How can creators like us, who are new to building online businesses, who have high-value skillsets, how do we scale our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) to get us the freedom we desire? That is the question, and this newsletter will give you the answers. Be sure to subscribe if these are the type of answers you seek.
My name is Boysie Gordon, and welcome to Boysie Talks Business.
Episode 5! Honestly, I am going to change the structure of this podcast this upcoming week. I don’t want to overload you guys with long content. SO! There will be a weekly long post and a daily medium-length post. The weekly post will be a broad, multi-topic post, and the daily posts will be super niche and focused.
Okay, enough housekeeping, let’s get it on!
In today’s episode, I want to finish the discussion about my evolution through sales and the top 10 lessons I have learned along the way, for those who missed the last episode.
Here are my credentials:
College Dropout Class of 2018
Sold cable packages both retail and D2D for 1 year—got fired
Got hired as a B2B account manager in Jan 2020
Averaged 3 accounts closed per month — record: 11 closes in one month
Grew monthly profit margins from $10k to $45k over the last 5 months of 2020 (peak of COVID)
End first year with a little over $1.1 Million in revenue
Got promoted to senior account manager in Jan 2021
90-day average of $350k+ in MRR to start the year
Facilitated 125+ orders per month without an assistant
Got burnt out and quit my 6-figure job
Started my first company in April 2021
Month 1 — $0 MRR
Month 2 — $67,807.70 MRR
Month 3 — $306,343.06 MRR
Month 4 — $414,228.60 MRR
…we didn’t scale operations properly, so the numbers fell off a cliff.
Regardless ended the year with a little over $1.4M in revenue
We ended the first fiscal year (April 2021 to April 2022) with over $2.5M ARR
Yesterday, we also talked about the first four lessons:
Lesson #1: Compounding is Real!
Lesson #2: The CEO Should Always Sell
Lesson #3: Never Be Impatient
Lesson #4: Sales is the Science of Relationships
If you’d like to check out the last episode, here you go!
Be sure to come back so you don’t miss anything.
Okay, recap complete!
Here are the top 10 lessons I learned (Cont.)!
Lesson #5: Always Ask For More
This one was a bit controversial when I first learned it.
I don’t remember where I got it from, but I do remember that we had just botched a small batch of a larger project for a client. Something about a missed pickup or an added charge, the details are fuzzy.
However, the client was pissed… that detail wasn’t fuzzy.
I decided to whip out the trick—I was going to ask for more business.
“Hey, [client], sorry about that. We’ll get it right! Do you have any more lanes on this project we can handle?”—I asked with confidence
“Uhh no, not right now.”—the client responded with confusion
That was it, that was the worst that could happen—a ‘no.’ I laughed at myself for thinking it would be worse.
2 days later? The client calls.
“Boysie, I need your help can you handle [the exact thing you asked for immediately]!”—She asked with urgency
“Of course, [client name]! I got you, just send it over!'“—I responded back with urgency
It… worked.
I got to erase the bad thing with a good thing and make more money in the process! Always ask for what you want, even when the situation seems untimely.
Sometimes, you win, and the worst that can happen is a no.
Just make sure you don’t mess up on the extra you do get—overperform on it
Man, this episode is going to be a 40-minute podcast at this point!
Lesson #6: Your Brand Sells More Than Your Service
Everywhere I sold, my name became known.
When I was in B2C retail, people would remember me and say high.
When I was B2C D2D, people would invite me in for a drink or honk their horns as they saw me.
When I was B2B account managing, other employees and branches outside of the DM would know who I was and just talk to me.
When I was a CEO, my customers would send me referrals regularly, and every employee involved in logistics would know who I was.
I recognized quickly that who I was as a person would spread faster than who I was as a salesman.
That’s why I focused on building my reputation. I’d call customers to learn more about them, and I’d wave to people passing by, even those who rejected me. It didn’t matter where I sold: I made people laugh, I gave great advice, I just had fun with it.
Because of that, my sales and client acquisition always took off. My brand compounded like crazy, and now that I am learning how to build one online, I can start to connect the dots.
I’m sure I’ll be compounding soon!
Who you are as a person is talked about more than what you offer as a business.
That’s a bar… definitely tweeting that.
Lesson #7: Start A Movement
I heard Russell Brunson recently talk about this in his book Expert Secrets…
But I had already unintentionally done this with my first company.
I started a movement.
I knew the ins and outs of my industry and the social stigmas that came with it.
Boredom
Depression
Overworked
Undervalued
Trash Relationships
These are just a few themes to name of the many.
So, I started marketing my business as something that relieved this. We cared about what our customers cared about. We want to make every day feel like a vacation for them. We want every conversation to feel like it came from a friend.
So, I integrated this into every part of the outreach process, from the website to the pitch.
It worked until I left sales, but it WORKED.
We could literally do no wrong. Our customers would override the orders of their corporate offices just to keep working with us… it was insane.
Starting a movement is a powerful thing and, if done the right way, can effectively increase conversions.
Lesson #8: Emotional Intelligence is Required
Most of these tips/lessons are completely optional.
This one is not. Without emotional intelligence, a salesman would be blind. Every pitch would be a shot in the dark, and they’d need to take a quantity-over-quality approach to closing business.
This may have worked in the past but with the rise of automation…
Good luck with that.
I never had to learn to have emotional intellect, I’ve always had that. However, I did have to learn how to use it effectively to close business. Before, I would just see sales as a task to complete. I was told to use a script. I wasn’t really thinking about how I could say the right things.
Once I put the script down, I started seeing things eye to eye with prospects and customers. It began feeling natural to communicate on their wavelength.
I knew what they liked.
I knew what they hated the most.
I knew what they needed to hear me say.
There were no more misunderstandings and no more selling. My days became filled with long stints of intimate conversation. Sometimes, it got so touchy that I ended up giving life advice.
I had customers asking me if they should quit or leave their companies.
It got really personal, and it made the relationship that much more unbreakable. I still communicate with many of my clients long after I’ve stopped operating my business. We are friends now, and I couldn’t have done that if I wasn’t in tune with my EQ.
Practice journaling and/or reflective writing to help train self-awareness.
Try listing out your best guess of how prospects in your industry feel about companies like yours. Next to each feeling, explain why they would feel that way. Then, try to pitch or converse with future prospects and clients while keeping those details in mind.
This will help you empathize better and engage in deeper conversation.
Lesson #9: Fake It ‘Til You Make It
Okay, this one is a bit controversial, but I will always stand by this lesson.
Most people take this thing literally and think of the negative side: lying, cheating, stealing, etc.
That’s not what I’m talking about here. You should always be honest, in fact, telling people I had just started my business landed me a few clients in the beginning. They were inspired to help me.
So, what exactly am I talking about, you ask?
I’m talking about faking the mindset of a successful person.
You may not be successful in the beginning, but the only way to get there is to do what the successful do.
DOING IT EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO.
That, my friend, is some high-level faking.
When I first started sales:
I was quiet.
I was new.
I was lazy.
When I first started my business:
I was lazy.
I was clueless.
I was overwhelmed.
These were my truths, and had I not faked the persona of someone who was the exact opposite of me, I would have held myself back.
My calls would have been trash
No one would have respected me
I wouldn’t have closed my first client
Not faking would have caused me to fail perpetually.
The crazy part?
Once I started faking, I quickly became the person I needed to be.
So don’t listen to other people on this:
fake it until you make it, or at least fake it until you become it.
Lesson #10: Don’t Wait to Find Your Niche
This lesson was crucial to scaling my first company from $1.4M to $2.5M in a couple of months.
In the beginning, we were a jack of all trades. We took every type of customer and business that knocked on our door. I mean, that’s the most obvious thing you can do to gain customers.
But this overcomplicated the backend and made employee onboarding that much harder.
See in doing everything, our customers were always comparing us to the competition: Our prices, our coverage, our service... EVERYTHING. We had no differentiation in our market because we offered the exact same thing as our large $100M competition.
There was no way we would compete with that.
Me, feeling like a competent CEO (for the first time), I looked at the numbers. And the numbers were very loud, too. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…
We made 80% of our money from one service… Pareto's principle in action
So, without hesitation, I decided to cut the resources we dedicated to the other service offerings and put all resources into our new specialization. This changed everything!
Faster employee onboarding
Easier order fulfillment
Higher profit margins
More projects won
It was the turning point for us, and all these wonderful things started to happen rapidly. Not to mention the fact that this removed over half of the workload from the team.
Had we found our niche earlier, we could have made more money with less work. This was the first time I had uncovered hidden revenue in my business, and it wasn’t the last, as this win spurred me to create more!
If you’d like to explore where hidden revenue could be in your business, schedule a meeting with me—mybluepath.com
If you enjoyed this list, be sure to subscribe so you can get more daily content from me!
Thanks for reading!
EP. 5 The 10 Sales Lessons I Learned On My 5-Year Journey From Joblessness to a $2.5M CEO Pt. 2