There's Sh*t-loads of Gold Sitting At The Bottom of Your CRM
There are two kinds of people in this world:
1. Those who know how to sell.
2. And those who do not.
Order takers on one side, problem solvers on the other. It doesn't matter whether you're pitching a product, a date or the gospel. If you don't know how to sell, you lose. Period.
The question you need to ask yourself right now is, “What kind of life do I want to live?”
Those wants will vary from person to person, but for me, it was crystal clear from day one.
I wanted to live life on MY terms. I wanted the freedom to do whatever the fuck it is that I wanted to do without asking someone else for permission.
Just to be clear, it was never about the money. It was always about having options.
Options = FREEDOM
Money gave me more options.
Simple as that.
You Better Be Tough If You're Gonna Be Stupid
I stumbled my way into sales as a career-path nearly 12 years ago now, 2014 to be exact. I was 25 years old at the time, had just graduated from UTSA with a Communications degree (worthless) and had pretty much zero clue what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was broke, desperate and completely unemployable. My only non-marketable skill(s) I had at the time was counting up how many bong hits I could inhale before noon on a weekday.
In classic Andy Cole fashion, I did what any responsible, freshly graduated college student would do. It was the first day of summer in South Texas. I hopped into my black 2014 Volkswagen GTI that Saturday morning and sped off to Twin Liquors to stock up the ice chest for the day. Then it was off to pick up a couple friends of mine. Let's call them Dragon and Swoop.
Here in Texas, things are really spread out. You have to drive everywhere. The game-plan for these kinds of weekends involved pool hopping all around San Antonio apartment complexes until you find one that you like.
We arrived at our first apartment complex around lunch-time. It was 105 degrees outside. I was thirsty. Time to initiate "Operation Get Fucked Up As Quickly As Possible." I honestly can't even recall what we were even drinking that day. What I do remember clear as day is that we had not been at the pool for longer than 1 hour and my friend Frank was already an absolute shit-show. In fact, I cannot for the life of me describe how much of a shit-show it actually was.
I want you to picture a tall, in-shape, physically attractive man stumbling indiscriminatingly from one female to the next, mumbling and insulting incoherent messages to each one. Frank was usually the guy that stole your girl by the end of the night without saying even one word. Currently, he was (attempting) to talk a lot and making everyone VERY uncomfortable.
Humbgererrddddg ddaagweeerrr jkkjjjj supppppp babaaay hummmbdddder
I could tell this was not going to end well.
It became clear to me that Frank was going to need to go home. I was not new to this kind of behavior, but at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon, really? And because I drove, we packed up all of our shit and went back to the car.
Something didn't click here though. We hadn't been going for longer than 1-2 hours and Frank was already way beyond any form coherent speech. As I was putting the ice chest in the trunk, Frank proceeded to vomit profusely in the bushes. Hey, at least it wasn't in my car.
After a bit of Sherlock Holmes questioning, I discovered that Frank had been on pain-killers for some sort of sports injury that he sustained while playing basketball. Apparently he took a few prior to meeting up with us. Well, that would explain it. Anyways, we drove across town to drop him off. This should have been the first big RED FLAG for the day.
After dropping Frank off, we continued on our mission for the day to find the best pool party in town. We certainly weren't going to let a little detour stop us from getting absolutely hammered. From what I can remember, I think we probably stopped at 3-4 different spots before striking pure gold. This particular apartment complex had two pools, the main one by the front office and the second pool at the back of the complex, located at the top of a hill with a great view overlooking the highway valley below. There were probably 100-150 people there. It was chaos.
And that was the last memory I had of the afternoon, walking through the gate to the pool. The next thing I know, I am waking up on a patio chair facing the pool with my sunglasses on. The sun had just set and it was quickly becoming dark outside. In front of me is an inflatable unicorn raft thing, patio chairs, a beer pong table and beer cans strung across the pool. It looked like a war zone. The only thing missing was all of the people. In fact, I was the only one there. Well, myself and Omar, who I discovered was to my left laid out on the patio chair with his sunglasses on right next to me. This should have been big red flag number two.
I nudged him to wake up. We both sat there for a bit and marveled at the scene in front of us.
What the fuck just happened here? Neither one of us could process it. As we sat there for a bit, we tried to work out where everyone was. According to Omar, they had all apparently left to go to this bar down the road to continue the night.
So, like a bunch of dumbasses, we decided to go catch up with everyone else.
Our School System Is F*cked
I had a "complicated" relationship with school growing up. I wasn't exactly a model student, however I wasn't terrible either. As the saying goes, "Life has to be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards."
I had taken the scenic route through college, but not entirely for the reasons you might think. Yes, I loved to party, but I also loved business and entrepeneurship. There were multiple failed businesses along the way. In one instance, I had gotten heavily into trading stocks. In another, I was looking to start an indoor aquaponic farm with a good friend of mine at the time. Both enterprises failed to materialize into anything for one reason or another. Shockingly, I did in fact graduate in 4 years, which is a tremendous achievement in and of itself.
The one thing that really sticks with me even to this day is that I had a the devil of a time getting my life off the ground between the ages of 18-25. For one reason or another, NOTHING fucking worked. And it was NOT for a lack of effort on my part.
Something else I remember vividly was the overwhelming theme was the so-called "adults" in the room told me that school was where I needed to be and unfortunately I did not have the knowledge that I have today that would have convinced me to do otherwise. So school was my only path it seemed, by default.
At age 25, here's what I understood about the world at that time…
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it DOES buy experiences, which at the time for me, was PEAK happiness.
There were two things I was laser focused on:
1. I wanted to make lots of money.
2. I wanted to do it fast.
At the time, I simply could not figure out how school was going to get me to where I wanted to be. Girls were more interesting. Golf. Soccer. There was a pretty good stretch where I wanted to play professional soccer. I was good. And with the right guidance, I think I could have gone all the way.
That changed as I rolled into college, however. I discovered that drugs and alcohol were lots of fun. So was music. And when you combined them all together, well, let's just say I was always in search of the next party.
Would you believe me if I told you that I went through twenty-five years of "school" and didn't take a single class on sales? That means if I live to be 100 years old, I will have gone 25% of my entire life without taking a single class on what is the single most important life skill one can master today.
That's 25 years, 742 weeks, 9,125 days…
Like, how the fuck is this even possible? And people wonder why Gen Y and Z are so pissed off. They have every right to be. Totally insane. School literally prepared us for a world that did not exist then, now or ever.
The more I unraveled this great mystery, the angrier I became.
Whereas I should have been learning about sales, marketing, recruiting, accounting, operations, etc.. you know, all of the things required to build an incredible business (that make lots of money), I was wasting my life away learning about geometry or chemistry or some random shit that I would never use again in my life.
The unfortunate conclusion I ultimately arrived at is that most teachers (not all, but most 90% or more) got into teaching because they needed a job, NOT because they were an expert in their field.
Read that again.
Most teachers (not all) got into teaching not because they were experts in their field, but because they NEEDED A JOB. Period. Full stop. And the teachers got hired by the parents because they needed someone to watch their kids while they go to work. In other words, you have people that couldn't make it in the real world teaching the future how to succeed in the real world. A real life case of the blind leading the blind.
Glad to know that all of those years I spent being indoctrinated in school accounted for something. Keep this in mind the next time you pay money for a mentor, a coach or a teacher. Did that person actually do “the thing?” Where’s the proof?
The kicker though, and the driving force behind my entire life now, is that society has sold the entire world on the blatant lie that we need to cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars and 20+ years of our life for this so-called education in order to be successful in life. This is a completely false narrative and it must be stopped dead in it's tracks.
Welcome To The Real World, Pal
TBD
You're Either Planting Seeds In the Spring Or You Are Begging For Business In The Fall
I distinctly remmeber the
Every person reaches a point in life where they need to make sh*t happen fast.
Get 1% Better Every Day
If you had told me what I would need to go through in order to start my business, I probably wouldn't have started it in the first place. It is absolutely excruciating to start a business from scratch.
Blank check.
Buy The Ticket. Take The Ride.
If you had told me what I would need to go through in order to start my business, I probably wouldn't have started it in the first place. It is absolutely excruciating to start a business from scratch.