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.

All right, welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here, back in Ready to rock. We are in the saddle again, coming at you hot. And live from the Austin, Texas area. Yeehaw. Let's get going. You're going to love this episode. Today we're going to talk about some strategies for becoming an elite performer. Right. I'm going to give you a little bit of insight into what top performers do that everyone else doesn't. So my goal and my mission is to inspire, encourage, and motivate every single one of you to take one step every single day farther than you did the day before, to do one more thing extra than you did the day before, to be 1% better than you did the day before. If you can be 1% over cross the year, that is a huge amount of improvement and growth. So that means that by the end of the year, you are not. You are not 1% better times each day. You are 37 times better than you were when you started. Because the power of compounding, right? The power of compounding is incredible. So if we can be focused to be intentional and to be 1% better every single day than you were the day before, that is your only competition. That is your only contest. You're gonna start hearing so many people all of a sudden on this podcast, and I'll tell you why here in a second. But not so many people. We're gonna hear from some people here pretty quick that are selling insane numbers. And I'm gonna categorize it a little bit because there's a little bit of stacking the deck there, right? So we'll talk about that. But also, don't let it discourage you. You are not comparing yourself to everyone else. You're comparing yourself to be the best version of yourself. Day after day, the people that have been doing this in our industry, doing sales for, you know, 15, 20 years that are, you know, putting up these incredible numbers. Well, they've got 20 years experience doing it right and focusing and getting intentional about growing themselves, putting themselves in front of the right opportunities at the right time. Don't Compare your chapter one or your chapter five or your chapter seven or 10 to their chapter 20 or 25 or 30. So let it inspire you and show you what's possible. Don't let it discourage you into well, I'll never be as good as they are. That is the message that I want to bring across to you. Because what's going to happen is the first thing I want to talk about today is I have been asked to speak at the H Vac Champions Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Hook Agency. Hook H Vac Marketing, Hook Agency. Friday, January 24th in 2025. So coming up, Friday, January 24th in 2025, you can get the link in the Close It Now Facebook group for this tickets. Get your tickets right now. There is a super early bird until the end of November 2024. That is $200 off. Now here's the catch, right? Let me tell you about the catch real quick and then I'll tell you who's gonna be there and you'll understand what I said here a minute ago. The catch is this venue only has 60 seats. That's 6,0. This will sell out, right? So grab your tickets now. It will sell out right now. Super early bird is the code. One word and it's 200 off. I'll put that link in the show notes and it's also going to be within the Close It Now Facebook group. So join the Facebook group to get to this H Vac Champion Summit. Now, I'm going to be one of the keynote speakers and here are the rest of the people that will be speaking along with me. We have of course, Tim Brown, who is the founder and CEO of the Hook Agency. We've got Brent Buckley. Hope you know who that is. He did. I think the number was right around 14 million this last year in sales. He is a total beast. We have of course, Jason Jdub, moneymaker Walker, who's going to be with Masters of the Hustle. He is going to be a keynote at this event as well. Along with myself, we've got of course, Uncle Joe Cressera. He is also a keynote. We have Elizabeth Howard. She is the GM at Lee's. If you haven't seen anything about them, they went from 35 million to 1 pace to do 100 million this year, which is incredible. And we have Phil Falaski. He is going to do 17, probably 20 million this year in sales. It's just absolutely absurd, but it's possible. And he's doing it and he'll show you being a top performer, being a top achiever. All of these people are speaking at the H VAC Champions Summit along with myself. And it's going to be really interesting because we've got very different perspectives. You've got Joe Chrisra and Elizabeth Howard who are very much in. And Phil Folaski is very much in. Call by call, right? It's call by call. Everything is set up, that's fed. And of course Brett Buckley too. All of their models are of course, you've got a whole bunch of people out in the field feeding one person all the lay downs. Right. Which is interesting. It's going to be fun. And then of course, my philosophy, in my opinion is there's a time and a place for that, but it's not for the masses. So that's my personal opinion. Maybe at this event I'll be persuaded otherwise. We'll see. Because I love differing thoughts, differing opinions, different ways to do things. It does not mean that because one works that another one doesn't, or that one is right and one is wrong. It's just different perspectives and different ways to skin the cat. Right? All the roads lead to Rome. Same destination, different ways to get there. So it's pretty exciting to bring us all together in one space. And so it's going to be Friday, January 24, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Hook Agency. And again, there are only 60 tickets. That's all the venue will hold is going to be at Hook Agency. And I am stoked to be representing for Close it now at this place. So it's going to be awesome. Make sure to go get your ticket. Come see me. I may be hosting a little special event for the Close it now community at this event, but we'll see. We'll get that put together, we'll announce it after. That is my event. The Close it now Spring 2025 Sales Masterclass Boot Camp. We are going to take you through the actual sales process of what works and doesn't work now. This is going to be the very last week of April, the week of 28 April that overlaps the first couple days of May. It's going to be in Boston, Massachusetts. And I got actually confirmed with the. I've got a partner up there that's going to be helping to coordinate. You will be excited to hear who that is shortly, but we confirmed those dates yesterday, so that is official. You will hear plenty more information about that coming up soon. Something that I really want to talk about for a minute is the difference in close it now and how we do training versus a lot of the other trainers in our industry. And some of the training that you may have experienced is we are not the technical part of the sales call trainers. We're not going to be park here and you know, walk up to the, walk up to the door, put your mat down, you got to put your floor savers on. Do you ring the bell, doorbell? Do you knock? Right, where do you stand? You know, all of that, honestly, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter. It doesn't move the needle all that much. What is important is the language in the conversation. It's your tonality, it's your body language, it's how you ask your questions. You know, one of the main talk that I give when I'm speaking at events is change your language, change your results because it's so incredible. If you've listened to many of the podcasts, you'll hear a lot of different times we have word substitutions that make all the difference. So replacing one word with one other or just moving words around in a sentence to get a completely different meaning. Now this is actually one of the things that I train during my trainings when we do on site visits for companies. And I'll tell you, there's not a company that we've gone out to do an on site visit with. As long as they implemented what we're training, their numbers haven't gone up, usually 20 to 30% within the first week or two. And then stay there. That's on the short side. There's plenty, plenty, plenty of companies across the country that have gone up dramatically more than that. Go back through the episodes, you'll hear me talk about some of the numbers from the different areas. But the main thing that we train is mindset. It's the language, it's the conversation and it's the skills. So right now we are booking for the fall and the spring, fall of 2024. We've got a couple months left, we've got spring 2025. We are filling up the spots really quickly. If you would like us out to your company. You said, you know what, I'm tired of being average. I'm tired of just with a little bit of growth. Let's get some people out here let's get some training. Let's allow our people, let's invest in our people so they can conversation. They can have better conversations with better output, better results. They can start to convert those calls that you're not converting right now. Right. You want your close rates to go up. You want your average tickets to go up. It is time for you to reach out to close it. Now you can email me samoseitnow.net or go to the website closeitnow.net, you can read a little bit about the coaching programs there and fill out a form. We'll get in touch with you. Let's have a conversation. Right? I'll hop on the call with you. We'll see what you're wanting to accomplish and show you a path to get there. This is what we do. We help companies grow. The sales system that we, that we train becomes the backbone of the organization, becomes the operating system for the sales department. And then what happens when you have a consistent system? It is your habits. And I'm going to put a pin in that. And we're going to talk about it more here in a minute. So reach out because we are filling up fast. I want to make sure that you get your company plugged in because here's how much it costs. It's free plus profit. It is free plus profit. The amount that you will invest into the training, we will make back for you, with you, along with you. We're not gonna do it for you, we'll do it with you. We'll show your team how to make that back and then it turns to profit every single time we're out and people implement. And that is the beautiful part when you invest into training. If you're investing into trainers, into different trainings and things and you're not seeing a return on your investment, find somewhere else to put your money because as a business owner, you should be investing in things where you get a return on investment. Now that's a huge conversation and I'm going to leave that to the experts, like Al Levy with a seven power contractor. If you need systems for your business, get a hold of him. Great guy, awesome systems and love him. But let's move on a little bit and we're going to circle back around to this idea of these habits in our life. But I want to highlight, before we get into the episode here, I want to highlight a review that we had because I love reviews. And everyone, thank you so much for leaving me a review. If you've ever gotten value from the close it now podcast. I would love if you went to Apple Podcasts and left me a five star review and go to Google and just leave Close It Now a five star review. And then you can also hop into Facebook and you can leave a five star review on the Facebook page. And then in the Close it now group, you can write a review. That would be awesome. I love it. And if I read your review on an episode and you hear it, then I will give you a free coaching session that is about a thousand dollar value, everybody. And I will tell you there's not been a single person who's done this that has not said, oh my gosh, the amount of value. And my numbers went up immediately just from one one hour session. So if you hear me read your review, then message me and we'll get you scheduled. We'll hook it up, we'll get you to the next level. So this one is from Nickness. N I K N E S. The title is just awesome podcast and we're five stars. Sam Drops Tons of Golden Nuggets every episode. Just listened to the Overcoming Objections episode for the third time. Exclamation point. Great content, exclamation point. So thank you, Nickness. I appreciate it so much and this is awesome. Message me if you hear this and we will. Let's hook you up with a coaching session. Let's solve something. What is a friction point in your life and what's a friction point in your sales process? And let's get you over that hump. So let's get into the episode today. We're talking about habits. We're talking about the things that make you know, that set top performers apart from everyone else. And so, and I'll tell you right now, I'm. A lot of this is coming from. There's a book I'm reading right now by Ed Milette. It's called Max out yout Life. You could get it super cheap, go to his Instagram, follow him, order this book. It's really, really incredible. But the nugget that I want to talk about today is what does it take to get the results that you want? It all has to do with our actions. Our actions are rituals, he says, right? Our actions, our habits. Because everybody really. Let's talk about this for a minute. Time is an illusion. There is no such thing as the past. Anything that happened in the past is memory. All we have is right now and right now and right now and right now and right now and then it's gone. And right now and then it's gone. So anything that even happened this morning doesn't exist anymore. It's memory. Because all we have is right now, now looking forward into the future. Anything in the future is imagination. It hasn't happened yet. We can plan, we can like have this idea of what the day is going to look like or what the future is going to hold. But we all know it could change in a moment's notice. Literally, a plane could crash on your building right now and everyone there is toast. Well, that completely changes the trajectory of the day, right? So anything in the future is imagination. So that means we only have right now. So how do we build a life? How do we create a life that we want? With our daily habits. We are the combination of the habits that we do daily, the rituals that we establish daily. We're very habit oriented people. So when we do this, so what do we do? We've got to get some very seriously great habits in our lives if we want to move on to the next level. Now go back to the episode on how to get out of the slump, how to get out of the summer slump that I just did in 2024. In that episode I go through the full. It's an exercise to help you recognize and analyze where you are in your life currently in six different areas and six different categories and those categories are sales skills, personal growth, spiritual practice, relationships, nutrition and fitness. If you get all of those pieces working, all of those pieces focused on improvement, your sales numbers will go up. Even if you leave the sales skills out of it and you focus on developing yourself as an individual. If you focusing focus on becoming someone worth buying from, then the sales will happen because people want to do business with people who are worth buying from. If they know you, like you and trust you is one thing, but they can buy from you and they don't have to be your friend. We have to establish trust. Of course. Yes, we have to establish trust. But so many times when I'm coaching people, what I hear is man, that appointment was great. We built awesome rapport. It was awesome. We were so friendly. And then they told me they want to think about it and turns out they went with somebody else. Well, if sales was only rapport building and building relationship in the house, that was it. Just being friendly. Well, but you didn't. So happened. It's not just about that. It's so many other different elements. The more that you can focus on your own personal growth and the more people will buy from you because you're worth buying from. You speak a different language than everybody else. You speak at a higher level than anyone else in the industry because you've developed yourself. Now, I'm not saying just use big words. That is don't hear what I'm not saying. What I am saying is the more that you grow your knowledge base and yes, salespeople in H vac and plumbing and electrical in every single home service, learn the skills, learn the stuff, right? Learn your product, learn your solutions. You don't have to know all the technical details to start and be great at sales in home improvement. But I will tell you the best people have learned the systems, they've learned the product, they've learned the solutions over time. So they're just as well versed in technical skills as they are in the sales side of it. I can guarantee you that. Because there's a huge lack of technical ability in the sales teams in our home improvement industries. And it's gross because people are out there doing not the best work for a homeowner. Just. And really, because they just don't know better. So take it, it's your career, take it. Your responsibility to learn everything you can about it. Of course, yes, communication is key. Communication is number one. But so how do we get these habits in our life that are going to take us to that next level? Right? So what he's saying in here, and this is how powerful habits are in our lives. It says Duke University did a study that showed 40% of the actions people take each day do not require a decision because they are simply habitual actions. 40%, right. That's huge. This ritual thing is mind blowing. We're creatures of habit. 100% is what happens. I mean, think about it. We get up in the morning and what do we do? We do the same steps every day. You put the coffee on, you brush your teeth, you take a shower, you do the gym. Hopefully you do the gym or some sort of exercise. You know, if you're Dan Antonelli, you're cycling, right? He'll go ride 10, 15, 20 miles before work. So huge shout out to you, Dan. But everyone has a habit and we all have these steps that we do, right? The difference is what are you doing on a consistent basis? Are you creating and building in habits of success into your life? Habits happen on cue, right? The cue signals you to move into non thinking or just habit mode, right? So this can be good or it can be bad, it could be great or it could be detrimental, depending on what your habit is, right? Are your habits serving you or are they sabotaging you, right? Do you get up in the morning and just, you know, sit on the crapper for 30 minutes and look at your phone? And I will tell you, up until a few weeks ago, I was guilty. I was guilty of that. And I've changed my actions and I'm instantly like one week of this, I'm seeing different results. Week and a half now, right? I stopped grabbing my phone. So the first thing I'll tell you, don't grab your phone first thing in the morning. Don't pay attention to what is happening in the world yet. You've got to get your mind right. Put your oxygen mask on first. So your morning routine is crucial. It's everything. Build yourself in time to have some mindfulness moment. If you pray, get your prayer in, get your study in, do the things that you know are in alignment with your own integrity and you know what you should be doing in the morning, get the exercise in. You cannot be a top performer if you don't get your exercise in. If you don't eat the right nutrition, if you're skipping breakfast, I'm here to tell you your results suffer every single day because you skipped breakfast. Healthy eating habits are huge. Now of course, if you're in some special situation and you're doing, you know, intermittent fasting or whatever it is, I get it, I've been there, I've done that, I do that. But live a healthy lifestyle. You cannot be a million dollar earner and eat off the dollar menu. No one does that. So your habits, your habits are everything. How do we develop these habits? Right? It stands to reason. Habit. You know that the person with the best rituals and habits are the ones that are going to win, right? Those are what is going to take you to the next level. So develop those habits in your life. Get up a little earlier and don't do it all at once. This is the big message too, is the recipe for failure is making all of the changes at the same time, right? The recipe for success is small, incremental 1% changes every single day. For example, getting up early. Did you know if you get up one extra hour every day, that's 365 additional hours every year for you to win, right? Nothing productive happens while you're sleeping. Stop sleeping your life away. Right? Nothing productive happens while you're asleep other than, of course, recharge. And everyone requires a certain amount of sleep. Yes, but so many people sleep more than they need to, right? So check this out and don't make the change all at once, right? If you normally wake up at 8, then spend a week at 7:45. Adjust it just by 15 minutes at a time. Then the next week, 7:30, the next week 7:15. This is a lifelong journey. You don't have to do it all at once. But making a small change a little bit consistently and intentionally will get you the results that you're looking for. This is what top performers do. So if you adopt the habits of top performers, then you will start to see the same results. Top performers see has nothing to do with anything else. Top performer, the difference is their habits are better, right? Their personal growth is more because they put more work in to get there. And a lot of it happens before you ever woke up. So even reducing your sleep, one hour, talk about an impact in one year, one hour a day, that's 365 additional hours every year for you to win over a five year period. That's the equivalent of adding 76 productive work days to your business or towards achieving your goal, right? Over a five year, that's 76 days. Take your current average and divide it out. Your current total sales, your current close rate, all the things, right? Divide it out by your current year and see what your do the math, right? See what your one day, the value of one day is to you and your life right now. Now multiply that by 76 days and see what that number looks like. Wow. It's literally a way to get more time out of your day. So, gosh, all of these things, I'm telling you, not everyone has it. You don't have to do any of them. But I will stress to you and encourage you, take a step start. You have to start to get better. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, right? You eat an elephant one bite at a time. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about going from. Well, this year I only sold a million and a half and I listened to this one podcast that had Phil Felaski or Brent Buckley talking about how they are doing 14 million, 16, 20 million in a year and think that you're going to get there next year because you heard, oh, they gave a tip and a nugget on a podcast. No, they've got 20, 25 years of experience of being intentional and being. You ask anyone in those companies, they will all tell you those guys are the hardest working people they've ever met in their lives. And I can guarantee you that, right? I was listening to a podcast that Tim Brown did with Elizabeth and Phil from Lee's the month of July. He put up three million, over three million dollars, almost three and a half million dollars in sales. But he worked every day and not just a 40 hour week. Superstardom does not happen in 40 or 60 hours a week. Right. The dude doesn't do anything else. So which actually takes me to a quick little pop out topic that I want to talk about. You have to decide knowing and really balancing and weighing your life situation, what are your current life circumstances and how much time can you invest into your sales career versus what else is going on in your life. Do you have a family or not? Are you single or not? Do you have other responsibilities and requirements that eat up some of the time that it would take that you could put towards this, that you could put towards your sales career, that you could put towards generating more business or closing more deals? Or do you like personally, I live a life where I have to be so extremely efficient in the short amounts of time that I have to actually do business because I have a huge family and it's very complex and it takes a ton of my time. Right. And so you have to decide what success looks like for you and what level of work that you want to put in to achieve it. Now my goal is to help you figure out whatever that is because there is no wrong answer here. You don't have to be, you know, an $18 million a year person. If you're a 2 million dollar a year person and you're perfectly happy with that and that's fine, that's awesome. My goal is to say, hey, well you don't have to run any more appointments but let's get your close rate and average ticket higher so you can earn more and work less. Right? That's my goal. We can absolutely go out there and I can show you how to blow the doors off and do that. I've done that. I've been that guy, right? For years and years and years. Come around April every single year. My wife said, okay, I'm the air conditioner widow, I'll see you in October. And I was gone. I was gone. I was up before the sun and I was home after dark. I mean I was running appointments. I would start appointments at 11 o' clock at night. The latest appointment I ever. What's the latest you've ever run? I started one on one at 1am no more than once. I've started numerous appointments after midnight started. That means I wasn't getting off until three and then I was out the next morning before seven for the next appointment, right? That's the work ethic it takes if you want to be the number one person in your state, I'm telling you, or in the country, I'm telling you this. That's the work ethic it takes to get there. Unless you build the model around yourself. Right? So, so many pieces to this. So much is going on. But I'm here to tell you, your daily habits create your life. If you want to change your results, if you want a different week from now, if you want a different month from now, if you want a different life six months from now or a year from now, it starts today with your habits that you are, the habits that you're deciding to eliminate because they don't serve you, that they're holding you back. And the habits that you're choosing to adopt, which are the habits of top performers and successful people, which will drive you forward towards the same results. Because remember, success leaves clues. And that, my friends, is what I want to end on. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening today. This has been a great podcast. I'm happy, so happy with this, with this topic, right? This topic is everything. It literally controls how our life turns out. You have control of your life. Stop being reactive. Stop being the person that just lets life happen to you and choose to create a life worth having. And that is my mission, to level up all of the home service industries to become that person. So until next time, my friends, be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive headfirst first 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 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.