Top performers don’t just show up—they train, think, and execute at an elite level. In Part 1 of this powerhouse conversation with Doug Wyatt, we explore the mindset and daily routines that drive massive success. Whether you’re struggling with consistency or looking to reach the next level, this episode lays out the blueprint for winning in sales and life.

We’ll cover how to build an unstoppable mindset, why morning routines dictate your outcomes, and why entitlement is the enemy of success. Plus, we break down the psychology of elite performers, decision-making strategies, and the powerful impact of self-discipline.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

🔥 How top sales performers train, think, and execute at a higher level

🔥 Why “Must Be Nice” is a dangerous mindset and how to eliminate entitlement

🔥 The daily routines and rituals that create lasting success

🔥 How to reframe challenges into opportunities for growth

🔥 A game-changing shift that will help you dominate sales and life

Resources & Links:

🎟 Join us at Close It Now Relentless: The Ultimate Sales Transformation! Get your ticket now!

📖 Recommended Reading: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, Atomic Habits by James Clear

🚀 Coaching & Training: Ready to level up? Visit www.closeitnow.net for sales training, coaching, and free resources.

🔥 Follow & Subscribe: Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Close It Now on your favorite podcast platform.

Let’s Connect:

🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/closeitnow/

🔹 Instagram: @therealcloseitnow

🔹 Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/closeitnow

💡 Final Thought:

Your results are a direct reflection of your mindset and habits. What’s one routine you can improve today that will take your game to the next level? Drop a comment or send me a message—I’d love to hear what changes you’re making!

Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right.

Welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here.

I am stoked to have this guest today.

Him and I go way back, actually, gosh, way back to the beginning of my sales journey.

Interestingly enough everybody, the very first year that I was in the field doing sales for H Vac, I happened to run into this guy at this little bitty town called Lubbock, Texas.

And, and we happen to be in the same class together.

And so we've known each other for God was 17, roughly 15, 16, 17 years now.

And so this is my guest today.

He is the CEO and founder of Synergy Learning Systems.

Also he is a two time Linux partner of the year on the contractor side as well.

So he has been all over the map, both the doing and on the side of the support for contractors.

So I'm so excited to welcome to the show today.

This is Doug Wyatt.

Thank you for joining me, man, what.

A great introduction, Sam.

I just.

Wow.

I am honored to be here.

I've been listening to Close it now and the one and only Sam Wakefield.

And I mean that there is nobody like you, Sam.

I can't believe it's been 17 years, but I think you're right in a minute.

Yeah, I'll just start by apologizing.

I can't believe that your introduction into the trades was so terrible.

I mean I think that event that we did in lck, Texas, I, I think I took over the training on day two at around noon and role played all the closing sequences, bids, brand calls, you know, price and man, I feel bad that you were set back so far right from the beginning, but you are.

I love it, man.

I wish I'd have saved my, the actual like numbers from back then.

A 30% bump in my numbers immediately and it never went down from there.

So that definitely was a huge, pivotal moment in my career.

Those events were pretty intense.

So I can only imagine your eyes as wide as saucers.

I remember you.

You still look very young, but I remember you in the audience.

And I was like, this guy's got it right.

But at the same time, you talk about baptism by fire.

Those events were pretty intense for the trade.

And everything from mindset to meditations and affirmations and a lot of that.

And what a great introduct to the trades.

Unlike what most people were introduced to 15 or 20 years ago.

There's a lot of that going on these days, but there wasn't a lot of that going on back in, you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

A lot of fun.

But, you know, you and I remain.

Friends, and a lot of people might consider us competitors.

I don't look at it like that as all at all.

I look at you as a person who's raising the level of the trades, right?

Like, the things that you're sharing, the things you teach, the things you're communicating, it's changing lives, it's changing businesses, it's changing families.

And so I don't.

I don't look at us as competitors.

I look at us as we're out there trying to do very similar things and lifting up those of us around us that want to do business with integrity, right?

Serve homeowners, do the job right, don't lie, cheater, steal.

And so I look at you as a partner, not a competitor.

Where, say, same man.

It's, you know, when you come from the abundance mindset, what I say all the time is, especially this last Friday, you know, I'm on stage with, you know, Joe Chrisra and Jason Walker, and, you know, there's some people in the audience are like, okay, well, you know, what are you guys doing together?

And we're like, man, there's abundance mindset.

You know, we could multiply every single one of us that are, you know, have training and stuff for the trades by 10, and there still wouldn't be enough of us to help as many people as need help and need assistance to get where they want to go.

What a great way to put it.

And, you know, obviously Joe's got some great programs.

He's been around for a long time and has helped so many people achieve so many things in their life.

And, you know, you mentioned abundance mindset.

And when I was about 20 years old, I read a book called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

And man is that book deep.

And I would find myself, you know, I'd be five pages past something that I was still thinking about, and it didn't really.

It didn't hit me the way it did about 20 years later.

And then I got a Chance to meet Dr.

Covey and 7 Habits certified instructor almost two decades ago.

And it's one of the things that we do at Synergy.

We teach leadership, and we actually have custom programs that we've developed now.

But I will say this.

Covey talked about the pie continues to get bigger when you're doing the right things, right?

And so that's really the epitome of the abundance mindset.

You know, when we live in a place of scarcity, that's what we're going to attract.

And when we live in the abundance mindset like you do and like I work on every single day and obviously like Joe does and everybody that was at with that event that you were speaking at last week in Minnesota, that's.

I think, what it's all about, right?

We don't have to hate each other.

In fact, we don't even have to dislike each other or avoid each other.

We can help each other.

And by doing that, we can help a lot more people than just trying to be in a vacuum or, you know, do our own thing.

So I really am.

I'm honored to be on here.

I've watched what you've been doing.

I've listened, I've been through the.

The Close it now podcast, and, man, what great value you're adding.

I appreciate it.

Thanks so much, man.

It's.

It's cool to.

You know, when you.

When you have a podcast, you never know where it's going.

You know, when I got this Spotify wrapped for this last year, and it said, hey, your podcast was listened to in 71 countries, I was like, are you freaking kidding me?

No way.

Holy smokes.

Like that moment of gratitude.

I didn't know you were worldwide.

That's like prestige worldwide on Step Brothers.

That's wild.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's the power of consistency, right?

It happens when you're consistent, persistent, disciplined action across time.

It compounds.

And you might not even recognize it in the journey, but when you start kind of the.

The gap versus the gain mentality, you know, you start to measure the gain instead of looking at, oh, I wanted to be here.

I didn't quite get to where my goal was, but you look back and measure, you know, measure backwards, and you're like, oh, wow, look how far we have come.

Yeah.

When you talk about being consistent and persistent, it reminds me of Lao Tzu, the ancient philosopher who said that a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.

Right.

The key is you just got to.

Keep taking additional steps and you don't even need to know how you're going to make it the entire thousand mile journey.

The key is we've got to remain consistent, one foot in front of the other.

And if we get caught up on we need to know every step, we're going to face analysis of paralysis or paralysis by analysis.

Right.

And so I love that it is, it is about being consistent, it's about being persistent, it's about getting knocked down because it's coming.

Challenges are never going to stop coming.

It's how we respond to those that are going to affect where we end up.

Right.

So got to keep taking the next step and keep back up.

Well, so let's back up slightly because there's a lot of people on the show for the last, you know, good amount of years.

You've kind of flown under the radar a little bit.

You know, you've got, you know, we've got a lot of similar peers and connections that are, you know, kind of the backside of the home services industry but aren't very public.

So I'd love for you to take a minute and give everybody a highlight reel.

You know, why should one, why are you sitting here in the seat and having this conversation today and give us some of your background like how, how did you get here?

And one, like one or two big philosophies that really drive your life and your business.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Thanks for the opportunity, Sam.

I'll try not to take too long, but I will start way back and I think it's relevant.

Everywhere I speak, everywhere I train, I share with people that I grew up in a small country town in southwest Missouri, a little town called Nixa.

And there were some things I took out of that town that, that have stuck with me forever.

You know, hard work, being a man or a person of honor, character and integrity.

The kind of place where if you make a promise to somebody and you don't keep it, you get run out of town.

Right.

For example, I've probably bailed more, you know, hay bales and buck more hay up on trailers in this sweltering sun of Missouri and the 98% humidity with 102 degrees outside than I'd even like to hardly remember.

But what I do remember is hard work and that was my first experience with performance based pay too we were getting, you know, I think about 3 cents a bale.

And you talk about 8 years old trying to buck those big old hay bales up.

Sure.

That'll condition you to realize a lot.

Of times you get strong fast, right?

Yeah.

And it also might make you realize that you don't want to do hard labor the rest of your life at a very young age.

My dad actually made myself a fake ID when I was about 12 years old so that I could work at a Christmas tree farm where you had to dress in full gear.

The only thing you could see is just your face.

You were full, long sleeves, gloves, pants.

And the reason was you had to reach into these trees and then you had to snip them.

You had to put the top together, duct tape them, find that line of the tree trunk, line them up, and then straighten those trees out.

So I had a fake ID when I was 12, but it wasn't why many people get fake IDs.

It was so that I could go out and work.

My brother and I would work out there.

There were about eight Hispanic guys that didn't speak a word of English.

And I carried a lunch pail to work every day.

And we sat there and we had lunch and worked hard and laughed.

I didn't know what we were laughing about.

They were all speaking Spanish.

But man, I'm telling you, I started driving when I was 12, right.

It was a different upbringing.

But what I did know is I wanted more out of life and basketball was my ticket out of town.

I ended up getting a college scholarship.

I played a couple of years of basketball at a small school in Kansas.

And after two years I decided it was time.

I mean, that was a job and I wasn't getting paid.

There wasn't any of that, that nil money or whatever it is now where people are getting a quarter million dollars even when they sit the bench at a major division.

And so I moved off to Colorado and I started at the University of Colorado.

I didn't really see myself as college material, but I got a basketball scholarship.

And so I started and I figured I should finish.

And so at the University of Colorado, I started a door to door sales company.

I didn't know anything about sales.

In fact, I hated sales.

I hated pushy salespeople.

My dad hated salespeople.

He was the kind of guy that would slam the door in solicitors faces.

And all those things.

And I just knew I was tired of being broken.

And so I got this idea.

I loved this local pizzeria.

And we started Eating a lot of pizza from this place.

And one night I woke up in the middle of the night tired of being broke.

And I thought I'm going to put.

Together a coupon book and go out and talk to people about this pizzeria.

So I went in the next day I talked to the business owner.

He was intrigued by my idea, invited me back that evening at close.

And before you know it, within a few weeks I designed a little coupon book and was taking it down to Kinko's at the time and printing them.

Selling them for 20 bucks at the end of about a six month trial.

Run of trying to figure out how I could sell these.

I'd learned to sell about 10 of these in a, in a three hour stretch between 5 and 8pm sure.

And I'm telling you there's a lot more rejection than success.

A lot of doors slammed in your face, people telling you get off my porch, not interested.

And you get conditioned, you start to really grow thick skin, right?

Yeah.

Condition yourself for that rejection.

But I figured out how to sell about 10 a night at 20 bucks.

So now I'm making 200 bucks in three hours.

In college.

So I wrote a training manual.

My first training manual was about 84 pages long.

I'm talking about how far back do you stand?

Smile, how do you all the details, yeah, script, word for word, gotta turn 45 or sideways.

Sam I grew up in a, from.

The way the door opens, all the things.

And I also realized that scripting was important.

So I put little, these superscript numbers line by line.

And so when I started training people, I literally had it broke into sections line by line.

And we would practice and we'd practice and we'd role play and then I'd go to doors and before you know.

It, by the time I graduated, Sam, I had 500 kids working for me in seven states out west.

I was making a boatload of cash, but I didn't put that money into a fancy new car.

I didn't grow up about that life.

What I did do is there were a lot of infomercials on TV with.

Guys like Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and Stephen Covey and Tom Hopkins.

So I set up my schedule the next year to be out of class by Wednesday afternoon.

And I started getting on airplanes and I started flying around, spending my own hard earned dollars while I was going to college.

The first couple days of the week.

I'd then go learn from the all time greats, Wayne Dyer, Jim Rohn and the ones I've already Mentioned and, and it.

You're speaking my love language with all these names.

Oh my gosh, Sam, I know.

You and I are like, we're bred from the same cloth, right?

Nobody handed us anything.

We just had to work our tails off.

And I'll tell you, one book, one book everybody was talking about that I.

Read that changed my life.

It was the first book outside of high school and college that I read.

And I remember it was $4.99 and grow rich by Napoleon Hill.

And that book, probably not affordable anymore today I think it's, it's 8.99.

Yeah, right.

$8.99.

Maybe even it's up to $10.

In fact, sometimes on Spotify Premium, they run it for free to listen to.

I think you can actually listen to it on YouTube.

And it's on YouTube for free.

Yeah.

So for everybody listening, if you've never done think and Grow Rich, you must.

I've, I love that you mentioned it.

I've physically read it with my eyes probably half a dozen times and I've listened to it probably that many times as well.

Well, the similarities continue on Sam.

I have read that book every year.

I read that book for, I guess now 30 years.

I'm 49.

I read that book when I was 19.

I've read that book at least twice every year for the last 30 years.

That's at least 60 times.

I am on audible now and I listen at 2x.

Your brain will fix it.

If you haven't tried that, I encourage you to start it.

You know, go to 1.5, go to.

1.7, go to 2.

Even Sam and I here on this, on this podcast on whether you're on.

Spotify or Apple or YouTube, wherever you're.

Listening, in 71 countries around the world, it sounds like, I would say 2x.

Your learning speed, your brain will fix it.

You can consume information at rapid levels.

But that, that book changed the way I thought.

It changed the way that I thought growing up as a broke country redneck kid.

It changed the things that I learned.

I learned that you should grow up, you should get a job, you should work at a corporation and then you retire.

And the crazy thing is when we no longer need a watch, they give us a watch.

And I don't know if they still do that anymore because I haven't worked in the corporate world.

I haven't had a job since high school.

I've been an entrepreneur, I've been self employed.

I'm addicted to it, but it takes.

A lot of hard work.

And then to finish up my story there because, you know, we mix some content in there.

When I graduated from college, I was having lunch one day with a guy I'd been doing some promotions for.

He owned a bunch of Papa Murphy's.

And we're having lunch and he's like, doug, what are you going to do now that you're out of school?

Are you going to keep building these door to door sales crews?

And I'm like, heck no.

And he's like, I thought you were doing really well.

I mean, you're making a lot of money.

And I said, yeah, but it's feast or famine.

I'll have my best month in the history of my career, my life, hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue all across these states.

And the next week, the next month, it'll literally like plummet to 3,000 bucks an entire month.

And he looked at me like I was nuts.

And I said, all these kids go home for the summer.

My crews fall apart all over the country and I got to rebuild them.

I got to re recruit.

And so he goes, you want to open some restaurants?

So in my mid to late twenties, I opened six Papa Murphy's, taken bakes and three Subways in one year, and we grew those.

And then one day on the golf course, he met a guy, the guy you referenced.

And he said, doug, what do you think?

You can always, if you, if you're comfortable, you can always say names.

If not, nobody.

I don't, I don't mention his name.

We had a, we had a good nine year run together, but we're not friends.

But he's got great content, he's got great books.

But yeah, anyway, so I'm not going to throw his name out there, but we had a great nine year run.

We did some amazing things together.

But I will say, and I don't.

Like to speak ill of the absent, right.

If he was on here, we'll hash it out.

But I don't have any interest in that abundance mentality.

Man.

100 and for everybody listening, you figured out if go back and listen to a bunch of my podcasts that I talk about my first training, here's what I'll say.

We're both very a type personalities and.

I'm not holding a grudge these days.

All I know is sometimes when you're both a type personalities, it can be hard to work together when you're both very driven and you believe you have the way that things should be done in the organization.

And so I moved on back in.

2015 so, but I will say this.

When I met that guy, we'd read.

So many of the same books, just.

Like you and I had.

So we partnered up, invested a quarter.

Million dollars, an H vac and plumbing company in Colorado Springs.

And a few years later, we'd grown.

We'd multiplied the X's and the zeros on that business.

And the crazy thing is, Sam, that's why you and I are talking today.

It's why you and I met 17 years ago.

We had scaled that business with integrity by serving our customers better.

We didn't lower prices when everybody else lowered prices in the entire worldwide economic system.

System almost collapsed under the mortgage crisis.

What we did was we raised our prices and we serve people better.

We answered our phones better.

We dispatch better.

We knocked better.

We entered the entryway better.

We sat down at kitchen tables and we communicated our value and what we do differently than other contractors in that marketplace.

And it worked.

We doubled the size of our business.

In 09, Inc. Magazine recognized us and one of the world's largest manufacturers that you were also selling their equipment back then.

They reached out because there was this little blip on the radar and they're like, what the heck's going on in Colorado Springs?

How do we have dealers sticking us with supply house bills, Hundreds of thousands of dollars, guys going belly up.

And yet there's this contractor selling our most high efficient equipment.

They're the first factory authorized dealer in the state of Colorado for this brand.

And what are they doing right?

They hired us.

We built a green screen studio and started streaming a broadcast every Monday morning for an hour where we would come on and we would do about 30 minutes of training.

We'd up the phone lines and then we'd role play and we'd role play the toughest objections that men like you and others around the country were facing.

And I mentioned them before bids, brands, stalls, price.

I got to think about it, sleep on it, pray about it.

I got to talk to my spouse about it, my so and so, yep, everything right.

And we would just role play that.

And we focused on effective communication.

Neither one of us, me or him, were the most gifted skills wise in the trades.

But I'll be darn if we didn't master the effective communication.

And so we went out.

We trained about a thousand companies, yours being one of those in big towns and small towns, in country towns and big cities.

From coast to coast, north and south.

And everywhere we went, the guys that implemented what we were teaching it started working.

And so that kind of put me on the map as far as a trainer.

But we didn't have to do any marketing because we had the backing of billion dollar worldwide manufacturers that were putting us in front of people.

The tms were going out and bringing in their dealers and they were bringing in their comfort advisors and their techs like yourself.

And so you just showed up and there were a couple of guys there to train you, right?

Exactly.

Slides and some role plays.

Yeah.

I remember when our TM was pitching the class to us, they're like, hey man, you got to come hear this dude.

You got to.

You just, I can't even describe.

You just got to come hear this guy because it's so different and it's going to change your life.

And we were like, okay, I guess we'll make the drive, you know, two and a half hours and see what it's all about.

There you go.

And so here we are, you know, whatever it is, almost two decades later.

So we had a good run.

I mentioned that.

We went out and did that training.

We launched a training organization.

We built a studio in our H Vac company in Colorado Springs and we.

Would bring our comfort advisors on and our techs and we'd role play and we'd talk about what they were facing in homes.

We'd do ride alongs and all those things.

Right.

And that company had two, two kind of old school contractors at the helm.

They'd never had a company wide meeting in 18 years.

Holy moly.

Oh my gosh.

Most of their business was on commercial rooftop replacements.

They had a friend that owned a whole bunch of properties in the Denver Colorado market and they were changing out rooftops and a lot of them, but they weren't doing much residential.

And they had met me through that training organization and so they offered me 33% of their business without $1 of investment.

Wow.

Sam, here's the crazy thing and I think this is what we're on here to talk about.

My second go around in the trades as a contractor.

I joined an 18 year old business that didn't have an office.

There were no phone lines, there was no website, there was no Internet, there was not a chair.

It was Simply a shop that housed a ragtag bunch of ductwork.

There were some breaks, there were some shears, but there was nothing that resembled a real business.

Right.

Especially not on a residential contracting basis.

Sure.

And so the agreement was, we'll give you 33% of our 18 year old business.

You bring your intellectual property, your training, your passion, your enthusiasm, your ability to build high value systems.

And Sam, I went into that business one day a week.

Now make no mistake, I work seven days a week and I still, I work 10 to 14 hours a day.

And we, by the way, that company, not only did they not have uniforms 18 years in, had never had a company wide meeting, they didn't have any systems or processes.

They were dispatching two sons off of Yahoo Calendar out of two white vans off Yahoo Calendar and they didn't even have an answering service.

They had an answering machine four miles outside of town that typically took three days to return a customer call.

Holy moly.

Now, pausing your mind and think about this.

All I did was come in and add what I thought would work based on what we had done in Colorado Springs and what I had learned as we also trained a thousand companies and 7,000 technicians and comfort advisors like yourself, because I really like to listen and learn.

In 14 months we won Linux Partner of the Year.

Wow.

So we went from no uniforms, no phones, no Internet and a website to Linux Partner of the year in 14 months.

How was it done?

Consistency, persistency.

It was based on recruitment, it was based on accountability, it was based on working towards mastery on small manageable, bite sized chunks every single week.

And walking in on a Tuesday morning at 6:30 in the morning, early, with your shirts tucked in, with your name badges on, with your hair combed and your teeth brushed, beard trimmed.

You didn't have to be clean shaven, but you better make it look intentional.

Just look nice.

Yeah, a million dollars as far as somebody in the trades could look.

And then everybody was on a red chair and we bought chairs and we bought six foot white picnic tables and at any moment you better be ready to role play.

And we role played and we practiced and we role played and I gave my guys.

And by the way, we'll talk about this today.

People always ask me, Doug, how did you do that?

And I'll say, well, there were a number of things, but if I was to really distill it down to one thing that made the biggest difference, it was that I got one week ahead of our training and I absolutely accepted zero excuses.

So what I mean, by that is, let's say that we were struggling and I asked a guy, hey, why didn't we close that sale last night?

Right?

And I'll use your terminology, since we're on close it now, why don't we close it now?

Right?

And the guy would say, well, the guy said he had to talk to his wife or he had to think about or he had to get three bids or we're the first one in, or he's never done this before.

He's never needed a furnace or air conditioner, whatever it is.

Right, Right.

And so instead of me trying to get our guys to learn the entire process that I'd been teaching all over the country, what I said is, this week we're going to master one thing.

And this week, if you're telling me you continue to get tripped up by people that tell you they got to think about it, sleep on it, pray about it, they can't make a decision, by the way, Sam, you know as well as I do that is not the same as a spouse or an available party or it's a.

It's an available party, not an unavailable party.

Objection.

Right.

Correct.

Yeah.

And so let's, let's break that down for the listeners today.

If somebody tells you you got to think about it, they're saying, it's in my mind, it's in my heart, it's in my soul, it's in my gut, it's just me.

But I have to think.

If they say I gotta pray, yes, it's between them and their Lord and Savior.

But they're not saying they have to talk to another human.

If they say they sleep, they're saying they're not sure and they have to think.

Those are all.

Think about it.

Objections.

And I consider those an available party.

I would say to my team is, I would say, I don't want you to.

We're going to lose jobs to bids and brands and stalls and spouses and neighbors.

And your brother from California, you got to talk to him about whatever your H Vac project is because he worked on a furnace once when he was in college, Right?

I usually say the neighbors, uncles, brothers, sisters, Billy Bob, four states over that company 30 years ago.

The real expert, right?

That's the person they need to talk to.

At least that's what they're telling us.

Whether it's true or not, that's maybe what they believe.

Or at least it's a stall.

Right?

So what I would say to my team is, I would say here's a 60 to 90 second, word for word script of the way we're going to handle this at our organization.

You have seven days.

I'm going to give you it printed, I'm going to record it on audio.

You can listen to it all day long, you can listen to it in your sleep, you can listen to it in the shower, you can listen to it in your van from call to call.

You can listen to it on your way home and on your way in.

All I know is when you walk in on Tuesday morning at 6:30, just know we're going to start a role play.

And I'm going to say, you know, sounds great Sam.

I tell you what, let me think about it.

And you're on.

It's showtime.

You haven't mastered 60 to 90 seconds.

You don't want it bad enough.

So what we did is we just did that every week, week by week.

What we did is we worked on small, manageable, bite sized chunk of learning that were leveraged activities that applied to those roles every single day, every single call.

And we knew it was coming.

So what we did over the course of that year, if you want to know how we went from a ragtag bunch with no Internet phones and all that stuff, to Linux partner of the year, that's it.

Yeah, there was a lot of other things and you can read between the lines and a lot of courage, a lot of consideration, a lot of recruitment, a lot of accountability.

But ultimately what it comes down to is by the end of 52 weeks, every man or woman that made the cut was an absolute expert at all of the leverage activities that they were going to face.

Answering the phones, running service, running sales, and there were just no excuses.

And so if you'll do that, get one week ahead of your training and master something every single week, your life one year from now will not look like anything you could imagine.

And so that brings us back to Laozu.

A thousand mile journey begins with a single step.

There's 52 steps for my teams every single year.

52 steps.

We're working towards mastery.

And so in our learning systems at Synergy, we also combine leadership.

We combine that with also mindset training.

You know, we, we ought to work on what's in our mind, what's in our heart, what's in our soul.

Why are we working so hard?

Simon Sinek said start with why, right?

Stephen Covey says, seek first to understand, then to be understood.

In Habit five, there's all these great leaders and thinkers, right?

And by the way, Sam, right before we went Live.

You hit me with some amazing stuff where you said to me and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said, you don't get what you want, you get what you become.

Right, Sam Wakefield.

Right, exactly.

And I said, you know, Sam, that reminds me of one of the smartest, greatest thinkers in the history of our planet, Albert Einstein, who said, we cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking that we use to create it.

And so if we're having challenges in our business, I challenge everybody listening to us on this podcast today.

Think about what that challenge is.

Maybe you've got a hundred, pick one or two and say this week is that that's the one that we solve.

And we don't.

We don't go surface level.

We drive deep.

We create systems, we create processes, we practice it with our team.

Whatever that challenge is, if it's an ops challenge, we fix that.

If it's an inventory challenge, if it's time card challenge, if it's a software challenge, if it's a sales challenge, an objection challenge, a roleplay challenge.

What I would say is, my challenge to everybody listening is solve that one thing this week.

And if you do that every single week, one year from now, a thousand mile journey with a single step, you will be amazed when you get those 52 steps down the line.

Two, five years.

Imagine where you'll be if you work towards mastery instead of staying at the surface level, where we just kind of sweep things under the rug or fix it.

Fire erupted.

Instead of figuring out what caused the fire in the first place, oh, my.

Gosh, I love this so much.

And it resonates to where my.

Especially where my head and my message has been lately.

It's about that.

For well over a year, I've ended every podcast with, you know, work.

We're talking about working to become someone worth buying from, you know, and this, that's the main driver of the close it now message.

And we end each episode with, you know, go be someone worth buying from.

And it so much ties to this.

And it reminds me actually of a scripture that, you know, faith without works is dead, right?

We can have all of the faith in the world.

That means we can learn all of the things in the world.

But something else that I say really often is success happens at the speed of implementation.

And so it just really ties all this together into that, you know, we could learn all this stuff.

And in fact, Friday, this was one of the things I was talking about.

I was like, who is actually going to go home and implement.

Pick one thing, pull your nugget out of the day.

What did you get?

What's your gold nugget?

And just implement that.

And so I love this because it marries so much of the way that we train, which is exactly this.

It's like, okay, here's the.

The biggest, lowest hanging fruit.

We're going to start there, and we're going to master this thing, and then the next thing, and then the next thing.

But it's that consistency, you know, when we strive to be that, you know, we always hear be 1% better today than I was yesterday.

And we're only in competition with ourselves.

Absolutely.

But at the end of the year, it's not, you know, 52% better.

300.

If we're 1% better every day, it's not 365% better at the end of the year.

It's way more than that because of the power of compounding.

And so then you're speaking my language here, and it's so fun to.

To connect on this level.

But I want to dive in a.

Little bit, though, because something really quick.

Absolutely.

Of course, you've got a lot of.

Things that you want to cover, what.

You just said and some of the things that I said.

You know, we're kind of mirroring each other a little bit, and we're saying similar things in different ways.

But here's the message.

I think so many of us have gotten addicted to the next podcast.

We're addicted to the next conference.

We're addicted because they feel good.

And there's a bunch of people in there working their tails off to change their life and change their business and make something out of themselves.

Right.

And to serve the customers and the community better.

And it's all true.

The challenges in what I say, if I speak at a large conference, I say something very similar to what you said.

And the challenge is, a lot of times we can't afford, whether it's the dollar amount to go to the event, the plane ticket, the hotel, the rental cars, and all those things, but we also can't afford what's called the opportunity cost of having our team out of the field.

We've got to have people answering the phones, We've got to have people running the calls.

We've got to have people installing the jobs.

So it's not possible for us to just shut it down.

Right.

We've got payroll coming up and people expect to get paid, and we've got existing customers that expect us to come out and perform maintenance on their system.

Or goodness gracious, God forbid, it goes down and we installed it for 20 or 30 or 40 grand.

They ain't listening to the fact that we're off training, having a good time, right?

Minnesota or San Diego or Orlando or Dallas or wherever the next conference is, right?

Here's the thing.

What I see over and over and over is almost too much information was success.

Resources puts on these get motivated events and I've been to a lot of them over the years and I don't even know what they're calling them anymore.

And now there's another one called Aspire and I try to go to all those.

But I will say one of the biggest challenges with those is there's so many great speakers, there's so much great content.

And so what happens is we get back and all of a sudden it is like we're in a Rocky movie.

We are getting stocked left and right uppercuts and right hooks and left hooks and all of a sudden it's like, man, it is a week or two and we're back from that conference and we came back on a high and now we're as low as we've ever been.

There's more challenges and more fires that erupted while we were gone.

And so we had all these great ideas and all these things that we knew would work if we could implement and use that word implementation.

I like to say what we work on with our clients is solving the challenge of implementation.

It's not that most of us don't know what to do, it's that most of us don't do it long enough, consistently enough to work in the long term and make it part of our new business, our culture, our team.

And so that's why I just said we're going to focus on one or maybe two things.

A mindset thing, a goal setting thing, and then a very specific scripted thing for our call center, our techs, our sales, our leaders in our organization.

So that.

And listen, by the way, I hear myself kind of, kind of ranting, it's hard to do that because we want to fix it all today, right?

That's what we do.

Whether we're.

Our job is to fix it.

If we're in sales, our job is to close it.

If we're in business, our job is to go out there and build it, to scale it.

And so I think the challenge that we run into is that we all want it now.

We live in a microwave society where you can stop in the drive thru, your food is prepared for you, you can go to the grocery store.

You don't have to farm it, you don't have to plan it, you don't have to nurture it, you don't have to run your tractor, your crops.

You just go to the grocery store, you go to and you know what?

The grocery store, that's too hard these days.

We gotta go get delivery now to save that time too.

Gotta have a frozen pizza, we gotta have frozen burritos.

It's too long to make something for 10 minutes in our kitchen.

So we live in this microwave society and the challenge is we get duped by that and we think our business should grow that same way.

My challenge to everybody listening today, whether you're a tech or in your in sales, you're in the call center, you're an entrepreneur, is slow it down, quit trying to 10x your business today and focus on all of the foundational principles that are going to help you be where you want to be a year from now, or five years from now, or ten years from now.

Figure out, get clear on what it is that you really want out of your life and your business and then work tirelessly on small, manageable, bite sized chunks to mastery.

I love this so much and you're so right.

So kind of two parts to this.

It's both sides of the same coin here.

But we don't see is the work.

They put their 10,000 hours in somewhere else and there's a lot going on behind the scenes with investors and all the things that nobody knows about.

So one we get this like just completely wrong idea and we see that happen.

We're like, well man, I'm having the hardest time going from 2 million to 3 million, let alone from this guy.

Went from 2 million to 45 million in like 12 days.

It seems like.

So it's like we see all of this and it's really fake news for most people.

The other side of it is as the entrepreneur and I'd love to your take on this is we have to Almost be bipolar in a way.

We have to have the most incredible sense of urgency to actually implement, to actually solve the problems and make the changes when we need to make the changes we need to do.

But also we have to have the biggest amount of patience because those changes, we don't see the results of them overnight.

Right.

Sales is a 90 day cycle minimum, let alone the changes we make in our businesses.

So seeing it's progress, not overnight success.

So I love for you to talk about that a little bit because that's where so many people miss it.

They feel like everything should happen overnight and why isn't mine?

And then they stop like inches before gold.

Right.

They're acres of diamonds.

Right.

They're literally right before the gold and they quit because they don't see the results yet.

I'm going to seek to understand before I answer.

Sam, you've mentioned one thing and I just want to make sure that I'm clear and probably your listeners too.

It's a podcast called Close it now and you said Sales is a 90 day cycle.

Can you share a little bit more about what you meant by that?

Because I know you know how to.

Close business and so.

And nobody's out there waiting 90 days to close a bit.

You know, a new water heater, a tankless furnace, heat pump, air conditioner, mini split or bath remodel, you know, most of those are getting closed at the kitchen table day of or very quickly thereafter.

Can you share a little bit more about what you meant by a 90 day sales cycle?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So when I'm talking about that.

So of course, when we're in the appointment, when we're in the actual call.

Yes.

That's where we're closing it.

Right.

Then that's the conversation to get there.

That is the work that we do outside of the appointment itself.

So for example, lead generation.

Right.

People that get frustrated in the shoulder months in the spring and the fall.

Oh man.

I guess it's time to start putting money into advertising and start going into the community.

Well, if you're waiting until October to do it, you're too late.

If you started doing that in October, when do you think the business is going to happen?

January.

Right.

So that's the type of cycle we're talking about, the bigger picture of entrepreneurial or business or even as individual, say I'm an individual salesperson with a company.

The work that I'm doing today in getting in front of more people, networking, doing social media on my own, you know, if it's going out and you know, there's so many different ways that we can self generate business for ourselves that no one's doing.

But starting today, you're gonna really, once we get into the rhythm of it, it's that consistent discipline, we'll start seeing the results.

The problem is so many people will, they'll be on the gas and we'll say networking events for, as an example, they'll be on the gas for a couple months and they'll go to all the networking events and they meet people and right when the referrals start to come, they all of a sudden see a little bit of a, you know, increase and then they, they take their foot off the gas.

Okay, it's happening.

Not understanding that it's happening from the work that we put in for the last two or three months, that's more, did that clear it up?

That's more of what I'm talking about.

With your permission, may I give an analogy in the trades that I think might, might be what you're talking about.

Then you can tell me if I'm, if I'm understanding correctly.

100 man, this is, this is a conversation here.

There's no, no limits, no rules in this show.

Everybody knows we're super casual here.

What you just shared about doing something for three months or three years, let's just apply that to physical fitness, right?

Let's just say that you decided to get physically fit and over the course of a year you lost £50, right?

£52 is £1 a week.

That's the thousand mile journey.

£1 a week.

A year later you're £52 lighter.

Very next day after losing £52.

If you take your gas, your foot.

Off the gas, meaning you stop going.

To the gym, you go back to.

The drive through, you start drinking the soda again, you're eating all the candy.

Guess what?

It doesn't matter what you did the first 52 weeks last year.

If you do that over the next week, the next month, you're going to start putting on the pounds again.

So it is a little bit of life is like, what have you done for me lately?

That's the way it is in our physical fitness.

It's the way it is in our relationships with our spouse, with our kids.

It's the way it is in our business, it's the way it is in our trades.

It's, it's everything, right?

It's, we've got to remain consistent.

We cannot laugh the gas.

Here's an example that I think I can apply to what you Were saying about the traction, right.

Where you were talking about, we've got to create that momentum and keep it going.

And if you wait till the time the phones start to slow, it's already too late.

I'll just give this example to everybody.

If you had budgeted, and I know a lot of people aren't doing direct mail these days, but that first company I was in, we were doing 20,000 direct mail pieces a week, a million pieces a year.

And you know, the response rates on those are very low.

So you better be great at answering your phones, you better be great at running those direct response leads.

Right.

There's a total difference in a tech generated lead to marketed lead.

Right.

So don't even tell me what your close rate is.

Break that down for me and tell me what your close rate is on marketed leads, direct marketed leads, you know, because it's just different.

Right?

Or you got a long time customer and the tech's been there 10 times and you got five, five star reviews from this guy and you went out there and closed it.

Great.

Thank God you lose it, because people do.

So it does count.

But it's not the same as getting a direct mail piece from somebody that wasn't even thinking about replacing their system.

But they got a piece that said free furnace or whatever and you go out there and close it, right?

Correct.

If I had a budget to market, it doesn't matter what time frame, a month, six months, and I could afford 50,000 direct mail pieces.

My question to the listening audience, before we answer it, Sam and I know we're on the same page, should you market to 50,000 homes at once and hit 50,000 homes one time?

Should you market to 25,000 homes twice?

Or should you market to 10 or to 5,000 homes 10 times?

I'm going to go 5,000 homes 10.

Times every day of the week, man.

I'm going to start marketing in June, July and August because the people that need those services.

To your point, Sam, now that I'm understanding your 90 day cycle, I want to have those people have multiple touch points getting familiar with me and my brand and my offers.

And then all of a sudden when, when they do call and your team shows up, they're going to say things like this, man, I see you guys everywhere.

I see your trucks everywhere.

I can't, I can't go anywhere without seeing you guys.

And when that would happen to us, we're thinking, we're so small right now, we only have one truck on the road in a metropolitan city the size of Denver and they're telling us they've seen us everywhere.

Not on the radio, we're not on television yet.

We only have a few trucks rolling around town.

Those can only be in one place at a time.

And people are like, I see you everywhere.

You see, you don't remember where they saw you all the time.

So it's multiple touch points.

Right.

So great point, Sam.

We've got to continue that consistency and we've got to do those things over and over and over again.

So is that kind of what you were saying too, when you were saying 90?

Yeah, that's it.

I mean, when we're, you know, the business level conversation.

Right.

You know, we can't make a, say, a structural change or anything in an organization and expect the immediate results overnight.

People have to adopt it.

They've got to get used to it.

They've.

They've got to retrain and retrain and we've got to retrain and retrain and retrain them to make sure that they've, you know, understand the new process and they, they have it mastered.

Just like you were saying, we're going to master it this week and here's the test next week.

Right.

I love this so much.

So here's what I would say.

You asked me a question a bit ago if you had one or two takeaways that people could take away.

What have I done?

How have I changed my life from a broke that kid?

What I will say is when I was 19 and I read that Think and grow Rich and I started learning from guys like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins and all the greats.

Since I was 19, Sam, for 30 straight years, I created a habit in my life and that is one hour without fail of personal development every single day.

I don't know how many thousand days that is now, but there's no way I'm breaking that streak.

Every day I do one hour personal development.

I figure it out.

Most of the time it's the first.

Thing that I do.

And it is so, in my opinion.

Sam, it is so easy these days.

Why?

Because when I wake up, I push play on audible on a book and.

I'm listening to 2X.

Sam.

By the time I get out of bed, brush my teeth, put on my gym clothes, and I'm fortunate.

I've worked incredibly hard.

I have a gym in my house.

By the time I get downstairs and I've washed the.

The sleep out of my eyes and I'm half awake to go down, first thing I do because I'VE got bad knees from playing on concrete and and basketball all those years growing up.

I have a hard time running even on a treadmill.

And so I take the compression off my knees by riding a stationary bike for 30 minutes to start my day every day.

Sometimes that means I have to get up really early.

Right.

Based on the day ahead.

But what that does is it allows me to hack my day.

And here's what I mean by that.

By the time I put my butt on that stationary bike, I've already been up for about 15 minutes and listening at 2x as I got ready to get in the gym, use the restroom, brush my teeth, put on my gym clothes, strap on my tennis shoes.

By the time I get to my basement, 15 minutes has gone by and I've listened to 2X.

I'm 30 minutes into personal development.

Then I ride the bike for 30 minutes at 2x listening speed while I'm riding the bike.

That's another hour.

So I've already got an hour and 30 minutes of personal development.

Then I get off the bike and then I do 30 minutes of weight training.

30 minutes away training.

I don't listen to music.

I've just figured out how I can get a good lift in and be very meticulous in what I'm doing that day.

And I've got another 30 minutes at 2x.

That's another hour.

Yeah, we're now at two and a half hours of personal development.

And all I've done is got out of bed, brushed my teeth, put on my clothes, rode the bike and done the weights.

And then because I'm older now and you don't recover as fast, I stretch for 30 minutes now.

I don't listen when I stretch.

Stretches are timed.

I follow this person on YouTube there's time stretches and I can tell you this, those 30 minutes, they don't say a word on that YouTube video.

I can hear the beeps once the 40 seconds of stretch is done.

And that is my meditation during that 30 minutes of stretching.

Not only I working on my body and working on my breathing, I'm also working on my breathing during my bike ride, my stationary and also during my weights breathing through my nose, keeping my mouth closed.

Read the book James Nestor Breath.

One of the greatest books ever written.

It'll get you off of sleep aids.

It'll get you off of sleep apnea and CPAP machines and Ambiens and all those things that are destroying our health.

Love it.

I'll make sure to have that in the liner notes for the show Everybody, so you can reference back and make sure to get that book too.

All natural sleep aid in Walmart and Walgreens.

And I'm not here to promote that.

All I know is I became a.

Sleep expert because I also have challenges sleeping.

I'm wired pretty tight and some people might be able to tell that by listening today.

But I will say this.

Get something all natural.

Start working on your breathing.

The perfect breathing technique that you learn in James Nestor's book Breath is five and a half in, five and a half out, breathing as deep as you can until your lungs feel like they're going to burst.

And five out to where it feels like you're going to suffocate because you expelled all the air.

That's actually where 80% of our weight loss comes from.

And in my visualization, I do.

And I've also lost £70 because I used to drink way too much beer and whiskey and I love a good burger on an ice ball.

And I love lives parallel.

We were, you know, we were being treated by all these territory managers and contractor trips.

And then I have training agreements with these major manufacturers and they're treating you.

And it wasn't because I was eating fast food.

It was the three $400 dinners at the Chopping house, right?

It's more than allowance.

And it's just four pound tomahawk steaks we were eating all the time back then.

Oh, on some beers and a, and a whiskey to wash it down over dinner, plus a dessert.

It's crazy, right?

And so no wonder I put on £70.

I had to get clear on what I wanted.

And so here's what I can tell you.

Most of your weight, you want to lose weight, Learn how to breathe.

You learn how to breathe.

All of a sudden that deep in, deep out, I like to imagine tiny little bubbles, bubbles like clear little bubbles, millions of them coming out with tiny little black dots.

And I imagine those little black dots as my weight loss.

That's how I lost 70 pounds.

But I imagine that.

So here's the thing.

To get back on track.

By the time I finish my workout in the morning and actually get ready to start my day, when most people are waking up, I've already got about two and a half hours of personal development in.

And a lot of times, Sam, that's two and a half hours at 2x, I've gotten five hours personal development every day.

It is so easy to do now.

If you put on close it now, you can listen to, to expert after expert.

You know, I, I heard a good friend of ours, Scott Sylvan Bell on here recently.

An absolute master in the trades.

I've known Scott also for about 15 years.

Did some training with his old company when I was on the training circuit.

And I love that guy, man.

And just it brought a lot back to me.

And I'm like, this guy is so freaking smart.

And you and him just back and forth in like that hour and a half.

I was in hog heaven, man, just listening to you two and learning from you two and being inspired by you two.

And you know what?

I didn't have to block out time in my day.

I listened on the bike, I listened while lifting, I listened while breathing.

And so think about this.

Before most people even get up in the morning, I've gotten in my cardio, my strength, my stretch.

I've gotten in my meditation.

I've visualized what my day is going to be like.

I'm eliminating negative thoughts from my mind as best I possibly can do.

And then as I get ready to actually start my day, you talk about a leg up, you talk about a, a rush and ready and creating that energy.

That's how you do it, man.

It doesn't.

Sleeping in, it doesn't mean, oh, well, he's just motivated or he has more energy than me.

No, I was fat, I was lethargic.

I was.

And it was.

I was making more money than I'd ever made, but I was exhausted.

I couldn't hardly keep up.

I was going through the motions, man.

And so now at 49, and I'm telling you, I don't know, you might have seen a ring.

I wear an aura ring.

Like a small spaceship inside of it.

My aura ring.

Sam tells me I am 12 and a half years younger in my cardiovascular age than my actual age.

Love it.

I like to tell people I'm actually 37, not 49.

I love that and I love where you've gone with this.

So two big things that really jumped out at me.

And I love that this episode has turned this direction for everybody listening.

We didn't plan ahead.

I love these interviews to be very spontaneous because I trust the universe that exactly what is meant to be said will be said in the right timing for the people listening to hit them.

Exactly right.

So a couple things I want to camp out on a little bit One is, you definitely want to cover a little bit of visualization here in a minute.

But before we do that, every bit of this last bit has been so much about personal growth.

And so I really want to talk about not necessarily the steps of it, but the importance of personal growth, because there's.

For so many people, they're just now getting introduced to this concept.

Like, what does this mean?

Zig Ziglar used to say personal growth is like taking a shower.

You can't do it once on Sunday and expect it to last all week.

We have to do it daily.

So I'd love to expound a little bit more on the personal growth journey, because you and I both know there's.

As we're growing, take a second to set a little more context here.

As we're growing, at first, we're just exposed to this whole new world.

It's like, wow, you mean I can actually become a better person by listening or reading and all these things?

You know, we hear Jim Rohn's quote, leaders are readers, and then we progress a little bit, and we find ourselves in this place of.

And here's.

I think.

Here's the point that I want to get to.

We find ourselves in this place, and it ties back to when we're talking about building our business.

We get to this place where we've got so much personal growth in, and we've been listening and we're doing the things and we're doing this daily journey, and it just feels like the results haven't caught up yet.

Talk to that a little bit, because I know there's these places in our lives where we get to where it feels like it plateaus for a little bit before the next breakthrough comes.

And I just really feel like this is like a message for somebody specifically today when this releases.

Talk about that a little bit when we're doing the things, but when it feels like we get a little stuck, what are some things we can do to kind of break past that and break out of that, to continue the journey and also shake things up a little bit?

Just like muscle confusion.

We have to do the same thing with our brain and with our personal growth journey.

Tony Horton, Muscle Confusion.

Sean T. Right.

Billy Blanks.

Sam.

One of the things I just want.

To give you huge props for.

You're a man that lives it right?

And there might be a lot of people that listen to this podcast because we repurpose it through our channels, through our social media, and they're like, okay, they're a client of Doug and Synergy, but they didn't know Sam.

And then we'll put this on our YouTube channel.

We'll put this on our.

On our website, and those sort of things.

And for those of you that don't know Sam, most of you probably do.

Because this is Sam's podcast.

But for those of you that knew me and heard about Sam through this, Sam is rapidly becoming known as the Tony Robbins of the trades.

And Tony Robbins is the greatest personal development coach of all time.

I think we'd probably agree to that, Sam, 100%.

You know, the.

The crazy thing about that is Tony Robbins is, as a person, that I've never actually shook his hand, even though his hands are giant, right?

Six foot seven, monster, you know, and.

The story goes that I think he had, you know, ogreism as a child and got on some medication.

But six foot seven, giant hands, giant head.

If you guys don't know who Tony Robbins is, I'm gonna encourage you to find out Netflix and watch.

I'm not your guru.

And for those of you that don't know who he is, I bet you do, because he's in shallow how in the elevator.

And he's the one that makes how see.

See women differently.

So that was Tony Robbins in the elevator.

Here's the thing I can say the reason I bring that up is I know you're a true connoisseur and professional or personal growth yourself, and you're teaching those things.

And that's one of the reasons I wanted to come on this podcast.

I also want to confirm what you said.

I actually texted you about 20 minutes before we were scheduled to go live, and I said, what do you want to talk about today?

And you said, I don't know.

We'll let it fly.

Now, I will say, a month ago, we had a brief conversation.

We had a plan for us to talk about my program with the seven foundations of effective communication and reducing conflict in sales and in life.

But that was a month ago.

And then your mother had some challenges.

And as I understand it, your mom's doing well.

She's out of surgery, and she's doing well.

So we postponed.

Thankfully, she's doing great.

But you've been busy, and God bless you, mother, and you.

You've been busy, I've been busy, and we hadn't talked, and then I teased you, and I'm like, anything you want to talk about today?

And you said, we'll just let it fly.

And so we didn't plan this.

And I do think things happen for a reason.

But let's talk about challenges, and I think you wanted to wrap visualization into that one.

There's never been a time like today at this moment with more free information to help solve these things in our lives.

It's going to take some discipline to start putting those things into our mind.

Mind if you're not where you want to be.

And by the way, I'm going to clarify this.

I'm not on here to preach, and I don't think Sam is either tell you what to do or how to live your life.

I'm not here to say that I've had it easier.

Sam has.

And I certainly don't think you do.

If you're living a life in sales or in the trades.

It's a very difficult life.

But we're all going to have challenges that keep coming.

And as soon as we solve one challenge, just like I solved a financial challenge with millions of dollars years ago, all of a sudden, I had a health challenge.

I almost died when I was 32 years old.

I had a bout of diverticulitis.

I'm a tough guy from the country.

I'm literally.

I've got blood in my stool, Sam.

And I don't want to be too gross here, but I just thought, it'll be fine.

Listen to me.

The toilet was filling with blood, and I said, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.

It's what we do as top performers.

We kind of like, it's okay.

Three days later.

Three days later, after bleeding profusely from my inside out, I almost died.

Spent three days in the ICU fighting for my life.

I almost didn't make it.

At 32, a father of five, a couple of my own, and a couple of step kids I've.

I've raised as my own.

All I can say is, when you think you've got something solved, life is going to throw you a curve.

And there's another challenge coming.

That challenge might be spiritual.

You might solve a financial challenge, and then you got a relationship challenge.

And now all of a sudden, you got a relationship and a financial challenge.

If you're in divorce court, right, you've got lots of relationship challenges.

If you have kids involved in an ugly divorce, you might have a financial challenge, a relationship challenge, and a spiritual challenge solved.

And all of a sudden, you're 70 pounds overweight, you might lose 70 pounds, but you spent so much time in the gym and at your job, you got a relationship challenge.

It's this cycle.

And so what I want to encourage everyone is please don't ever, ever, ever.

And I don't usually like to use definitive terms like that, but I'm going to ask you, and I think Sam will probably agree, don't ever allow yourself to say these three words together.

Must be nice.

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