Mastering Sales Pt 1: Lessons from Brook Bishop's Path to Success

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 18 of the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And this is a special episode as I have an opportunity to actually interview my good friend and partner and co-host, Brooke, on this episode. And what we're really focusing on, you know, Brooke has got such an incredible story and such an incredible journey. But for the purposes of today... We're focusing on the success that he was able to create in the world of sales and the journey to get there. Because here's the thing. Success in sales does not happen overnight. And there are so many incredible lessons throughout Brooke's journey in sales that we have an opportunity to bring to you through some of the amazing stories that you're going to hear in this episode.

1:32 And not only is it going to be entertaining and fun, but exciting. You're going to get nuggets that it took Brooke 15 years to figure out, and you're going to get them right now on this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Let's do this. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my good man, my good friend, my good buddy, my co-host and co-founder, Brooke Bishop. What's up, man? What up, what up? What up? Happy podcasting. Yeah. Happy podcast day. This is our favorite day of the week. And today is actually a very special day. It is because I get a chance to really get under the hood with you on some stuff that I really want to know and some stuff that our audience I know really wants to know as well.

2:23 So buckle up. And when I say buckle up, I don't mean you, the listener. I mean, you should too, but you buckle up, buddy. I'm so scared. What is happening? Dude, you have had such a successful career in sales. And I think that so many people that know you today really don't know the story of how you got from the beginning to where you are now. And especially with all of the level of mastery that you have today. I mean, wasn't something that was created in a short period of time. And I know some of the story, but I can't wait to hear more. And that's really what we're going to dive into today is, you know, through your journey, what did it look like to cultivate the skill set and the successful career that you've built in sales?

3:13 First things first, where did you get your first sales job? How did that happen? Where was it? What were you doing before that? Let's start there. It's interesting because at the time, I didn't realize what it was or how things were happening within it. My uncle, who was really more of my father figure growing up, he was training to go into the Navy SEALs. And we shared a room when he was going to school because he wasn't working at the time. So he came to live with my mom and with us. And so I slept on the top bunk of the bunk bed. And he was, you know, training like crazy and he was doing all the schooling stuff he needed to do. And through what I would refer to as like asmosis, right? So I got to absorb the information and the content that he was participating in.

3:56 And back then it was, you know, cassettes and he had... you know, the Zig Ziglar cassette tapes, and he had Bob Proctor, and he had Tony Robbins, and he had, you know, the who's who of personal development. And so I just because I was in proximity, and I was probably 11 years old at the time. So I just used to get to listen to all this personal development stuff, because I wanted to hang out with my uncle who was like my best bud. Yeah. Fast forward in time, then go to junior high, go to high school. And I actually had a lot of drama that happened in my junior year of high school. And I ended up living with my dad, went back to my mom's and found myself. I actually had a 3.9 GPA. My world kind of blew up at that point in time.

4:37 And I had loved school. When I transitioned back over to my mom's house, I I found myself just hating school and I was in a really depressed state. And my uncle, he goes, Hey, like change your question, change your life. So I went to the local school board and I said, how do I get out of school? And they go, I'm sorry, you can't do that. And I go, well, if I could do that, how would I do that? So nice little coaching question. Yeah. Better question. I love it. And so they go, well, no one's ever asked us that. And so they actually put me in front of the head of the orange County school board and And I told her, I said, look, I don't want to be sitting in class. I feel like this is a waste of time. Like, how do I get out of my classes? So she pulled up my transcripts and she goes, look, your grades are fantastic.

5:19 You just have a couple of classes you need in order to be done. She goes, here's the textbooks. If you just bring me back the chapter tests at the end of these books and you ace them, you're good and free and clear. And I'm like, seriously? Game on. And I'm like, so I get the book and I get to do the chapter test myself. She goes, yep. I'm like, well, our school system is a crock of... This is insane. So I spent a weekend, filled out the test, sent it back. So I'm giving you way too many details on this. However, from that, my senior year, all my buddies and friends were still going to school. And so I was done. In essence, I did two weeks of my senior year and then I filled out the chapter tests and I was good and free and clear. So I started going to college early.

6:01 So I started getting a lot of my prereqs done. Hit pause really quickly. Let me ask you a really quick question on this. This is an important point that relates to sales. What did that situation teach you about the value of asking a better question? Well, first it opened my eyes because I'm like, the better question just saved me an entire year of my life. Right. Yeah. And I also got a, I don't want to call it a leg up on my competition, but as I viewed it at the time, I'm like all my friends and the people I was going to school with, they're just sitting in classroom burning time. And it gave me the opportunity to get college going faster. And then the real big piece, because I had a car that was a piece of crap. I needed money so that I could get from point A to point B.

6:43 And that was really that catalyst where I went. Yeah. okay, now I have the time and I can actually go work. My first sales job, this is the tee up into it. I used the same strategies I used with the head of the school board to get my first job, which was waiting tables. So, here I was 17 at the time, actually just turned 18. And because my mentor had shared, ask better questions, you know, XYZ, he goes, Hey, don't just go to the lowest restaurant position you can get. He's like, go where the most expensive food is because guess what, you're going to get tipped on the cost of the check at the end of the meal. And so that was really where I got to go cut my teeth because I got to learn influence and I got to learn connecting with people and I got to learn asking them questions and finding out why they were there and what their outcomes were and why they were eating dinner that night.

7:31 And I got to figure out how to anchor in what foods they should buy. And then I got this was the crazy fun part. I didn't realize how competitive I was. Until they started doing bonuses and spiffs for like whoever sells the most lobster this week. And I'm like, oh, hell yeah. Game on. It begins. Yes. I love it. Yep. So yeah, that was the first place I started getting into the sales game of it. I mean, the real cool piece of that. And again, this is something that Mark, my uncle, he goes, look, everyone else is going to come in and go, Hey, you know, how much money I'm going to, oh, my goal is to make a hundred, 150 bucks tonight, whatever the number was. And he goes, I want you to pick a number that would blow your mind. And I want it to be a random number. Yeah. And I want you to put every ounce of your being into the number and charge it up.

8:15 And I want you to have a meaning to it. I want you to give it a name. And like, we went through this whole process and I started to gamify selling, even though I was waiting tables, but I started making double, triple what anyone else was making in the restaurants because I was coming at it from a very, very different approach. Intention. And I think, yeah, there's so much to that, dude. I love that. We talk about outcomes and goals and all of that stuff, but without the intention behind it, it changes everything. Not to mention the fact that most people, it's also the lens through which you are looking at the position and the opportunity, right? Most people look at a waiting job as like, hey, I'm just here. Like, I'm going to get the tips that I'm going to get.

8:56 That's what it is. And then there's somebody, you know, who looks at it through a different lens and is selling the shit out of all the things that nobody else is selling. Yeah. What do you think it was in you? I'm just curious. What do you think it was in you that when you first got that taste of like that competitiveness about, ooh, like who sold the most this and that? What do you think it was that sort of set that off in you? It's interesting because so many jobs that I had prior to that were, you know, you get paid an hourly wage and you work 10 times harder. You make the same amount of money. It was the first time where I went, wait, my effort can have a compounded return.

9:37 And when I went, well, I'm already going to make more because I'm selling more on the lobsters. Let's as the example here. But then I'm like, well, they're going to give me an extra even over and above that. That's a guarantee, right? Like earning tips. It wasn't a guarantee. There was like this element of like, if I do a good job, there's a strong probability I'll make more. Right. As soon as I had that certainty of if I do X, I'm going to get Y. It was like game on. Now I went a step further. Yeah. I went a step further because most of the people at that time, you know, they were in their early 20s and most of them were in their party years and many of them were, you know, indulging in the other elements of the world. Yeah, I may or may not know something about that.

10:18 I didn't go down that path. And so I went, okay, if the hostess is the one that's controlling who sits in my section and how many people sit in my section, if the manager is the one who's picking what zone of the restaurant I get, and if the bartender can extra heavy pour my drinks, I started working all of the other people I worked with to tee me up to have greater success. So guess what? I might have had less tables, but I had the bigger tables. And so the hostess would seat me with more people. So I had more opportunity to sell lobsters. The manager would put me in the better zone. So I had where people were requesting to sit in my section. So I started to gamify those pieces. So I would stack things in my favor.

10:59 Everyone else was just coming to try and make some extra quick cash so they could go party. I was a ringer. Yeah, listen, I was far more interested in a few liters of beer and some potato skins at Bennegan's about 12 o'clock that night. Dude, I love that. And this is such a great lesson because I think it's truly a lesson that we can not just apply to sales. we can apply this to business in general. All of these kinds of opportunities are available to us in business in general. And the gamification of it is something that can really make it fun, especially when you realize what the possibilities are. So I love that. So, you know, you kind of get your taste of it in the restaurant business. And then where was the actual like real sales job, quote unquote?

11:44 When did that happen? So apparently I don't have a good track record when there's a new manager that's brought in. I'm really good with established management that I've already connected with and built trust with. Every time they bring in a new manager, it's like, fuck, here we go again. So they brought in a new manager, which we butted heads. And my ego was apparently bigger than my job. So lost that job. And there's a whole story behind that, but I won't bore people with the antics of getting fired from a restaurant. But with that, Mark, my uncle, was selling timeshares at the time. And he goes, hey, you cut your teeth, you know, working in the restaurant, you've built up the skill, like come really see how challenging it is to do a whole different level of sales.

12:29 For those of you that have never sold, if you haven't done face-to-face sales, or if you're a coach who's selling, if you think that your job is hard, go sell timeshare. I can echo that. Now, the trickiest piece, I was 18, almost 19 years old when I started selling timeshares. The closest person in age to me was my uncle. So he was 17 years older than I am. Still is 17 years. It keeps going. But at that point in time, everybody else on the team, these were all a lot of retirees who were just selling timeshares as like a side gig to make some extra cash. Yeah. So I was, let's just be real with it. The management team did not want to hire me, but Mark was their top salesperson.

13:11 And Mark stuck his neck out and said, if you don't hire him, I'm going to quit. So they're like, well, it's a straight commission gig. And they got to pick who got what leads. So they're like, okay, well, we don't want to lose Mark. So cool. We'll hire Brooke. And they just shoveled the lowest quality leads to make Mark happy. First two months, I made a whole whopping zero sales. Yeah. Goose egg. Goose egg. What make from three to four hundred bucks a night waiting tables to not making a damn thing for two months. And my confidence was shot. I'm like, dude. And I mean, I had literally I had conversations with Mark where I was in tears where I'm just like, what am I doing?

13:52 Why am I doing this? It was fascinating because he said something that stuck out. This stayed with me in every sales gig I've ever had. He goes, if you can figure out how to sell to the lowest common denominator, you will crush it because anyone above that is. it's going to be that much easier. And so I had to figure out how to enroll. At the time, it was who they used to give me was single women who had income below 30,000 a year. What single woman? Easy to sell a timeshare to that person. buy a $20,000 piece of real estate for vacations when you, after taxes, you may not even make that much. Right. So I started creating this little joke in my head.

14:33 I'm like, okay, if that's what I'm going to be selling, I'm either going to get a sale out of these engagements or I'm going to get a date out of these engagements. Because being 19 years old, I had two things on my mind. And so that's what it turned into. It was either, and then poof, that third month, it clicked because I started to connect with people and I started, because again, I wasn't approaching it as just collect cash, collect cash. If I was going to be talking to these single women who are older than I was, and I was a 19 year old guy, I had a way better chance of enrolling them if I could connect with them, if I was able to engage with energy versus just trying to take them through a process, if that makes sense. So you get into that third month and what happened in the third month?

15:17 The third month it clicked. The third month I enrolled 92% of the people I sat with, which was unheard of. So I actually... I broke every record they had. I got every spiff they had. I got every bonus they had. I shattered Mark's records from prior. I'm sure he was happy about that. I know that guy. It definitely kicked up the competition for us, but it was really fascinating because, you know, waiting tables, you know, making three, 400 bucks a night. The year prior, I made maybe 30, 35 K in one month selling timeshares. I made a little bit over 80 grand in that one month. Holy shit, man.

15:57 Screwed with my paradigm. Right. Right. Then the next month, I think I did 60 K the next month. And then guess what I did? I just made all this money. I took the rest of the year off like a moron. And because I made huge dollars compared to what I had done prior and I was 19 and I was a moron. And I'm like, holy crap, I could have kept running with that gig. But I learned some valuable lessons and then that teed up. I burned the rest of that year, melted all the money. And then I had some other new interesting opportunities that came on the horizon after that. So... Speaking of opportunities, there's tons of stuff we could unpack here. But I know that every single person listening to this, if you have, hopefully you've made an attempt at sales at this point.

16:39 If you haven't, for the love of God, start selling your shit like now. But my guess is most people listening to this right now have been through that period of suck where you are trying. You're trying everything. It is not working. Your confidence is in the tank. And the hard part is that so many, and you and I have both seen this, so many people never get on the other side of it so that they get to actually see and find out what happens. They quit before they get there, or they don't get the right help before they get there or whatever. I want to ask you this question. If you had walked in the door and you just crushed it right out of the gate, had you walked in the door?

17:26 Right. How would your experience and or your eventual results have been different in your mind? Hmm. That's a really interesting question. You know, I don't think I would have had the muscle for the hard times that would be in every other position I had thereafter. I think I would have expected every subsequent gig to just be easy. And if it wasn't, I would have totally gone internal that it's me, it's me, it's me. And I would have, I would have just, I mean, even into simple, not simple things, but like my wife attracting her, like when I met her, I knew like she was the one. But I approached it the same way as I did where after I had that context of it sucked for those two months.

18:09 And then it was like, I stuck with it. I stuck with it. I stuck with it. I knew that if I had that level of certainty and if I was unrelenting and if I had more certainty than anyone else on this planet, I could make anything happen. And so I got to apply those same principles to literally everything thereafter. But yeah, to answer your question, I think it would have made it really challenging where if I, any other gig, I probably would have walked in. And if it wasn't easy, I probably would have walked out. I want you listening to this right now to hear that loud and clear because you're going to have this. You, you likely already have had this at some point. You've been running a coaching business or a business of any kind for any period of time. either in your sales or in your business in general, it's inevitable.

18:50 And I think that so often it's so easy for us to just wish that everything would just come to us right away. And when it's sucking, like, it's not like it just sucked for a week. Like you went from making three to $400 a night to like zero for two months. That's a shit ton of money that goes out the window and you start questioning everything. Those truly are the periods that define us. And one of the things that I want to bring out in this dude is that it number one was a testament to your resilience, but also a testament to who you decided to surround yourself with.

19:32 A lot of people in that position aren't hanging out with their uncle, who's a badass sales guy and has done all kinds of other badass stuff in his life. You know, they're hanging out with a bunch of fuckwads, you know, who probably would have been like, oh, just quit, you know, go back and find another server job. So I think it's such a valuable lesson. Well, just to stack on it. I mean, my friends were like, what are you doing, dude? Like they were all, you know, they were on the party bus of life. Yeah. But they're like, dude, you've literally worked for two months and you've made zero dollars. Like, come over here, go back to waiting tables, come bartend with me and come do this, that and the other. And I'm like, I stayed in that pocket. I'm super grateful to have somebody who mentored me and was like, just stick with it.

20:12 Like you crack the code here, the rest of your life, you're going to have a skill that you can't get going to traditional university. And that's what they all were trying to get me to go do. They all came out of college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And they all were coming to me at that point asking for jobs, which was a wild, crazy experience. But yeah. I love that. So coming from the timeshare space, fast forward a little bit, what was kind of like the next big jump for you in, you know, in sales in terms of position, company, etc. ? We actually, it was very fascinating. So Mark, his sales mentor, gentleman named Daniel Penley. So he was a real estate sales trainer and he was based in LA, his company, I should say.

20:56 He would go around office to office around Orange County, LA County, and he would hold trainings for realtors and teach them how to do listing presentations and buyer presentations so they could go out and generate business. Yeah. And so Mark had gone through his program a number of years prior, and he had circled back around and he hit up Mark saying, hey, like, would you want to come sell and sell my events and essence be a salesperson for him and go build that up? And so Mark goes, well, I don't want to do it solo. So Mark, you know, hit me up. And this was when I was in my little hiatus of... Of working. And I'm like, dude, I'm down for that. Like, that'd be a fun gig to go do him and I could go do that together and go travel all over Southern California and go host these trainings that we would do sales on the back of.

21:42 And in the spirit of that, I got humbled yet again, because these were now salespeople that we were going in and having to train. And I was the young buck. Right. So it's different than selling to a consumer. Now we're front of room selling to groups of humans who, unless that we could show them that they could make a ton of money, they weren't wanting to invest squat with us. What we found out later, which was crazy, Daniel had actually pissed a bunch of these offices off. And so he threw all of these problem children to Mark and I to try and go re rekindle the relationship with these people. You guys were like Australia. Yeah. No, seriously. Like, literally, we went into these offices, and they're like, why are you here?

22:23 And we're like, we thought we had an appointment. Oh, my gosh. And they're like, no, we told them we never want to see them again. And we're like, oh, my Lord. So, we had to turn these people around. And we also got the non-English speaking teams. So, we had... Literally not multilingual at that point. So we had to get really creative. And then here's the cool piece. We figured out how to crack the code. So with him, we did over 3 million in revenue in our first year and a half selling in front of the room with what, you know, should have been the clientele that he that didn't want to work with him anymore. So with that one, what was kind of the nuance that you found in that one that helped you sort of get over the hump with that group?

23:05 Yeah. So the cool part was I got to develop some new skills. And one of the skills was I took ownership of booking the appointments for us. Why was that valuable? Well, one, because we kept getting the appointments booked with the people that were disgruntled and upset. And we went to Daniel and we basically said, hey, if we book our own appointments, are you cool with that? He's like, sure. He doesn't care because he's just getting revenue. Yeah. So I went great. So I went and figured out where's every real estate office in Southern California. And I just started outbounding instead of depending on them to give me the meetings. So we took ownership of the outcome in that. And then we got to pre-frame the way we wanted to pre-frame it versus, hey, I'm sending in these people to kind of turn things around with you.

23:45 Instead, it was, we're going to come in and rock your team's world. And so we got to shift the narrative. These are two huge lessons as it applies to sales. Number one, you and I talk about this all the time, dude. I mean, we're now in this culture, especially in this type of sale, coaching sales. People are used to being order takers. They're used to just sitting back and, you know, hopefully you find a way for leads to come in the door and that kind of thing. And you're talking about actually going out and creating your own opportunities, doing outbound work. That's lesson number one. Lesson number two is... Pre-framing the conversation.

24:25 There is so much value in this when it comes to the sales game, and it is an underutilized part of the conversation. People don't think about what needs to be done before you get on the sales call in order to optimize the chance of somebody saying yes. And I love that you learned that so early on because I learned that lesson and it radically changed things for me. The conversation can always start and should start before the sales call. Huge, huge, huge value. So that same concept carried over, right? Because Mark was usually the one front of room selling sales. Like the presenter, so to speak. Right. And so I showed up and again, I was 19 at the time.

25:07 So I learned a little strategy of how to get expensive suits. So I had Yves Saint Laurent and I had like all the, I literally had my, my suit wardrobe. If anybody had looked in my closet, they'd be like, you have like 20 to $30,000 worth of suits at the time. And I had found this little back window of eBay that you could buy used high-end suits. And so I was buying suits for like a hundred bucks that were valued at like five grand. Here I was as a 19 year old and I had to figure out how to dress the part, how to talk the part. I also was boots on the ground. So Mark would be presenting from front of room. I figured out how to start selling wealth not from stage. So if somebody has a question, I would start engaging and I would start to ask questions and I would start to anchor and I would start to break down the fears and help navigate that.

25:51 I got some really good face-to-face sales in that way. And it was a different strategy than front of room selling or selling somebody a timeshare where you're selling the dream of going to Hawaii or whatnot. There's so much goodness in that. So this is a journey that's going to take a little bit of time to unpack. And I was so excited about doing this because I know how many, it's not just about the story. Your stories are wonderful and fascinating and the journey itself is fascinating, but there's so many important nuggets and lessons to be learned about sales and the different things that actually make up eventual success and a certain level of mastery in sales.

26:34 I'm going to cut it short. I'm going to do what we call in the biz a teaser. This is part one of what's going to be a two-part episode on Brooke's journey in sales and all of the lessons. But for the purposes of today, a couple little things that I want to just highlight for you for today. Number one, when you start selling for the first time and you get your ass handed to you, don't make that mean anything. Just keep after it. Get around the right types of people. Start asking better questions and you will figure it out because that's how it works. And quite frankly, I've had a few experiences in sales where I did do well right out of the gate and it totally screwed me.

27:17 Set me way back. So that's lesson number one from today. Number two from today is making sure that you go create your own opportunities by not just sitting back and waiting for leads to come in, but doing the activities where you're going out to actually get leads. You become a farmer. This is not just being an order taker. And number three, the big one is... you know, pre-framing the conversation. What's the communication that you're having with your prospects, with your potential clients before they get on the phone, whether that's email, whether it's text messages, whether it is a very short conversation.

28:02 Three really, really valuable lessons, dude. This is really good. I know these people are hanging on the edge of their seats and probably screaming at their iPhone right now, but stay tuned. They just want to know why I got fired and what did he mean by new management? Yeah, right. That's for the not yet to be released third episode, potentially that, you know, that may happen at some point down the road. Dude, thank you for sharing so honestly and vulnerably today. And I'm excited to dig in on the second half of this because there's so much more good stuff to come. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. And we'll see you for part two.

28:43 of Brooke's journey and creating, cultivating a successful career in sales on the next episode. See you soon. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.