00:00 Zach and Jack, the legends. We've got a meeting finally. Finally, finally. Are you able to lay out the whole sales methodology, the whole playbook, how you think about sales from there's someone here now is thinking, I know we could help out the CEO of Salesforce. Yeah. How do they start that from front to back? You need to do the disgusting, horrible, annoying work of direct messaging 3000 people. I always get frustrated when people say, oh, but it's easy for you. got a big audience.

00:29 I don't put most of that stuff on the social media. I cold call, I cold message. know, I kick off the same way you guys would kick off. I think it would be silly, because me and Jack are known for cold calling, to not ask your thoughts on cold calling. And we can take it. It's going to be brutal. We take it. We're working to save it. You work it, yeah. I would much rather they do a year of cold calling. Does everybody need a personal bro? You don't need one. You could just not like nice things.

00:58 I've got a magic message that works every time.

01:08 Today, we got to meet one of our business heroes, someone that we've consulted regularly via podcasts and books, and that we've built our business off his brain. It's the great Daniel Priestley who joins us today. And I can't believe I'm saying that. Jack, what did you learn from Daniel? I can't believe what I learned. I learned so much. We spoke about business, lead generation, sales, how to actually generate appointments, and how to build a personal brand to bring you lots more opportunities.

01:38 So if you're budding entrepreneur or you're a salesperson that's looking for the edge, this is one that you won't want to miss.

01:47 Daniel, thanks for being here. Zach and Jack, the legends. We've got a meeting finally. Finally, finally. I was just saying from the penthouse of high performance and Darryl Vaseo to the outhouse of our Rinky Dink up. quickly I can fall. It's amazing. Oh my goodness. How did this happen? Suzy, what happened? I can only apologize. We'll try and make it as painless as possible. So we always start our podcast off the same way. So for anyone who's crazy enough to not know who you are, who are you and what problem do you solve? I'm Daniel Priestley. I'm an entrepreneur and an

02:17 who writes books about entrepreneurship. We develop entrepreneurs who stand out, scale up and make a positive impact in the world. Beautiful, beautiful. So I want to make this as actionable as possible. One of the things that I think a lot of our listeners have is that desire to start a business, a sister business, but they want to make sure that they fail in a low stakes environment. So if they have that idea and they want to test where's it's fit, where would you advise them to start? Oh, cool. Let's get straight into it. So waiting lists.

02:46 So launching a waiting list, whenever I've launched a business, I always start by launching the waiting list to see if people will opt in for that business. if you're like, even I have multiple businesses. if I've got like I currently do, I've got a side idea. I can't help myself. I'm like perpetually like just like in the shower thinking about new ideas. And I go, oh, we should do this. My first thought is, okay, we need to launch the waiting list.

03:15 So it'll just be a high level overview of the idea. And then are you interested in this? Join the waiting list. When someone joins the waiting list, we always ask five questions to get onto the waiting list. And then we give them a little bit of information straight away about what we're thinking and what we're doing. So we might record a video and tell people this is what we're up to. And we have a really amazing high quality waitlist joining process. If we can get six, seven, 800 people to join a waiting list.

03:43 And we can collect the data that people are willing to pay that they have a problem that needs solving, that they've tried stuff that hasn't worked and that we think we can help them. Then we go ahead to the next stage. then, so the people that are listening, if they are, they don't have a massive network, they've got this idea and they post it on social media and no one, no one does anything. So that's like, is it a bad idea that people don't want to join the waiting list?

04:10 Well, it just means you're lazy sod. basically you need to do the disgusting, horrible, annoying work of direct messaging 3000 people. you know, score app, right? So score apps, we've just been notified that we're one of the fastest growing companies in the UK. We're on the fast growth index. won scale up of the year. We're less than five years old. We're probably a 50 to a hundred million dollar business at the moment.

04:40 I started that by messaging 3000 people. Now I message 3000 people because I didn't wanna post on social media about something I wasn't sure about. So all through late 2019 and early 2020, I'm firing off 100 DMs a day. And when I say firing off, like not just cut, paste, send, but cut, paste, customize, send, cut, paste, customize, I'm like cold outreach, cold DMs across...

05:08 you know, social media, hey, I noticed this such and such, I wanna share a quick story with you. Over last five years, we've been doing this campaign and it's really worked well. I wanna explain it to some more people. Are you interested in knowing how we did that? Would you like the full story? Oh yeah, I'd like the full story. Okay, cool. So here's the full story. If you're interested to know some of the tools that we use, just join this waiting list, right? Or in that case, actually, I went with a...

05:37 an introduction workshop, come along to this little introduction workshop. I'm going to do a one hour explainer workshop where we introduce you to how we've been doing this and yeah, 3000 cold DMS. I always get frustrated when people say, Oh, but it's easy for you. got a big audience. don't put most of that stuff on the, on, on the social media. I, I, I cold call a cold message. You know, I kick off the same way you guys would kick off. So one of the bits that you kind of, skipped over it, but I think people are going to love that. The messaging that you send.

06:07 you know that there are going be people going, but I don't know what to say. So you spoke about like the story and it sounded like you were alluding to curiosity. two things. Number one, if someone's listening to this and they're like, well, but I don't know, blah, blah, blah, right. You got to go get a mentor. You can't be a number one if you don't know too many things. You need to be a number two or a number three before you can be a number one.

06:31 before anyone starts a business, go do an apprenticeship. If you wanted to be a hairdresser, you'd go do a hairdressing apprenticeship. If you wanted to be a plumber, you'd do a plumbing apprenticeship. You do two or three years working for someone who's very experienced and then you know all the stuff and then you go do your own. There's a CEO that I know who's added $10 billion worth of shareholder value. I said, how did you get to the point where you could do that? And he goes, I worked for Larry Ellison.

06:58 I'll go, oh, okay. It makes sense. Right. If you worked for Larry Ellison, then it makes sense that can go off and be a CEO of other big companies because you do an apprenticeship. you know, everyone has to do their apprenticeship. You get self-awareness, you get commercial awareness and you get access to resources. And when you've got those three things, you know, so it is a massive red flag. If someone's sitting there going, but I don't know this and I don't know that. Right. There's a few gaps in knowledge, but if it's like, well, I don't know where to start.

07:26 Be a number two, be a number three, work your way up, be a number one. I know that's a painful thing to say, but that's just how it works. What message do I send? I've got a magic message that works every time. And it's, did something special for a certain type of person. We got a remarkable result. I can explain it. That's the, basically that's the framework. So I did something special. Here's what we did for a certain type of person. Here's who we did that for.

07:57 we got a remarkable result, here's what ended up happening. And I can explain it step by step. Would you be interested in that? like that just works. So for example, with ScoreApp, over the last five years, we generated 90,000 leads using an online quiz, online assessment. The leads generated over $20 million worth of sales. It worked well for us as a B2B services firm.

08:26 Um, and I can explain to you how we did it so that you can replicate that. Nice. Simple as that. Yeah. So, one of things that you said with that message and nothing, just to be clear on, I've helped people like you. Is that a case of I'm telling Coke I've worked with Pepsi or is that saying we've worked in food and drink? Yeah, could, yeah, it could be, I mean, whatever's true, right? Whatever's true. And you're trying to find people who would want to replicate that. You might say,

08:53 If I was approaching Coca-Cola or Pepsi, I might say we ran a campaign for a boutique startup in the drinks industry. We had a very low budget and we got a massively outsized result. And I can explain that step by step. And I actually think it would work for a big business if you're interested in learning how we, in seeing what we did. Let me show you what worked. So I'm working with whatever I've got. It's normally, unfortunately it's normally the raw material of what you've got.

09:23 that has to be a true story. So you're just looking, one thing I often do with companies that come through our accelerator is we go through like a timeline and we say, okay, last five years. And we say, let's just apply this little framework. I did something special for a certain type of person. We got a remarkable result and I can explain it step by step. Give me an example from 2023, 22, 21, 2020, 2019, 2018. We go through and we like pick apart the stories and then we say,

09:53 Okay. That's going to be your intellectual property. Those are the stories that you're going to leverage and share. So we go through and find all of those interesting stories. find the best examples from the last five years using that particular story, that framework. Wow. Okay. So are you able to lay out the whole sales methodology, the whole playbook, how you think about sales from there's someone here now is thinking, I know we could help out the CEO of Salesforce. Yeah. How do they start that from front to back?

10:21 Oh, you, well, let me, you want me to lay out how I think about sales? Yeah. Um, all right. So we're opening big Pandora's box. So the first, the first place to start is that I think of sales as a profession. Um, and I think of it as a high value experience that it adds to a luxury or high value experience. So in this country, in the UK, we have negative views of sales and we, have ABS breaking anything that sells you're allowed to do anything.

10:51 that say that you work in sales or that you do sales, right? So, which is causing most companies to break. They're not going as fast as they could because they have negative perceptions of sales. But if we objectively look at sales, we say, who does the most sales training and the most sales development and the most sales process optimization? It's luxury brands, Rolex, you know, all of the luxury LVMH brands. You've got the top real estate projects. You've got the top.

11:19 car brands, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, all of those, they take sales incredibly seriously. In the 1970s, there was the baby boom, so the baby boom that happened in the 50s and the 60s, these kids who were born back in 1946 to 1964, they grew up and they needed a first car to drive. And that all hit all at once in the 1970s.

11:49 So in the 1970s, there were lots of people who wanted a used car, but they couldn't get enough used cars in the UK. So it created an unscrupulous set of incentives where people would lie about the used car stock in order to just make a sale because there were so many people who wanted used cars and there weren't enough used cars. So what emerged is this caricature of the used car, the 1970s used car salesman. And that caricature haunts us today.

12:17 And it's not, it's 50 years out of date. It's not true. It was a little tiny window into the past because of the baby boom. If we fast forward to today, sales is a luxury high-end profession. So what we want to do starting point is view it through the lens of this is a luxury high-end experience. This adds to a luxury high-end product. This adds to a luxury high-end process. It's an important marketing touch point. So the first thing is just treating it with professionalism, reverence.

12:47 reframing how you feel about sales, reframing your desire to do a great job in sales, changing the way that you view the thing. know, because a lot of people, that's just barrier number one. So that would be my first thought. Second thing is that sales requires you to get into a rhythm. You have to get into a rhythm. Like fitness people say that you got to get into a rhythm of going to the gym.

13:12 you must get into this rhythm. And the rhythm that I have always used is called LAPS, Leads, Appointments, Presentation Sales. On all of our startups, we have a big whiteboard with our LAPS dashboard. How many leads do we generate? How many appointments? How many presentations? How many sales? So we have our weekly LAPS. And what we're looking for is actually smooth weekly LAPS. Like, you know, every week it's gonna be, you we generated 100 leads. We booked in 12 appointments. Eight people showed up.

13:41 for presentation and we made two sales. And it's something like that. And it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we just see that we're able to consistently do these, these labs. So profession rhythm. And then the final part is the way that we approach sales conversations. Like how do we, how do we script, rehearse, uh, and, and, um, produce great sales conversations that are high performing sales conversations. So we kind of break it into those three baskets. So that I love this Daniel, and that there's probably a few.

14:11 things to pick it. Leads is so interesting. think you've kind of mentioned it already with what you're talking about. so I guess for you, what is your definition of a lead? And then after that, I'd love to know those appointments. How do you run it? I guess from top to bottom, what are you trying to get out of those appointments? So a lead is a strong signal of interest, or a detectable signal of interest. No, it doesn't even have to be strong, but it's a, we can detect a signal of interest.

14:36 So lead could be that they've liked a social media post through to commenting on a social media post through to filling in an online form, engaging with an, you know, I've got my big four lead generators that I use. So the number one lead generator is online assessments where people fill in an online assessment to see if they need something. Assessment based selling or assessment first selling is phenomenal. You know, I've built most of my businesses off the back of having a really thoughtful assessment.

15:05 where if someone fills in that assessment, they're pretty much halfway to going ahead. So online assessments are excellent. Introduction workshops, I love intros. So registering for an introduction workshop is a lead. Always for 20 plus years, I've had introduction workshops as a cornerstone strategy for lead, for signal of interest. Discussion groups, where people join a discussion group on Facebook or LinkedIn or WhatsApp.

15:34 And they say, yes, I'd like to join that discussion group. Um, and waiting lists, uh, waiting lists or expression of interest lists. Um, or the fifth one would be opt in for content. So opt in for a report opt in for a video series opt in for some sort of content, uh, additional premium content that, uh, that you opt in for. So any of those kinds of big lead generators, um, those, those four or five things, they are my big.

16:01 go to lead generators. So it's when people engage with one of those, those are my pretty warm signals of interest. then to your, you're pushing those. you get all these leads, you get a hundred leads through the door and then is it via the message you were saying that you're going to push them towards the appointment? Yeah. So an appointment is a commitment to spend some time. So that's all the first commitment is can I get you to commit time? So an appointment might like, for example,

16:28 If someone books into an introduction workshop and they're actually scheduling an hour to attend, that is an appointment. They're booked into that. Or if they book an appointment with a salesperson, that's an appointment. If someone fills in an online assessment where they've taken the assessment, but that's it. And then we message them and say, Hey, I noticed that you scored 23 % on your assessment. Would you like to have a conversation around getting up above 70 %? Would you like to talk to one of our team? That's an appointment. If they say yes.

16:58 book that in, that's an appointment. So appointment setting is getting people to schedule a time. Nice, that mini commitment. then say, say I booked you a load of appointments and you're going to run them and you're like, what are you doing? What are you trying to find out? What boxes are you trying to tick before you get them to that presentation? qualified appointments is most important. And that is ideally that we know which segment they fit into. So are they a big business, a small business? Do they make decisions through committee or individually?

17:27 Do they have budget or would they have to find the budget? Do they have a clear need or are they just, you know, exploring? I might want to know, are they already problem aware or solution aware? So problem aware is they really understand the problem that they've got, but aren't fixed on a solution or solution aware is that they've already moved to finding a solution and they just want to find the best supplier. So, you know, those kinds of questions, it's different for each business, but some of those qualifying.

17:56 markers would help us to deliver better presentations. I think it would be silly because me and Jack are known for cold calling to not ask your thoughts on cold calling and we can take it. It's going to be brutal. can take it. We're working to save it. You work it. Yeah. So I've got a cold, cold outreach background. love cold DMS on social media. I like, you know, when I was a teenager, I'd knocked on doors.

18:23 I sold roses door to door, knocking on doors, selling flowers. sold roof insulation. I did a roof installation appointment setting where I was an appointment setter, knocking on doors cold. So I understand the value of it and I understand crunching through the numbers. I think more and more the digital environment is top of funnel and the human interaction, the call is appointment setting.

18:52 presenting, it's responding to some sort of signal of interest, it's following up with leads. But personally, where I like to put any humans is a little bit further down the funnel, mid funnel to bottom funnel is where I like to see humans. I certainly like in the purest sense of the word of cold calling, I'm not a massive fan of just completely cold. I'd much rather drop them, drop people to DM.

19:20 Um, and then if they say, yeah, I'm interested in that. Why don't I give you a call? Um, might, might be easier if I just drop you a call. I'm free this afternoon. Can I give you a call? You know, something, something along those lines where I'm doing something digitally. First, um, I would much rather a really high quality video of the CEO presenting something and then follow up with those who liked the video or commented on the video or something like that. I just want something digital first and then, and then humans. Okay.

19:50 And then I played devil's advocate. Go for it. What about those? So it's almost like a net, right? So I've got a net of people who are engaging with the marketing and the net that is slightly more wider might be people who don't exist within that net. But if I want to get hold of those people as well, what would you suggest? think super high, super targeted appointment setting. There's definitely a use case for cold outreach, like direct cold. Still, I would probably still go with

20:20 Texting. Interesting. Right. So, um, you know, texting a CEO, texting a, um, uh, uh, a CEO's assistant, texting someone who works closely with that. I personally, I would start with, I'm just trying to get through to so-and-so. Um, what do you think would be the best way? Um, by the way I've, I've

20:46 got in touch with you because I noticed the X, Y, and Z, something where we can craft a good text. Personally, you know, or at least texting and then following up with a call. So, I'm just trying to get in touch with you, blah, blah, blah. I'll give you a call later this afternoon. Something like that. think, I think personally, if you're trying to get the high end, it would work. that a...

21:13 a psychology thing with the text. always so interested in this Daniel, but is that like, is there a psychology behind it or is that like, um, like a personal preference? Like if we were trying to reach out to you, because I sometimes forget that different people live in different places. If you want to get ahold of me, probably best call me and I'd be like, I'm in that world. I'd love it. But actually if I receive a cold email and it's like, I saw that you did this when you was 21 and this, I'm a bit like, get it, but it's like over personalization. So what's your.

21:42 What's the reason behind my, issue is that my, my diary is scheduled pretty finely. Um, I've got an assistant who schedules stuff into the diary. Um, there's not a lot of times where I'm happy to take a call. If I have blank free time in my diary, it's because I want free time in my diary. I don't want someone calling during that time. I'm working on something. I'm catching up on something. I don't want an unscheduled call. Um, so I'm always going to have my backup of like, how did you get my number? Why? Like all of that sort of stuff. And.

22:12 Uh, you know, I'll give you an example. Someone lovely and amazing cold called me the other day while I was loading 10 suitcases. I was traveling with my whole family through LA and grandma, and we had 10 suitcases between our group and I'm just pulling up at LA airport. And they said, have I caught you a good time? And I said, absolutely not. If this is a cold call, I said, I'm literally arriving at LAX.

22:38 And I've got 10 suitcases. I've got to get onto the sidewalk and I've to then drop this car back at the thing. This is the worst possible time. Right. And they never called back. Had they just dropped me a long text, I'd read it. Like they've got my number, drop me a freaking text. You know, I'll read it at some point. I'm going to be sitting in the airport. Like you just happened to get me at the exact wrong time. So it, there's nothing personal about that. It's just, if you're calling me cold, there's a very, very high chance that I'm, that it, that I'm not sitting around waiting for a call. Yeah.

23:07 I'm glad that we emailed your assistant to get you on the podcast because we have cold, cold guests in the past and that could have gone badly. What about, so I know that I've heard you talk about it, but you're probably best to answer it, but what about out of the box prospecting? We know a lot of people and we've done them ourselves thinking direct mail, lumpy mail, something a little bit different. I guess what other ways apart from cold DMs and cold calling and cold email?

23:35 How else can you get interest? of the best ways. You find a really, really good book, really good book that speaks to what you do. You order a hundred copies. You drop people a text and say, I've just finished reading Atomic Habits. It made me think about who I'd love to share that with. Do you mind if I bought you a free copy? I'd love to send it through.

24:04 Something along like those lines. I'll drop you a free copy of atomic habits. If you like, whatever Ray Dalio's principles or, I just read the biography of the guy who started Nike and I thought of you love to send you a copy. If you haven't already read it, the fact that you're offering to send a book. And if you do send a book, um, like then at that point, the door is open. You know, you're going to get a phone call. You're going to take a phone call from someone who sent you a free copy of a book. Um, if we're talking about high end, you know,

24:34 That sort of stuff. The other one, actually the other one that's really, really good for high end is private dining. I'm putting together a private dining experience with 12 people. Everyone's a CEO in your similar situation. We've got some really exciting people coming along. It's at a very fancy restaurant. Would you like an invitation? Oh yeah, send me through an invitation. That'd be nice. Something like that. That, that, that can work really well as well. mean, that's interesting. And then so let's say you've got

25:04 people there, people, they may be not there, but maybe in the back of that, they know there's going to be a pitch or an ask at some point. So what is the ask there to make that not feel too grabby? Well, when I've done this, the ask is only, can I get an hour of your time one-to-one? Can we follow up from here and do a one-to-one? Mind you, I'm talking about things that end up being ultra high-end, but essentially,

25:33 I'd love to, I'd love to catch up with you for a coffee in a week or so, and talk to you about, we're launching a new thing. We'd love to partner with you on this. Would I be able to carve out an hour to actually take you through what we're actually, um, you know, what we're doing. Uh, so I never do a big pitch at those. I normally facilitate a great conversation, go around the table, let everyone introduce themselves, myself included. Um, and, um, and then I follow.

25:59 So I once did this with 28 people. I'd arrived in the UK with a suitcase and a credit card, 2006. I spent the first two weeks reaching out to people, got 28 people to agree to come to a private dining in just near Chancery Lane. And out of 28, 26 agreed to meet with me face to face in the following couple of weeks. Out of 26, I partnered, I did a joint venture partnership with Most, probably close to 20.

26:29 Um, on the day that we launched, had something like two and a half thousand people, uh, opt in for our, uh, event launch. And then we did 4 million pounds worth of sales in the first six months. Yeah. Starting with a suitcase and a credit card. Yep. So within six months of arriving in London, 4 million pounds where the sales secured. And it started with just that private dining. Where does that, so if that's baseline, that's very impressive to start there and make that happen. Where does that belief come from?

26:59 I can do that, can get in a room full of these high net worth individuals and make something happen when I paid for it on a credit card. From 19 to 21, I was mentored by a fast growth entrepreneur. So I was employee number three and two years later we had 60 employees and we'd built multi-million pound revenue and we had a, we'd gone from around the kitchen table to an inner city Melbourne office. So from 19 to 21, I had that very close relationship with the founder.

27:28 John and I'd learned a lot about just how to get stuff done I'd then launched my own business in Australia I'd grown it from zero to a copied John and going from zero to a million in the first year and then ten point seven million in year three And then when I came over with a suitcase and credit card I'd actually built an eight figure business in Australia prior to that But I actually did set myself a challenge to come over with a suitcase and a credit card and start from scratch So I'd started from scratch, but I also had

27:56 By 25, I had actually built like an eight figure business. So that's where I got the confidence from. wasn't my first rodeo, but I was starting from scratch. then going, so we, um, we had Derek Sivers on the podcast recently and we were talking about beliefs and some beliefs being useful, but not necessarily true. Go back to, I guess, when you were in Australia and you build that first business, how did, how did you get there? Like what, what, what belief system did you have that?

28:24 Maybe we're useful, but not necessarily true. think we use the word belief to signify that we don't have a lot of evidence. And I think personally, I think evidence beats belief. like, I'm not necessarily a massive fan of belief without evidence on anything. I think you want to believe something because you've got that data. You've got the evidence. So when.

28:53 I was a teenager, I sold flowers door to door and I ran nightclub parties and I put together nightclubs and all of that sort of stuff. And I had probably a significant belief that it would fail and I'd fall on my face, but I was really taken with the idea of one day owning a Ferrari as a 17, 16 year old. I liked the idea of having a Ferrari. I thought that would be the coolest thing that you could possibly do.

29:23 Um, and I thought if I don't fail a few times, I'll never have a Ferrari, so it'll never happen. Um, so I just have to just fail or succeed or fail, but I just have to do it or else I'm like, if I don't take these steps, I guaranteed lose the things that I want. So there's all the, I want a big house and I want a Ferrari. That was the thinking of a 17 year old. Um,

29:48 And before you ask, no, I never ended up getting a Ferrari, but I've got three kids that don't fit. Um, I'll, I'll, I'll when the kids are older, um, the, basically like, just knew I would guarantee, I guaranteed I would miss out on the things that I want if I don't try and fail. And I just kind of knew that failure was value was part of the process. So I kind of actually went into the nightclub parties expecting that we'd full flood on our face and that I'd be humiliated and all of that sort of stuff.

30:19 So I was shocked when the nightclub parties succeeded. So, but then I did six of them and each one of them got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I bumped into this guy who was a super successful entrepreneur and was starting a new company. And I told him about my nightclub party promotions and how I'd been building these nightclub parties and how I dropped out of university and I didn't know what to do next. And he just naturally went, well, come and I'm doing a startup, come and join my startup. And I was like, cool. And he had a huge house.

30:47 And three kids and like he, looked around at his life and I was like, damn, I like, you know, I want, want a bit of this. So I just joined his startup. So I had, I had enough evidence for him to go, I'll take you under my wing. And then I worked my tail off 60, 70 hours, like 10 hours a day, every day. Like I never took time off for two years, like every day that I could work, I worked and I just wanted to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. was super, super hungry. And I just.

31:16 spent two years getting evidence of I can do this too. it feels like you're just an optimist through and through. Sometimes I, um, I don't know. I'm, I'm also quite pessimistic. Like I totally accept that I'm probably going to fail at stuff. Like it's, it's probably going to be shit. Um, do you know, the funny thing is I actually think that I'm quite negative and,

31:46 And then I'm pleasantly surprised. I think you can be, I think optimism can blow up in your face. Um, because you can think that something's going to work and then it doesn't. And you feel really like down. I, my genuine default is that people are going to let me down. It's not going to work. People are going to be rude and horrible. It's going to fail. I'm going to lose money. I'm going to lose. Like it's all going to be shit. Basically, if this is going to be dog shit, this is going to be terrible. It's going to be so hard.

32:16 And then it's like, oh, okay. It's not as bad as I thought. Right. So like, actually, surprisingly, um, I'm not, I don't think I am an optimist. I really do think most things are going to be terrible. So then when you, you're, no, it's interesting. have a realist. Yeah, I like it. So when you go into those situations, you feel like you're going to. One of the, one of the questions that we always kind of talk about is like your relationship with rejection and validation then.

32:44 So if you're going into those situations, how do you, how do you kind of balance it out? you're pessimistic or realistic, but also it's not going to get me down if it does fail. Or is that just like the default? I just think about what I want. I don't, I've never had a safety net. So I just have to, I just have to get on with it. I don't give myself a lot of time to think about how I feel about stuff. It's just like, I don't have a safety net. I've got to make this work.

33:13 One of the best things I ever did is I started a business. So when I was working with John, I used to put all these company expenses on my credit card and then he would clear it at the end of the month. And by 21, I had a $20,000 credit limit because I'd just been turning over all this money on my credit card and they just upped my limit. And when I went and started my first business, I stuck.

33:38 all the startup expenses on the credit card and it had a 55 day, I timed it, it had a 55 day payback cycle. You had to pay it back 55 days. So if you couldn't pay it back in 55 days, the credit card gets canceled and they literally start proceeding against you. So I started my business by putting an $8,000 quarter page newspaper ad on my credit card, a $2,500 venue on my credit card.

34:05 So like literally on day one of like, I'm doing this. think I racked $15,000 worth of startups costs onto the credit card. And then I had to make enough sales in 55 days to clear the credit card and then do it all again. So my first 12 months of business was max out the credit card, pay down the credit card, max out the credit card, pay down the credit card. So I was just caught on this. I was caught on a treadmill.

34:35 of like, you know, the credit card was a noose around my neck. And if I didn't, if I didn't make my sales within 55 days, I'm out of business. The credit card gets stopped and that's it. Right. So like that, that was my experience of the first 12 months of figuring out how to pay down the credit card before they turned it off. Uh, so yeah, there wasn't a lot of room for just feeling about how do I feel about it? And it's just pay the credit card down. You've, you've hit on.

35:02 A truth that we've spotted recently, and especially in this journey that we've had in business, the moments where it has to work, tends to work. So when I was in my bedroom making cold calls with babies crying in the background, it had to work in that first month and it did. And we've got salespeople in the team now and I say, why are you doing so well at minute? Oh, I have to, because I've got something on my back. I've got this thing on my back. So sometimes I think we're shying away from pressure. I don't know if you're spotting that. There's like a softening. It's kind of crazy. Like my...

35:32 My grandfather was a riot policeman in Palestine and that reshaped my view of pressure. Cause I used to hear the stories of him having to basically break up violent fights every day as that was his job. His job was riot police in post-war Palestine, post-World War II. And my other grandfather was he had 140

36:02 people, was the general manager of a factory that produced copper cable and plastics. And I remember him being very proud of the fact that he had sliced off the end of his finger and had it sewn up and was back at work the next day. And like, you know, he'd had sparks fly in his eyes and then he had to get glasses and all of this sort of stuff. And, he said that, you know, that's how serious he took his work. That, you know, you don't let that stuff stop you.

36:31 I'm like, I run nightclub parties. I run, like I do very simple things compared to my grandparents. So I just have this view of like, how hard is it? This thing we call pressure. It's like, oh, I've got lots of DMs to get back to. It's not comparable. Yeah, I'm with you. So it's interesting what you thought success looked like as that young lad, the Ferrari, the big house.

36:58 When I say to you now success or what does success look like or a successful person? Well, how do you think of it now? It's probably more to do with my calendar than, than other things. Like, I spending a lot of time doing the things that I want? Am I getting lots of time with family? You you mentioned before about I dropped the kids at school every day and, um, you know, am I like my preference at the moment is I like to do one important thing in the morning and one important thing in the afternoon. And if I'm, if I'm moving at that pace and I've got plenty of time to think, and I've got plenty of time to.

37:28 Um, you know, enjoy the pace of life that that to me is more success. But with that said, big house is nice. Working with charities is nice. Um, having, you know, not a Ferrari, but some, you know, not nice things is nice. Oh, all of that's part of it. But I think, I think you, uh, I think eventually ultimately success is how you spend your time. Like, you spending your time doing the things that totally light you up and that you really enjoy looking forward to the week ahead?

37:57 Um, there's a, an interesting dilemma that's probably emerged as a father of your children are probably growing up with things that maybe you didn't have. Yeah. What problems does that, you know, we've got young children. What problems does that raise? Well, we just went to Canada and in USA and they're like, they literally don't know what's behind the curtain, uh, at the back of the plane. Um, they're like,

38:26 They think that all the seats go so they're in for a rude shock. can't wait. Actually. I can't wait till they're teenagers. And I go back down the back of the plane now, now that, now that I don't have to watch here away. Um, so, uh, Oh no, they're, mean, they're screwed. Yeah. They're, they're, they're, they're gonna have to get a real dose of reality at some point. How have you thought about how you, I know that, um, there's a beautiful.

38:55 quote, I can't remember who said it, but it's like, if you want my cheese, need two degrees. Shaq said that. in terms of like how you're going to parent them and teach them the value of hard work. And for me, it certainly wouldn't be degrees. I think university is so lost its way. You know, the nonsense stuff that they, that comes out of universities now. And, you know, it used to be that, it used to be that any degree would get you a decent

39:23 job and a decent thing. And now you get, it's actually more than half the degrees have a negative ROI. Um, so, you know, I certainly wouldn't be saying, you know, just go to university and get two degrees. That's something, um, I would much rather they do a year of cold calling than go to like genuinely, if I had to choose between the kids doing a university degree or a year of cold calling on the phones, I'd say cold calling would probably be.

39:53 We'll have them. We love free child labour. Yeah. One of my kids is really chatty. He'd be great. Yeah. He'd be really, really good. He just loves chatting to strangers anyway. He couldn't believe his luck if he got paid to talk to strangers. Yeah, we'll get him in. It's interesting what you say about university because we've got two business owners here, one with a degree in music and one with a degree in drama.

40:19 It's useful. Yeah. Very useful. Those are the high ROI ones. Yeah, exactly. high ROI. In that situation, you know, you can do the degree. What you're avoiding by doing the degree is producer show, right? Like just producer show. mean, music and drama used to be things that you do apprenticeships with. I miss apprenticeships. I really feel like we've overlooked the most obvious way most people learn for decades.

40:48 which is you get under the wing of someone who's ahead of you and you become an apprentice. You look at Gordon Ramsey, he apprenticed under Marco Pia White. And you know, that was, that was what changed his life. was the, it was apprenticing under someone who was phenomenal. We've lost this kind of, we've kind of overdone it with, with degrees and massively underdone it through apprenticeship. Apprenticeship was the default way for everything.

41:17 You you know, very small people went to small group. went to do it at some degrees and then vast majority people apprenticed and now we've gone the other, we flipped it. I'm sure it will, it will kind of come back full circle in turn. one of the things I've heard, which I think I was curious to get your takes on it is you shouldn't kind of chase it. If you're, if you're tasked with like, what makes me happy? It's quite a hard question to choose, but it's a case of what actually don't I like on a day to day basis.

41:47 from a business angle, what are the things that you don't like to do if you're like building your dream career? What are the things that you wanna delegate to someone else? Here's how I view that question. So in the deck of cards, there are four suits, right? And there's ancient knowledge in the deck of cards, but the four suits represent the four energies of how humans have, each of us have a dominant energy. So hearts is...

42:15 the love of people, the love of connection, the love of getting out and meeting new people. Spades is task orientated, getting in there and digging the ditch, doing the work. Clubs is big ideas, big innovations, big transformation, big change, thinking about the big picture. Diamonds is refinement, data, numbers, cutting it back to its absolute perfection, being a perfectionist.

42:44 Each person has their own different thing. So I'm clubs energy clubs energy is I love big conversations, big picture. I want to talk about, like, if I'm going to answer a question, I always start at 30,000 feet or 60,000 feet in the air. Um, whereas if you talk to my head of operations, she starts with a task list, like what needs to be done? What, what do we need to be doing this week? And I'm like, Oh, I don't know. I'm just thinking philosophically about the problem. Um, so, you know, her.

43:15 If you ask her, what is a perfect week? She's going to say, oh, on Monday, I came up with like 40 things on the task list and I got all 40 done by Friday. It's like, it was amazing. I'm like, to me that's hell. Right. So me, it's like, oh, I had all week to just, just daydream and think of big ideas. And like, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and I went walking in the forest and had a big idea halfway through the forest. I knew I needed to call someone. So I called them. We had a great conversation.

43:43 You know, I can't tell you what it was about, but it was amazing. Right. So like for me, it's all about 30,000 to 60,000 foot view. Um, that, that to me is the perfect, perfect week. I've got people on my team. Their perfect week is, I met 150 new people. It was so good. just roamed around meeting new people. like, cause the heart's energy. Um, and then I've got people like my CFO or, uh, CTO.

44:09 diamond's energy, oh, I just refined the system. just, I got in there and I got super refined and I was able to focus. I just focused for the whole week on just fixing these tiny little metrics and like tweaking and refining. And at the end of the week, it just worked perfectly. Great. So yeah, it's, really you. Part of it is knowing what your energy is, whether you, which of the four suits you are and, um, and which is your dominant energy. then, and then, uh,

44:39 doing the thing that, is your dominant energy. Beautiful. Um, I think we'd be silly to not ask you about a hot topic. Everyone's talking about AI and I think there's two tribes almost of, of thoughts around this. There's your Moe Gorda. We're all doomed. We're on a train. We can't get off. It's the end of, end of days. Jimmy Carr, AI is a covers band. You'll always need people. Where would you sit yourself in that argument?

45:06 I think we can't see around corners with AI that it's too big a technology to be able to know how it impacts us. So it falls under the category of a general purpose technology. And general purpose technology is a technology that basically disrupts things top to bottom, left to right, everywhere. So, you know, electricity is a great example of a general purpose technology. If you go...

45:35 back before electricity, you immediately know you are in a time before electricity. Like within a day, you're like, oh, how do we boil water? Oh, we stick it on the stove, which is burning coal. How do we turn the lights on? We light candles, right? You immediately know that you are in a time before electricity. Same as if you're in a time before smartphones, right?

45:58 I like you guys probably say at a similar age, you remember a time before smartphones and how freaking epic it was not to have smartphones and how we used to ride bikes places. And you know, you, you would just look at a group of teenagers and know if they're a pre smart, you know, if you were, if you didn't know what year you were in, you'd discover pretty quickly just by are these teenagers on their smartphones all the time or not. Um, so the thing with AI is it's a general purpose technology.

46:25 And we're just right now, we're living at the right at the last minute before AI is everywhere and everything. And it's one of those things that if a time traveler would come back to here, they go, oh, this is a time before AI takes over. And afterwards they go, oh, well, yeah, obviously this is now AI has changed everything. How does it change everything? I don't know, right? We can't see around corners. Ask, try and ask someone who's

46:53 pre-electricity, what does electricity do to the economy? They go, well, what are we gonna do with all the candle, people who light candles, the wicks, right? You know, the surname Wicks, right, is someone who goes around and lights candles. You know, what are we, well, you know, what are they gonna do? like, how are we gonna, you know, how's the economy gonna work if electricity does everything for us, if electricity does all these things? Same as like, steam engines and all of that sort of stuff.

47:23 What are we, how are we going to, how are we going to be if that that's taken care of, if that happens in the economy? Um, and it's hard to draw the right analogy. You know, there used to be 900 horses per thousand people in the economy. Um, and now there's three or four horses per thousand people. Um, so for 10,000 years, horses were extremely essential to human civilization. And then suddenly they weren't. And like 13 years was like.

47:52 horses, no horses with the motorized car. So it happened real fast. So it's really tricky because AI will do something like that to accounting and law. And, you know, in the next 10 years, it'll be, oh, we used to have, can you believe we used to have 400,000 people who were accountants in the economy? Or can you believe we used to have a profession called lawyer? And there used to be loads of them. Right now there's only a few.

48:21 You know, like it's kind of like, you believe there used to be a guy who used to program the elevator? Uh, and now we just push a button and it knows which floor to go to. And it's like, Oh, you know, most companies employed a mathematician. If you were to go back to companies, not that long ago in the sixties, fifties, forties, there were people whose job was to be a mathematician and executives would say like, Oh, we need to send that down to the mathematician. And the mathematicians would do the calculating and then send it back. And you go, well.

48:51 Who does that? Well, it just happens automatically. So who does the accounting? Oh, it just happens automatically. Like it reverse engineers off the back of the bank account. Oh, who does the, the legals? Oh, you just say what you're trying to do and it just writes the law, the contracts. Um, it just happens automatically. So yeah, we're going to go through massive transformation, massive change. Um, what does it look like on the other side? Uh,

49:19 I think it potentially could look neo feudal, Kings, Queens, dukes, digital Kings, Queens and dukes and counts and everyone else is a peasant. Um, so like a huge difference, you know, one thing that is dangerous to think about or is on difficult to think about is that the probably the default position for most of human history is the vast majority of people have nothing and a small, small minority of people have everything.

49:49 That's kind of been the default position other than the last 50 years, 50 to 60, 70 years. But if you look at the last 5,000 years, that's kind of how we structure society mostly, unless we orchestrate it to be different to that. So, you know, there's a very good chance that we go back to some sort of neo feudalism like that in a post-digital world. Hopefully we orchestrate something that's a bit

50:19 bit more empowering. Yeah. It's interesting. There's so much, you know, we can have conversations like this. There's Elon Musk talking about Neuralink and we were talking to someone yesterday, but the thing that you mentioned that's interesting that keeps coming up is a lawyer is a large language model. So if you think about a lawyer in suits, it looks quite cool. The reality of that job is probably going through lots and lots of contracts at a human's pace. Yeah. Yeah. So anything that has that element to it feels like that'll be the first to be placed. I've just done a multi-million dollar, um,

50:48 acquisition and all the legals leading right up until the closing have just been done on chat GPT. And then just at the very final moment, we've brought in a senior lawyer to just make sure that everything's like dot and dot some I's and cross some T's. A few years ago, that exact same process, we would have spent 30 or 40 grand up until this point. We're probably going to spend six grand.

51:17 just on the last bit. And your chat GBT membership is probably 20 pounds a month or something like that. You were talking just before we started recording and I'd like to go back to that because I was sat there for a minute thinking, wow, okay, we might be out of jobs in the future. You were talking about the power of AI when it comes to cold calling. You've seen some demos, guess. What does maybe the future hold for salespeople, people that prospect and lead generation when it comes to AI?

51:47 So, well, some of the demos that I've seen is that the AI automatically chooses the right voice that speaks at the right tone, that speaks at the right speed, and it figures that out within the first few seconds of the call, and it adapts without you knowing. So just the way you answer your phone, this stuff may be outlawed because it's too powerful. So if, like, if, for example, it detects through data that you...

52:16 based on how you answered the phone and how it knows, goodness knows, but if it detects that you'd respond better to a female Irish voice, it'll become a female Irish voice. If it detects that you would be more of a deep Darth Vader sort of, Daniel, I am calling you. You know, it's just going to become the thing that you know. Have you ever seen the movie Her?

52:43 where he has these ongoing flirty conversations with Scarlett Johansson as the voice. And when that came out, it seems so preposterous. And at the end, he's absolutely jilted that his operating system is having these conversations with other people as well, where he thinks he has a very personal relationship. And he asks her the question, how many other people are you talking to right now? And she goes, well, you don't wanna know that, that's personal.

53:12 And he says, no, tell me how many people are you talking to? And she says about four and a half million. So what, like what AI can do is brute force 30,000 calls a minute and become whatever you want it to be for those that first call. Uh, and it can have great conversations and it provided it's got the detail and the information. Um, yeah, it can certainly do it'll certainly do things like appointment setting, um, all of that sort of stuff.

53:40 So what should sales, so any salespeople that are listening to this might be panicking and might have to be having to have a lie down. What should salespeople be doing to stay ahead or incorporate AI or kind of maybe polish their skillset to make sure that they're in demand? Your goal is to get closer and closer to the bottom of the funnel, not top of funnel. So you want to be closing deals. You want to be a sales closer, not the top of funnel appointment setting.

54:10 you wanna build a personal brand. So you want, when somebody Googles you, wanna be on all the social media platforms with a respected voice. And ideally you wanna become exceptionally good at a particular thing. So for example, you wanna become exceptional at boat sales and you are all over the boats and you know everything about the boats. You know exactly how to host a great party on a boat.

54:39 You know exactly which boats are best for families, which boats are best for, you know, crossing the Atlantic. You become absolutely immersed in a particular thing. You've read every book on it. You know, everyone in the industry, your name comes up in conversations. You know, a great example would be Ryan Serhant, the guy who did Million Dollar Listing and owning Manhattan on Netflix. And he's become super, super well known for New York real estate.

55:08 He's a big name, he's a big personality. He's exceptional salesperson. He has phenomenal product knowledge. He's got all of the right chat. He's got the product knowledge. He's got the personal brand. So you're looking at like that personal brand and deep product knowledge, really super well connected with all the people in the industry. Like, so the future of sales is really trying to, as much as possible, move towards that model. So then personal brand is a phrase that comes up and obviously you've got a

55:38 a brilliant book around being like a key person of influence. So I guess the question is, does everybody need a personal brand? You don't need one. You could just not like nice things. But if you like nice things, it's helpful to have a personal brand. You want, you want inbound opportunities. You want to be known and respected for something. So personal brand and key person of influence is not an influencer. You're not trying to show you breakfast and you're not.

56:08 you know, check out my gym and my Ferrari and all that sort of stuff. What you're doing is you're becoming professionally known for your domain of expertise and other people respect you. They would happily invite you to be a speaker at a conference or they would read articles that you've written about your domain. And they know that you're super passionate, super focused. They know where to find you. They know how to refer you. And they, you know, it's that.

56:37 It's that professional respect, professional status in your industry. So the personal brand is like a lot of people think it's about having professional headshots and obviously that's nice to have. it's about having a really well written LinkedIn bio. Okay. That's nice to have as well, but deeper than that, it's about you take yourself serious within the industry and you want other people to take you seriously in your industry. then, so I've read the book and obviously it feels like it doesn't have to take decades to get there. It's fast.

57:06 What should people be doing to implement implement today? So the five things is pitching publishing products profile and partnership So pitching is when I ask you who you are and what you do if I say I'll tell me a bit about yourself What do you do? You've got a really good pitch, right? So You would essentially be able to say, you know, I'm Ryan say sir hand I'm known for being one of the top real estate agents in New York We've sold over 1.5 billion worth of property

57:36 with myself and my team, I was mentored by this person, I've written books on that and my passion is bringing people to New York and showing them the best of New York real estate. He's got a key person of influence pitch. We don't want to have a generic pitch. We don't want to be like, I'm a financial planner and I help people with their finances. Too bland, too worker bee, you want to have a really good key person of influence pitch.

58:04 Publish is that you make your ideas public. You take the best thinking, you take your ideas, you take your recipes, and you put them in recipe books. You take your best thinking, you put them out there on social media. You share your best ideas. You share your stories. So that's publishing. The word publish means to make public. So you make public your ideas. Writing a book is a big powerful step as well. Like it really does open up a lot of opportunities. I think a lot of salespeople will write a book.

58:30 on their particular domain and that will make them an exceptionally sought after salesperson because they wrote the book on the thing. In fact, I'll give you an example from the boating world. There was a guy called Darren Finkelstein who worked with us and he wrote a book called Honey, Let's Buy a Boat. And he was in boat sales in Melbourne and he wrote the book Honey, Let's Buy a Boat and his business just blew up and he was able to sell the business. But he went from a boat salesperson to the boat salesperson.

58:59 through writing a book, he went from being available on the marina to going on the radio and talking about boats that you can buy on radio. So there's that. then products. So great salespeople are very fussy about what they sell. So they choose to sell the right product. The truth is that you could be the best real estate salesperson in Blackpool. You're not going to out earn. Did you know we were from Blackpool? I didn't. We're both from Blackpool.

59:28 That is bizarre. That is. And we know what Blackpool's like. So we're not offended. So there you go. But you could be the best real estate salesperson in Blackpool. You will not out earn an average real estate agent in Mayfair. So if you know you're damn good, you've got to select which product you're going to sell. got to say, okay, I'm really good at sales. I'm going to move to where that skill is the most highly rewarded. You may need to change country. Right? So you might say,

59:58 I'm currently selling this little subscription service in the UK, but I could be doing software sales in Silicon Valley. Right? So it's like with that same set of skills, if I was selling enterprise software in Silicon Valley, I'm probably going to earn half a million dollars a year versus 60,000 pounds a year. So products, profile, all the online staff speaking at conferences, being on podcasts,

01:00:28 I mean, all of this stuff we don't think of as what salespeople do, but we should. Salespeople should be getting on podcasts, speaking at conferences, putting out videos on YouTube, a weekly video, blow the roof off. And then doing joint ventures and partnerships, being partnered in with lots of different companies adjacent to you so that people are always referring people to you, that you're partnered into all these people.

01:00:57 One place where this has happened really well is the Australian real estate market. So the Australian real estate market, they take personal brands super seriously and they have done for 30 years. So if you go anywhere in Australia, you'll see billboards, bus shelters with the real estate agent, they're putting content out there, produce their own reports, they create videos about local restaurants. So if you're buying a piece of real estate in Noosa, you possibly will find a video

01:01:27 of the real estate agent talking you through the best restaurants in Noosa. And they'll say, you know, I'm Daniel and I sell luxury high in real estate in Noosa. And today I want to take you to my top three restaurants, my favorite place for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Let's go for a walk and let's talk it through because they're engaging their audience. Wow. And they're you the idea of this is what it would be like to live here, not just buy the property. yeah, amazing.

01:01:56 I feel like we could talk all day. It's been amazing to have you. I was shocked, nervous, all the things when you agreed to do this with us. Yeah, it's just been amazing. thank you so as bad as you thought? You were amazing. I'll tell you off there what we think. This is the thing, if you have low expectations, you're pleasantly surprised. great until you slagged off Blackpool. Yeah, exactly. If someone, as I'm sure they will, watches this and thinks, I want to learn more.

01:02:25 Daniel, what Daniel does, buys a book, where would you say is the best place to start? All the books are on Amazon, obviously. LinkedIn is a place that I publish a lot of stuff. The companies that you may want to check out is Dent, Global, does the key person of influence, Accelerator, we work with people on their personal brands. Score app, all of those lead generation campaigns, we turn those into templates. So online assessments, we've got templates. Waiting lists, we've got templates.

01:02:53 introduction workshops templates. So you can literally go there, create a free account, select the template, 20 minutes of customization, launch it, you've now got a lead generation magnet based upon millions of lead gen that we've done. And our best thinking after working with 6,500 businesses to do lead gen with them is captured in those templates and you just customize them in 20 minutes. Nice. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Cheers.