 Oh, no, there isn't. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Tom Stewart here, smart business moves. I'm with Liz Trotter. Hey, Liz. Hey, y'all. And we have a very special guest who's a super special guest to Liz. Liz's daughter, Shara Turley. Hi, Shara. How are you today? Doing great. How are y'all? We have a lot of guests. That's where I get it. Tom, that's where I get the y'all. See, you just heard her. Y'all. She spends her time in the South. She's been indoctrinated, so. But maybe that's where I get it. I get it from her. You think? She was just asking me yesterday where I got it. It's just unusual. Most people from Washington, I don't think that's part of their working vocabulary. Is that? Eh? That's more ours. Eh? It's a Canadian thing. Yeah. Oh, Lava, if you look on the right-hand side of your screen where you have the private chat, there's another tab that says live comment. You'll be able to see what people host. Paula. Paula. OK. Yeah. OK. So Tom, let's do our housekeeping so we can get into it. Shara's got a lot to talk about today. OK, so just real quick, we've earned the downhill side of this week. We've got Shara. This is really a rare opportunity, because we have a lot of people on smart business moves who share their best ideas. But a lot of their experience has just been gained by just trying to figure stuff out, running their small cleaning business. Shara is a professionally trained and professionally functioning salesperson, which is different than a lot of us. Chief, I hope you don't mind that Liz shared with us that you generate revenue of over $40 million a year, and that's $40 million. And I don't even know how to write a number that big. So I'm sure that doesn't happen by accident. So being able to share with us some of those tips and tricks techniques could certainly be useful to us. So we're going to do that today. And what are we going to do tomorrow, Liz? Tomorrow we have a secret guest. And the clue for our secret guest tomorrow is that she has something in common with the largest planet in the solar system. That's it. That's our clue. And I hope to see you tomorrow on the spot, for those of you that don't know. We bring on our guest. And each one of us gets one minute to answer any question that you ask us on the spot. It's kind of easy, kind of fun, and kind of fast. We ask for a minute, rapid fire, bang, bang, bang. Hour goes by fast. Bring your best questions. Yeah. And it's Friday. So we like to wrap it up real quick on Friday. So get us out of here. All right, anything else we have to share before we get going? No, no, not really. I think we're good. Let's just jump into it. All righty, well, Leva, I think you are going to do your top 10. You're going to start from 10 down to the number one most important thing. Is that right? Yep, and I was going to. Hi, Samantha. I was going to do a quick intro to give you an idea of my history, how I got from college to here because I've done a lot of different kinds of sales that might give you a different idea. Go ahead. Yes. So I came out of college and went into a sales job back really before there was so much internet. Terrible job. They asked me to go into places and sell things I didn't know about, gave me almost no information. Two months in, I called my mom. And so I was crying more nights than not. I hate sales. I should never do this. It's terrible. She said, get out. Just get out. We don't like it. The day before I called her, somebody told me, hey, this job that you're trying to do seems terrible. I don't even know you, but this is bad. You should get an insurance. I don't even like my insurance guy. And he keeps taking my money, so you should get into that. And I was like, how do I get an insurance? Interestingly enough, I've been making George at the time. It's one of the six hubs for Geico. So I went to go work for Geico. I still thought I hate sales. So there's no way I'm going to sales. I'd go in there to interview. And all they have is six. So now you're back in sales. And my job there was to income and fall. And within three minutes, after about 25 really personal questions, and then asked them to give me their credit card number over the phone. And I had to do about 10 of those a day, where I forgot the entire sale. So very quick turnover there. Lots of no's. Lots of yeses just fast. From there, I went to work at Penske. Thought, again, I didn't want sales. Was there for about four months, picked up a mentor, and sales job opened, told me to go for it. I got it. It was a different kind of selling. And I enjoyed it very much. And my head on day to go on my friend's job was to have to go in a little bit. We just found out today that we were voted by selling power, number one selling company in the country. So what is it? Penske or electric guard dog? Amarok. Well, electric guard dog. Wow. Amarok now. Yeah. All right. Congratulations, mama. Thank you. Yeah, we're super excited. It comes down to how happy their employees are. And we're all just thrilled to be doing our job. So basically, the story is I've been trying to get out of sales since I got into it. And I've never been able to. And now that's it. This is it for me. So mom, that's going to come up with like 10 tricks for sales. Char, it sounds a little wonky. I think it's just how I sound, Leslie. I think that's just my voice. It is wonky. It's bad. It's OK. Can you guys hear her well enough to understand her? Thanks, Kristina. Yeah. Best mommy. You're so lucky. I know. Nice. All right. Well, hopefully, everybody can hear it. It is kind of hard to hear. But it's real echoing. If I sit further back, maybe. Is this more helpful? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Try, Lola. OK. All right. So top 10. OK. I'm helping. Leslie, let us know. I have a question, though, because you started off in sales and was really miserable doing it, went through several positions. And it sounded like it was just a progression. And now, obviously, you're rocking. You're a high performer. And you love what you do. How much of that is, I guess, the job is party equation. But how much of that is just kind of learning and figuring out what it's about along the way? A lot. A lot of it has to do with good people, helping you get what you need and do the right things to be successful, having the right people around you, and then also being with a good company. You all run your own companies. So you have the ability to make sure that where you are is where you want to be. I didn't have that until recently. So that tells me that if you're doing a job or an activity or whatever and you think that you hate doing it, well, maybe that's not a terminal thing. Maybe if you spent time learning how to do it better and got coaching and advice from other people who knew how to do it and have experience that there might be a lot more things out there that one can do in activities and skills that they could really enjoy doing if they just poked around and looked for the right opportunity and developed the skills to do it. I agree. And there are some jobs in particular people expect you to know how to do or you don't know how to do it. And that's it. Like for a sales, they pretty much say, just go do it. I think a lot of management is like that, too. Just go and figure it out. If you like people, then you'll be fine. That's not really the way life works in anything, but alone in those difficult industries. Balava, you did have professional training as well for this step. How did you get your professional training through? Here and there, everyone. I would say I got, so Jeb Blunt himself came and worked with us at Penske, and that was good. I liked that very much. We got some good training. We got tons of training with Amarok. Penske did some as in-house, though, so really focused on what they were looking for. But I think that they give you, we want you to do this instead of, here's the psychology behind sales, and those are two different things. But training is elusive, especially when it comes to stuff like sales. I think a lot of people feel that just like what you said. Well, if you're good with people and can talk, you can figure it out. You really don't need training. I mean, how big a part, how important is training in order to be able to sell at the top level? Imperative. I mean, nobody bundles their way into the top level without a good network of people helping them, a lot of training, be it through their company or outside of their company, because you can't find other training. I mean, unless you're good with it. What was that one really good program that you told me about, Sandberg or Sanford? Don't you guys love her COVID coffee instead of this? Only a mom would notice that, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's OK. So I'll apologize for us. You're under some extra scrutiny here. Lez doesn't treat all of her guests this way. That is so not true. She knows me best, see? She knows me. She's like, of course she does. OK, I'll take that back. She does. That's true. OK, Leva, what was the name of that training, though, that you really love, Sandberg or San, something or other? Remember which one I'm talking about? I do. That's OK. Let's get your top 10, because I know she's got about 35 minutes worth of stuff to talk about, Tom. OK. And when you remember, Leva, just tell us, because I know it was really a great program. I have some books. I remember he had a couple of books I really enjoyed, and I can find it there. OK, so top 10. Mom asked me to create these. I think you see a lot of these in sales. I tried to keep mine a little different than what you might see if you just Google top 10. But this is what's been best for me. Hold on. Sorry. So for y'all that don't know, Shar is building a house right now, and she's transitioned from her old house to her new house. And she's in a 1,000 square foot apartment coming from, like, how big was your house before, Leva? 3,800 square feet. From 3,800 down to 1,000 square feet. They're struggling a little bit. Yes. Sandler sales training. How is it? Good job, Heather. I was like, it's not quite right. Yeah, Sandler. But you know, this is really good experience, because there's some people. It's a trend where people are, like, getting these little tiny houses, like 400 square feet living in them. So if you ever thought you'd be interested in this, this is a good opportunity to kind of see what it feels like. I never thought I'd be interested in that. If you had ever met my amazing daughter, Liz's amazing grandbaby, she's a delight, but she is, like, a little whirling dervish of energy and destruction in our world. So 1,000 square feet. Sorry, back to it. OK, so everyone knows you need to create relationships for sales, right? The trick for relationships, though, is a couple of things. So it depends on your selling, how long your sales cycle is. So for me, right now, I only have 20 accounts that I watch all over the country. And I've known these people for two years. So I have a long sales cycle. I know these people really well. However, when I worked at Geico, it was short. I have five minutes. I have to ask you questions like, what do you do for a living? Your social security number? I have to get in touch with these people quickly and get them to trust me fast. At Geico, of 300 people, I was in the top 15 for sales every year. But more importantly, we were great on two things. It was quality and customer interaction. Customer interaction, I was in the top five every single month because I had some tricks. If you have to ask the same question every time, have your answers ready. So at Geico, I'd ask, well, what kind of car are you driving? And any car you gave me, I can give you a compliment for. A 1998 Honda Accord. Oh, those Hondas they last forever. What a good little gas car. Or a 2020 Jaguar. Whoa, that's a gorgeous car. Hold on, let me look that one up. I don't know what that one looks like. To, oh, it's a 1994 Ford pickup truck. Oh man, completely made out of metal. You're totally safe in that. Any car you have, because I know I have to ask that question, I have got an answer for you. I've got some way to connect with you on that. If you have a job where you have to ask one question every single person, make sure you have answers to all those. All right, so I have a question for you then, Lava. So one of the questions that we ask a lot is do you have any pets? So what we might really want to have an answer for is if they say, yes, I have two little Chihuahuas. We want to be able to tell you what's awesome about Chihuahuas. Or I've got a new puppy. We want to know the answer for what is cool about a puppy, right? Is that what you're saying? You'll want to find something that is, we'll first have to be honest. People can tell if you're just styling it in. So if you don't really like animals, just avoid that one. You'll have to ask more than one question. I like animals, so any animal you give me, I can be like, oh, what's their name? Are they young, how big? And people that have pets love their pets. So if you do like pets, it's an easy connect. They already eat them. So you're ready for number nine? Go like this when you want them to change page. I will. The other thing is if you've got a longer sale cycle or you don't ask the same question all the time, so like you have to be able to communicate in your area and in your demographic, there are going to be things that are popular. I live in Dallas. I have to be able to talk about football, so I can. I talk more about college than pro personally, but I can discuss that. I work with a lot of police officers, so I can discuss conservative politics comfortably. You don't have to agree, but you need to be able to talk about it. Next. OK, so everyone's heard about mirroring, and you think it's, they lean forward, I lean forward. They lean back, I lean back. And there is something absolutely to be said about being able to read someone's body language, because you can't get a lot off of that. But the other thing about mirroring is with your personality. So everyone has a standard personality that they fall into. Believe it or not, this is about as professional as I get. My default is more like, so happy to be here. I'm just so excited to be talking to all of you. Sales is the most fun thing you could ever do. So really bubbly, really high energy. To say that not everybody enjoys that would be an understatement. So where do you sit? And then be able to figure out how far on the spectrum you can go. I have two counterparts. One is my exact opposite. He is perfectly buttoned up at all times and is very, very professional. He's from the Navy Academy, the Naval Academy, play, play, sports in college, this type of thing. So he has to be able to go from that level to more of my level with it seeming to be here. So you need to be able to mirror how your people interact. That's one thing. The other one, and people forget this, and don't do it all the time, and it's me crazy when I buy things, is if your person texts you, do not call them. They do not want to talk to you on the phone. That is why they text with you. There will be time when you have to, but if you can text back, that's their preferred way of communicating. If they emailed you, don't text them. So if they respond, if they talk to you in one way, then that's so much easier for them. I had to make a message on LinkedIn the other day. This was not convenient for me, but it doesn't matter, because my job is to make it easier for him. So I responded back on LinkedIn. But you want to work with them, they're parameters. Most of the time, I didn't respond quite as well. That's good. Next slide. Yes, please. Good manners, Lava. Well, I have a toddler, so it's quite simple to be around her. That's right. You know, I'm going to bring this one up because everybody knows about referrals, but it's just, it's imperative and you can't get away with it. I do have some info for you that can help. The thing about referrals is, of course, you're going to have people who like you to refer you, and you're going to ask them, who do you think of using, what would I have? Who do you know of that had an issue? Some other things you can do is, at Geico, at one point, they had it set up so every time you call, you gave some of your referral number, if they called in and gave your referral number, they got like $10 or something like that. This is all pretty simple stuff, and I'm sure you know all of that. It's just so important. I will tell you one thing that I don't think most people think enough about. There is a psychological study that says, if you want people to like you, then instead of doing something nice for them, hold on, come in hot. If you want people to like you, instead of doing something nice for them, let them do something nice for you. So, if you can get someone to give you a referral for somebody, be sure you send them your compliments, like, oh, my God, thank you so much. My business runs because of people like you. We couldn't do it without your referrals. The people like you give us. I can't tell you how much it means to me. You really, really appreciate it, because now you're making that person feel like they've done good in the world. They've done it for you, and I don't think they really like that. The other thing about referrals is that, when you get a referral, now when you talk to that person, you already have it in. So, Tom refers me to his friend, Joe. I talk to Joe, and I'm like, oh, don't you love Tom? I know, he's one of my favorite customers. I'm so thankful. And then, he even gives me referrals. How do you not love Tom? Right? So, that's the way I've got referrals people think about, is both sides. You know, when you can say perfect, you're gonna get it to you, because now they'll be looking for more ways to get it, give out your information. And also, using that kinship to your relationship with your person you're meeting. Okay, let's do that, Leslie. Oh, yeah, I'm so glad. Oh, love, you know, you know, Leslie, she's the one that gave me this painting. Oh, you love that. I know, that's why I love the product. Yeah, no, I don't. She painted it. Yeah. Yeah, okay, Heather, my mom doesn't think we look alike. Hello, could we look more alike? Hello. I don't think we look alike. I don't get it. Okay. Oh, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is such a good one. This is a good one for life, not even for sales. I love being uncomfortable. So, there are some tricks that would be uncomfortable. Probably the best trick for being uncomfortable is people like people who say exactly what they wanna know. We, when you're trying to sell something, people know you wanna know, are they gonna say yes? Are they interested? What, what did they like about what you said? They know that. So, people respond well when you just say, so what do you think about what I just said? And so, what is your budget for this? Okay, and then when you say it, straight face, no joking, eye contact, and then sit back and let them respond. Don't soften your question. Ask them great how we want them answered. And if you're thinking, oh, I really wanna know this, but I'm not gonna ask, just say it just like that. Just say it exactly how you're thinking it, and then let them respond. As long as you act like what you're saying is completely reasonable, people will answer. Like I said, Geico, people are on the phone with me for two minutes. I asked for their social security number. 98% of people would give me their social security number. This is crazy. So, people have a trouble saying, you know what, your budget, and a lot of times you'll get this. I don't know, I don't really know what my budget is. That's not true, you know what your budget is. Or if you don't know exactly what it is, you have an idea. A good way to hedge that is say, okay, well is it like $50 a month or is it like $900 a month? Because even if they don't know, they'll be like, oh, no, not 50. Or no, no, not 900. You'd be like, oh, it's more like maybe 400. And then they'll say, yes, because they'll be used to answering your questions. The more people answer your questions, they'll get in the habit of answering your questions and they won't want to stop. So, you can hedge that one, but only if they force you to. Otherwise, just get comfortable being uncomfortable. And I mean, personally, I kind of enjoy it, but it's kind of amazing to be able to tell you if you just ask it straight. And people will be respected if they're my experience. Thanks, Jeff, for holding on. So, you know, I'm getting a lot of feedback here and I personally just blown away about what I'm hearing here. Obviously, you know, we all do sales at some level by at the highest, you know, being, you know, at the highest point of the game is something completely different. And, Shar, I think that you're giving us a lot of incredible advice here. Thank you. Sure, my pleasure. Love to help people who want to hear more about sales. Okay, I'm ready for the next one. Yeah, okay. The flip side of that is, anyone talk to that says get comfortable with rejection? I don't think that's true. I don't know anyone who's comfortable with rejection. I'm not, it's not natural to be comfortable with rejection. It's weird, not right. Don't try to be comfortable with rejection. Forget that. Here's what I would tell you. I've been in sales in one way or another for 15 years. I have never personally been rejected. However, not one time yet. I've had people not buy things to me to literally constantly, but no one's ever been like, I'm not buying that because I don't like you. When you think about it, when you don't buy something, it's almost always because you don't get it or you can't do it. Neither of those things have anything to do with you as a girl person. Nothing. You can't do much change with things. So if someone says no, do not internalize things that have nothing to do with you. That doesn't have anything to do with you. And doctor, they tell you no, good. That's one thing, we'll get to that in a little bit, but don't try to get comfortable with rejection. You're not going to be comfortable with rejection. Just recognize you're not being rejected. However, they just don't want you to sell them right that second. The other thing is, you don't really know what you've done in the day. You don't, I didn't catch that level. Was it because of the airplane flying by mom? Is that why you didn't catch it? Maybe. Contributing factor, yes. Yeah. So you don't know what you've done in the day. So when I go and knock on doors, right? And I'll go to a bunch of places and I'm like, no, we don't need that or no, we're not having any issues with security or no, we don't need that, what have you. I'll go out and I'm like, whoa, that's 14 not even interested today. I'm not even interested. Don't want to hear any more information. 14 or less. Who has a hard day? If you don't know and had this happen, one year to the day, I had them to call me up and be like, you came by here a year ago and we had a conversation and we didn't need you then, but we do need you now. You have no idea what you're doing today. We can pay off six months from now. We can pay off six weeks from now, but don't, as long as you did the work today, it will pay off. It just will. You can pay off exactly today it's coming. It's a numbers game. I like that. I like that a lot, Lola. That actually helps me feel a little bit better that I might not get the results today, but it is paying off. It's just a longer game. And it's crazy that what I was talking about, it was to the day. They called me and said, Shara, I know we talked about it. And I looked it up. It was literally been to the day. And I was like, perfect. So you just, yeah, you just don't know the long-term benefits of what you're doing. Every time you talk to somebody and tell them who you are every time you're doing good work. They didn't know who you were with you. So it doesn't matter. Okay, I'm ready for the next one. I love this one. Also hold on a second. Hey guys, we see that you got a couple of questions in here. We'll get to them after we get down to number one. So don't worry, David. We're not ignoring you. You're coming in on modern cleaning instead of cleaning business today. So I can't respond. I've got them all. We'll go back and hit questions at the end. But after your questions, that's good. We'll pick them up. This is one of my favorites. Let me rank for you the things that you want to hear from a person. Yes, no, let me think about it. I'm going to tell you this. And you're going to say, I hear you, Sharra. I totally believe that. I know. And you're going to fall for it again. And do you know how I know that? I still fall for it. Because here's what I'm saying. Oh, that sounds really good. That sounds really interesting. I got to think about it a little more. Man, oh man. Because here's the problem. They might need to. And there is a place for it when you need to use your breast discretion where, sure, they need to talk to their spouse or their boss or whomever. And that will allow everyone to do it in time. What you want to be aware of and try to get a read on is when people are too nice to tell you about it, because they don't know it. But they will waste so much of your time. And I have wasted years on accounts that did nothing. And here's why I'm part of it, too. Sales at its base, the actual work of sales, it sucks. It just sucks. So it's a little much easier and more comfortable to call on. I tell you what, Liz was so nice. And Liz wanted to think about it. So I'll call Liz. I'm totally working. You're not working. You know who's not going to say yes. But she was going to say yes, but she would have called you. You're not working. You are going to convince yourself that you're working, and you're not going to help yourself at all doing that. That being said, be easy on yourself when you do that, because I don't know a single salesperson who doesn't do that. You'll get to people that you like, that you think are going to do something, that you want to believe. And they're just so friendly to you that you'll fall into a trap. Just don't fall into it for too long. That being said, everyone's thinking, if I'm having a really, really bad day where I know that I am off my game, I'm not doing myself any good, I'll retouch both my people I like. Because I don't know if I'm doing something. I know I'm not really working. I'm coming within that day. You're still doing something, but you're not really, really working. So it's OK for some of those people to be that proper. They're going to be aware when you're doing it. You're aware. So you're really just going back to what you said before. If you're uncomfortable while you're doing your work or you're getting a no, and that's not feeling good, that's good work. But if you're too comfy, yeah, that's not good work. That's not good work. And if you've got nothing to lose, go for no. Like if you're going to say yes, get them to say no if we can move on. Because there is nobody selling anything right now that doesn't think that what they're selling is worthwhile. So if you're selling it, you know it's worthwhile. If you don't, you're not there. So what techniques do you use in order to get somebody to say no? When they're being nice and saying, let me think about it. I need to talk to whomever. How do you get them to say no? I usually do exactly what I was telling you earlier. I say the things exactly what I want. I say exactly what I'm thinking. So I'll say this. OK, so Tom, I think that you're one of those people who's really nice and doesn't want to tell me you're not actually interested, which let me just tell you. I would rather hear no than let me think about it. Because what's going to happen is for the next however long every week, I'm going to email you, waste both of our time. So if you're not interested, just tell me no. And then if you become interested in the future, you can always reach out. I mean, you'll have my card and my phone number. But this way, it's easier. That is one of the one way to do it. Depending on the personality type, I have also, I've had some strong headed people that I'll just push and push and push until they're finally. I'm just not interested. And I'm like, thank you. That's what I was looking for. I mean, if you have nothing to lose, throw a Hail Mary. You can try. You know, you said you're interested, but do you want to thank your spouse? What do we call your spouse? What's calling right now? Good answer. Here, use my phone. Oh, yeah. I mean, get uncomfortable. It's good. It's going to be uncomfortable. But if you've got nothing to lose, I love having nothing to lose. Like, let's do this. And that's also a good place to try new things. Like, sometimes I'm in a good mood and I'll try being really friendly and seeing if I win them over. Can't. Or being really aggressive and seeing if I get to know. I can. Trying something creative that I've never tried before. Sometimes it goes either way. But there's a lot of different ways and you kind of have to feel out the different person. Hail Mary, though. I love Hail Mary. OK, back to sports again. You and your sports thingy. I deal with nothing but men. So I do a lot of sports stuff. Yeah. But you love sports, too. So you just wear like that, yeah. Watching the playing and then, yes, absolutely. OK, creativity. So we all know we have to think creatively about things, right? Here's what I would tell you. I would tell you to find time in your day to think creatively about things. So it's a crazy to me in the amount of time I've been thinking about, OK, well, I need to go to the UPS and I need to go to the store and we're going to have for dinner. And gosh, I've got to put my mom back and write all of these things. So when I personally go to bed until I fall asleep, all I think about is work and creative new ways to do things. We've all thought about, so what do our customers have in common and what are they looking for? But something that we do a lot at my company now is we discuss the buyer's journey. Because before they get to the place where they're going to forget, they'll have done things. And the buyer's journey is different from one person to the next, or at least from one type of person. So for us, we have like, if I'm dealing with a VP of security, the buyer's journey there is different than if I'm dealing with a site manager. The buyer's journey is different. So figuring that out is one thing you can do. Also just completely off the wall, ideas that, I don't know, when I was working at Penske, we're renting trucks, right? That's the whole job. You just have to rent trucks. That doesn't sound that hard. People know your music, right? So we're trying to find new companies. Trying to find new companies. Who's using this company today? They're like the guy I work with, and I still to this day think they're a big junior. We can rent them to the public if they're moving. We want to create a supplier and ask a couple of complexes if whenever you give your welcome to our apartment complex, and you put the photo in with all of your welcome letters. How smart was that? Why didn't they do that across the board? How had no one else thought of it? It was, it was just a completely, I was hoping that she did it completely on her own. It was just genius. And then- I couldn't hear it. Tom, could you hear it? I couldn't hear it. It was too echoey. Oh no, hold on. Just repeat that last thought about the flyers. Okay, so we have to rent truck dependency, right? We can rent them to people for moving. What she did was she created a flyer and then took them to apartment complexes and asked them that in there welcome to our apartment. Like they give you a little catalog if she could put her flyer in there. So when people were renting apartments, the first thing they picked up was, oh, I do need a rental truck. Oh, here's someone's number and some special rates for us through the- So it looked like there were special rates through the apartment complex. Like, how smart is that? How would no one else have said that yet? It was crazy and she just thought of it one day. So my suggestion for you here is I have a friend who does it in the shower. When she's in the shower, she only thinks about work. That's it. She turns off her brain to everything else. I have another friend who does it while she's driving. For me, driving is too much time. So I do it before I fall asleep every night. That's what I think about. What am I missing? Could I do something different? How can I change what I'm doing in some way? Okay. Cool. Okay. This is a popular one, but just in case you haven't heard of it, it's called the three month rule. And it's similar what we were talking about earlier, mom. So the three month rule says that everything that you do today is within what you did three months ago. So someone explained to me like this, you're on a roller coaster because sales is a roller coaster. It just is. You're gonna have good months and bad months. But while you're on a roller coaster, never coast, because what happened is you get to a month where, oh my gosh, all the things I've been working on are coming in and I have got all this work to do. I have sent out these contracts. I have to follow this person. I have to call them because they asked me to call them I have to do all these things and you'll stop doing the basics. You'll stop knocking on the doors. You'll stop sending out the flyers. You'll start, you'll stop leaving. So in two more months, you'll be like, you don't even buy anything anymore. I'm doing the same thing I've always done. No, no, I'm doing the same thing. And on your really good month, you stop doing the basics to make your leads. So if your funnel goes to zero, you're in trouble. And I get that from everybody I know in sales that is like a personal friend, not a colleague. It's like, you're starting a really bad month and I don't, I'm not doing anything wrong. I think I need to work on my closing. But they'll people inevitably when they think they're not doing well, because I'm not closing well enough. You're closing well, and you're closing the exact way you always close. You didn't create enough leads. You got, you were on the downhill of the sweet roller coaster ride and I had to do all the work to get to the top again. Keep doing it. Yeah. You know, we have, we have the same sort of cycle when it comes to hiring. You know, we see this a lot of times with people. They'll hire people, hire people and then they're fully staffed and then they stop hiring. They stop placing ads. And then they're like, oh my gosh, I can't hire anybody as normal as people are. You know, we need a better ad. Well, you don't need a better ad. You just need to keep placing that same ad. So I think it's the same thing. I think it's a natural response because when you are, like when you're training, you're doing a lot of training work. You don't have time to be answering more ads. But if you've got the, how we're doing the training, you are legitimately busy. When I'm closing business, I'm legitimately busy. You have the time for those, those other things that are, it's the same thing too. It's not fun to do that stuff. It's not, that's not the fun work. You have to make fun work even, even though you're busy and you're busy doing money-making things which are awesome things. Talking about this the other day in the context of marketing, advertising, you know, like AdWords and things like that. And, you know, sometimes we're short of labor and it's like, well, don't you stop advertising when you're in that situation? It's like, no, because it's so hard to get the pipeline filled up again. You want to keep getting those leads regardless. For sure. Yes. You fall under that one. Okay, I think we all know this one, but it just has to be said, I would say that there was one thing that differentiated me and most of my peers when I started seeing my career really go up was books. Books. I personally love books. I like the actual physical active reading. If you don't audit books, I know somebody, Liz, listen to her books on 1.25 speed because she wants to get through them quickly. Dude, that's so long ago. We're at 1.75 now. Oh my God, I don't know how you do it. I think it's- Lucky. She's insane. But I mean, you can listen to books while you're getting ready. You can listen to books in the car. I mean, I listen to them in the car while I'm getting ready. While I'm doing my chores around the house, turn off the TV, stick it in my pocket, my headphones on, baking dinner, that type of thing. So books, we all know blogs are important, but I think there's so much knowledge in books. Like if a book's been published, there's some good stuff in there. I have read a few books where, I don't know, one or two things, but still felt so worth it because those were good things. Oh, those were awesome. So I'm a big believer in books. Networking in groups. We all know this. I'm a part of five different transportation groups right now. I'm about to be on the board of one. What? Well, I know I have transportation, but that's what you do. You have to get in there. And I know it's hard for introverts. I know it's hard because you have to be so on. Like, so on. But if you can be on for an hour and a half, you can do all your work in an hour and a half. You can make 20 people in an hour and a half if you're on. So, if you're an introvert and you would hate the actual, like, picking up the phone and making the awkward calls, that might be a way for you to get around that, at least somewhat. You're gonna have to make the calls, but at least somewhat. And then last, mentor. If there's one thing I tell every single person I know, not even sales, get a mentor, get one. Get one who does whatever you want next. My friend, my, it's always been my thing. So, my current one is actually my, which I don't normally do because this is the person I want to ask about the next level of my career. But at Penn State, how I got back into sales was when that job opened up, my then mentor said, you need to apply. And I was like, oh, I don't want to be in sales as I charge you to apply. And he taught me some interesting things, like little things that I never forgot. Like he told me, always be the first one here. And I was like, why? No one cares when you leave. No one even notices that if you're the first one here, people will think you work hard even if you don't. Like, and that is crazy and true. I'm always the first one in my office. Always. Now I am working hard, but I make sure that I'm always the first one there because I know it makes me look good. And I learned that because I had a mentor and he was saying, do this with your career. Do this. This is what they look for. This is what your bosses right now are looking for. So, if you own your own company, find the people you own company that you want to be like and ask that person, I take you to lunch. And then I always say, would you mind being my mentor? Because people are flattered to hear that. They'll almost always say yes. They might say, I don't have a lot of spare time right now, but I'll help you where I can. Take it. You can have more of a mentor. Take all the mentors you can get. And then have a question. Those are people you reach out to. There's people in your back pocket that can help you tell you what you need to do next. Or man, I'm having trouble with X, Y, and Z. Did you go through that? Yeah, I would do something similar or no, I haven't. So maybe here's what I did differently, did not hit that stumbling block. Men pour up, get one, get two, get three. I love them. All right. All right. Number one sucks. I'm sorry. This is what it is. If you're going to be in sales, you just have to do the things. You have to do the things. There are some tricks to getting something done. I will tell you this. I went about for everybody. Every little time I go and walk into a place and I'm like, can I speak to your manager? It's uncomfortable. Every little time. 15 years in, still uncomfortable. But I will tell you this. Usually the worst one is the first one of the day. So the first one of the day, if I get that one, easy. I'm downhill from here, no problem. So two things. Most people do better. I'm a strong component of having a schedule. I always, when I was knocking on doors to leave my house at 7.30 in the morning, I didn't have to. I could have not left my house at all. I could have left at noon. Lots of people leave at 9. But I did my best work. If I left house early, I felt like I was being productive. I'm going to do a good job today. I am going to get out there and just do the work. And it's going to go great. I had that feeling. So however you have to find out what that is and then create a schedule around that. The other half of the schedule is the next week. There is a few books on it. One of my favorite was, what was that book about? Habit. Do you remember the name of that habit book? Top of your head? So many of them, Lava. High Performance Habits by Brian Bercard. No. Basically, the book I took out of one of those was. Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Successful People. I bet she might be talking about Rockefeller Habits. I might be. The premise was, though, that nobody has enough motivation to do all the things all the time. None of us do. It's why I fail. It's why I stop working out, which I am currently guilty of. Don't want to get into it. So what I did for this, because no one's going to watch you, especially if you're the best owners, have to make a routine. So mine was, I would get up. The second time I learned it off, I don't necessarily sleep in one time, get up and then put on my work clothes. And I would always have my stuff waiting for me. So once my work clothes were on, because that was my first step, everything else was easy. But that worked on the hard part. Like I'm already in my work clothes. I mean, I'm not going to sit at home now. I'm in my work clothes. It's not comfortable. So now I make my tea, I grab my paper, and I go. So if you've been trying to create a routine, then you only have to get the first thing done. Because after that, it'll just naturally kind of snowball down the hill for you. So that would be how I went against how I made myself do the things every single day, even when I want to have a schedule and have a routine. And that's it. Yeah, that's good. That's a lot. Excellent. Do we want to take a couple of questions? Okay. Here's an easy one. Yeah. So I'm going to put a poll up on my own page, guys. Does she look like me or not? Yes or no? Because people always say we look so much alike. And I'm like, yeah, I don't see it. I don't get it. Take off your glasses. I can't see myself without my glasses. But they can see you. And change your smile. Before she got her jaw surgery, we had the exact same smile. You're doing? All right, I'll take your word for it. All right. Samantha, yeah, here's a question. What other things could cleaning clients do for us besides referrals? I'm sure you have your people that you have them on speed dial where other people can call, right? I'm sure that's normal. Like what, Lava? So you have your people that maybe somebody's not sure if they want to go with you or another company and you have those, like you can call Liz and she'll tell you whether you have a great job or a list of people like that. Okay. Yeah. That's an easy one. Testimonials to review sites, maybe? No, those are good. Or if you can do like business case, not business case. I'd rather work for a longer testimonial, but the good thing about testimonials too is you can write them up for them. Like, oh, I got into this because, or I got the service because I have three kids and two dogs and my weekends are spent just cleaning and frustrating me. And now I can pay every two weeks and I don't feel like I have to do that anymore. Now it's in my time, my weekend, I'm having fun with my family and then you can send that to them but they agree they can sign it and now you've got to get an entire books of different things. You can also do really specific ones. So one lady has nine cats. So when you meet somebody who has nine cats and she's like, well, I don't know what I need but well, I had a lady who kind of reminded me just of Peggy Sue and here's what she said. Or somebody, child was a lot for work and so their house just kind of gets into disrepair and they don't need a lot of work. I mean, once a month just as a dust, when they're home, it's nice and cozy. You have that person write you something or you write it for them because people won't want to write it for you. And if you write it, you can write exactly what you want and then just ask them to sign it, my favorite. Cool. Yeah, so, and actually I, you know, we've talked about this a lot but nobody really does this. And Shari, you told me this maybe, I don't know, a forever ago, maybe even 10 years ago and you do this all the time, right? You write out the testimonial and you send it to them and ask them to sign it and they do. Oh, constantly. I was like, oh yeah, absolutely. That's great, thank you. And how easy is that? Yeah, and they literally will be like, oh, you wrote it for me? Oh my gosh, that's, and then you're super effusive because that's so helpful for your business. And I'll be like, oh yes, that's exactly what I need to thank you so much because especially these people like you, they already think you do a good job and I'll have to put their name on it. So they'll love to be a part of your growth. I don't think I can pull that. Oh, thank you, Shari. Thank you so much. It's over. I'm gonna work on it. Dear personality, please Tom, do not try and act like Liz. I don't mean you'll fly. No, I don't mean you'll be adorable. I don't. Many businesses are jumped into booking online and trying to reduce or eliminate the sales process. Do you believe, and could you talk about how the sales process adds much more value to a personal service like house cleaning? What he's talking about is a lot of companies have basically stood up websites where they'll ask you how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, I'll give you a price. You don't need your credit card and basically you've bought service and you haven't talked to anybody, but for every one person that does that, there's probably 10 more who kind of went through the process and quit somewhere along the way. Yeah, hold on a second. I love when you turn into that little round circle, Lava. Me too. So cool like that. I feel so cute. Okay, so I will say that I think that there is a place for that. There are people, especially young people who do not wanna talk to somebody. We don't like being sold. I wanna just go online. At least wanna see how much it is because if I am looking for $50 and I can't get anything below $300, then I don't wanna waste my time or your time. Mostly my time. So I think there is a place for that. However, the problem is the cost per person to get them on your website to fill that out is exorbitant. I'm sure I don't need to tell you. I'm sure you've done the math, but it's crazy. So you do want to have it so that people can talk to you and you do see that. So maybe on that page where they are going to be able to fill out the stuff and get their information themselves, you have those testimonials running. So you've got the talking to you while you're doing it. Oh, hi, I've been a customer for so and so years and we do a lot of video testimonials right now because people are video centric right the second and it worked out really well for us because my husband and I, neither like to do the dishes or not just like to dust, it's probably a better one. So we don't wanna do the bathroom. So we don't have to anymore because we're constantly like having to draw straw and go to the bathroom or a little blip that are going constantly to do some cell filling so what you're saying is still having the conversation with them while they're on that page. So they're still seeing that popping up. Okay, I like that. Or content. Do you want content for sure there? Cause you don't want to lose somebody. Not just a form saying how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, how many, keep giving them information at the same time about keep going, keep going. You're going to love it. Your bathrooms are going to be clean. You're going to, your house is going to be great. Keep going. Okay. After, did I answer your question, David? I think that you did. That's awesome advice. Making another, okay. What time is it? At the time of the hour. This was probably one of the fastest hours I think we've had. Yeah, good job, Leva. Oh, so I have to tell you guys this real quick. So for her to be able to come on here and do this, I asked her what, maybe a week ago, Leva, two weeks ago, to do it. And she was like, okay, I'll do it, mama. But I'm really nervous. I'm like, how are you nervous? You do sales for 15 years. Pop sales person. She's like, I'm so nervous. I'm nervous. I'm awkward. I'm awkward. I could see all of your faces. I'd be like, I make uncomfortable jokes. They wouldn't land. Oh, it's so, like my boss has been like, what happened to you? I'm like, I'm sorry. They were all looking at my face and I just froze. You are way, way, way too talented to be nervous. There's, that's just- That's kind of my point though, you know? 15 years in, top sales person, multiple years in a row and still nervous. So, you know, being nervous, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. So you gotta be thinking now, maybe I should be more nervous, huh? You know, you're not nervous, you're not uncomfortable, not doing the work. You're all nervous, you're not uncomfortable. Okay. Real quick. Cleaning business today. We have this really awesome training program for professional house cleaners and we haven't been talking much about it because we've been cleaning it up on the platform, getting it ready to go and it's there. We are in unprecedented times and we're going to see more of that over the next few weeks because 2008, I had the best staff I ever had because the housing market crashed and there were a lot of people in the job market and we had our pick. In a couple of weeks, the federal unemployment benefits are gonna go away and there's gonna be a flood of talented people in the market and you're gonna have a lot of people to choose from. A lot of them are gonna be coming from jobs and professions where, you know, they have expectations that there's gonna be real training and more information and they're gonna be looking for that. And a lot of us really have built our businesses on a model where that really hasn't been the expectation and really hasn't been the focus. Well, we've made it really, really easy with the PAC program. It's an online platform. You can buy multiple seats at discounts and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time here because we're short of time but really need to be thinking about, are you prepared for what's gonna be coming down the road the next couple of weeks? And this is- Bottom line, Tom, I know we're out of time here but I really have to interrupt. You guys, at the end of this month, there are going to be tons of opportunities, tons and tons and tons. We have a whole new chance of getting the best people in our companies but you gotta be ready. If you are not a professional house cleaning service right now maybe you're calling yourself professional but you're like, you don't really know all the stuff. Here you go. Here's your program right here. Just take the program, sign yourself up, get the information and get ready to have a professional program to pass on to these new people who are expecting better than what we're doing right now. If I had a nickel for every time a cleaning business owner told me I just can't hire the right people, well, give it a couple of weeks. You're gonna have the best chance you've had in a dozen years but hiring the right people is just part of it. The other part is you gotta train them and this is just so easy. You gotta do it. Cleaning business today, if you haven't subscribed, please do. Just your email first name, last name. You'll be getting information about a lot of new things that are coming down the road and including what we're doing next Wednesday with deal Wednesday. And we've talked about that over the last couple of days. We're gonna have 10 sponsors each giving you a four minute pitch and a special deal that you're not gonna get anywhere else. So it'll be good for like 24 to 48 hours and it's gonna be a lot of fun. And if you haven't gone to our resource page I'll drop the link there too. I need to hook up with Greg. He was supposed to send me text to his blog. He sent it to me. I forwarded it to you. You were probably expecting it to come from you. Greg, I never read Jury, I'm sorry. I do. I know, true, right? Here we go. I get a lot of emails and I was really looking for something for Greg because I wanted to get it done before five. I do read Jury, you may have heard, but sometimes you send me an email asking me to put that slide together for sure today. And then you gave me like 30 minutes to do it. It happened, right? Yeah, good job, Tom. I give you that, yeah. I'm, yes, Sam, the PHC course is the same one that you purchased a few weeks ago. It's just the whole entire program now. And we just wanna make sure that everybody knows that the whole program is there. It's on the new platform, it's ready to go. You need to have something better than you have right now for the new crop of people that we are going to have access to. We haven't had this chance, y'all. You always bemoan the fact that the people that we get are so bad, we don't get good applicants. That's changing. Get ready now. Smart business move, do the right thing at the right time. And right now, the thing is prep for those new people. Oh, here's something important too. Since you guys are here, there's a discount code that you can get 30% off of whatever you get if you buy. But what does it say? It expires Friday, June 10th. So that's like end of the day. What is today? Thursday, June 9th. Are you looking at Tom? I'm not looking at what you're looking at. No, I'm not looking at, because I'm not sharing my screen. I do that all the time. Oh, gotcha, okay. So it's just a code for that PHC. Yeah, yeah, so this is our PHC, 30% off, but it expires end of the day Friday. Okay. So you can use it today, you can use it tomorrow. Real scorn. Great. Thanks, y'all. Y'all be safe. Remember on the spot tomorrow, bring your best questions. We're gonna have a lot of fun. We're gonna end early because it's Friday. It's supposed to be Sunday, it's official. Bye, guys. Thanks so much, Lava.