Transcription
You know a lot of [ __ ] and like you've clearly packaged this in really easy to understand ways. It's almost exhausting listening because it's like every it's like when you read a really good historical book or something, it's like every sentence is packed with a fact.
You seem like a grinder when you were building these businesses. Were you just like doing 80-hour, 100-work weeks? And what about now? Because you're like yolked, you're huge, you're like a bodybuilder. So so like how did you balance like being fit and getting married and you? But I don't know you well, but you seem like you'd be grinding hard.
So my wife works in the business with me, so we are true 50-50 partners. Like it's very rare. I like I recognize how rare it is. She actually is 100 matched with me and like should just as much be on this call because she runs the other half. Like she from a work standpoint she has more output than I did. She is the operator, so she builds the infrastructure, she does the recruiting, she sets the they are the HR stuff, she does the culture, she like she does, I mean, she runs everything. Um, I just, you know, occasionally come up with a good idea and try and stick with it long enough um to see it come true. But in terms of grinding, like I love business, like I love this, and there's nothing that really stimulates me like this, and so I do as much of it as I can. And if we want to go out to dinner, we'll go out to dinner, you know, but like worst I was just saying we're single, so we don't have kids, and so we work from like five-ish to four, and then, you know, usually in the middle of the day we'll probably go to the gym for an hour or two and then come back and keep working and go out to dinner at night, and that's that's kind of our lives.
You seem pretty um this isn't I would say I'm a little bit I'm I'm definitely this Sean has a little bit of it too, like manic's not the right word, but like neurotic maybe is a better word um where it's like uh there's something that's deep-rooted inside of you. It's not like you want to do something necessarily. It feels like you're it's more compulsive or obsessed. You're obsessed about stuff, which I am as well.
If that's true, what's that rooted in? What are you trying to get done?
So I think originally the drive was from just crippling insecurity and needing approval, right? And then I think from like a behavioral conditioning standpoint, I got immediate feedback that was positive, and then I was conditioned to continue those actions. Now I continue to do them without the original catalyst that got them going to begin with. I don't think I suffer, you know, from the insecurities as much as I used to. I'd say I'm probably 30% better than I was at the beginning, and it might just be because I have this massive big pile of money that I can use as an emotional crutch to why I'm not a piece of [ __ ] that would help. I'm just being like I mean, and if it were all disappeared, I'd find out how much actual growth I had or if I just compensated by circumstance and you know compensate for the division. Yeah, I don't know. You can send it to me, and we'll we'll find out. We'll see. Let's run the experiment.
I like so there's the compulsion and like this last year I pretty much took off like I did not work that much, and so I saw the difference and I have come to accept that I love working and I don't need to judge myself for that or or take in other people's judgment on how much I should quote do. Like this is my life and this is what I like doing, and their ideals that they've arbitrarily made up as what they define as balance are irrelevant to me.
You said you took last year off. What'd you do? What'd you get up to?
Um, we traveled a lot. Uh, went to Cabo, went to Scottsdale, went to Sedona, went to Flagstaff. Traveled all over. One out felt felt honestly pretty empty, like you can only eat so many times. Like there's just not a lot to do. It feels good having that rest though, like you can't be in the trenches I think like or rather you need breaks from being at war I think, and maybe even phrasing it I'm just throwing this out there like phrasing it is instead of a like a break is a shift in how you're thinking because like it's going from dirt to clouds, but I still think it's high-leverage activity, you know, I mean, or like output, it's just a different type of output.
You said something on one of your videos that uh you're one of the only other people that I have heard say this phrase. I use it a lot, which is yeah, I had a season like or this season I'm doing this or I had a season where I was really just focusing on X, and that's been like a game changer for me. My personal trainer and kind of coach, she's like my mindset coach plus trainer, he does this all the time, but he's like he's like I'm in a season right now where I'm I'm just uh he'll be like, you know, I'm practicing not waiting, and he's like he comes up with these little themes or he'll be like right now I'm in a season where I'm going to eat whatever I want. And it's kind of like in the entrepreneurial world it's like time boxing's like all right, I'm going to give myself two hours to get this [ __ ] [ __ ] done, or I'm going to launch in the next two weeks no matter what, right? Like we I've used time boxing for productivity, and now this season's thing it makes every like decision you're making less heavy of a commit because you're like it's okay, yeah, because there's yeah there's beginnings and ends, and this season is gonna feel a little different just like winter feels different than summer. That's how I use it. Do you do you use it like that?
I just noticed you said that phrase 100%.
Yeah, I mean, I I think about it in terms of entrepreneurial seasons, and I at least for me might have been like five-year chunks, and so this is gonna be my fourth season, and they've roughly been about the same length, so I think that it probably takes me like three-ish years to like really see something through and then two years to figure out how I'm going to transition from that thing or realize or mod, you know, whatever. That's right. It's kind of like a PE cycle almost.
Give us kind of like um give us an example of normal like here's the default way people are doing something, and then here's the rephrase of the reframe that has better results.
Um, I would love to get two minutes of learning sales from Alex. Sure. So it's my belief if you look at Belford, you look at Bradley, you look at Grant Cardone, some of the big sales trainers that are out there, almost all of them invariably have the same story, which was I started selling and was the best guy on the team by a [ __ ] mile, and then I tried to figure out what I was doing. And so I do think that some people naturally based on their childhood, their upbringings, their whatever or just have a higher proclivity for selling, which yeah, just a gift of gab and and empathy. Yeah, and I think it carries over into how you recruit for selling too because we built a lot of sales teams, and I actually have a very short allowing for people to fail at sales cycle, probably much shorter than most people, and it's just because I've never had a killer salesperson who didn't do pretty well the first week. And so for me, we you know, we turn through this quickly, but as a result of that, the team is just killers, and they know that.
In terms of uh sales stuff, I think people don't know how people are really freaked out about the idea of selling, and the front part of that is that I do think that the number one predictor of good sales is conviction. Fundamentally, you have one person who should believe in something, another person who does not believe it yet, and trust is the thing that transfers that conviction. So if fundamentally there's the two things you need, you need trust and need conviction. Most times salespeople don't have 100 trust, sorry, 100 conviction. And so the also the idea of conviction as a binary is false, so it's not like I believe it or I don't believe it is to what extent do I believe, right? And so that's why like in terms of if I want to improve a sales team, I can do the drills, which we do, and that's like blocking tackling, but the thing that really juices the sales team is hearing the testimonials of the people that they sold last week and what they're doing today and how their lives have changed. And so I noticed this because on my sales teams when we were in person whenever I did weigh-out day, which is when everyone finished their challenges and everybody was crying and so excited, I tried to stack as many sales appointments as I could while people were weighing out, and during those days we closed like 100% because people were like, dude, how can you not think this works? It's right there. And so the thing is is like you can either trick yourself into having the right tone or you can train yourself, and I think that it's much easier to trick yourself into it by just simply believing because if you talk if you truly believe in the product, you will talk about it differently. And so in terms of an understanding of selling, if you need to have conviction, you need to have trust. Trust is going to come from expertise and some level of rapport, right? I think that overarchingly to help someone sell, we just have to ask the right questions to get someone to come to the conclusion on their own. And so most sales conversations follow more or less the same framework if you know what you're doing; otherwise, people are just chasing their tail and trying to chase a prospect to an outcome that the prospect doesn't know how. Like we've had this conversation a hundred times, they have only had it once. We should be the one knowing how this conversation's supposed to go, right? We should also come in with a massive advantage to how to have this conversation go the way we wanted to because we do it on [ __ ] day, right? And so big front-end pieces is like why are they there? What's the problem? What have they done so far? Understanding where they failed, seeing why our product is different from the things that they failed, asking for permission to explain about the product, explaining the product not in any way based on features but only based on the experiences that they will have as a result of it, and using analogies to explain those experiences and then having a close at the end, which the the TikTok I think that you he references like a no-base close, and I think a lot of natural salespeople do this anyways, like if I want something I might be like, hey, can you do this for me? I'm like, hey, would you mind? And they say no, they don't. I don't mind, right? Like it's natural communication dynamics that most people who naturally know how to persuade people or at least influence do that on their own. This is just retroactively looking at it and saying what did I do different? Like why is this different? In terms of like overcoming because people are afraid of confrontation, right? That's what they're afraid of. And so I believe that you can sell without ever having confrontation, and you can do that with what I like to call childlike curiosity. And so if someone says well my husband's not going to approve that, I'm like, why wouldn't he? Huh, that's so interesting. Tell me more about that, rather than like all right, let's like your husband's an [ __ ], like that's not going to work because in arguments no one wins, right? And so you're like why why would he think that? Because because I would think that he wants what's best for you, right? Yeah, he wants what's best. Does he know you're struggling with this right now? Well, I mean, yeah, he knows I'm struggling with it. Okay, so he wants a specialty. He knows you're struggling with it, so why do you think he would be opposed of solving something that you're currently struggling with? Just so I understand, would he be happier if you continue to struggle? Well, no, it's like well, great, then would you be opposed to moving forward today, and that way? And hey, if you go home to your husband and you make a joke in the lightning scenario, then you close it, right? And so it's I think childlike curiosity is the immediate that you have to train because people get defensive. So that is one thing that like fighters talk about when they're in the ring, like in the beginning you breathe in too much, right? I don't know if like if you've been like sparring and stuff like you breathe in, you breathe too much, you hyperventilate, and so the guys who've done it enough, they slow down their breathing because when they get things get intense, they can slow it down, and so I think sales is a lot the same way where you're like your adrenaline kicks in, start breathing faster as fight or flight, so you gotta be able to slow down and be like, huh, that's crazy. I wouldn't have thought that. Okay, tell me more about that, and like now you're interested, and then they don't feel like you're combating them, they feel like you genuinely are interested and want to help them, which is what you should be doing because you should be only if it makes sense.
You are full of like interesting insights and like you know a lot of [ __ ], and like you've clearly packaged this in really easy to understand ways. It's almost exhausting listening because it's like every it's like when you read a really good historical book or something, it's like every sentence is packed with a fact. Yeah, and it's like oh my gosh, like I cuz I got it. I want to pay attention. I was like exhausting. This is awesome.
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