Scott Leese on why personal brand is the only moat that’s left

0:00One percent. That is roughly the percentage of users on LinkedIn that post content on a regular basis. Why is this stat important? Personal brand is probably the only moat that is really left when you think about it. In SaaS, what they talk about a lot was the product and the differentiation being the mode. And now that AI and vibe coding has really taken over in the last year, that mode is no longer there because the feature sets and all of these things that we used to sell that had differentiation are super easy to copy now. The thing that is really hard to copy is brand. Brand, your distribution, all of these things are very, very hard to copy.

0:50And I used to, you know, my advice, honestly, two or three years ago was that as a sales rep, you don't really need to build a personal brand on LinkedIn. I mean, the best sellers at every single client that we worked with had no personal brand. I mean, they may have had a brand within the industry that they work with and being known amongst their clients and they go to a lot of industry events and all that stuff. But no one's going to LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, wherever people are posting content these days and consuming any type of content from them. The game's completely changed. And our guest today is going to talk about why personal brand might be the only moat that's left.

1:33Uh, he's been a five or six time VP of sales. He runs his own consulting firm at this point and consults some of the fastest growing series, um, A, B and C companies out there. And I'm super excited to get to this episode. So before we do that, my name is Jason Bay. I'm CEO at outbound squad. We're all about helping you turn complete strangers into paying customers. One thing that has become increasingly hard is building pipeline, the sales source pipeline, All of the stuff that the sales team has to get on their own that won't be provided by marketing. And for most of our clients, that's two thirds to a half of the pipeline needs to be self-sourced in some sort of way.

2:16Maybe that's expansion opportunities. It might be through channel. It might be networking referrals. A lot of it's outbound. SDRs of course are in that mix. Like that is the part of the pie that we help with at Outbound Squad. And what has fundamentally broken is that all of the really easy things to do no longer work. The sequencing tools kind of ruin that for everyone, right? The outreaches, the sales lofts, nothing against them. They are great tools, of course. But when you make it that easy to send out emails and then with AI, you make it that easy to research and fire off thousands of, you know, semi-personalized emails, it's gotten so easy to do that, that the noise is just extremely high.

2:59and what we really believe in that it is that it's really about doing the hard stuff. It's about picking up the phone. It's about enabling the soft skills of your team to pick up the phone. It's about working on the workflows and reducing the busy work for the reps, eating the complexity. It's not just about spoon feeding them things that AI could send out on their behalf because you don't need a human to do that anymore. Those are the things that we've helped companies like Shopify, Zoom, Rippling Gong, iHeartMedia, Amex, and a bunch of startups who are building out their first sales teams with, it's PipeGen.

3:33How do we get more qualified meetings with buyers that aren't proactively coming to us? So if that's something you're thinking about, you're definitely in the right place. So today's guest is Scott Lease. I got to meet up with Scott again in person in Austin. I've gotten to know Scott. Well, God, I want to say I met Scott. I know I met him when I was living in Austin from 2018 to 2021. So I was in Austin for about three years. I know. And I met him prior to COVID. So I've known Scott now for gosh, shit, I guess it's like seven or eight years now. So always really good to meet up with him in person.

4:09He came on the podcast and, you know, I'd planned on talking to him about like networking and like Pike Jen and like, he's really big on channel and like referrals and all that stuff. And we talked a little bit about that, but really where the conversation went to was around personal brand. And then Scott has just been freaking crushing it on the personal brand side of things. Scott lease. If you're not aware of the stuff that Scott is doing, he runs a company, Scott lease consulting, and he's been doing that for the last seven years. But prior to that, I mean, the dude has been in the VP of sales seat.

4:45Like he's, he's taken companies on that zero to a hundred million ARR. he's done it like four or five times and now he helps hundreds of companies uh do that he also runs a sales event called surf and sales and he's got like nine other income streams and that's like what's really interesting is he i think if you're listening to this and you're a sales leader and you've been doing the game for a little while and you're like hey i'm making pretty good money like what's next i think this is really going to be a great episode for you like i see a lot of sales leaders that I think have a massive opportunity to build their personal brand.

5:17One, it just makes you more marketable when you decide that you want to move on to something else and just being really well known for that. It's a recruiting tool. If you can build an audience of people that could buy the things that your company is selling, I mean, there's that. There's just all kinds of opportunities that will come your way. A lot of the folks that we bring in as our pipeline consultants or trainers, these are ex sales leaders. So having a personal brand and, and getting on podcasts and doing that stuff, it's, it's a really good investment into the latter stages of your career.

5:52Absolutely. But he talks about that journey, like his journey with that. He talks about his journey and building out these side hustles alongside of what he's been doing as a sales leader on the side with his consulting business. I think one of the things he invests in or owns is a lawn mowing company or lawn care company. I mean, it's, it's like, it's really very interesting. Uh, so we talk a lot about his journey there and his why, and he's just been pretty open about his personal life as well. So I think you're really going to enjoy the episode. Uh, two things before we get to it, if you've been a listener of this podcast and you're leading a sales team and you're like, Hey, I need them to do pipeline generation, uh, this outbound thing, uh, and we need some help.

6:35Uh, we've done this for 250 plus sales teams are typical client increases qualified pipeline by 20 % or more within 90 days. We've done that for some really cool companies. So just send me an email, uh, Jason at outbound squad.com would be happy to talk to you. The other thing I would recommend checking out is our free outbound masterclass. This is three hours of our best content out there. I really don't believe at this point, uh, you should be charging or paying money for courses, The best content out there, some of the best at least is the free stuff. We really help and believe in getting paid to help you implement stuff.

7:11I don't believe that the information should cost you. So the course is free. Check it out. OutboundSquad.com slash masterclass. All right, let's get to the episode.

7:28Dude, get to jail with you. We've had you on the podcast. many times and we've got to do some stuff in person but uh you're just connecting with ryan kifi out in the in the hallway i knew each other um but i know how we know each other i think he knew that you were uh the podcast after him i don't think that you knew that he was no i was surprised to see i was totally surprised the backstory there is um 2013 or 14 i hired ryan as an account executive. And he worked for me for a couple of years. And he was, by his own admission, like he was pretty mid. Oh, damn. He was pretty mid. He was like, do okay, but I wouldn't do like that great.

8:13He had, you know, some personal things going on or whatever. And then fast forward a few years to 2017. I'm starting to build a sales org out. Again, this company called Qualia. and i reached out to him yeah and i was like hey you know you you were so so last time but this thing might be more your speed and he freaking chitled yeah and he was incredible one of the top producers and you know got elevated to leadership role and stuff like that and he was there for a long time i think by kimmy i think he ended up being moved to like director level and whatnot so yeah he worked under me probably for five six years total at two different places and now uh he lives like you know probably less than a mile away from yeah so that's how much when i came in here what are you doing here you're having a good time man yeah um i wanted to in preparation for this i know that you didn't like you don't like to do prep calls right and I always like to, with the podcast, do a prep call.

9:23And last time I asked her, you were like, dude, I'm fucking getting these prep calls, man. Like, we're professionals. You know, what do you do? Let's appreciate you being flexible. Yeah. I was like, I'll send him a Google Doc. And then right before this, we're like, you know what? Like, what do you want to talk about, man? See, you ripped up the Google Doc anyway. I know. So the thing, though, I find really interesting about you is that, you know, you have this, like, really great story around how you got into sales and some of, like, the health, the stuff that you've dealt with. you're a six-time sales leader, you do all this advertising, and that's like a one, that's one side of you.

9:59And I feel like it's becoming like a, that is just like a part of like a much larger thing that you're thinking about and working on. And I think to kind of set that up, we were just talking about this prior to hitting record. A lot of this stuff, it sounds like, was prompted by all of the AI stuff that's been coming out. And like your thoughts on like, what's the future of consulting and, and training and courses. And this is something I think about a lot too, because you know, you always think about what your mode is as a business and like where you're going. And, and you also think about the people that you sell this to, how are they thinking about that?

10:35And you want to try to future-proof fish something the best that you can. So I've been thinking a lot about it also, but I just, like, what's your, what's your take? Like, where do you see all of this stuff going? And I'm assuming it's AI that is a big, Big. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, this is a very interesting time where you're like, you have tremendous opportunity to be creative, to build things, monetize, and to move extremely fast and to create generational wealth for yourself. And at the same time, there's this existential dread Looming over all of us. Yeah. Of like, do I even have a future?

11:24Yeah. Do I have a future? Do I have a job? Do I have any kind of future? How long until the robots decide that I'm not even necessary? So I sort of am like, this goes back to a couple of years ago when AI kind of first broke. And I was writing at the time about how, man, cold calling is getting like impossible. Cold emailing is like dying. And I'm like, my head is in guillotine right now. Jason's about to chop it off at any moment. But at the same time, I also have all of this crazy opportunity to do all these things. It's a weird juxtaposition and it freaks me out. So I had this like, those thoughts on cold calling.

12:04I started preaching this like go to network methodology as a new way to go to market and then AI starts hitting. I just started thinking to myself like, dude, salespeople cooked. it's a matter of when not if for me and then i'm reading my sales team well how necessary is an sdr today it's less necessary than it was a couple years ago fast forward two years how necessary is it can driven now what about an e certainly simple sale a you can automate away a lot of that stuff. One of my clients in the past year, OneMind, that's what they do. And they're rushing it. And I know there's other AI, SDR companies that promised a lot and kind of failed to deliver on that and things like that.

12:57And it's going to happen. These are like V1s of these types of products and companies. And the acceleration. Like two years ago when ChatGPT was like first the thing and you're like, oh my God, I could like rewrite a cold email. And now it's like, chat GPT. That's the thing. So people are like, oh, you know, people will always buy from people and they'll never replace sellers. Like, okay, come on, dude. Yeah. You can look into the future. Okay. So the tech is just going to get better. Yeah. We're going to become more assimilated. We're going to become more used to it. Right. It's no different than, I don't know, you used to be scared to spend a certain amount online.

13:36I don't trust my credit card for a purchase over$5 ,000 on it. Now people buy cars and they're like, Exactly. Yes. Perfect. And they're not interacting as a human, to your point of view. For example, we don't care about that. We don't want to actually interact with a human. Yes. I literally had this conversation with my 18-year-old son, about buying stuff. He's prepping to go to college. He specifically said, I don't want to talk to a person. Why would I want to talk to a person about buying some of these things? That's a completely different concept. up and say, my parents, generation. And most people are my kids.

14:09They look them in the eye. They don't, they want to do the opposite. Right? Yeah. So I just started thinking, my sales could be in big trouble. Right? Yeah. And then I started looking at myself and I'm like, well, what about consultant? What about coaching? What about training? This, this is knowledge work jobs. Yeah. Knowledge work now is democratized. like anybody with a computer a gpt or slot account you know theoretically can access all the information in my brain or your brain about sales and about selling they can even go in and be like study the philosophies and writings and newsings of jason bank you know model everything after all the content you can find how jason sells what he teaches find videos find podcasts right build that into this you know system for me you know now you don't have to hire jason right there's no model at the present to like license out your brain that you spent 20 plus years recruiting all this knowledge so all these things are happening right and i'm over here going And I mean, I mean, you become obsolete.

15:22I can't have that. I'm not at a place where I can just disappear to a beach in Costa Rica yet. Yeah. I'm working on it, but I can't do it yet. Yeah. So I need to diversify. Yeah. Okay. So. So your business felt extremely risky at that moment where you. Absolutely. Really? Yeah. What's crazy. And all of my friends, people like you were like, you're an idiot, dude. you're panicking you're oh no you're making millions you never said this to me but like other friends of ours that we both know yeah they give me shit all the time they're like you're so paranoid dude you're you're making you know seven figure plus like yeah you work for yourself you go wherever you want blah blah blah blah blah and i'm over here like well i'm scared yeah well it's interesting hearing that for me because i what we do at avon squad is extremely specialized around typegen.

16:16I have not been a VP of sales in SaaS in the way that you have and grown the organizations that you have. So when I think of Scott, at least I think of this like wealth of knowledge and experience and how could someone like you ever feel like people wouldn't need that expertise. That's crazy to me. Well, I appreciate that. But I have felt and I feel more every day. people think they can just DIY DIY yeah build versus buy kind of you know analogy and do it themselves so rather than pay somebody like me you know a good deal of money to like get it right download my brain work with you I'm not saying it works as well right now it doesn't but people think I can just punch this into Claude and Claude can write me up a sales script and a strategy for growing a sales team and who to hire and you know you know what process to put in place i don't need to pace so right that's that's a that's a fear yeah and some of that fear is confirmed every single day some of it is just proven every single day because i'm still in business i still have people who want to work with me and whatnot yeah but that's the fear right yeah it's like perfect example throw my buddy john itell under the bus last night yeah halftime of the basketball game last night.

17:33By the way, this is the morning after the mix just completed the largest comeback in NBA history. You know, um, halftime, he sends his text to you and I, to others. And he's like, wow, Jason, we should go out to dinner more. You know, we're up by 30 or whatever. Right. And I was at home going, this game is not even close to being over. And as the momentum started to change, my son was like, my younger son was like, dude, we're up by 20. We're up by 15. Stop. He's, you know, we're up by four. And he's like, if the game started, dad, and somebody said, if you're up by four with two minutes left, would you take it?

18:10Yes or no? You would say yes. And I'm like, yeah, you don't understand. So there's this like complacency that some people have or this confidence that some people have when they're way ahead. I don't have that. I sometimes wish that I did it, frankly. Yeah. But I have this underlying paranoia and nervousness and anxiety about it. And so ahead of the game a little bit, I was like, I could be in trouble. So I need to start making moves to sort of protect myself should things go south. So I started a landscaping business a year ago. So I got into the trades. I'm thinking, well, the trades business is safe from AI and robots for longer than consulting.

18:54The bar is probably pretty low as far as salesmanship, business IQs. As I come from construction, definitely the bar is much lower. Right. Yeah, where someone with your skill set, even if you don't have industry experience, you could come in and immediately turn our sales work around and simple customer service stuff. Simple stuff. I mean, even speed to lead. Yeah. Like, we call some of these leads back that we get for the landscaping business for only a couple hours. And people are floored. They can't believe it. You know, we say, hey, we'll get you a quote by tomorrow morning. It was send it tomorrow morning.

19:28And they're like, oh my God. Yeah. You did that on time. Like the bar is so low, right? Yeah. So that's an area to diversify. I started a podcast last year, an in-studio podcast, not about sales, just about life, talking to famous and successful people. We've interviewed former MLB players, NFL players, NBA players, MMA fighters, newscasters that are on TV all the time, musicians and rock stars and actors, all of these people. We've done like 35 episodes. It's called What's Your Story with Mike and Scott. And we've got like a million downloads. It's crazy. Totally different thing. And so that started working well.

20:13And this playbook that I built started working well. So I built a media company. It's called Highway 99 Productions. So now we're starting to run our playbook for other people's podcasts. Yeah. The algorithm on LinkedIn starts to dry up. Yeah. Content, even if you write something yourself, the first instinct people have gone is like, oh, that was him. Yeah. That's a weird comment. That end dash is in the wrong place. That phrase doesn't sound like a human will say it, even if it is. Yeah. So I'm like, well, I got to do video. Yeah. That's safer. that will expire people will pretty soon be like that's a fake video but still it seems more authentic so from a standing start of zero instagram account i'm at 36 000 plus now a little over a year later i got four something million impressions in the last uh 30 days or so it's me it's it's my personality it's my face it's my thoughts and it's not all on this about sales that i've been talking about business infrastructure i've been talking about life I've been talking about motivation.

21:16I've been talking about health. I've been talking about relationships, about divorce, about raising kids. Because I started thinking, well, I need to maybe pivot and become more of like a media personality and more of a brand that's capable of doing more things. And then just talking about the one thing that I spent the early part for most of my career kind of doing. You know, right? I got into venture capital. I work with a local firm. Excuse me. a local firm here in Austin called Tip Top. I'm an executive entry car. My brother and I started a micro VC firm. And we, I told you off camera, we've done very well with some investments.

21:58We've got 70 something LPs. So that's a way for me to make money. I have properties in three different states, soon to be four. Rental properties, LTRs, STRs. So all of these things, and I put this diary about up there. What's that? How old are you? How old am I? Yeah. I'm 48 for another, uh, you're young still, man. For another 19 days. Yeah. And I'll be 49. Yeah. Young. Well, keep in mind, I didn't start until I was 27. Yeah. So I got a late start. So, you know, I've talked about this a lot, but I think I've, I have a strong sense of urgency because of the health struggles that I have. I was young enough and getting the late start.

22:41I'm like trying to maximize the very time. But I put this graphic up the other day on LinkedIn and on Instagram. It's sort of like these enterprises or whatever. It's got my name in the middle. And around it, like rays around the sun, are all these things that I'm doing. You know, surfing sales, event business, consulting business, podcast business, landscape business, VC business, coaching business, audience kind of social media and brand. And then I refereed soccer. I talked to you about that before. This will be the first time I publicly announced it, but I'm now the assistant men's head soccer coach for the NEIA school here in Austin, Texas.

23:25Yeah. Houston, Tillstein University. So I'm getting into math. That was always in my head what I want to do after I make millions and can retire from sales and from tech. I got to go back to my roots and coach soccer and be around that and be a leader and kind of help change kids' lives. anticipate that. So that opportunity showed up seizing that. So it has been a conscious change and a conscious strategy in terms of how I'm running my businesses. And it all started a few years ago with an algorithm change. Is cold calling dying? Is email dying? Is AI about to destroy way, you know, my profession, right?

24:14It's beautiful. Just... Is this part, Chayton? Okay. Um, so yeah. So yeah, so as the answer to your question, yes, it's been like a, it's been a purposeful change in terms of what I'm up to and how I'm sharing. And I still do the stuff I was doing before. Yeah. Right. It's just, I'm looking, I look ahead and say, I don't know for how much longer. Yeah. There's, um, have you read a book called, um, an economist steps into a war? No. So I don't know if you, are you a big reader? I used to be a big reader. Now I'm like the big collector of books that collect. Yeah. Just on my shelf. I will like, I'm a very big fan of like on time or in time learning versus, uh, you know, just in case or whatever.

25:04But my wife, Sarah, have you read it? And it's, it's all about risk and decision-making and, and it's just a topic I've been really fascinated with. this or business is growing and stuff. And you're you've like, I think I bring it up because I think you would really like it. The ideas in there, because that's how you're kind of thinking about your like what you do in your career as like a portfolio. Yes. Whereas like, you know, someone could be all in on their job. Or if you're a sales exec, especially it's just like everything is like in that position. If you're running a business like myself, I mean, I do that to make money.

25:37And And then we invest in the S &P 500. Like, that's it. Like, it's those two things, you know? So I've started thinking about that too with like, how do you hedge your bets, you know, a little bit? My question for you though is, if you were giving advice to someone that is earlier stage in their career as you, or maybe to yourself as a third or fourth time VP of sales, like kind of in that timeframe, would it be like, hey, keep doing this and make sure that like this thing is working and like bank a bunch of cash, so to speak, before you do all that stuff? Or would you want to diversify even earlier?

26:16Like what advice would you give yourself or someone else that's like not as far into the journey as you are? Well, I think you have to get really, really good at the main thing first. And I think people, I don't want people to get it twisted and walk away from these types of conversations and think, Oh, I got a sales job and now I need to build nine other businesses. Yeah. Like, I did nothing else but be a sales leader for 15 plus years. Yeah. Successful exits, nothing else. Didn't write a book, didn't build brands, nothing. So I don't think I would change that. I do think that, um, once I got to a particular benchmark milestone, I would start a little sooner.

27:12Yeah. I was very conservative. You know, you know, I've, I've said before, like I'm making this much my full-time job. If I start this side stuff down here, you know, and I waited until the side stuff passed the main thing. Yeah. Very conservative. I don't think I needed to be that conservative in hindsight. Why did you wait? Why did I wait? Because, you know, there's a little bit of fear. There's a little bit of, did I do enough yet to sort of earn people's respect, earn credibility? If I go out on my own, will people actually care to talk to me and pay me? So there's a little bit of ego involved in it.

27:58a lot of kind of trepidation around going out on my own because of my health issues and you know I had young kids at the time and you know you leave kind of the security of the W2 kind of thing I also did not grow up in an entrepreneurial kind of family or mindset or mentality I grew up in a very western New York Buffalo mentality of like Like, whatever thing that bad, whatever bad thing can happen will happen probably. So you better plan for it. Yeah. So I had to shed all of this fucking baggage of like fear and negativity and whatnot, you know? And a lot of it I shed emerging from my illness and breaking into sales and whatnot.

28:45But some of it was still there. You know, it's easy for me to be like, do this and go all in. like, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Meanwhile, I go home and I'm like, yeah, but you're kind of a plus-handing. Because you're, you're doing it here in the W2 sense and going all in, but you're not brave enough to go all the way in on fully on your own. And then once I shed that, now I operate very differently. Now I spin up a business. I let it ride. If it fails, fuck it. I put it in a dumpster and I start a new one. You know, I'm, I'm very fast around this kind of thing. Pressure test it. If it's got legs continue if it doesn't throw it away move on no long no foul so i would encourage people to lose some of the fear how did you decide quickly how did you work through that fear though it's not consistent i mean a lot of like a lot of boring cliche and sort of self-actualization and stuff you know a lot of talking to friends mentors therapists a lot of just surrounding myself with a different crew and a different crowd and over time that influence prepped in in a positive way you know a lot of forced change and evolution.

30:10I got divorced about four something years ago. Now, all of a sudden, I'm on my own. I'm a single dad. I got to do everything myself. I don't have bandwidth and time to wait, to overthink. And I guess some people in that circumstance could choose to do the more safe thing. For me, I was like, I have no choice but to go big now. And it was almost like a forcing function of sorts um yeah just just a decision i mean in a focus and you know and then i would also add that in my kind of personal life i found ways to calm down calm myself to find more peace to choose peace rather than chaos and i started to craft an environment conducive to that.

31:02Yeah. You know, I, I built a sauna in my backyard. Yeah. I go in the sauna every day. I have a cold plunge. I go in the cold plunge every day. You know, I do like physical therapy and, and kind of, it's not really like working out how most people would think where you're trying to lift 200 pound weights and stuff like that. I have to do a lot of like functional training to keep myself healthy and flexible and not in pain all day long and whatnot. But I, I would just put that stuff off previously. Now I go two, three times a day. I go later today, in fact. So just reshifting some of the priorities and that changes, that's changed the way I, you know, look at things and, and how I operate.

31:46And I used to think, well, if I'm spending time doing all this stuff, there's no way I'm going to do as much pro there's not no way I'm going to produce as much therefore i'm not going to earn as much yeah and now the opposite is kind of yeah what was the breakthrough for you to prioritize for lack of a better analogy putting your own oxygen mask on first and being okay sacrificing you know sacrificing quote unquote the hours per day where you could have been doing something work related or or whatever yeah i mean i i honestly i think it was my divorce and moving out and, you know, being the caretaker for my kids.

32:29Yeah. And, you know, all of a sudden, like, I'm in charge of every dinner. I'm in charge of all the chores. Yeah. I'm in charge of getting them to and from practices and all this. So, like, my day is over at 4 o 'clock. Yeah. You know, this is four years ago, so my kids were... 14 and 12 at the time. Yeah. It's like, my day's over at four. And I got to get them out of the house in the morning. And they're in high school, so school doesn't start until like nine or whatever. So all of a sudden, I really only have like nine to four to work. Yeah. So, man, you better be effective and you better be efficient.

33:09You don't have time to second guess yourself and nothing will get done. So you have these natural constraints in your life. Oh, big time. Yeah. Big time. And then I thought to your oxygen mask point, if I'm not in a good place, I cannot be there for them the way that they need me right now in this difficult season of change or what could be a difficult season of change. Yeah. Right. And I didn't want to be the guy who was like single dad and working 15 hours a day and gone all the time and whatnot. I wanted, I chose to be present. And so I had to start to construct things. you know how can i make money while i sleep how can i find passive income how can i partner with smart people whose skill sets complement mine so i don't have to do as much on my own like if you and i started some business and you're the tech guy and i'm the go-to-market guy yeah perfect dude you know we complement each other right if we start a podcast together you know i have the network and you have the technical chops like that way i'm not over here trying to figure out technical stuff yeah so if you look at a lot of the businesses that i've started and run i have partners that i that i work with and operate so yeah but that but you know having to go out on my own as a man at 40 some mid 40s and figure this new life out like that was a forcing function to i better make sure that i'm right yeah i better make sure i'm in a good headspace or i'm gonna of completely fail as a father.

34:48Yeah. Dude, I love this. I would love to spend some time talking to you about, because when I think of all of these businesses, I don't have kids yet and you have a family and then, you know, you have all of these like great relationships, like everyone I know that knows you like loves Scott, you know what I mean? the first thing I think about is just like your rituals and rhythms or whatever you want to call it just like how do you think about managing your time man like is there anything that you found to like work for you to like manage all of the communication and the calendaring and like making time for all of this stuff how do you what's a typical week like how do you how do you operate man yeah because the VP of sales or an exec listening to this is they're thinking about their next move.

35:37Some of them are already doing advising and consulting. They have families, they want to be good moms and dads, et cetera. Like they want to be present and do those things. So is there anything that like works for you? Like what, what does that look like? There's a lot of different things. And I'll say that it's evolving and changing. Like for the longest time, I tried to do way too many things myself and I was able to do it. And now I've gotten to a place where I'm doing so many things. Now I finally have to ask for help.

36:10but speed always meant a lot to me. So I prioritize getting back to people quickly. You know, if you message me, I'm getting back to you same day for sure. Usually within an hour or so. Yeah. You're very quick to respond. Yeah. So that's a priority for me because in my mind, at least, if I file it away to do later, I won't get it done. so I gotta do it right now and if I get back to somebody quickly I'm making a little deposit in the you know Jason and Scott have a good relationship fund so if and when one day I need something or there's an opportunity we have a certain level of friendship a certain level of trust so you very kindly said all these people said nice things about me or whatever maybe part of that is because I'm there and I would get back to them and I do what I say that I'm going to do.

37:09And I have to do it right then and there in my mind. Cause if I fly out of way, I won't get to it. I'm very good about going to bed and waking up at the same time. I have a very consistent routine now that I'm on my, I own, you know, um, I'm basically out at like 11 o 'clock and I'm up at seven. Yeah. This is not an absurd schedule. I'm not one of these 4am people. I can't go to bed at 8.30, 9 o 'clock to wake up at 4 a.m. I'm also not staying up. Kind of boring. I'm not staying up till 2 a.m. You know, burning the midnight oil. But I'm down and I'm up consistently. Yep. I sauna every day. I cold plunge every day.

37:50I work out a few times a week. I walk a decent amount. I'm always trying to convince people to get off Zoom so we can go on a walk and talk instead. So, you know, I try to prioritize fresh air, sunshine of course i eat really healthy yeah part of it i shouldn't give myself so much credit because part of it is because of my health struggles and my my diet and the structure of my body like i actually can't eat junk food i can't eat a bunch of crap i can't drink beer i can't drink soda yeah i can't eat cake and cookies and you know greasy like taco bell shit I can't do it. So I end up eating really healthy.

38:33So I think that that plays a big part in it. I sleep pretty good.

38:42When I sit down at my desk, I'm locked in. A lot of people, maybe they're right and I'm in denial, but they try to say I have ADHD because I'm doing all these things. I don't think I do at all because I lock in, man. If I sit down at 9 a.m., I can work on all these different things, rip through my priorities. I'll get up from my desk at four or 5 PM and I'll be like, Oh shit, I forgot to eat lunch or whatever. Yeah. So when I'm working, I'm like on, I'm not, I'm not somebody who edits a bunch of things, right. Whether that's content, sales scripts, objections, email, copywriting. Yeah. I'm like draft one, quick look publish live and die with the results for better or worse yeah you know i've always been like a b plus a minus kind of kid didn't care about perfection at all yeah so that saves me i think not being a perfectionist yeah right trusting that the first draft if you will is like good enough yeah i i block off time each day for each particular type of business right so you know 9 a.m is consulting do you like to plan your week like at the beginning or end of a week and kind of look ahead or is it a day-by-day thing how do you well what do you mean by plan your week um like so for example first thing i do monday morning is kind of think about the big like maybe three things that i need to do that week and have i blocked off time you know for those things outside of my standing meetings or calls or whatever might be on there just like prioritization really is.

40:18Well, that's interesting to me because I don't do that because I've already done it. If that, if that makes sense, like I don't show up Monday morning and be like, what are the three big things? Like I already know the three big things. Yeah. They're already on my calendar. Yeah. And they're on my calendar for the next six months. Yeah. You know, I have two different calendars that I, that I share. I have a calendar for people who just like want to chat with me. and that one's like good fucking luck getting on the calendar it's like months out and then i have another calendar that's like i don't know what i'd call it it's like business opportunities or relationships i prioritize or whatever and that one is like one to two weeks kind of out yeah so i guess to answer your question i'm scheduled out pretty far in advance pretty far in advance I know the things that I need to move the needle on and I'm already looking ahead to like January a little bit.

41:17What do I need to do come January? How's my life going to be different? Well, here's a good example. My oldest son just graduated high school. I'm shipping him off to the university of Oregon at the end of September. Go Ducks. Yeah. So I'm already thinking like, okay, come August or October 1st, my life is going to be different. Yeah. I have one less person in my house. I have one less set of activities. That means I have more free time. What should I do with that free time? How is my day going to be structured differently? Do I get an hour back in the morning? Do I get an hour back at night in the middle of the day on the weekend?

41:59Definitely get hours back on the weekend. I have less soccer trips to go to and stuff. So what can I do to capitalize that? one of the things I did is I took this head soccer or assistant head soccer coach job. Yeah. I had this extra time. I'm like, I can fill that in. And this is something I'm passionate about and want to do. Right. Especially as I get older, this is step one is a little baby step to that. Yeah. Take it seize the moment. Right. So I'm planning out months in advance. At least I think I am. And it sounds like a big part of it for you is you're really optimizing for what the ideal day and week is going to look like for you.

42:40More and more, I think I'm focusing on that. Yeah. How do I want to spend my time? Yeah. What do I want to spend it on? Who do I want to spend it with? It's such a great place to start because I think it makes it really practical and real. I've never been a BHAG kind of person, you know? Yeah. I never really have either, you know? I was never a big procrastinator. I never waited till the last second. Yeah. But I'm certainly not the guy who's like, okay, what's the hardest thing I have to do today? Let me do that first thing. I'm like, oh God, I don't know about that. Let me get rid of a, let me get a couple of little minor wins under my belt.

43:14And then 11 a.m. I'll be ready for the, you know, the big thing. Yeah. But as I get older, I'm, I'm optimizing for that more. And to be fair, if you have hit a certain level of success or have a certain level of wealth, it allows you to operate this way more. I'm not under pressure or stress every single day to pay my rent or to make bills or I don't have crushing student debt. So, you know, I don't expect, I guess I recognize the blessed position that I'm in, but at the same time, I think I'm choosing fairly intelligently of how to go about my day because I am in this kind of privileged, blessed kind of position.

44:06Right. But when I was 27 years old, no way was I talking the way that I was talking now. Yeah. I was like in the office at 6 a.m. and leaving at 7 p.m. I was in the office every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Like I was all in, man. I worked really hard and sprinted really hard because I hoped that I could get to this place where I could get a different set of control over my life. Yeah. And I'm pretty close to having it where I want it. I think there's a few more things that have to drop for me to fully get there, but I feel like I'm on my way. Yeah. I love how intentional that you are with this.

44:53It's like, there's a lot of intention. One of your values, it sounds like is speed. Health is a really obvious one. You have this sort of send it, you know, attitude around stuff. And sometimes I'm like, when I send Slack messages to people or emails, I'm like, okay, cool. Does the grammar need to be perfect and how that'd be perceived? And then some of it is like optimize what will really make a difference. And what makes a difference is just fucking sending something. I'm not trying to cold email, maybe a little bit different, you know, if it's to someone that I've never met before. But love that, man.

45:26I want to shift gears. I want to talk about personal branding. Sure. And you're really big on like the founder, especially having like a brand. But and we don't need to talk specifically about that. But how has your brand, you know, kind of shifted and how do you think about it? We talked about it a little bit with all of the stuff that you're sharing, but I just, you know, before we hit recording, I just told you, you know, I've noticed a big shift in like the stuff that you talk about in the last year. And then it's like you said, Scott, at least the, you know, the personality versus the sales leadership tip or the cold calling tip.

46:04what are your thoughts on personal branding in the ai era you know and all of that stuff and just how how do you think about your personal brand my thoughts are it's probably the only moat that we're gonna have i know dude the only thing that the only thing that can't be taken away from us is our brand our network the way people perceive us and trust us or not. So it just feels more important than ever. And I'm extremely glad that I started when I did. Yeah. If I had not done anything, I really started in 2017 on LinkedIn. And if I had not started till now, let's say, Oh, it's so much harder now than I was there.

46:56Oh my God. I'd be, I, yeah. it would be very scary yeah right um so i i think it's it's no longer a nice to have it's no longer acceptable for somebody to say to me well i don't care about that stuff i don't want to do that thing they need a total reframe around why it's important what it can do for you, what it can do for your team, everything around it. I was very single platformed. All I cared about was LinkedIn forever. I didn't even have a Facebook page, an Instagram page, TikTok page, nothing. YouTube page, nothing. I've only really started, like I was saying, a little over a year ago on some of these other platforms.

47:48I'm still trying to figure them out but it's starting to grow yeah i get business and leads from instagram consulting leads tier one venture-backed consulting leads yeah come from instagram i got two from tiktok the other day i don't even have very many followers on tiktok yet yeah leads so they're out there yeah so i think about the same way you wouldn't right now if you're trying to build a pipeline, you wouldn't only email. If you're trying to build a brand, you can't only do one platform. Yeah. And each platform maybe shows off a little bit of a different side of you. Yeah. My best performing post on YouTube is a 20-minute long-form kind of coaching post.

48:34Yeah. The shorts that I do don't seem to do very well on YouTube. Yeah. I haven't invested in doing very many long forms on YouTube, so I suck on YouTube still. Yeah. But all these reels on Instagram, I think I've kind of figured Instagram out now. I won't be surprised if we have this conversation a year from now, I won't be surprised if my Instagram has surpassed my LinkedIn following. LinkedIn, you know, you used to be able to grow pretty fast. I used to talk about sales stuff and then sales leadership stuff more broad. Now that they've killed the algorithm, it doesn't matter if you talk about something broad or niche so i stopped caring at all about talking broad and trying to get more eyeballs and whatnot i'm just talking about the things that i think are meaningful and important and i'm just waiting for the one right person per day to potentially see stuff but that's a very different shift compared to how i used to think about things yeah um i don't want to get pigeonholed as like you only can talk about this one thing.

49:42You know how everybody used to say, pick one thing, Jason. Totally. Be the outbound guy. Yeah. What if outbound dies, bro? Yeah. What if outbound is not effective anymore? Yeah. Right? You're screwed. The brand you've built means nothing now. 100%. I mean, you talk about the thing that keeps you up at night. This is the thing I worry about a lot. Okay, so you, in my opinion, if I was coaching you, I'd be like, Jason, you need to diversify away from just being the outbound guy. You know more than just outbound. Could be podcasts, could be copywriting, it could be running small businesses, it could be HVAC stuff, back to the roots, right?

50:23Whatever it is, right? So I started talking about different things because I wanted to have opportunity to, you know, do more. Events, I've run the surf and sales event, I don't know, 15 times in the last seven, eight years or something like that. Different parts of the world. I've been running mastermind events now. Yeah. I did one a couple months ago with a dozen people like us, solopreneur guys, friends of ours, all super successful. Yeah. Right. I did a golf and sales kind of event. So I want to have the flexibility and I want the optionality to be able to talk about different things. And fortunately, I think I recognized that this advice people gave of pick a niche and stay there, pick a lane and stay there.

51:12I was like, nah, I'm not going to do that. I'm capable of talking about all these other things. So that switch was less abrupt for me or less difficult for me because I kind of had already been doing it. And you wanted to, it sounds like too, where it's like, you're talking about stuff that you have a lot of energy and passion around and believe in and I have to imagine that bleeds through in the content too like I sure I can see even in the written stuff that you do I can see the conviction and like your voice in it if that makes sense sure you know like when you read a really like Jocko for example when I read Jocko Willink's uh anything that he writes I hear Jocko's voice yeah right here in my ear like he's fucking captured it right Right.

51:55With your stuff, I hear your voice when I read your stuff. That's cool. Yeah. So with the personal brand. Part of this is like the network and you've talked about relationships. And this is who I'm really thinking about when I ask you this is the sales executive that does not have a personal brand. And it's the majority of them that I work with. Yeah. I just talked about very senior people that like they have the reputation. but you know nothing about them as a human unless you've worked with them yeah and these are people that you've one guy i'm thinking of i'm like i got dinner with him in dallas he was like dude i literally have over a hundred testimonials from reps talking about like how much they loved working with me i'm like but no one knows that dude you know yeah um so i guess before we talk about the network thing my my last question on the personal brands part specifically is like what advice would you have for someone like that that's like dude they're doing the fucking grind that you did as a VP of sales it is a grind they're maybe conscious in about their brand and like what they talk about and all of this other kind of stuff like how should someone like that think about this and and get started with it because this is like you said this is this is the career mode it really is.

53:10I mean, it's so easy to just say, just do it. You know, um, one thing to think about is have somebody do it for you. Like you don't have to post every day. You could have somebody do the copywriting for you. You could hire a ghostwriter. Well, the other thing too, is you could also just record yourself. I like to do that a lot these days. Just record yourself talking and send it to someone and it's, they're not, they're ghostwriting in a way that is like in your voice and your thoughts and ideas. And this is how most people write books these days too. Yeah. There's, there's a, uh, a guy that I'm friends with named Tiger Joseph, who has built a product that records your meetings, your zoom calls.

53:54Yeah. And at the end of each call, it converts it into two or three posts, two or three social posts. Yeah. It's like meetings to content meetings. That is a number two content. His name is Tiger Joseph. Shout out to Tiger. Um, but this is boom. There's, there's content ideas. Yeah. The quality of it. I don't know. You know, you still got to run the last mile. Yeah. Right. You're not going to just going to trust the AI to do it for you. But those people who are stuck, it's like, okay, either shut up and just do it yourself. Enough with the excuses. If you don't want to do it yourself, pay somebody a little bit to get you started.

54:29Okay. And stop thinking only about right now because that sales guy is like, I'm doing fine. Well, what if you lose your job, bro? Yeah, the average tenure is for a VP of sales like 12 to 18 months or something crazy. Because it doesn't even matter. This is my dystopian side coming out, but like it doesn't even hardly matter if you're hitting your number right now. Yeah. Because if Salesforce stock plummets at the end of this quarter, they're going to lay off 10 ,000 people. Oracle lays off 30 ,000 people. Meta lays off 60 ,000 people, whatever. So whoever that person is, they think they're safe.

55:02They're not. They're not safe. they don't have a safety net. Yeah. The safety net should be their brand, their relationships, their achievements and accomplishments. Yeah. And that stuff lives digitally now. It doesn't live in person at the PTA or the church group or whatever. It's online. And anybody that may choose to do business with you is going to judge you based on your digital resume. Yeah. Right? So that person just needs to start adding connections and growing the size of their network. I don't tell people start producing content straight away. I say, can you just add 10 people a day for me?

55:54Yeah. Just 10. Don't mess with anything else until you get in a nice solid rhythm of 10 people a day. Yeah. And they're like, well, who do I connect with? This is just your alumni, dude. Like people you've worked with, where they're working now. I mean, it's so easy as an exec. And then slowly expand from there. Be like people I've done business with. Yeah. People I maybe want to work with one day. People I admire. Somebody I might want to hire one day. Yeah. People in this city and that other city that I've been to and whatnot. People who are peers of mine. Just slowly, just 10, 15 people a day.

56:26and at some point that gets boring because it becomes easy yeah so then i say to them okay now your next challenge is why don't you try to comment 10 times a day on other people's content and this is actually hard not because it's hard to like write comments it's hard to actually find 10 pieces of quality content every single day yeah that make you that compel you to write something yeah but it's good practice to learn to write yeah online it's good practice to engage yeah That also compounds the growth of your network because if you write compelling comments, people see those and they start kind of inbound connection requests, if you will.

57:07Right? Just keep doing that. Do those two things. When those two things become easy, maybe now you're ready for level three, which is share your own experiences. Yeah. You don't need to brag. In fact, I don't want you to brag. You definitely don't need to sell. I definitely don't want to hear you try to sell or pitch. Yeah. But maybe talk about, what you learned in this last month of selling. Maybe tell a story about a good deal that you won and how you did it. Maybe tell a story about how you screwed up this one time picking the wrong company to go work for. Especially when you're kind of my age or older, it's like, dude, pass down some knowledge to the next generation.

57:47Send the elevator down, dude. Help some people not make your mistakes. Elevate the profession, right? The things that you don't like, the bad behaviors that you've seen from leaders, talk about it. So other people don't make the same mistake. So I try to give folks that type of advice. Under the guise of like, you think you're safe, but you might not be, dude. Your job could be eliminated tomorrow, and then what are you going to do? That guy who has a thousand followers that you were talking about, how's he going to get his next job? Is he going to blindly apply? That doesn't work anymore. Some of those guys don't realize that.

58:26It doesn't work anymore. Yeah. Right? Now you get into the interview process, let's say. You got two people, Jason and Scott, who are totally equal on paper. Yeah. Except for one thing. Jason has 100 ,000 followers and Scott has 1 ,000. Who's getting hired? Jason's getting hired because he can recruit easier. Yeah. He's free PR for the brand. Yeah. So he increases, you know, kind of public awareness. He can bust into accounts through networking better than I can. Right. All of these things sort of add up. And now that person who's been good for 20, 30 years, but has no network, they're left at home.

59:08Yeah. Pondering where it all went wrong. Yeah. And why would you want to leave that as a potential weakness? Why? Yeah. I don't think that way. I look at myself and my businesses and think, where am I weak? What's my Achilles heel? Yeah. I better fix that thing. Better plug that hole. I need to become more defensible. And I don't know, you know, some people don't think that way and don't operate that way. But the risks, the consequences of that risk are becoming severe. Yes. And maybe they don't realize that yet. Yes. So let's, I want to talk to you about that more, but just for time's sake, the connections and the network part of the personal brand and the, uh, the moat that you build as like an individual.

1:00:02role. I'm just curious for you, like how you think about the people in your life that you choose to surround yourself with and how you prioritize that and how you stay on top of it and how you think about showing up. And I'm really curious about this because of what you said earlier around changing the people in your life. There's this book, Tiny Habits from B.J. Fogg. Basically, all of James Clear's stuff is based off of B.J. Fogg's research. And he's like, there's three ways to change like your life, right? Obviously one of them is habits. That's what this book is about. Um, the other thing is like having like a, like a learning, right?

1:00:41I forget, I'm forgetting the word for it, but you know, you do a shroom trip and you figure out something breakthrough and breakthrough. Yep. But he's like, the third thing is you change your environment. And he talks about it in that book. He's like, it's really hard. And what I was thinking is if you have, like if you have money and resources you can change your environment very quickly that's like where you live the people you surround yourself with in the environment piece that's a lot of what i think about is the relationships yeah and the people so you mentioned that i want to just kind of i'm just curious how you think about it now like the relationships in your life how you manage them yeah um like the network that you have etc like how do you think about all of that stuff.

1:01:22Well, I think I consistently try to surround myself with people who are as motivated, if not more motivated than me. Yeah. As best I can. I really have not a lot of tolerance to invest in relationships where people are just sort of dormant and kind of satisfied and satiated and, you know, their lives revolve around whatever TV show they're watching and, you know, don't take any gambles or risks or what I don't, I'm not super empathetic to that. So I'm not, I'm not a perfect person by any means. I'm not super empathetic to that. And I have moved away from those people metaphorically and physically, over the last 20-something years of my career.

1:02:17Yeah. I left California to come to Texas. That was part of the reason, candidly. You know, I've exited a relationship, two relationships, in fact. You know, certain friends of mine that I had when I was young did not grow at the same rate or at all. You know, I have a bunch of friends that I knew when we were kids that are no longer with us that stayed doing the wrong drugs and substances and whatnot and they're literally passed away um so i made lots of like pretty hard pivots and and shifts and as i was saying before i prioritize I prioritize people that are kind of on my level or around my level that I can try to elevate a little bit.

1:03:13Yeah. Right. Like I'm 10 plus years older than you. Yeah. I don't mean this disrespectfully at all, but like I'm a little bit farther along in the journey than you. Yeah, dude. Yeah. But it's like, okay, how can I elevate Jason somehow? Yeah. So I'm, I prioritize those types of questions that you send me or things that you want to do like, hey, can you carve out an hour and a half to come down here or whatever? So I'm trying to uplift those people. I prioritize people who also respond the way that I respond quickly, sincerely. I do try to send the elevator back down. I reply to everybody who messages me on LinkedIn.

1:03:53in. If it's not spam or trash, garbage, you know, I heard you want to start a franchise. Anybody who sends me a genuine question gets a response from me. It's not my VA. It's not a bot. It's me. And, uh, that goes back a little bit to me of, you know, somebody gave me my first shot once upon a time, four years in the hospital, no job experience. Somebody hires me as a salesperson and takes a chance on me. So I try to keep myself humble by saying, well, you got to help people too. Right. At the same time, sometimes I have to make hard decisions. Like I thought I was going to be able to make it to this dinner with you last night.

1:04:39Yeah. The day got away from me. My kids had stuff going on. I didn't make it. Yeah. You know, the day before I was supposed to go to an event, I had a parenting situation that demanded my attention. Yeah. Couldn't make it. I have a colleague or associate of mine yesterday who told me that I was a hermit. Hmm. Teasing, joking, but teasing also kind of serious way. And I'm like, I'm not a hermit. But then I started thinking, well, I can see why people think that. Yeah. Because I don't go do stuff if it's going to be too much of a detriment to my life. It's going to set me back. if it's with a bunch of people that I don't know or whatever.

1:05:25So again, to the intentional piece, like, you know, I do things like this that I think are meaningful. This is a relationship that I enjoy and I want to pour energy and effort into. I want to see you thrive and succeed. If it was strangers I didn't know, I might say, hey, I can't take two hours out of my day, but if you shoot me a note and email me your questions, I'm happy to reply to you. Yeah. Right. Things like that, you know, and, uh, your circle, I think as you get older, it gets smaller and smaller and tighter and tighter in terms of who you're willing to do anything for as it should. Yeah.

1:06:06I think, you know? Yeah. How do you think about, this is something I'm personally going through in my life and that I'm realizing, you know, I haven't done a good job of literally in the last decade. And it's creating good in-person relationships where I live with like other men, like having good close male friendships. That's something that men suck at in general, by the way. I know. Women are excellent at this and men suck at this. My wife is phenomenal. This is like a super skill of hers. Like we can literally go anywhere in the United States at least. And like, she'll just make friends and build community, you know?

1:06:46And I have not pulled my weight in that. And it's also not about not pulling my weight. It's about, I have all these great friendships across like the country where I will go in person and do fun stuff like this. But it's like, you need to be in person with people and have community like where you live. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, What's that been like for you? How do you think about that? Bro, I have the same problem. I'm not going to lie. Really? Yeah. I would say that I am maybe in the middle of you and your wife, a hybrid of sorts. A hybrid. Yeah. So one thing that I would encourage you to do and you do a little bit is I can go anywhere in the world and I pretty much know somebody at this point in time.

1:07:32Yeah. And I've done that. So I tell people on LinkedIn sometimes, hey, I'm going to be in Finland. Yeah. And then I go meet people. I have a day. I have a night out. I have a dinner or whatever. Yeah. I'm going to be in Australia. I'm going to be in New Zealand. I'm going to be in Denmark. I'm going to be in Sweden, whatever. And you go meet them. Yeah. They pick you up at the airport sometimes. I know, right? They take you to the airport. Yeah. They buy you a beer. You have a meal or whatever. So your network is large enough that if you just made one little ounce of effort of saying, hey, I'm going to be in Denver.

1:08:06Yeah. If anybody wants to meet up, let me know. Just wait for the messages to come in. Yeah. You just have to put the, you just have to throw the bat signal up. Yeah. And then wait for the inbounds. This is how I do it. Cause I'm not a naturally like outgoing person. Yeah. So my effort is like, Hey, I'm going to be in such and such place. And then I wait for the leads to kind of come to me. And then I'm like, Hey, let's go hang out. But at home I suck, dude. Really? Yeah. I have lots of people that I know, but my like best friends or whatever, They all live in California. Yeah. Except for maybe two or three who are in Austin.

1:08:44But sometimes, you know, the game was on last night. Sometimes I sit and think, man, I should invite a bunch of people over, you know, and come watch the game. And I think to myself, I don't know who I'd invite over, actually. Oh, really? I could invite some of these people, but like, they have kids, they do this, da, da, da, da. I invent these excuses. And this is what men do. Yes. We are terrible at consistently carving out time to spend with our friends. I just saw Hefe. He lives a mile away from me. I haven't seen him in months in person. He's lit up when you saw each other too, you know? But we're good at that as men.

1:09:22Yeah. We can go six months to a year without seeing somebody in person. And the moment you see him, it's like no time passed. Yeah. And you're happy as all get out. And, you know, when the time together is over, you're like, damn, we should do that more often. to do that yeah definitely yeah and then we all go back to our ways kevin dorsey lives around the corner from me yeah haven't seen him in months yeah so i've been my attempts at hacking this right have been activity based so in the last year and a half i've been playing more golf than i ever have before yeah that seems to get people to kind of come out yeah so i go golf with jake Dunlap and I've got Dorsey to come.

1:10:02I got a neighbor that I go golf with. I have a buddy that I go play tennis or pickleball with. So he's to his credit, he's more of the one who kind of invites me. And I'm like, okay, yes, I'll get out of my kind of shell and go do that thing. But it's hard. Part of it is I work hard, I parent hard, I travel a decent amount. yeah I'm real good at finding excuses and I think to myself I already know who my boys are my best friends are like they live somewhere else yeah and in my mind I'm like one day I'll go back there and then we'll have this yeah and the the trouble is like Scott you're wasting time right now yeah and it's the opposite philosophy of how I try to live my life and I understand the dichotomy of it and it frustrates me and I'm I try actively trying to solve it but it is not it's not easy yeah it's not easy to consistently be like hey every Tuesday like let's all do xyz yeah you know and I know guys who are pretty good at it yeah they just have a they're at a different place in life they're either older and their kids are gone or they didn't ever had kids yeah so it's been it's been a challenge i'm not i'm not great at this either there's this article i want to send you uh later it's from a woman kate hall is on substack and sarah my wife sent it to me and it was this idea of you're not trying and it was like you're putting in the effort but if this was a problem that you were paid to figure out how would you approach it differently and i was like fuck yep yes i would approach it very differently if this was my job yeah that hurt that one hurts i feel that i felt that punch yeah guilty i'm calling myself out too dude yeah it's true it's it's crazy so um hey we gotta run this is awesome man i'm glad that we pivoted the conversation a bit because we're going to talk about pipe gen and all of this other kind of stuff um i just have one very important question for you okay what's your fucking money purchase the question is am i going to answer truthfully or am i going to steal somebody else's answer that i heard uh i'll answer truthfully and then i'll share the funny answer that somebody else gave that you know the first thing that came to my head was um a sort of over the top surf pad in costa rica yeah i've been wanting to kind of move to costa rica for a while and if i had that fuck you money i i would probably get something a little bit outrageous like right on the water and just you know the type of place you walk in you're like oh my god yeah that would probably be my fuck you kind of purchase the better one the most creative one somebody told me and you earlier they would buy a blimp and you and i were like what a blimp not a jet plane not a helicopter or whatever, not a train, not a Lamborghini, a blimp.

1:13:07And I was like, what would you do with the blimp? And they looked at me and just said, what do you mean? I'd fly it around. I'm like, okay. Helicopters are so last year. We got some blimp is the thing. She had a great answer. Never would have thought of that in a million years. I love that. So surf house in Costa Rica, man. Yeah. I think that would be it. Um, before we take off, where can people go to connect with you? And what do you want people to go check out? Man, you know, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, you can follow me on Instagram and all the other kind of social platforms that I'm that I'm working on.

1:13:42My main gig is I work with early stage startups, and I help founders and sales leaders build a scalable and successful sales motion, I kind of help them go from zero to 100, so to speak. and I would also say check out surfandsales.com. I've got some tickets left. I run a retreat sales conference in Costa Rica and sometimes in Portugal every year and our event this year is in November. Kind of teach people about entrepreneurship, business, leadership, sales, all this kind of stuff and then the second half of the day we go have fun and go to the beach and give people surf lessons and have good food and drinks and relax.

1:14:24stuff so yeah