Episode 4 of The Last Sale features sales leader, 6x founder, surfer and lover of sparkling water, Scott Leese. In addition to stories from Scott's career in sales, we touch on how soft skills and restaurant work, Scott's favorite surf spots, and the importance of matching the right personality type to the right sales role. Enjoy!
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Episode 4 of The Last Sale features sales leader, 6x founder, surfer and lover of sparkling water, Scott Leese. In addition to stories from Scott's career in sales, we touch on how soft skills and restaurant work, Scott's favorite surf spots, and the importance of matching the right personality type to the right sales role. Enjoy!
Thanks again to your our sponsor, GoPayhawk (https://gopayhawk.com/). Stop overpaying and start thriving with GoPayhawk's payment process solutions. Visit GoPayhawk.com today and use code TLS24 to learn more about receiving a $250 credit on your payment processing solutions.
Here we are, episode four of the Last Sale Welcome. This is a good one, kevin Scott Lease. You've probably seen him on LinkedIn and on the internet. He's quite the vocal voice in the sales community. He has a lot of good things to say. I enjoyed this conversation. You know the thing that came to mind when, in the middle of the conversation, after this conversation, he was talking about personality types and how some people are more suited for the fast pace, closing lots of deals every day, and other people are more suited for the enterprise world where you have things that are coming in every I don't know, once a year or maybe once every two years, and it's a different type of mindset and mentality for both of those. And he was talking through that.
Speaker 1:And maybe think about restaurant work and I worked at a breakfast restaurant once where it was fast paced. People are in and out coffee what do you want? Eggs, how do you need them? Over easy toast. Boom, here you go and you're just taking care of hundreds of people in every hour. I mean there is in and out and you never stop moving.
Speaker 1:And I bartended in places that were like that too, kind of nightclub sort of atmosphere, where it was just I need a butt light, go go and it's all volume. You're just go go. How fast and efficient can you be? But then I've also worked fine dining. I mean, you've got two or three tables for the whole evening and you want to make those tables very special. You want to be very attentive. Everything is about detail. You're wanting to be likable, but not too much. You don't want to be too conversational where you're ruining their evening, but you don't want to be dead silent either. There's so much more nuance and space in that kind of slow fine dining restaurant world and it's a very different mentality. It made me think of that. So it was a really cool conversation. His stories are very good. I don't want to give too much away, but very, very much worth listening into for some of the stories that he shared as well. But yeah, what were your takeaways, what were your thoughts after that conversation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a great conversation. Scott's a really good guy, really good salesperson, really good sales philosophy. And you're talking about just the guess to define your personality type, right, Because you have to have a sales cycle and a job that fits your personality types. I think we have two different ones. You love enterprise sales, that long sales cycle where you don't really get much feedback for weeks at a time, sometimes months at a time, and you work very large deals. I'm more I don't want to say transactional, but I like daily activity. I like bringing in lower amounts of money constantly. That's feedback that I desire and that's what my personality is suited for. And you can work on the big accounts, but you have to have that daily activity and that daily hustle. So I'm a busy bore type of person. Instead of fine dining, I just like a burger and a beer at the bar.
Speaker 1:It's a different thing. Hey, just because we're an enterprise roll, kevin, doesn't mean that we're not busy, busy every day, hey, we're doing things.
Speaker 3:It's just that you don't get the feedback.
Speaker 2:We don't get the feedback. And that's what we're talking about getting the wins. You have to get any constant wins.
Speaker 1:Yep, I understand, yeah, and it's a different type of mindset and your busy work is very different and it was interesting. I feel like I was the oddball. I felt like you and Scott were like we need the feedback and I'm like, give me all the uncertainty, I'll just bathe in it and who knows what's going to happen. But yeah, it was a cool conversation for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like simple things and I think enterprise is just too much complexity for me a lot of times. I like a simple offer, a simple yes or no and a simple move forward a lot of times. One of the other key takeaways is kind of and we heard about it a little bit in our last episode with Kevin Nolan right is kind of like last sell or getting back to the roots, and you have to stack your wins. No matter what sales game you're in, you have to stack your wins and sometimes those aha moments come in smaller deals where you're testing your limits, where you're learning things. It's disconnected from the grand results of life sometimes, and sometimes those hard deals make a lot of difference. Or those first deals make a huge impact on saying, oh, I can do this, so, and those are oftentimes the most important cells that you make.
Speaker 1:For sure. I mean, getting the snowball started is the most important part of the snowball, regardless of how big or how fast it gets going. It's figuring out that you can make one and roll it. That's a big, big part of it. So, yeah, super cool conversation, let us know what you think Like. Subscribe, check out our sponsor, go Payhawk, be sure to go give them some love. And, yeah, enjoy the conversation and catch you next time.
Speaker 2:How long have you been in Austin? I'm just up the road in.
Speaker 3:Dallas or Fort Worth. I moved to Austin from San Francisco in 2011. So I got here a little bit ahead of the curve of everybody you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You did.
Speaker 2:That is ahead of the curve. So back when Austin was just starting to pop right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I came here now that it's kind of popped, I don't know.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I don't know how long I should stay. I know it's so expensive down there.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's just it's still cheaper than where I come from originally, but it is definitely not the same as it used to be.
Speaker 1:So you were, you a 49ers fan first or a bills fan first, like what came first on the good question.
Speaker 3:And my family is from the Niagara Falls Buffalo area originally, and when I was a baby you know that's kind of where I was, where I was at my grandfather was a big Buffalo bills fan. But we moved to Northern California this town called Chico, which is about three hours north of San Francisco, when I was like a year, year and a half, something like that. So I kind of grew up, you know, with 49ers games on TV and everybody in town being 49ers fans and then also my grandfather telling me you need to be a bills fan, this is your roots. So I grew up caring about both teams more or less equally. And you know the 49ers had good runs. When I was a kid, bills had an amazing run. Never could finish it off. Then there was about 25 years of darkness for both teams that we don't need to talk about, and now both have been very relevant for the last five years and just have basically ripped my heart and soul out every season. So yeah, follow me for more painful sports experiences.
Speaker 1:I grew up in Atlanta so I can understand like painful sports, Like I feel like Atlanta does that well. So yeah, I feel you, yeah you have.
Speaker 3:You have done that well. I mean, you know the Braves won the division, like you know, 12 years in a row and only one once. Right, that kind of thing, I get it. You have the biggest Super Bowl collapse in NFL history. So yeah, if we stay on this topic long enough, I'll try to belittle you enough to make myself feel better.
Speaker 1:And you know what, I would be used to it and accustomed to it, and you know the heart's been pounded so much that I'd probably be fine with it, you know, yeah, I think you probably would.
Speaker 3:I'm kind of OK. I'm kind of OK with it as well. It just comes with the territory.
Speaker 1:So question what is your favorite? This is just going to take a right hand, turn just into a different topic, but what is your all time favorite vacation spot? Scott's going on one more vacation. Where is he going?
Speaker 3:Man. I went to this random surf town with about 10 of my buddies for one of the guys' bachelor party. This must have been 10 years ago now, maybe more than that, and there was nobody there. And when I say nobody, I mean like nobody. We had the beach and the waves to ourselves for a week. It's I'm going to screw up the pronunciation, but it's like playa ashun shilo or something like that, and it was. I mean, all of us talk about it to this day, like how did that happen? You know, how did we have perfect waves, nobody else around, good weather, so I've never gone back, but that would be on the list of places to go. You have this like cool drive through the jungle, it seems, and then all of a sudden boom opens up to the beach. So that that's my idea of a vacation these days.
Speaker 2:These days it was disappearing like that.
Speaker 3:Where was that at? It's in Nicaragua, actually. Okay, on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, nice, I'm not asking you, in Shilo, I think is the name.
Speaker 1:And what's your favorite beverage Could be alcoholic, non-alcoholic, Like. Just what are you reaching for if you're?
Speaker 3:through Thursdays. Well, these days I literally only drink three things, that's it. Regular water, tap water, you know, still water, I should say sparkling water, which I possibly have an addiction to, and then and then tequila. That's it. And every now and then I might mix sparkling water with tequila and get real crazy, but that's it. I don't drink anything else. I don't drink juice, I don't drink soda, I don't drink beer, I don't drink any other alcohol, that's it.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's fast forward, and you, you've taken this crazy drive through a jungle. You've arrived on this beach in Nicaragua that I can't pronounce.
Speaker 3:I won't drive.
Speaker 1:And and you're there with your friends. There's no one else there, but some kind of way, even though there's nobody else on the beach, there's tequila everywhere and little bottles of sparkling water that are like coming up out of the sand and you're wondering. You're scratching your head like, is this heaven? Is this some sort of weird hell? Like what's going on? But you do notice that you know you're older, you might have a few wrinkles and you're definitely done. Working like work is completely over. What? What if you're looking back in time, what was the last thing you sold?
Speaker 3:The last thing I sold. It would have been a consulting contract. You know I run my own consulting business right now, so it would have been a six figure consulting gig. Why six figures?
Speaker 1:Instead of five or seven or eight or four.
Speaker 3:Well, the four and five is easy to answer Easier to answer than the why not seven? You know I've been doing this for a while now and I think I've got my niche and my, my kind of ICP and sweet spot down and I primarily help early stage kind of series a, series B companies trying to go from zero to a hundred, so to speak, and those types of companies who've raised a few million bucks but, you know, haven't hit scale and some of them barely even have a million dollars of ARR art right now. They're not spending a million dollars on me as or anyone as a consultant. So seven figure deals are not really happening in my kind of arena that I play in. Why not five figures or four figures?
Speaker 3:You know I've worked a long time prior to even being a consultant to learn the knowledge and effectiveness to get stuff done to help people. So that's just where I have valued my time and my work and my, my effort. So I usually work with people for about six months. Those contracts are usually six figures. Yeah, that would be the. So that would be the last thing that I sold.
Speaker 2:So you seem to have your, your ICP, your, your idea of customer profile down to a science? Yeah, I guess it's a science?
Speaker 3:I don't really think of it that way necessarily.
Speaker 3:But I, you know, I, when you're first getting started, I think a lot of people just say yes to anybody who's willing to pay them Right, and then you start to realize, well, I maybe can't have the right to do that, well, I maybe can't have the right kind of impact with this type of client, or this type of client is actually problematic for me and I don't like dealing with them and they, I don't know, they can't do what I'm asking them to do or they have a high probability of going under and therefore they don't pay me or they don't pay me on time, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So you, you, you realize, like, you know, who maybe do I not want to work with because I don't think it's going to be a good experience for me, and who do I maybe not want to work with because maybe I can't deliver the best experience for them? And you know, for me I try to get kind of tighter and tighter with what I think is my ideal customer profile where they'll treat me well and I'll be able to deliver, you know, kind of maximum impact for them. And I try to get, you know as many of those as I can and avoid the others.
Speaker 1:For this fictitious last sale. Apart from the deal size, what? What do you envision or imagine that customer being like? And you know, the last customer that you consult? What is that experience like if you were to think about it? What would be the nice, the nice last sale, the nice, last consulting before you?
Speaker 3:I mean the big dream is they go off and have a liquidity event of some kind. You know they grow and scale and get acquired or get profitable and IPO or something like that. I mean those are the big wins for me. I think I've worked with somewhere between 100 and 200 different companies in the last couple of years and I'm over a dozen exits of those companies. So you know I'm shooting around, I don't know, for simplicity let's call it 10%. So one out of every 10 companies that I've worked with the last couple of years inside of the last few years has had an exit. So hopefully more more to come, but that's that would be my.
Speaker 3:My hope would be this group that I'm working with now. You know we're able to put the right systems and processes in place, get the right people in there and kind of tee them up for success. And then you know they run with it the rest of the way, they run the last mile, so to speak. And, and you know it's just a good success story you know Scottcom went on to, you know, sell for a billion dollars or whatever. Those, those kind of success stories, those, those are the wins that that feel really good, feels like everybody benefited, you know.
Speaker 2:It does, it does. And 10% is about about the going right right Of success in in the startup or early stage.
Speaker 3:I don't know. 10% feels pretty high to me. It does.
Speaker 2:It sounds, sounds good it sounds really good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think. I don't know the number anymore, but I remember it being very small. It is yeah.
Speaker 2:It is very small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know the number of time I had either 10% is the percentage of minor league baseball players that make it to the major leagues when they sign a contract.
Speaker 3:Well, there you go, I'm at the very least.
Speaker 1:I'm like a AAA middle reliever, oh you get the AAA, you get a double A, you have a 33% chance.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, so 10% is single A, that's signing rookie ball.
Speaker 1:You sign a contract to go to rookie ball. You have a 10% shot. You get the double A, you get a 33%. Well, I'm in rookie ball, but it's still tough odds out there, no matter how you cut it.
Speaker 3:Whatever they are, I don't think the math for startups is the same as for baseball, so I'm going to give myself a little bit more credit.
Speaker 2:So, um, and before that, I saw last night after the, after the Super Bowl and everything, that Corey Kluber announced his retirement.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 2:You got a really good story about that that we might get into here in seconds. But going along those lines, scott. When was your first scut? So?
Speaker 3:My first sale Well, my first sale in this kind of you know, technology, saas services type industry, that would be 2004. Probably would have been August of 2004. So roughly 20 years ago or so, my first sale of anything was probably like baseball cards when I was a little kid, you know, selling cards to the shop or or to friends, that type of thing. Oh, that would have probably been in like 1982, something like that Any notable baseball card sales.
Speaker 2:Oh, man, like make a man or rookie or something like that. No none of the like historical stuff.
Speaker 3:You know, my, my grandfather grew up in in Italy and then moved to New York and he was a big like Brooklyn Dodgers fan back in the day. Anyway, he had, as he used to call it, you know, garbage bags of like old baseball cards from the, from bubblegum packs and stuff like that right and from from that era, and when they moved to California from Buffalo, my grandmother God bless her soul threw it all out and my grandfather never, never, forgave her for it and never neglected to tell us the story of, you know, all these cards that he thought that he he had that were quote probably worth something, something. Yeah, for context, some of these cards are probably worth, you know, five to six figures at this point in time. Uh, if they were in any good condition. But, yeah, my, my grandmother chucked it, didn't deem it necessary to, uh, make the cross-country move.
Speaker 1:Little little. Did she know that there was a season sales professional right there who could have? Yeah, those cards.
Speaker 3:I could have repurposed that stuff and uh, raised my own series a you know you could have.
Speaker 2:You could have it's good experience trading and selling and buying and selling baseball cards. Growing up, I I did the same thing. I.
Speaker 3:I, you certainly don't think about it. At least I didn't think about it back then. I didn't grow up in a family, you know, full of business people or sales people or anything like that. So there was there was no coaching or nobody telling me You're gonna, this skill is gonna serve you later in life. But you know, you look back on and you're like, okay, I was negotiating, there was something of value that I was trying to present in exchange for this other thing of value. And you know, it's a yeah. The things that you did when you were little and I was never one of those people that had like a lemonade stand or you know door, knocked the neighborhood, running my own grass, cutting business. I didn't do any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So that that baseball card selling stuff is as close as I must have got to Practicing sales skills as a, as a youth that's awesome Thinking back through your career, what was the most difficult or the hardest sales cycle and you don't have to share like all the specifics, but is there one sale cycle or one sale that you think back to and you're like, wow, that was Much more difficult than I thought it was going to be? Um, is there anything that sticks out in that?
Speaker 3:in that regard, um, I don't know about more difficult than I expected. But you know, we I did a seven-figure deal with with my team, with the state government of Iowa years ago and it was just kind of a good reminder of how slow moving certain industries are, how much red tape there is, how everybody can kind of Agree that there's a problem and want to change this thing, but nobody's willing to stick their neck out To get it done and be the fall guy, if you know, if it goes wrong, or something like that. So I'm not really built for that kind of world. I couldn't do that. Only I need positive reinforcement.
Speaker 3:So, said differently, I'm not the guy who's going to go home happy if I close one mega deal a year. That's not for me. I can't imagine coming home. You know, if we were all roommates and I'd come home and one day out of 365 days I tell you guys I closed the fucking deal today. I can't do it. It's 364 other days. What am I supposed to say? Oh, we pushed that deal forward from stage eight to stage nine. Today I got really multi-threaded today. That doesn't do it for me.
Speaker 3:I got no problem working one of one or two of those kind of deals, but I need, like you know, I want to go home feeling like I won or lost every single day, really, every single day, really. You know, what did we close? What did I, what did I Close lost today? What did we lose? That's, that's the kind of stuff that always made me feel alive. So, you know, you get into a 18 month kind of government deal and it's just like, oh man, that's that was really difficult for me. I'm not a super patient person and, uh, I just don't. I have a struggle with like inefficiency and you run into all those things in that kind of world right.
Speaker 3:But it's an important, important lesson. Actually. You think about it because One of the mistakes that I think salespeople and and sellers often make, especially earlier in their careers they're not self-aware enough to put themselves in the right position to succeed and to enjoy it. They'll be like, oh, I need to get an enterprise sales job Just because, like somebody told them that that's the career path. But if you're a super kind of impatient person who needs positive reinforcement every day, needs to close deals to stay hyped up and stuff, that's the wrong arena for you.
Speaker 3:So I spent the first part of my career really in like transactional sales environments where you could close deals every single day legitimately, like even one call closes. I sold stuff to real estate agents and brokers, automotive dealerships, contractors, all of these kind of services type small businesses, restaurants, bars, all this kind of stuff. And only later in my career did I kind of start to move up into kind of mid-market and kind of dabbling in these larger kind of deals and stuff like that. And even then it was kind of tough for me mentally and emotionally. So I think people should pay more attention actually to who they are and what type of system is gonna suit them best. If you move real slow, you probably shouldn't go into a transactional arena. If you move super, super fast and you're super impatient and you get affected when deals don't close right away, you might wanna think about whether you should go into an enterprise arena.
Speaker 2:I'm on that scale, I'm more toward you At the enterprise. Sales is difficult I think it'd be difficult to manage as well, just because months go by. And how do you judge if that deal's getting closer or not? There's just a lot of unknowns out there. But I like to wake up every day and think that, hey, I can make a deal today. Yeah, I can make a deal today. It doesn't matter, and that's the kind of, I guess, patience I have too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm the weirdo introvert here, huh, that just wants to play chess with 30 minute clock, like 30 minute moves, and drag it out and just overanalyze everything to death and take my time and just live ask in the ambiguity and the unknown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not built that way, man, I'm not built that way, yep, yep, no.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of the difference when I was playing ball, between a relief pitching and starting, you know, and when you're a relief pitcher, you're in the bullpen, you're playing games and joking and having a good time. Phone rings. In a matter of minutes you're in the game Like it's just boom, it happens, it's fast. It could be any time. When you're a starter, you got four days to think about your next start. So you're watching tape, you're studying film, you're studying I mean, you do all that as a reliever too. But there's all this prep time and sometimes guys overthink it, they overprep it and they're better just getting thrown in without having much leadway or you know much preparation. So yeah, that's kind of a similar sort of dynamic I feel like with baseball.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I never thought about that before, but that definitely resonates for me.
Speaker 1:Yep and Kevin just so you know, I did notice that Corey Gloober retired and Scott. So you know, when I got released from minor league baseball there was one guy on the team whose ERA was worse than mine and I knew it was gonna be me or him that was gonna get cut. We were both having kind of rough seasons in the California league and I'm like I'm doing I'm a full point better than this other guy, like surely they're gonna let him go. But I was wrong. They let me go and the other guy's name was Corey Gloober.
Speaker 1:They kept him and I didn't know, you know pretty good voice, wow, because I don't know if I would have been able to meet like match that career from that point forward. That's incredible, oh my God. So that was. Yeah, I noticed that I was like that's the end of an year, like all the guys that I've played against and with are slowly fading out of the game at this point, so it's a little bittersweet to see.
Speaker 3:Happens to all of us.
Speaker 2:It does. It still stings, though, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, it does. Especially, you know, if you have kids and all of a sudden they're bigger, stronger, faster than you and you're like what has happened? This is not okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, I'm a two years older than that.
Speaker 1:I have a one year old and a three year old.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, you got a ways. Mine are 16 and 14. And is it ever ahead or on the cusp of being ahead of me on just about every category? At this point, tides are turning. Yeah, it's not a good feeling, not gonna lie. This gotta be mixed. There's some pride there, like oh, you know, my kids are begging, grown and doing some amazing things. But then there's a flip side of that pride, which is like bruised ego, like holy shit, my 16 year old, I think, is taller than me almost. Or my 14 year old, I can't beat him any more shooting baskets.
Speaker 1:There would be more three pointers than me now There'd be mixed emotions on the flip of that too, like if they get to be 18 and 16 and they're still smaller and weaker and you're just dominating them still, like sure you're ego.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that wouldn't feel good either, I suppose. Yeah, True, true.
Speaker 1:So, thinking back to you know notable sales in your career, is there a sale that comes to mind that was emotional, Like your emotions got really heightened, or it wasn't just normal business, but it impacted you emotionally and it? Could be, positive or negative, but is there something that generated a stronger emotional response than the normal sales process?
Speaker 3:You know, the only thing I can think of is really is my very first sale, because I got hired with a group of I don't know, let's call it 20. It was like a pretty big class, but it was all at once and brand new. This company was a startup and they were gonna sell to real estate agents for the first time. So we got kind of thrown into the deep end, so to speak. I think we had about three or four hours of training in the morning the very first day and then off you go. And I'd never sold anything before my life, never had any kind of office job like this. And by the end of the first week I think I was the last guy that I either had not already made a sale or hadn't quit or gotten fired already that kind of boiler room type situation, right, and I was 27 years old. I had just come off of being hospitalized for four years and before that playing soccer and being in grad school and stuff. So I had no frame of reference for winning, losing in a business sense, like what's normal, what's not. I was just terrified, like I'm gonna get fired at any moment. That's what I was thinking. It's for sure gonna happen.
Speaker 3:So when I got that very first deal, it was like a relief more than joy, like okay, I just bought myself maybe some more time to kind of see if I can figure this thing out. And then I remember a little bit of a light bulb going on, like well, that felt pretty good actually when I closed that deal. Like that was kind of a cool feeling. I could get used to that feeling. I think I would maybe want that feeling again, so not really, you know, not tons of sorrow or emotion or joy, but more just like relief, and then a little bit of maybe hope or a spark of ambition started of some sort, where it's like that was awesome. I need more of that.
Speaker 3:That's really the one sale that I feel like I've talked about the most over the years, I think about or remember the most. You know, I still remember it was a real estate agent in Hawaii and it was at like 930 California time on a Friday night and I was still in the office because I was paranoid that I was gonna get, you know, fired if I didn't get something done. So I'm using the time zone to my advantage, calling Hawaii, you know. So it's like I still remember those details 20 years ago. I can't say the same about other sales that I've done, so that would be the one.
Speaker 1:Does it feel like? Maybe I'm taking a stab here, but it's almost like it was a sign of affirmation, right, that you could do this. You could be successful here. Maybe there was some sort of doubt there. You know you're worried about getting out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there definitely was doubt prior to that. For sure, I don't think it was. It wasn't affirmation in the sense of like oh, now I'm confirming, I know I can do this now, or let me show those people I know what I'm doing. Because it was like this relief, like okay, I got one, thank God I did that one, but more of like affirmation of hope, like I might be able to do this, maybe I'll figure this out, maybe I'll get good at this right, and just creating that. And that was enough to kind of get me hooked, to want that feeling again.
Speaker 3:And so I learned a few things and you know, one of the things was I'm not as good as everybody else because I've never done this before. So, just like in sports, as you probably know, you're not as good as somebody. What do you have to do? You have to outwork people or compete harder, want it more right. So you know, I kind of looked around the room and I'm like, well, I'm the only one here on Friday night at 9.30, I'm 27 years old. A lot of 27 year olds are doing something different on Friday night at 9.30. And that I kind of just paused and thought you know, the only reason that probably happened is because I was willing to outwork people and outwork my boss. You know he can't fire me if I'm still in the office at 9.30 working, can't be mad, right. And so I just kind of decided that that's what I was gonna do and I kind of changed my approach a little bit. And you know it's not very popular to say nowadays, but like I was the first guy in the office to the obsessive point where if somebody beat me one day I moved my arrival time back 15 minutes earlier and it was like no way. Mentally I was like looking for an advantage and I started doing the same thing at night, because I'm not letting Richie leave, you know, after me I'll just sit there and pretend to work. Even I just mentally need this advantage, you know.
Speaker 3:And then I did something that ended up being really good for me and a couple of folks.
Speaker 3:But I had a couple buddies that I had kind of made at work and they were of the same age and same kind of mindset, you know. First kind of corporate sales job and I started telling them, you know, like hey, real estate agents and brokers work every weekend. Man, like we're stupid for not working on the weekend, like I know you don't wanna go to the office, but you know what, if we go to the office from like 10 am to one pm, like every Saturday, religiously, you know, three extra hours, 12 hours extra a month, minimum, right. And then let's go surf afterwards and grab a drink and, you know, get some food and kind of make a routine out of it. So none of that would have happened without that first deal, kind of arriving in the manner in which it showed up for me and me kind of paying attention and leaning into that and saying, well, I guess I have to do these kinds of things in order to get good. And you know, luckily for me it worked.
Speaker 2:Scott, just out of curiosity, how much was that first deal worth?
Speaker 3:Oh, God 3 to 5k probably yeah nothing, yeah, yeah nothing.
Speaker 2:So I mean it kind of goes back to you know your most memorable cells, the, the, the, the ones that really impact you the most. The dollar matter dollar, yeah, I mean doesn't matter, right it's. It's about what you can do, what, what, what doors that opens for you, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and in and the, the Ability to allow that, to adjust and change your entire Mentality. No, how you think your mindset Right. Yeah, I know, cuz I assure you in those first five days that I was selling, I wasn't Thinking about Outwork somebody or where can I? Where can I get an advantage? Where can I squeeze 12 extra hours of of a work month? Nobody was teaching me that. I wasn't. There was no podcast back then. So it's not like I'm listening to somebody tell me this kind of stuff, right. But that one deal which was again, I think it was like $300 a month for like six to twelve month contracts somewhere in there. It's like nothing right but the, but winning.
Speaker 3:That had an impact on me and how I looked at things and thought about things and the effort I gave and I restructured, you know, a lot of my life to Lean into that and try to turn this into a career that would be, you know, long lasting and have a future. And I Wasn't looking at it in terms of like I'm gonna make millions of dollars off of this one day. I was just like, okay, I have to do this if I want to keep my job and just be a you know, keep my, keep paying the rent and keep food on my plate and that kind of stuff like this is what it's gonna take. And then you know all those successes kind of compound and you start reaching new levels of insight in terms of mindset, approach. What's possible? Now I'm not closing one deal. I'm like how do I close one deal every day?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and then you prove you can do that in that kind of arena You're like I wonder if I could close two or three every day. Can I close 60 deals in a month? This shit was like thought to be impossible at the time. You know, and then all of a sudden you're finding ways to do it and people are like how'd that happen?
Speaker 1:Oh, what I love about this is, you know, you know, having been a lifelong Competitor of sorts whether it's baseball or racing, mountain bikes or sales or whatever I'm fascinated by underdogs and underdog stories and this whole underdog mindset and this growth mindset. And like listening to you Tell that story about landing that one sale. And it wasn't so much Affirming that, haha, have arrived on my success, but it was more affirming that you're not a definitive like a new, you're not a definite failure. At that point there's hope, and so now you're. It's what I'm hearing from you is like You're in this mental place of curiosity About what's possible, what's next, what? What can I do? I don't. I feel like I'm not as good as the rest of the team, but I cannot. Can I figure out a way to operate in this space? And what's possible if I just give it my all, knowing that what's the worst that could happen at this point?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're trying to find your, your home in the team, or your role maybe in the team. You know, first it's like, okay, maybe I, maybe I do belong here. And then it becomes how can I Stick and be here, you know, for a long term. And then it's like, okay, here's my role. You know this rule of maybe I'm, maybe I'm a little too good for this role, maybe there's a bigger role, you know, for me you just keep, you know, going from there right and I and I think having that kind of Outlook, I'm trying to find what can I do differently here, how can I optimize this, what can I do better at that? I Think I've tried to keep that Kind of mentality for the last 20 years and looking at all the things that I'm, that I'm doing, you know, not necessarily with a mindset.
Speaker 3:Today, at 46 years old, of you know how do I work 9,000 extra hours over everybody else, but that flips from 27 to 47 and now almost 47. It's like, how do I continue to earn what I've been earning while working less, not more? And it's at the different perspective I wasn't trying to think that way at 27 Was like I got the time and energy, I got a put in the hours. But now I'm like I Don't want to be in the office for 12 hours. I'm not being the office at 9 30 at night on a Friday, like that's not what I want to do. But how do I succeed still Without putting in those those kind of hours, right?
Speaker 1:The commonality there is, impact right, like whether you were 27 wanting to burn all the hours first and last out, or today Wanting to be more mindful of how you're using your time. It seems like you're still trying to maximize the impact you can have.
Speaker 3:I Think I'm trying to maximize the impact I'm not just on myself, but on others as well. You know that could be clients, that could be colleagues, that could be loved ones, and then impact on myself more. Personal stuff is like Could be my actual income, could be the Actual number of days and hours I work, could be my ability to do certain things like Take that vacation, or, you know, by this house or something like that, or, and then just the feeling and the emotion of you know, no longer trying to prove necessarily that you're a success, but get comfortable with the fact that you are a success. Try to find ways and not beat yourself up and feel like a failure if you didn't do better than yesterday, every single day. You know. I don't know if these are things that just come with age and experience and everybody goes through them, or or they're Any way, shape or form unique. I would imagine they're not that unique, but my first time through this that I'm aware of.
Speaker 2:So I Don't think it's. I think it's a natural regression, right, so you spend your early days you know, doing those Blame the foundation, getting that, that, what?
Speaker 2:10 to 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and oftentimes you have to do it three or four times and being be kind of an expert at, or pro it, two or three different things to be able to Then flip the switch once you get into your, your 40s, and be able to make the same amount of impact for yourself and others While doing less, because that foundation is already there, so there's less work to be done each time. Make a scaling Would be part of it, as part of the thought process as well.
Speaker 3:I think that's you got more work to do in other areas of your life, depending on how your life went, but you know you got Partner. You know relationships. You've got parenting stuff, duties, you know.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know about you got. You're not there yet, but you will be. But you know, my kids have Soccer practice, basketball practice, track practice, band practice. They used to have baseball practice on top of everything else. It's like I'm doing something. I'm like an Uber driver from 430 to 10 pm Every night. You know I Can't be working, even if I want to. Right, and that's the season of life that Some of us, you know, go through, chose to go through, and you have to adjust, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, let's, let's finish off with the funniest cell, Though, the one that that really strikes your funny bone, your funniest cell that you ever done that you really enjoy looking back on the first thing that comes to my mind is I close a deal one time a hundred percent over email, and this is 2004 or 2005, maybe.
Speaker 3:So before it was like fashionable, you know, before there was some 23 year old TikToker saying all you have to do is email people to close deals. Yeah, I was. You know, it was like Outlook was probably the email tool and I got some email requests for information or whatever and I just started responding back and asking like one question and there must have been like 47 emails flying around and at one point I remember thinking it feels like this person is actually getting serious to the point where they might buy something. You know, and the environment that I came from it was you have to close a deal on the phone, you have to talk to somebody. It's stupid to just, you know, fax somebody over an agreement and expect it to get signed and faxed back, Cause, yes, we had to use fax machines in order to close deals back then. But the person eventually was like you know, send me over the agreement so I can take a look at it. I said, fuck it, fill out the agreement, I'm gonna fax this thing. I've never talked to this person before Same type of same product that I was selling as the story, by the way, with my first deal.
Speaker 3:And sure enough, they signed it and it came back like three or four X bigger than my first deal. So it was like a pretty decent size deal for that sale and what our normal average contract value was and I just kind of was laughing. I still kind of laughed to this day Like how is that possible, you know. But it's kind of that person was a kudos to them. They were ahead of the game. They wanted to buy something without talking to a salesperson way before. That was the norm. That never happened in that job, ever again.
Speaker 2:Total like rarity for me at that time it was a good deal deal that stuck and didn't have any problems with it down the line, Not that I remember that's good.
Speaker 3:Maybe I blacked that part out, I don't know. I don't remember anything bad happening. I remember back in like yeah, 2004, 2005,.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean like email really didn't, didn't start doing deals until just a few years ago, maybe like 10 years ago.
Speaker 3:You know what that funny deal did teach me, though? It did teach me that emailing people worked. And so back then this is like before spam laws existed, these real estate websites if you went to real estate websites, if you clicked on the person's email address, which was, on the main, like homepage on real-addedcom or whatever you would like, auto populate and outlook message, and so I've, like, made my signature file some template, you know, prospecting email and I had this whole rhythm where it'd be like copy paste, alt send, just with my fingers, I'm like clicking, and it was this whole rhythmic thing, and I would just sit there at night watching you know games or whatever. I would just send off hundreds of emails at that time and people would, you know, write back, buzz off, unsubscribe, but then I'd get all these actual positive messages back. So you know, I guess I was email prospecting before. That was really a thing.
Speaker 3:The original cadence, yeah well, also known as spam, but it worked. But it worked back then there wasn't that many people doing it. It was a brief moment in time, you know, less than a year probably where it was glorious and people like me ended up ruining it, probably for everybody after that.
Speaker 1:Scott, thanks for your time and joining us today. Like where can our listeners find you? Where can they go and learn more about what you do? And find you in the internet. Not that they're wanting your spam, but if they're actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those days are gone. You won't get that anymore. You know, I run my own consulting business, like I said, working with primarily like series A, series B companies at scottlesconsultingcom, and I do a lot of other things. Got a couple other businesses, communities that I run, events that I run. Best place to learn about that stuff and message me is just go to LinkedIn and shoot me a DM or connection requests. I respond to every single one of those that I see that isn't spammy, so hope to hear from anybody out there who wants to have a chat about something.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Any last words of wisdom before we depart.
Speaker 3:Thank God football season's over, because I need a break from the pain. I need about eight months to recover and then come August, you know, I'll be feeling real optimistic again, like an idiot, delusional optimistic idiot.
Speaker 1:Optimism is often a good thing, you just keep coming back.
Speaker 3:Keeps us coming back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks again for your time, scott. Okay, guys, cheers, cheers.