Wes Schaeffer:

Episode Transcriptions Unedited, AI Auto-Generated. 

Speaker 1: 00:15  Opening Music

Speaker 2: 00:15 Welcome to the social chameleon show where it's our goal to help you learn, grow, and transform the person you want to become. Today I had the honor and privilege of talking about West Schaffer, the sales whisper. After being in the U S air force at West worked in the sales field. You got a great income traveling the country in the world and still wasn't happy. I started the sales whisper in 2006 to train passionate but confused. Sales managers rehabilitate Hungary, but abuse salespeople and wake up dreaming entrepreneurs. Since then, he has helped over 5,000 executives, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals in over 29 countries achieve predictable, repeatable sales growth by implementing his transferable proven process. West combines an uncommon sense, peak headed determination and attention to detail, help his clients dig deep into what needs to be done to grow. He is a prolific writer with over 800 blog posts, two books in print.

Speaker 2: 01:06 His third one is set to release anytime now and nearly 400 episodes of the sales podcast west is a sought after international speaker sales trainer, copywriter who believes marketing is just sales imprint west has got some great, great tweetables quotables amazing plethora of knowledge and experience. I love his attitude of everything's your fault and you gotta figure it out and you got to fix it. I just love it. I like, I think you guys are gonna get a lot from this. Even if you are not a sales person or you're not an entrepreneur, not in this type of thing. These are core fundamental skills all of us need to know. All of us need to recognize and you know, he really, really does a good job of, of really, you know, going through all these different things. I hope you guys really enjoy this interview with Wes, Wes Welker, the social chameleon show.

Speaker 2: 02:00 Thank you so much for reaching out and joining us here today. I really look forward to our conversation. All right, thanks for having me. So, as, as listeners heard in the beginning here, you, you really went through a lot of, a lot of different things in the beginning of your, your life, your career. You went from the Air Force Academy to the Air Force to sales jobs into the curling what you're doing now. What would, what would, what was going on? What were you seeing? Were you feeling that you were just, weren't happy or satisfied or whatever it was, you kept, went from thing to thing to where you are now? Well, not all of them were my choice, you know I'm, I left the air force on my own. Okay. And I had always loved financial services and I, I had, you know, several licenses. My six, my 63, my seven, my 65 life insurance. I mean, I had all of it. Right. And I studied it for years. I've been investing since 92. I got out in 97. I mean, I was looking forward to it

Speaker 3: 03:00 And ended up in, in a bad deal. It took me, it was ended up being a three year arbitration case that I won. Oh Wow. But I still was out of a job. Yeah. So, you know, with I was unemployed or my second son was born when I was on unemployment. I'm in a town where I knew nobody other than my dad and my stepmom and I had to put food on the table. So I know why I would hire me. Cause after six months of being at a job and you're in a lawsuit with your employer it's tough to get a new gig after that. Right. OK. I can imagine. Yeah. And that kind of leads to the unhirable part of, of your story. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'll reply to a classified ad selling mobile homes, you know, and mobile, Alabama.

Speaker 3: 03:48 And because it paid 10 or 20 bucks a week more than unemployment. Wow. and my first 12 months, I made $100,000. I was like number 26 in the nation out of like 2000 salespeople in, so I started in April late April of 98 I was promoted to manager in June of 99, so I was given my own store. But the thing with mobile homes, I mean I had to go to this little bitty town of 11,000 people up in North Mississippi. And so I was there. I got there late June. I spent the 4th of July up there. So I know it was up there by then. And by December we left because the company was going under. They eventually Oakland homes went bankrupt. So, so now, you know, within two years, now, a little over two years, I'm going, I gotta get my third job.

Speaker 3: 04:51 Right, right. It's both. We moved to Austin cause I just want it to be back in Texas. I want to be in a big city. I knew if I was in a big city, I'd find something, you know, I couldn't be in a town with 11,000 people and no family. You try to figure it out. So I got into this military recruiting company. We placed veterans leaving the service that was right at the peak, at the.com bubble. I was recruited away actually by a high tech company, but nobody knew it was the bubble. So everything was great. Then it was all topping out, but you know, I hung on for several years and it just, you know, that's just, that was just the beginning man. And but I spent a lot of time in high tech and because the nature of high tech working with startups, they don't all make it right. You know? And so, but I kept learning. I was still making, you know, I made over $100,000 every year. But I was working really hard for it and I kept learning and kept applying myself, kept testing new things, you know, one thing led to another. And now here I am on your podcast.

Speaker 2: 06:02 You know, there, there's that time it seems like, you know, there's still those two or three years where things are just not going your way. What was the self-talk light? What was the things going on in your head? How did you stay afloat and, and not let that just all pull you down into the death spiral?

Speaker 3: 06:19 Well, I met a lot of times, it was really dark. You know, I mean, there were tough times. I mean, I, and throughout all of that, because I made good money, I had and we lived within our means. That was the other thing, right? So I had money to invest in man. I kissed more frogs. I had more bad deals, bought into a franchise, lost everything. Ended up in a three year audit by the state of California that eventually won. Ended up invested in commercial, some apartments with a former boss of mine. He lost it all and I had to pay back my friends that I guaranteed. So not only did I lose my money to pay them back so I mean, a lot of dark times, but you know, the main thing, it's like, look, like they say, if you go through hell, don't stop.

Speaker 3: 07:06 Right. Right. And so you gotta take a step back and say, how did I get here? You know, who's fault is this? Okay. Such and such was a jerk and he mismanaged the money. Well, but I, I chose him as a partner. I put my money in that deal. I chose not to check it out closer, you know, so, and then I finally realized, stop investing in others, invest in myself. Right. And so when I started putting money in my own mentors and coaching things got better. And so I just kept doubling down on me, you know, and, and finding, you know, if I had a gap in an area, you know, a skill set or whatever, I'd either hire somebody to do it or buy a program so I could learn or, you know, whatever. Hire somebody to do it, teach me real quick.

Speaker 3: 07:57 And yeah, that was the main thing. It's cause you know, you gotta look around even when times are tough, like you look around, it's like, give me a break. You know, you got $1,000 iPhone in your hand. Yeah, probably $2,000 computer. You're on, you've got air conditioning, you're probably binge watching game of Thrones. It ain't that bad. Right. Okay. Yeah. Things may be tough. Yeah. you may not know what, what's going to come tomorrow, but you know what, tomorrow might not come. So what's your worrying and you know, keep pushing ahead. You know, it's either that or quit. Right. And the people are like, I remember my great grandfather, he he was in his late nineties when he died and I was, I was hanging out with him. I was 21, maybe pushing 22. And we sat on his front porch swing and he was laughing and he'd said, the key is to get you a job with a good pension.

Speaker 3: 08:57 You said, I've drawn a pension longer than I worked. And he laughed. He, because he was the anomaly, right. Right. Back in the day. I mean, when social security was invented, I mean the age was 65 when the life expectancy was like 57 or something like that. Right. You know, so they literally, I mean, you were supposed to pay into it and never get it. And life expectancies have increased like 17 or 19 years since social security was created. So that's why all these companies did away with pensions or they went away from defined benefits to defined investment or whatever. Right. So that they'll get, they'll match a little bit upfront, but then they're done. They're like, we don't want to guarantee these returns because people were living too long. Yeah. You know, so, but if I listen to my great grandfather, you know, I'd work at a airline and go bankrupt and lose my pension, work at a car manufacturer, go bankrupt, lose my pension. I mean, patriots are going away. So you gotta be careful whose advice you follow. Right?

Speaker 2: 10:05 Yeah. And that was the tried and true safe sage advice to the day. You know, everybody, you know, works for so many for 20, 30 years, got a gold watch. And you like your grandfather this having a fortune, enjoy life from then on out.

Speaker 3: 10:16 Yeah. He, I mean, he had a good, right. He's living in Texas, got some property, got some cows go fishing, driving his old dodge truck. Life was good. Yeah, definitely. You know

Speaker 2: 10:31 Do, do some research stuff. I, you know, I'm reading a lot of this stuff. You, you, you put out a lot of things people say about you. You're, you're really good at storytelling. What, what is it that the power of storytelling and what are people missing

Speaker 3: 10:41 With that? Well, if you look back, I mean, as humans, we are storytellers. I mean, going back to the caveman drawing on caves, right? They were, those were cartoons, right? Basically. And people underestimate the power of a comic. And to their own demise. What did Jesus do? Right? He didn't say, go, go right up. You didn't say, go write a novel. Go write a book. Go write the Bible. Right? He told stories. He met people where they were. And that's what we have to do in sales. We have to adjust how we sell to match how our prospects buy. And so the curse of knowledge is a real thing when we do something for too long. You know, it's like I just got done with Brazilian Jujitsu and Tuesdays I go and for our noon class, and you know our instructor, he's, he's a, he literally the world champ for his division.

Speaker 3: 11:36 But what makes him a great teacher is that he, he's never forgotten what it's like to not know something. So he, he gets into the, the most, the minute details to teach something because when you see him perform a mu oof, there's literally things he might do in, in two seconds, right? Where does your left foot go? What's the angle of the foot? Are you as, is the pressure on your heel or on your toe? What about you? How much do you bend your knee? What does your right foot go? What about your left elbow? Is Low elbow down? Is it up? Where's the wrist? I mean, they literally will teach us like angles of the, of the wrist on how to finish the choke. All right, so literally 20 maybe 50 things like where's the weight transition? All these things. But he, he knows that we don't know it and so he'll break it down, you know?

Speaker 3: 12:26 And it takes a while. You got to do steps one through three, you know? Okay, all right. Or now I'm ready for four and five. And so that's, it's a skill. It's an art. I mean, it's a little bit of both, but if you could just remain cognizant, right? Look in the eyeballs of your prospect and see if they're getting it. And the worst thing you can, you can do is assume the experience of your prospects and it's, and there's always a dichotomy right there. A tradeoff, right? Great tastes lace less filling. If I'll always ask somebody, I don't want to insult them. Like they'll ask me about hubspot, right? So very complicated software, very powerful. Tons and tons of modules and upgrades. And so I don't want to start at the beginning if they know what I'm talking about, but I don't want it. I don't want to skip ahead if they don't.

Speaker 3: 13:24 Right? So it's just like, I'll just ask you, can you show me hubspot? I'm like, well, what is your experience with other CRMs? What is your experience with this, that, or the other? And when they tell me that, then I can, I can start where they are. They're like, Oh, I'm on chapter two. Okay, great. It's a 20 chapter book. Great. At least I don't have to start at the introduction and then I'll take them from there. So, but yeah, you need to understand, hey, as soon as you know, if you were to play the star wars music right about Trudeau and the, and the slow scroll, Bam, right. I go, when did it start? And I, it was in 1977 or 1979 I forget one or the other, but I was there. Right. And I'm 49 I was there for the first star wars and when I hear that music, I am taken back to 1977.

Speaker 3: 14:18 Okay. That's just how we're wired as human beings. So get good at telling stories. We, we, we talk too much about the facts and against the curse of knowledge. We talk too much and we wear people out. And then they said that was very nice. Thank you for taking your time. That was a great presentation. You know, if you could leave us some the brochure and send us some more information and we'll get back to you. You're dead the chain. Yeah, you're dead. But the chances, the reason why they're saying that is probably because you went too fast. You use too much jargon. You talked over their heads and they just did not want to admit their ignorance, right? Okay. And ignorance is different from stupidity, right? Ignorance just means you don't have any experience with it. Doesn't mean you're dumb, right? I'm ignorant of heart surgery procedures, but I could learn it, right? If I had eight or 10 or 12 years, I could, you know, a lot of money. I could go learn it. So, but doesn't mean you couldn't explain the fundamentals of what it takes in a heart surgery. But again, meet them where they are. You've gotta be good. My kids, they always roll their eyes. They're like, oh, here comes an analogy from dad.

Speaker 2: 15:44 Bye.

Speaker 3: 15:45 They also understand the question when we're done. All right? So I remember I learned this years ago when we were doing sales training at Dell. And first you have to be the same before you're different. Okay. And so it's basically meeting them where they are. You know, so like I sold, I sold against Dell. It was funny. Before that I had sales training job with them, but I sold against them before that. And basically I would tell people we were selling these blade pcs, these computers on a stick. Basically they were in a closet, like a server, but it was a PC. So basically I would just tell the, are you familiar with that desktop with a tower with all these different footprints? They're like, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's the same thing. It's just on a stick and you slide it in Iraq and you're running a long cable for the monitor and they're like, oh, okay. Yeah, we'll look at that. Yeah, fine. You know, you gotta wait for that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you can move to the next step.

Speaker 2: 16:52 Well, what is the, what is the thought process like? Cause I, I, I feel what you're saying. I know this intellectually and sometimes it's hard, especially when you're talking to somebody. And you just kind of, you get in that mode and it's just, you spit off a couple of acronyms and you think, oh, and then, and then like you're saying, people are just like, oh yeah, ha ha, yeah, I'm, I'm from very familiar with that. And you know, after you, you're done, you replay it back later, you're like, oh, they had no idea what I was talking about. How do you, how do you hold now? How do you cultivate their, what, what are some tricks or steps or processes look like to pull yourself back and say, I can't talk to people this way. This is industry jargon. They do not understand. And knowing the difference.

Speaker 3: 17:34 Yeah. Well, it's the you know, the ABC's of selling, right? Right. And it's the worst thing ever in the world of sales, right? So it comes from Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, that that movie came out, I think in 1992. It was based on a, on a Broadway play from like 87 or even earlier. And it was written by an by a dude who worked in a real estate office. Like in the, I dunno, the 70s and he saw his dad selling in the 60s all right. So his dad was trained by people in the 50s so this is literally like a 70 year old acronym, you know, that we're still hanging on to always be closing. Okay. I know the new abcs are always be courteous. Oh, always be curious. Right? I'm curious about your situation. I don't, if I show up and talk, talk, talk. If I get my emotional needs filled by you, right?

Speaker 3: 18:36 You're, oh wow. That west, that's a smart guy. He's a really smart sales, but he's know he really knows what's tough. A lot of sales, but they don't really know their stuff. They're just there to kind of buy lunch and, and ask for the order. But that West Guy, he's a really smart, he's a good presenter. Good speaker. He really, he really knows this stuff. I mean, I don't know really. He's talking about, I'm not buying from him, but he's really smart. I mean, so that's what a lot of salespeople do, that they're getting their emotional baskets filled or they got some void. Daddy didn't love them enough or whatever. I don't know. So they go get it filled from their prospects. So you've got to always be curious. I'm curious what's going on with you. Okay. The only way I can know that is if I ask a lot of questions.

Speaker 3: 19:16 Okay? And then always be concise. If I'm talking more than you, I'm in trouble, right? Okay. Now it's not an inquisition. I can't show up and ask you a hundred a hundred questions while shining a flashlight on you and splashing you with cold water. Right? There needs to be a give and take. When friends get together, you ask each other a bunch of questions, right? How's the family? How's the kids? How's work? Oh, what are you? Oh, you're training for a triathlon. Oh, good. You've got to run a marathon. Oh, you're adding onto the house. Oh Wow. You're digging a pool, blah, blah, blah. And then you share stories. Oh Man, my neighbor built the pulley. Oh yeah. When I was training for a triathlon, I learned this. You should try the Quito die. Oh, you should try intermittent fasting. Oh, you know, but then you, so you give and take, you asked some questions but it hopefully it's equal, right?

Speaker 3: 20:06 Right. So you know, the old adage is you have two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately. That's a good rule of thumb, okay? The prospect does need to feel like there's at a dialogue. Okay? So you got to talk some and, and studies have shown, right? They've done using artificial intelligence and, and listening to calls, listening to closing calls, and then rewinding the tape, going back to the beginning, the hard questions were answered early on and the dialogue was pretty eve. So, so always be courteous. Always be curious. I don't know if I mentioned courteous before, you know, something Nice, right? Treat. Treat people like humans, not just dollar figures. So be courteous, be curious, be concise. Okay. Answer the question, share relevant information and then ask another question. Okay? Because if I'm not, you know, whoever's asking questions is in control of the conversation.

Speaker 3: 21:06 If that prospect is constantly peppering me, how long have you been in the business? What type of intellectual property do you have? Tell me what the number of trademarks is this compatible with windows 95, you know, on and on. You're just like, yes, no, a, I don't know. And then they're going to catch you. You're like, Oh yes it is. Oh No, it's not. Later on you told us. So this contract's void cause you said, you know, at 10, 22:00 AM on March 17th, you know, if you're asking questions, you're not going to get yourself in trouble. Right. All right. So get better at asking questions. So always be curious, always be courteous, always be concise. What's your, your favorite method or your best tip or advice or book or whatever it is to get better at asking questions. Oh, of questions specifically or, or, or the thought process of what goes into to, to feeling that out.

Speaker 3: 21:56 Knowing what questions to ask to understanding the room or the mood or, or your prospect or whoever it is and saying, there's something here I need to, I need to ask more. I need to dig more. Like how do you learn hone that skill? Well. So again, there's there's a contradiction here on the one hand study as much as you can. On the other hand, you need to give yourself time to apply what you learned. Okay. It's not good enough to read a hundred books. You need to apply the skills of one book, right? So I just re-read the ultimate sales machine. It sounds right. I know Ted Miller's, he was a Chet Holmes partner. And I mean I could literally flip to any page and you can see better than making them showing you the camera. Every page is underlined. Yes. Every page. You know, most pages there's notes, you know, and then I've got, you know, a index car got multiple index cards in here on the very back.

Speaker 3: 22:53 You know, I've got additional, like super key points I got to get to. So this book won't get off of my desk even though I reread it and I just finished it on this trip. I was just came back from, it won't get off my desk to like go through and apply the notes that I took. Yeah, no, I'm still reading their books, right? This guy, Brian, was a guest on my podcast, so I'm reading his book, the Index Business Card plan, Mary Lou Tyler. She was a guest predictable prospecting. I'm going to get through her book, right? So I'm learning and, and sometimes it takes me a long time to get through book because I'm reading it and I'm going through it and applying it. Right? So it's not enough. And I use that, the point from Bruce Lee and my talk last week, you know, he says, I'm not afraid of a guy that studied 10,000.

Speaker 3: 23:46 I'm afraid of the guy who studied one kick, you know, practice one kick 10,000 times. That's right. And it's true. Right? And Jujitsu, I was always mesmerized. I'm still mesmerized by these higher belts. I mean, they feel, it feels like they're aliens from another planet. It's like how do you do the things you do? Yeah. And it's literally, it's just, they have failed more times than I have tried. Right. My instructor is like a fifth degree black belts. He's, he's been a just a black belt 10 times longer than I've trained, right? So he gets just failed more and I'm, and I see it, right? I fail. I missed something that somebody shows me now. Now it relates to me, right? We could spend eight hours, he could show me 4,000 moves and I would remember maybe two of them. You got to go fail, have it sting and go, how do I make that sting go?

Speaker 3: 24:42 How do I make it to where I never feel that pain again? We'll do this. Okay, now I can recognize that and do that, right? So, so damn near anybody is good, right? I mean, you've got 'em. You need to look at yourself and say, where am I weak? Am I not good at setting appointments? Am I not good at reaching decision makers? Am I not good at setting from appointments? You know, am I setting appointments? But then they're blowing me off. Do I think I'm reaching the decision maker and I get there and they shut me down to somebody, you know, they can't make the decision, am I not good at? And negotiation. Are My proposals terrible? Okay? Am I not good at getting referrals or testimonials? So you've got to nail this down and then go fi, you know, once you go, yes, I'm going to get better at asking for referrals. Do a quick Amazon search, go buy the top three recommended books on referrals and devour them, right? Dog Ear them, rip pages out, make your own notes, make your own index cards until you're a perfect. And then you can set those books aside and say, okay, I've got to get better getting testimonials. How do I do that? I gotta get better at cold calling. I get better at email, direct response marketing, then you drill down, right? So it's long answer, but

Speaker 2: 26:01 No, it's perfect. It's full of so many, so many nuggets and, and you can, I can feel it like you hear your, your experience in all, all that coming through and build those things. Or you know, the, the nuance of what you're saying it is looking at yourself and realizing I'm weak here. How do I fix it? Going in there and, and, and finding the, the thing that I need to do over and over again. And that's hard a lot. Most people cannot do that. They will not do that.

Speaker 3: 26:30 Right. So go, go do Jujitsu. Get humbled. Yes. Then you won't worry about it anymore. Yeah. Right. Lower belts getting me a good friend of mine. I'm blue, I'm a blue belt. My good friend, he's a belt and I got him today for the first time ever dealing with an ankle lock and a, but he's going 70%, probably 60%. And I'm going a hundred, 110. But I did get it and and he's like, cool. It doesn't hurt his feelings. He does. He's, he's like, this is what happens. He's at what it does. It shows he's a good trainer cause he teaches a lot. In the mid day classes he fills in, he taught today. So he feels good that he's been a good teacher to me. Right. Others would get angry. I've actually got, he got me, it's like I got him one time. He, he got me three more times in five minutes. So it's not that I'm better than him, you know, one time I did one thing right. And so when you, when you stay humble like that, right? You just, you'll keep going. So you gotta stay hungry. So we got to fill up, fill in a word for, for being a synonym, for a hungry. Always be carnivorous. Right. Another good seaward you're, although the vegans out there, they may not like it. So we've got to find a vegan friendly word for carnivorous.

Speaker 2: 27:57 Well, well maybe I'll put something in the show that I love that mentality. It's, it personally think of me a long time to to, to, to get their income pat. That like you were saying earlier, you know, just sitting back and not blaming others when it's easy to say, you know, Bob fucked up, this was his deal. He, he screwed me over. Like that's easy and you can never get past that and you could probably have a good life, but to, to sit back and say, why did I choose Bob? How did he get me? What went wrong. That is hard and it's taken me a long time to get there. But once you do, it's, it's like freeing bothers you. It's always your fault. It is 100% once you accept that,

Speaker 3: 28:45 I remember Dan Kennedy talking about that, like he was driving to an appointment and a kid hit him and it was the kid's fault by law. I said, it's my fault. I didn't leave on time. I chose this route instead of that one. I was like, I remember hearing that. I was like, that took me a minute to wrap my brain around. Yeah, sorry. Okay, I see where you go because you'll see me getting a rag. No, get out there, fight each other and say like, yeah dude, the law's gonna figure it out. There is a right, there is a wrong, but just roll with it. You know, and you gotta cause life is literally what you make of, right. It's how you respond. So, and when we see people getting upset about little things, I said I wanted a 298 degree whipped on my phone. Mocha Macchiato. I mean, it's like, okay, if you get upset about that, you've got a pretty good life. Yeah. You know, the people in Venezuela right now, they ain't worried about the temperature of their foam on their machiatto or whatever. I don't even know what those things are. All right. They're literally going through dumpsters trying to eat, and so we're, we're living in pretty good times right now. And you can tell by the problems, quote unquote, problems that people are having to endure. Yeah, no, yes. It's a good time right now.

Speaker 2: 30:04 Yeah. That's a, that's a lesson I'm constantly really trying to hammer home and my children, you know, I, it's tough in, especially my, my daughter, she's like, I, I, these can't be problems I ever have to worry about. And it's like, ah,

Speaker 3: 30:19 Manly

Speaker 2: 30:20 You one day. I, I hope you, I hope you don't, but you're gonna look back and say, I get it. But you know, I tried to, you know, one thing I'd like to say to my kids all the time, it's like, listen, this, this water and this toilet,

Speaker 3: 30:30 It's better than 99% of the water in this planet. People have the drink. I think this is, we're flushing it away and like this is, this is good, good water that people would die for. Literally they do, you know? And those, those lessons are tough. There was one of the big guys like buffet or gates or one I don't remember, but basically it's like, what do you want for your children? And it was, it was like basically to struggle through the tough times, you know, like I did to find themselves. Right. I mean basically it's like, it's the tough time. Does it make you make you creative? You know, it's when it had been inventions and big, big advancements are made. You know, Warren Buffett, they asked him like, what is he going to leave his kids? And he was, he was leaving. I'm like millions, but he's not leaving them billions, you know, he said, I want to leave my kids enough money that they can do anything. I don't want to leave them so much that they can do nothing. Yeah. That's the danger. Right. So, okay, let me give you a few million bucks. I go, you can you launch a business, you could start a foundation. That's the seed money to go do even bigger things. It's not really enough to sit on your butt for the rest of your life, you know, cause you can't go through a few million, no sweat. And believe it or not.

Speaker 2: 31:41 Yeah. Oh yeah, I can, I can burn through some money pretty quick. I waste a, I joke with people that he did you do with the $500 million. I said that'd be gone, but end of the month, that'd be so easy to just turn,

Speaker 3: 31:55 Dude. You didn't believe how easy. Yeah. What,

Speaker 2: 31:58 What is the, you know, the, the one or two things most, you know, either salespeople or business owners are not

Speaker 3: 32:03 Doing well. They're not accepting responsibility. That's true, right. For whatever. And everything is, is connected. So, you know, from a business stand point, always say people don't do business with you for one of two reasons. Either they haven't heard of you or they have. Yeah, that's it. That's the only two reasons they have no business with you. So, so take a look around. So it's like, from a business standpoint, what are you doing? You know, whatever you can measure, you can improve. So are you measuring the key things? Are you, you know, not sweeping things under the rug? You know, are you, if you're going through hell, right, are you accelerating? You know, get through it. Don't stop. You know, so, and from there, so you really have to look at literally everything. How do you eat? How do you exercise? What's your fitness?

Speaker 3: 33:08 You know, are you crashing or you don't have the energy and the focus to, to get through that financial report, get through that spreadsheet to plow through quickbooks and find out the little things. You know, just yesterday I get 'em a renewal from GoDaddy, right? For one of my URLs, it's like 18 bucks. And I'm like, they're usually like eight bucks. Yeah, right. You're like, oh, it's no big deal. 10 Bucks, 1818 months for a year. What are you worried about it? I, it's barely a dollar a month. Dollar 50 a month, you know, I'm like, it matters. It all matters. Okay. So I call him, I'm like, why is this, oh well you know this discount domain club, you were an expired. I'm like, how'd that expire? I've been on that for, for ever. Right. Literally 15 years. And I'm like, how did that expire?

Speaker 3: 33:58 That didn't renew, but my URL did. Right, right. So on the one hand, I did miss the first one, but I call it the second one. And then, then I benefited because they go, well, because it expired. If you do three years instead of two, we can do a 35% discount and it's $2 more than what you were paying for two years. I was like, so yeah, but because I was able to catch it, you know, cause you're the one just, it just happened. It just expired, hired, you know, and I mean, in my defense, I was traveling all last week, so I get a little break. You know, I'm, I'm fresh, right? I'm in shape, I'm watching what I eat, I'm paying attention to the little things in my business. And it doesn't sound like much, but I have like 50 or 60 URLs. Right, right.

Speaker 3: 34:44 So an extra $10. Well that's an extra $600 over the course of a euro. $600. I can, I can pay my overseas assistant for five months for, you know, cause she's just part time, right. A couple of hours a day. So it all adds up. It's $500. I can run on a, on a Facebook ads campaign or something, you know? So you got to pay attention to little things matter, you know, people like what's your big hairy audacious goal? Right? Well, I wanted to be a billionaire and I want to have USC name a building after me. Fantastic. Wonderful goal. You want to cure cancer and that building. Lovely. I've had multiple friends and family die of cancer. What are you going to do this afternoon to move that goal a little bit closer? Right. Well, I mean well we've got happy hour tonight and you know, and I gotta catch up on game of Thrones and, right. You know, so I mean, tomorrow like tomorrow is too late. Yeah. You're dead tonight. Well, yeah. Too many people have these big hairy audacious goals and they don't know what they're going to do in the next hour, you know? So you've got to get granular to make it work.

Speaker 1: 35:51 Okay.

Speaker 2: 35:52 Wait, what's your trick or, or, or thought process or methodology to getting granular? What is a couple of things you'd like to do to tease that out?

Speaker 3: 36:00 Well, you, you have to have one priority, right? You literally cannot have priorities, right.

Speaker 3: 36:11 It's just impossible. You prior is like what comes for what? But comes comes before the other. No. Yeah. You can rack and stack them, you know, but if you're running around with, with 27 to dues, you're not going to get it done. Yeah, definitely. You got to slow this thing down, man. You gotta, you gotta boil it down to its essence of what has to get done and then get that done. But you know, like Zig Ziglar always said, if you gotta eat a frog, right? No. You staring at it. If you eat more than one, eat the biggest one first. Yeah. Okay. So have the big goals, the big two dues for the day. Get those done first, you know, then let everything out. If you have time, get to the other little things. It's amazing how many little things just work themselves out. Yeah. If you just let them sit over there in a corner and suck their thumb for a little while.

Speaker 2: 37:06 Yeah. It was one of the great things I learned. This is lot of times like you're saying sometimes, you know, if you work on this one thing, will it take care of all these other things? A lot of times they will, like, if I knock this out, it'll rattle off five other problems I have are fiber the things I'm on my list of things to do.

Speaker 1: 37:22 Okay.

Speaker 2: 37:23 Definitely. What does what is your, you know, the first, maybe 60 to 90 minutes your day? Do you have any habits or routines that you, you really just gotta do, even you with your travel schedule and everything? What are the things you really just, I gotta do it today

Speaker 3: 37:35 To just win. So get up early. Yeah. So to get up early, you got to go to bed early. You go to bed early. You can't be pounding Booz and eating heavy fat stuff all the time, you know, so have some discipline. So if you're going to eat heavy, eat early, right? Right. Give your food time to digest. So then you get a good night's sleep. Then you wake up early. You can, you wake up early, you can get going. A lot of people say don't check email. First thing, it's like, I personally don't check email first thing, you know, most days, every now and then I'll, I'll, I will. But it is rare. I like to read in the morning, I like to write in the morning. So, you know, I get that done first. And I used to be a morning workout guy, but doing Jujitsu last two and a half years, you know, it's, it's a mid day or it's an evening class.

Speaker 3: 38:30 So I, I'm adjusted my schedule in that regard. But most people I work from home so I can have that luxury, right? If you don't, then you've got to get some physical activity and right. You know, you got to take care of yourself, right? So regardless, like we were talking early on, I'll all the ups and downs, you know, I've, I've never missed going to church and I've never missed working out, you know, at least not for any extended period of time. Right. You may take a week here or there, but you know, I've consistently stayed in the gym, stayed active since high school, you know, so you gotta take care of yourself. And so focus on that and you know, it goes back to your diet and, you know, like I said, I'm 49. I trained hard. I've been really sore lately and I've been really big and, and my wife and I just started this intermittent fasting.

Speaker 3: 39:23 And Man, I think might've finally found something that maybe we would tried Kido and Paleo and all this different stuff, man and body for life, that, that was great for us 19 years ago. But an intermittent fasting seems to be working. So, you know, you got to look at what you put in your body and there's too many fake things, you know, to post to this a couple of months ago and so many people are like, do testosterone, you know, and I'm like, dude, me, men and women, you know, it's like we're so quick to just put drugs in our body, medicate ourselves. It's like, I'm like, maybe right? Maybe I will, but I want to exhaust everything else. Right? and I knew I could, I don't eat terribly bad, but because I train hard, I kind of get to eat whatever I want, right? So I'll eat burgers and fries and ice cream and whatever, but it's like, okay, the weight may be staying off, but the inflammation, the soreness, that, the slow recovery, you know, I want to be able to train six days a week and a, I've been hurting.

Speaker 3: 40:26 Right. I've been going three days, maybe four. And now it's like, man, I'm feeling good again. You know. So like I said, the little things matter, everything matters. You know, that one extra beer, that one extra doughnut, you know, the staying up, you know, just one more episode on Netflix. I mean it adds up. It compounds. Yes. And so, you know, in the talk I gave last week was the TPC sawgrass the Marriott. And so the whole theme of the conference was around golf. So I did some research and you know, tiger woods, you know, we just won the masters, so it's his first major win in 11 years versus masters when and 14 years. And everyone had written them off cause he's like, I think 42 something. Yeah, I think he's the second oldest to ever win the masters behind Jack Nicholas. So the odds are against him, right?

Speaker 3: 41:24 Just looking historically he shot two 75 over four days. He beat three guys by one stroke. And one of the key differences was that he made five putts from beyond 20 feet. All right. His top three top five closest competitors only made three cumulatively. Wow. Okay. So Tiger made five. So the other guys should have made, if they all made five, then that would be 25. Right. But they made three. Wow. So whatever that math is, it's infinitely better. Yes. Okay. And he won by one stroke. So one stroke divided by two 75 divided by four. Okay. Is Nine one hundredths of a percent. Tiger Woods was one or nine one hundredths of a percent better every day for four days. And he won at one point $2 million. Right? Or you got that off his back? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. No, I think he went to 2 million, 2 million.

Speaker 3: 42:32 $70,000. I think that's right. The closest competitor if there's three guys tied already, Ma, yeah. 2,000,070 three guys tied for second. So they are $858,000. Still not a bad earning for, for a week's worth of work. Right, right. But as a 241% difference by being point or nine 100% better each day, but at least in golf you make money for losing. Yeah. Right. If you and I are nine one hundreds worse than our competitors, we get 0% of the sale. Okay. So that one extra beer, that extra 15 minutes, hidden snooze instead of reading or working on your website or making three more outbound calls, it all adds up. Okay. So you don't have to do like this miraculous, you know, thousand percent turnaround be 1% better today. Yeah. If you normally make 30 calls, make 31 okay. That's a 3% improvement by making one more call.

Speaker 3: 43:42 Yeah. So it's in, it does, it adds up. You know, when I was a stockbroker that very short time, this mutual fund company came in. You know, the thing that I remembered him saying is that we, we overestimate what we can achieve in a year, but we underestimate what we can achieve. And Five, yeah. Okay. So have those big goals, but then have a plan to do something about it every single day. Definitely. That is amazing by side. We looked at a lot of here on the show, that 1% difference, you know, if it's every day, that's 365% improvement over a year. If it's just once a week, that's 52% improvement. I mean, if you're just doing it once a month, you're at 12% better at the end of the year. The reality though, the reality is because of compounding, you're actually better than that, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah. But yeah, and plain math. But yeah, if you're 10% better every month, you're actually 314% better every year. That's huge. You could even imagine the difference in your life. Okay. 10% of month, three, four, three, 300 times, you know, three times better by the end of the year. Right. So you got to love compounding interest. Yes, it is.

Speaker 2: 44:59 It's, it's, it seems so simple. And, and the difference between like, like you're like tiger woods and the rest of the guys is, is that that 1%, that's that, that's the, that little extra, the little something else. That's a difference between the top 5% of people in the world and everybody else is just not going to do that kind of stuff. They're not going to take

Speaker 3: 45:17 It is the simple things. Right? So my instructor, he's literally the best in the world at, at his level. And all we do are the fundamentals. We always laugh about, Oh hey, you've been watching youtube videos. Did you watch these? Youtube is there. She always fancy moves. Yeah. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe if I give, if you're competing to be like the best in the world aren't you learn those fancy moves, but you better have the good fundamentals too. Right? And so I'm not studying and my goal is not to be some international world champion. Right? Yeah. I want to stay in shape, do a couple tournaments here and there. Have Fun. Get better. Right. But, but it's the fundamentals and I can't tell you how many times smaller guys, but, but more skilled, they beat me with just simple stuff, you know, but they've been willing, you know, for years to keep doing the simple stuff over and over and over again. So it makes a difference between a professional and a rookie. Right. The rookie will do things so they can't, a rookie does things until they get it right. The professional does until they can't get it wrong. Exactly. Right. That takes a lot of work. That's [inaudible].

Speaker 2: 46:30 What is, what is you know, there a book or a course or something like that you wish you, you took earlier in life and you read earlier in life.

Speaker 3: 46:40 Yeah, my own course. 30 days sales growth. All right.

Speaker 2: 46:47 Course. I don't remember a book or something that just really, you're like, Dang, I wish I was 30 and I came across this or, or, you know, whatever it is there. Was there a moment in your life you're like, Dang, I wish I knew this 10 20 years ago.

Speaker 3: 47:01 Yeah. Well, there's, well, 10 or 20 years ago it didn't exist. Me and I am 10, but Oren Klaff, I've had him on my podcast. He's great pitching anything. Yeah. A dude's done billions in deals. Yeah. He's awesome. He's really boiled it down really good. There's a guy named Robert Ringer he wrote a book called winning through intimidation. Yeah, great book. Most people haven't heard of it, but and, and it's not as like mean or violent as it sounds. He was in real estate years ago and he was, you know, he was bringing, taking a private jet and bringing staff, you know, like literally carrying typewriter so they could Lao, you know, type out the paperwork right there. And you know, he's doing these, these commercial deals. So you didn't want time to be wasted. And so, but you know, the idea, you know, winning through intimidation.

Speaker 3: 47:56 It's like when you show up on a private jet and walk in with your staff that are like, you know, you're, you're not trying to like bully them, but they're going to be impressed and they're like, Oh hell, I better, I better be on my a game cause this guy surely is. So, you know, understanding how you're perceived. Chester Karrass one of the biggest things in my life, I took his a winning through negotiation class. You know, I think they still advertise. I haven't seen him as much. I'm like on southwest at least, but they used to have big pullouts and I think they still do like the southwest magazine. But I took this negotiation class in I don't know, around 2001 I remember was a two day class. I drove down to San Antonio from Austin and it taught me how to see things from the buyer's perspective.

Speaker 3: 48:48 And I learned buyers have processes, right? They have buying processes. Do you as a salesperson have a selling process? Most don't. Right? You're just kind of winging it. So when you do wing it, good luck cause you're literally betting your paycheck on it. Then it goes great books. I will link those in the show notes for everybody that interested in it. I, I've, I love pitching anything I did not take and some of these courses as well. The other ones I'm, you shouldn't chicken those out. Thanks for the recommendations. Sure. Is there, what's the best place for people to, you know, learn more about you, learn more of what you're up to connect with you, man, everything is accessible@thesaleswhisperer.com. Perfect. I will make that initial on it as well for everybody's social media links. I'll put in the footer. Right. And I think most people should put it in the footer because you don't want people clicking away.

Speaker 3: 49:43 Yes. Okay. Yes. I want you to engage on social media if that's where you prefer to engage and consumed content or whatever. Right. But ideally I want you opting in, you know, getting my free resources, scheduling a time to talk. We see a lot of people though, and especially they'll put their social media at the top and you'd go click and they're like, they're not active. Yeah. They have two posts, you know, like, why, why are you sending me away? And the real killer is when they don't open it in a new tab or a new window. Right. If they opened in the same tab, then you just sent me away. And despite, despite my own discipline and, and, and Ellen efforts, it's like, oh look, squirrel. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. I'm off debating college football and who makes the best whiskey and who's the Best Jujitsu? Oh hell, I was, I was looking something up. Where was I? I'll never, it must not have been important. Yeah. It's tough. I'm out of here. Yeah. Right. So put your social media stuff in the bottom, but a minimum, make sure it opens in a new tab, but a, you know, all my stuff's there is there in the footer. Contact us. It comes to me, you know, so if you want to talk about the different programs I've got hit me up. And like I said,

Speaker 2: 50:53 All that will be easily linked for everybody. Don't, don't, don't get too crazy and chapter, try and write it down. We'll link all that easily in the show notes. And then I'm on this community show. We'd like to do a weekly challenge. Whether you know it's, it's from what we talked about or not, just to kind of inspire and implement some of these concepts and ideas that you have here. And I'd like to give you the opportunity to issue this week's challenge to the listeners. So I'd like to know west, what's this week's challenge?

Speaker 3: 51:19 So we're issuing a social media challenge.

Speaker 2: 51:22 It's going to be on social media, it's going to be part of the, the podcast. I pull it out, I put it on Youtube. I'm just [inaudible] going to live alone as well as being part of this episode. I want to challenge people to work on that 1% work on these things. All right. Thought

Speaker 3: 51:36 Do this. Are you ready? I'm ready. Are you listening? Are you recording? Yes. Are you taking notes? I am. Do this one thing. All right. Track your time in 15 minute increments for 30 days. Love it. All right? And it's easier than you think. What I do is I print my calendar out for the week, all seven days. And so obviously you're not waking up every 15 minutes while you sleep and run it down, right? So if you have a four hour, eight hour thing, you know, you've got a two hour conference call. God forbid, you know, you just draw a line conference call. You know, if you're making prospecting calls for 90 minutes, just draw, you know, eight to nine 30 prospecting. But start tracking it. If you can measure, you can improve it, okay? And have a piece of paper or something about a pen in your hand and paper in front of you.

Speaker 3: 52:28 Literally have it at your desk and carry it with you folded up, carry it in a binder, carrying your back pocket, whatever. But you will even on my own computer, like on my Mac, I it's set really low, but every 15 minutes she's just telling me the time, you know, it's three o'clock, it's three 15. So it's a subtle reminder. Keep going. All right. But it's Eh, and give yourself, you know, schedule in some goof off time. Schedule in 15 minutes in the morning, check your face for 15 minutes over lunch, 15 minutes after afternoon. Okay? That's 45 minutes. That's a lot of time. You can debate your politics, debate your fantasy football league, check up on old girlfriends. You've got 45 minutes, a lot of time. Then you'll realize, you know what? I can do this in 30 maybe I can do this in 15 now all of a sudden you've got 30 minutes a day to read a book. If you read 30 minutes a day, you'll read most books and I don't know, seven to 10 days. Yeah, at most two weeks. Okay. So now, just from time you wasted on Facebook, let's say it takes you two weeks to read a book, fine. You're gonna be 26 new books in a year.

Speaker 2: 53:36 Okay.

Speaker 3: 53:36 Or can you read the same book 26 times? Right. And apply what you learned. So just by tracking your time to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 53:46 I love it. I love the, I have this a productivity planner. It's got something like that all kind of set out. I don't know if for people in the thing, you can see it's got the different blocks to check how much time you're spending 25 minute blocks. I love it. It's really been a game changer. Things you think, oh, that's it. Do that in about 10 minutes you look back and you're like, oh, that's been an hour and a half and it is nice to do. It's really, really powerful. Good challenge. I love it. It's definitely a game changer.

Speaker 3: 54:11 Amen.

Speaker 2: 54:13 Is there anything else you want to talk about we didn't cover or any, you know, asks of the listener? Any final parting thoughts you have for us?

Speaker 3: 54:20 You know, do, engage I'm always surprised I'm, I'm coming up on my 380th episode of the sales podcast, six years and very few. I mean, I had my best month ever last month, so it's growing, right? So it's not like I only have like my mom and my sister are listening, so I mean, it's growing. Hundreds of thousands of downloads and people they don't comment, they don't reach out. It's like, I'm not going to buy, I'm not going to use some Jedi mind trick to make you buy something you don't want to buy, you know, but leave a comment on this podcast, shoot me a note on Twitter or wherever, just let me know you're out there and engage, right. Let me know what you're working on. And let's figure out if there's a way to work together. Cause if I can't help you, I'll tell you. And I'll find you somebody that can help. So so just come out of your shell.

Speaker 2: 55:14 Definitely. Thank you so much. You've got just a immense thing of knowledge and so much experience you brought in. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 55:26 Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 55:28 All right man. What a great interview. I know man, just all those nuggets. He's got all that wisdom, all that experience. He's got some great stuff and he's got a great mindset and he's got a great experience. And this guy has been through so much and he's so, he's still so bright and so fiber and so whole foods are optimistic. I love it. I love the energy. I love the, I love the, everything's has said that the focus, the everything is just great. I know, I'm, I hope you guys got a lot out of this. Like I did. This is really, I got, I got a ton of notes here and I hope you guys took a bunch too. And like I said, everything will be linked in the show notes for you guys. If you guys hit over the social community that show slash west.

Speaker 2: 56:04 Dot. Schaefer he has to get her orange, this thing, get on to these books and stuff and check out the other things he has got going on. If you're interested in upping your sales game and you know, if you guys don't know yet by now, we love doing giveaways. We love, you know, sharing the products and service to the books and the different things we find with you guys. You know, whatever it is that we can do to help make your life, your, your, your job, your career, your family, whatever, 1%, you know, whatever is better monthly or weekly or thinking that like we did talk about in this episode and we want to share this with you guys. You're interested in and in your chance to win these things, we find that, you know, add value add, add different things to your life, head over to social media, that show slash.

Speaker 2: 56:45 Pickney if there's something that you'd like us check out or, or, or you know, whether it's something you have or a company you work for, whatever it is, let us know. We'd love to give that a shot and see if we can get that into a giveaway. And if this episode like always is something of importance to have something of value and you got share with your friends, you know, share this knowledge share, share these things as the best way to support the show. If you like. We've got going on, like West was talking about, you know, hey, you know, get with us on it, on, on social media. Leave a comment and a review for the show and connect with us on Facebook. There's a discussion group there for you guys. You want to talk more about this episode? I'm on Instagram and Twitter as well as, you know, don't forget to subscribe. We got this on youtube and your favorite podcast app for past episodes and links to everything we talked about here today. Is it the social chameleon.show and until next time, keep learning, keep growing, taking responsibility and transforming to the person you want to become.

Speaker 1: 58:11 [Inaudible].