thing like what I've learned over life is if you're doing something and you have a fulfillment at doing it, there's a purpose driven process behind this.

And you, and you work your mind around that you're going to make money no matter what.

But when you upgrade your skills and the application of those skills, the weird part is, is, you know, and I've seen this happen with many, many of my friends is all of a sudden there's like this weird humility that comes into life because it's like, like I got, I got one friend right now, you know, in one of his accounts, he was telling me the other day, he's like, it grows to 8 to 8 to 10% a year, tax free.

He's got $20 million in the account.

And I'm like, well, dude, peel a little off for brotherly love here, you know, like, I'm just joking with him.

It's like, I'll pay the taxes on it, right?

Like that type of thing.

But you know, it's like the guy, so humble, he's like, it's like, yeah, whatever, right.

And he's probably got, I don't know how many accounts he's got like this.

He's got more than one, I can tell you that.

Sure.

You know, yeah, you can fly private planes or whatever.

So some of these people, they go that direction.

And those are the people I love to hang out with.

And, and, and on any level doesn't mean that you have to be wealthy.

And what I want people to understand is unless we open up the mind to the possibilities of stuff like this, because I can tell you, interviewing these people, hanging around with these people, none of them started thinking, oh, I'm going to be the biggest, you know, consulting company on the planet.

You know, I mean, they didn't start out that way.

They started out like everybody else.

I'm trying to make a living for my family.

You know, a few bought maybe, I don't know, I haven't had the chance to interview like, Jeff Bezos.

I really would like to know, did you really think world domination was possible back then?

Right.

Where was the vision?

The, the famous picture of him sitting in the office with the spray painted Amazon sign, you know, next to his desk.

What was the vision then?

What did it look like?

Well, I mean, Sam, he was door knocking to raise funds.

Yeah, right.

So, so yet again, for everybody that says door knocking doesn't work, a guy that was the richest person in the world for a while, door knocked to raise funds for his company, I, I.

Have a gentleman I used to know, same last name as mine.

I won't mention his name because he'll punch me out.

But, but he actually in the origin when they were door knocking type play for Staples when like penny stocks on staple, like pink sheet state.

Right.

And he said no, he's like, I can't ever see an owner or CEO of a company going and buying office supplies at Staples.

Well, they're staples today.

Right.

I mean, so the, the point being is that we all make mistakes.

We all make, we have some wins.

But you know, when you're starting out, sometimes people won't believe in you.

And if you're starting out in sales or you're in a place in sales and you're having a little bit of a challenge, some people aren't going to believe in what you're trying to do.

And that's okay.

You've got to believe in yourself.

And the only way to do that is you got to change, challenge the current paradigms that happen in your life.

Sure.

Because it, there's a difference between you thinking something and you taking that thought and putting a label on yourself.

The moment you put that label on yourself, it sticks.

And so what we want to do is be able to have that, is peel off label and get rid of that label and then you remove the drag that you know, because all airline, all airplanes need thrust, lift and drag.

Right.

But you lower the drag so you can fly higher, faster, quicker with less fuel, etc.

I love this.

You know, you, what you were just talking about there, this is, this is going to rabbit trail us into something else real quick.

Yeah, we should probably.

I.

So I'm doing a session.

So at the event, I'm doing a session on belief and identity and another gentleman that's actually going to be there, Scott, Scott Sylvan Bell, he's also doing a session on identity and what it takes to have the mindset of, you know, the mindset of a champion, the mindset of cells.

And it all comes from our thoughts.

When we have, we are who we believe we are and the results, our outcomes come after that.

And so we're going to really deep dive into, you know, how to change your thoughts, which direct your belief about yourself and then your belief creates your identity and then out of your identity, that's where the outcome happened.

It's not the other way around.

Everybody thinks things and you got to have a reason why you want to do it.

Right.

That's, that's, you know, not to promote Simon Chinook or whatever his name.

Right.

Cynic or whatever it is.

But, but the there's, and not the Plug Mike podcast, but this is a great value episode.

There's a, there's a gentleman called Dustin Gutowski and he in a very short period of time built a 50 million dollar roofing company.

Yeah.

And he, at the time he started it was driving around delivering pizzas in between door knocking.

That's grind.

And he started out because he had this huge.

Why he had, you know, he wanted to be a good dad and a good husband and you know, and he grew up in a really rough environment that would shape anybody's brain to say you're not really, you know, kind of like the Oprah Winfrey type environment.

If anybody knows about that.

She grew up in a very, very hard environment and hard backstory.

Yeah.

And so if they can do it and you're, how do I say this kindly?

It can however you want to say it on this show.

If you're, if you're in a self pity party place, gotta get out of it because that label that I'm the victim of this or I'm the, you know, I'm not smart enough or I'm, you know, I tried this before and it'll never work.

So I'm the guy who, you know, or gal who doesn't, you know, who fails.

And, and you label yourself as that, you're gonna see yourself in that frame just like you put your picture in a frame and what you're missing is what's outside the frame.

If you're looking through binoculars and you can only see us, you know, like your hands are up like that.

You can only see what's in the, in the lens of the binoculars.

But then if I take the binoculars off, you can see a wider field and you can go, wow, I didn't know a farm was over there.

I didn't know there was a little goat over here or whatever.

Right.

And you see different things when you put these labels on.

You're putting the binoculars on and you're narrowing your field and that's awesome.

When you put labels on.

I'm courageous, I'm successful.

I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to be this type of individual.

And you're, and you're literally labeling yourself with positivity.

Yes.

And that's, that's awesome.

Right.

Because those labels, you will act as if, and, and I can tell people this because Sam, I know the moment it happened to me I was in the military and they were training us and then we had to run at live machine gun fire.

Oh, yeah, that was an eye opening experience, I can tell you.

Life flash before your eyes.

Right.

And I remember clearly the moment that when they were training us and we're all running toward the machine gun fire because that's what they're teaching us because it's a technique to like.

Otherwise you're.

You got a wide field and they'll just pick you off.

Right, right.

And I'm running, I'm like, why the hell are we running toward this?

That's what's going through my brain.

I'm like, no, keep going.

Because this is, this is the mission.

Right?

Then when it happened for real.

It.

Was still a shock, but you had the label of, okay, this is what we got to do.

Sure.

And people survived it.

So I just think that, you know, it's.

By the way, folks, no one, no one's going to throw you out their third bedroom window because they say no to you because you offered windows in their house.

Right.

I mean, I suggest that, that with the high probability that's never going to happen.

Right.

So the most they're going to say is no.

And, you know, so just take it for what it's worth.

Be careful of the labels that we put on ourselves.

And Sam, I'm so grateful that you and he are doing that because this is a big part of, of being successful.

And.

And, you know, I mean, I can tell you, out of those 36 businesses and now that I didn't even know, 37, 38 coming up, you know, not all of them were successful.

And there were some very, very like, learning lessons that people, you know, would ask me, like, why did you get back up off the ground and do that?

And it's because.

Because that's who I am.

You know that.

Remember that song?

I Get knocked down and I Get back up again.

You know that Jumbo Wamba song or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Every once in a while I'll play that just to kind of remind myself that that's because I know who you are.

Right.

It's your identity.

It's my identity and the labels that I put on myself.

And the reason I did that is because having exposure to all these great CEOs and business owners, they went through heck and back on some of these things.

And they failed numerous times before they actually succeeded.

And even when they succeeded, they failed in numerous things along the pathway of success.

And so, you know, doesn't mean you have to be them.

But in your own world, what are you going to actually take?

And.

And, you know, are you going to get knocked down and get back up again?

Because it's not that you get knocked down that's the problem.

It's the recovery time.

For most people, the shorter your recovery time, the better you are, the better off you are.

I love it.

We could not have ended on a better note.

For everybody listening, I will make sure to get the link to the episode that Doug was talking about with the founder of the roofing company that'll be in the show notes.

So make sure to click that and listen to that episode.

Massive value there.

And like I said, order the book, listen to the podcast, and definitely check out some of the products that CEO Sales Strategies has to offer, because I can tell you all, I'm going to take the master classes.

Absolutely.

When you choose to be a lifelong learner, you can always learn from the people who have gone before you and have done what you want to do.

And so follow the lead, everybody.

Successfully.

Success leaves clues.

So thanks for being on the show, man.

Any.

Any last things that you want to impart to everybody before we sign off here?

Yeah.

Make sure you put the link to the event.

Come to the event.

Yeah.

Close it now.

Bootcamp.com that's where you get your tickets.

Thanks for having me on.

Yes, sir.

Thanks for being here for Everybody.

Yep.

Closeit now.

Bootcamp.com it's going to be an incredible time.

The first of a movement.

This is not just another event.

This is not just.

We're not just sales training here.

We're creating a movement of something that is different and new.

And it's been a long time coming.

I've said for a long time, an idea whose time has come can't be stopped.

And that is 100% what's happening here in a way that I've never seen before.

And the way people are coming together to support this is.

Has been pretty mind blowing.

And so I'm grateful and I know that lives will literally be changed out of it.

And so thanks for being on the show.

I cannot wait to see you this next week here.

In just a handful of days, we'll be able to break bread together in person.

And yeah, we're definitely going to make some serious impact.

So as you know, everybody, this is how we always sign off.

Make sure you are intentional with what you do.

You do have the ability to change the labels that you put on yourself, Peel off that old negative label and write your new story.

This is the first day of the rest of your life, what are you going to do with it?

And I implore you, go be somebody worth buying from.

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

Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that 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 at the real Close it now and on Facebook at Close It Now.

See you next time.