Founder

It all begins with this indescribable fire that burns inside of you. It’s impossible to sit still, your mind races with excitement as you think about the solutions you can provide and the problems you can solve. Above all, you cannot contain the eagerness you have to help others reach their highest peaks. That’s why I do what I do, that’s what makes me, me!

My Story:

My sales/business journey began when I was in college. Working out one day, this big buff guy approached me and asked if I’d be interested in working at a health & fitness store selling supplements. I quickly agreed as I was selling pizza at the time and endlessly smelled like pepperoni.

The new job quickly morphed into my passion as I fell in-love with helping my customers reach their goals through sales consultations. At just 19 years of age, I had no idea these moments would mold my future successes in sales & business.

After a couple of years of working here part time while going to school, the same buff guy who I later found out was the owner, offered another proposition. He was planning on opening up a new store and wanted me, a 20 yr old college kid to manage it. I’d be responsible for hiring, firing, training, scheduling, marketing, hitting store sales numbers, managing inventory and much much more.

It was an easy “yes” for me, completely ignoring that I was a full-time student and this management role required me to work 42+ hours a week.

For the next 2.5 years, I’d work almost every day of the week while going to school full-time and passing my classes. Class at 8am, work at 9:30am back to class at 3pm and then to work again at 5:30pm. In order to hit my required hours for my salary and stay on track for graduation, I had to be extremely creative. If I close my eyes I can still smell that scent of pine-sol from when I mopped the store the night before.

Graduation was approaching and I knew it was time to take the next step in my sales journey. A buddy of mine who was working at Cintas at the time mentioned he was getting blown up with recruiting messages for sales positions. So I asked him to forward me all of those messages and I’d begin cold calling those folks to get an interview. Guess what? It worked!

I ended up getting an interview at one of the best places a young hungry sales professional could go, Paychex. At the time, I was 23 and by far the youngest person in my training class at Paychex. It wasn’t long before my first taste of success in an outside sales role. I quickly became the top performing rep on a team of 6-7 and was on my way to my first Sales Conference Award. That’s when opportunity knocked.

It was a message & call from a recruiter telling me about this new division within a top bank for a Commercial Payment Program. At the time, I was just beginning to make over six figures at Paychex and was about to hit their prestigious “Conference” award. In sales, you’ll hear all kinds of tactics to get you to switch to a new role, more money, freedom and benefits. For me, it was all about one thing, will this new role require me to grow, become uncomfortable and ultimately be a better version of myself. The answer was “yes”.

I found myself in another training class of new-hires, except this time, I wasn’t the youngest by a couple of years. I was the youngest by 7 years, I loved the pressure that came with being in that room. After training, we were off to the races and I quickly became a top performing sales professional amongst my new hire class. In my first year, I achieved 150% of quota and was awarded the “Peak Performance Club”.

In 2019, I was ready to get back to the West Coast where I was born. Currently living in Kentucky at the time this wasn’t going to be an easy process. Due to my success within the organization, a transfer out to the Seattle market was approved. My partner and I loaded up a U-Haul and were on our way to an area where we knew nobody.

It was the most incredible journey of my life, establishing new roots in an area you’ve never lived is one of the most empowering things you can experience. Of course, this process of re-establishing ourselves was going to hit a massive road block 🦠 🦠 🦠 .

The pandemic changed my professional career forever. As COVID began I had just finished a book by a friend of mine John Berardi called “Changemaker”. There is a specific exert of his book that discusses the importance of Outcome Goals vs. Mastery Goals. You see, most people focus on Outcome Goals, it’s the face value of the results of our actions, or is it?

The major drawback of Outcome Goals is, you can’t always control the outcomes of your actions. For example, if you’ve ever tried to get in-shape and weighed yourself over the course of X amount of months, you’ll find the outcome of your efforts aren’t always linear. Just because your weight is up over the day before, doesn’t mean you are off track, especially when you zoom out.

Similarly, in sales we generally only focus on Outcome Goals. How many meetings did you run? What were your sales numbers in Q1? Now, I’m not saying Outcome Goals aren’t important it’s just that oftentimes the results are out of our control. Queue Mastery Goals.

What you can control are your Mastery Goals. In sales, there’s of level of luck and chance that dictates success of sales professionals. Personally, I prefer not to leave it up to luck or chance by focusing on Mastery Goals. By dedicating a specific amount of time & effort into “mastering” sales, I can put myself in the best position to achieve the outcomes I want. The idea is, you can control the specific actions that are going to help you reach Mastery and in-result have more control over your outcomes.

My division decided to go on-pause for a few months during the onset of COVID. The anxiety that transpired was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. My whole life I had spent focusing on Outcome Goals, scores of sports games, commission checks and if we could get a girls phone number.

It was during this stressful time that I remembered my friend John’s book about Mastery. I couldn’t focus on Outcome Goals as we weren’t selling and that would make my problem worse. However, I could focus on “Mastering” sales and implementing a strategy that would enable me to crush my goals. I was going to invest a certain amount of time every week into “Mastering” sales so when we went back to market it was game over. I began reading two books a month, found a mentor within my organization as well as a monitor outside of my organization.

Once we went back to market, I was one of the top performing sales reps within the division and with this strategy I haven’t looked back. I finished that year at 145% of quota, the following year at 224% and in this current year I’m projected to finish well over 300%.

In the last few years, I’ve begun sharing what I’ve learned with my peers as well as other organizations. The success these principles and ideas are having on others, is what has motivated me to create my free sales course as well as begin consulting Start-ups.

Editor

Chief Barking Officer

Woof, woof woof, woof!