The One Sales System That Keeps You Out of Pipeline Scarcity for Good

0:00 Being great at what you do doesn't automatically make you great at business. The skills that got you here won't get you there. This is Path to Mastery, the raw and real business podcast for service-based entrepreneurs, consultants, and practitioners ready to stop chasing tactics and start building foundations that scale, hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop, co-founders of Empire Partners. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-host and good buddy and partner, Brooke Bishop. What's up, my man? Dude, you threw me for a curveball.

0:41 I was like, wait, that's not the name of the podcast. I'm like, oh, wait, that is the name of the podcast. Still getting used to it, right? You underwent a re-brand. That was, yeah, that just literally just threw me off my rocker. You're like, whoa. Okay, so... I want to dive in headfirst today. We talk to a lot of people all the time. We're fortunate enough to have wonderful conversations with people about their business constantly, whether we're talking about our clients, whether we're talking about prospects, whether we're just talking about people in our lives. It's always coming up. We're always having conversations. And we're consistently having conversations about what people believe to be the biggest constraint in their business.

1:23 Yeah. Especially when it comes to revenue. Revenue, we're often talking about sales and marketing. And if I had a nickel for every time somebody told us that they don't have enough leads, and that's their biggest problem, we'd be doing this podcast from a fucking private island somewhere. Um, people think they don't have enough leads. They think their leads are not good enough. Uh, or, you know, they get into sales and, you know, maybe they have leads and they're, I'm quote unquote, not closing my, you know, my conversion percentage is not good enough. Uh, or, you know, they, they think that they don't know how to sell or sales is icky or whatever. Um, yeah.

2:06 And the real issue at the underlying all of it in truth is that they don't have good systems. That's the reality where sales and their marketing don't have good systems. And today, what I want to get into today, bro, is I want to get into one of the core systems that we have in, in, in sales. Um, And the beauty of it is, quite honestly, it is a very simple system. It's elegant. It can be implemented no matter where you are in your business, whether that is at the very beginning, whether you're advanced. And the best part is it doesn't require a $300 to $1,000 a month sales CRM to make it work.

2:47 All you need is a spreadsheet. If you got Google Sheets or Excel, or fuck, you could do it on a notepad if you had to. You can make this work. Paper, chisel. That's right. Hammer and chisel. Honestly, what I'm seeing is working great for most, especially for anybody who's a smaller, medium-sized business in that way, is honestly using their notes on their iPhone. Yeah. Like, it's a crazy simple way to play it. But yeah, no, there's a... It's really interesting, dude, because back in the olden days, many, many years ago, it's weird to say that now, but many, many years ago when I first started in the sales game, I was trained in a very negative way as it pertained to today's topic.

3:33 So the old adage of buyers are liars and they're just tire kickers and there's no such thing as a be-back and I'm trying to think of some of the other languaging that was embedded into my skull. You know, there's just all this languaging around if you don't enroll them, if you don't sell them right here, right now, like they're gone, they're done. And we've obviously found over the course of time, that's not true. And there's so much data and so many reports to prove otherwise. Yeah. That's absolutely true. And the system that we're referring to is the whip list. And no, we're not talking about whip.

4:15 Like cool whip. Not that kind of whip. What are you talking about? We're not talking about whip it. Like whip it good. Devo. Come on now. You must whip it. You must whip it. I mean, you must whip it. You must whip it. You must whip it. Different whip. Different whip. No H. No H. That's right. All right. We're talking about whip WIP work in progress. And at a high level, essentially what this is, most people are going to go, oh, this is a tracker. Right.

4:56 No, it's not. What this actually is, is this is a psychology and control system that keeps you in abundance. That's what we're talking about today. Yes, does it track stuff? Absolutely it does. But what this is, it's a psychology and control system that keeps you in abundance. So before we get into exactly what it is and how we do it and all the things, I want to talk about where this came from from the beginning because I think you sort of got your origin story for this and I kind of have mine. So I want to ask you, When was you know, tell me a little bit about how this process began for you in sales?

5:38 What necessitated it? And how did you kind of start doing it? So this might sound like a weird starting point, but again, this is going to date myself on how old school my approach was. Do you remember the desk calendars? The paper desk calendars? Oh, yeah. Like the big ass one? Oh, yeah. Each month you'd take that sheet off and then you'd have the next full month sitting in front of you on your desk. Absolutely. So that always had eight. So each day had eight lines. And so many, many, many moons ago, actually Mark, so my uncle Mark, so a little shout out to the book I recently released, but uncle Mark. Go grab that on Amazon, by the way.

6:20 Just go on Amazon, type in uncle Mark. I already have it, dude. It's right here. Grab Brooks' book. Oh, look, he's showing me. Grab Brooks' book on Amazon, uncle Mark. Okay. That's a tongue twister. Go ahead. All right, derail. So Uncle Mark, back in the day, we used to manage our calendar, not in a digital calendar. But when we when we would book appointments, it was always on that paper calendar. And so each day we had eight slots. So it was like, OK, great. What day? What appointment do we have? Everything was done in pencil. And it was literally here's how I'm managing my schedule. Now, the schedule then doubled as my follow up schedule. document. So anytime I'd meet with somebody that was like, Ooh, this is somebody who I'm going to work with, you know, somebody I need to follow up with, I would basically just use a highlighter.

7:05 And I have like 15 different colors of highlighters in my drawer. Yeah. And I would highlight the names based on who was like green was gangster, right? Yellow was like, okay, I definitely need to follow up with them. And then the pink highlighter was like, okay, if there's time, let's check in with them. So that was my OG original system was that giant calendar. And based on who I followed up with, I would highlight with colors. And that was basically the extent of it. So when you started, I'm curious, when you started doing that, what were some of the things that you noticed? Did it start to increase your conversion percentage? Were you just seeing fewer leads slip away?

7:47 What were you noticing? Yeah. So the thing that was really interesting is no one else at that time was doing any form of follow-up. So everyone back in the day, they were literally, it was whatever was in front of them, they would sell and that was it. And they were gone. Immediately doing the follow-up, we started to see like, okay, there's actually a huge difference in our production. Because I started back then and now keep in mind, I wasn't super calculated. I wasn't locking these in for a follow up time and I didn't have a system and a procedure. And we weren't using a lot of the methodologies we're using now in our follow up game in terms of the psychological pieces. But going back to then, no one else was doing it. I was generating an extra. So we were usually enrolling about 20 to 30 percent in engagement number one.

8:31 But we were pulling in another 10% to 15% enrollment off of the follow-up on the back, which, again, for you math wizards who don't like numbers, you're like, oh, whoop-de-doo, 10% to 15%. No, no, no. So that was like a 50% increase on our total enrollment. That's huge. Yeah. And again, we weren't spending more money on leads. We weren't going and having to do more ad creatives. These were people we were already talking to. And by simply having a very rudimentary, simple, old school way of follow up, we were getting a 50% higher enrollment rate off of the business that we had coming through the door. A 50% higher enrollment rate.

9:11 Yes, please. I'll take that. Um, how about you? What was, what was your OG whip? So, you know, is, is really, this is funny when I, when I first got into, when I first got into oil and gas, um, you know, I'd had sales positions before, but, uh, I mean, really all throughout my life. But when I first got into oil and gas and I was going out and I was, I was meeting, you know, meeting with a lot of people, I'd go out and, you know, go on these, in these rural areas and go out to people's farms and stuff like that. And, you know, and meet people.

9:53 And I, I, I remember it's funny because, and you would know this about me. Like I, I, I will absolutely just go do something, but there's also... I function much better with systems. When there's a system, I like a lot of the bullshit reasons why I'm not going to do something, like go away. And I'll never forget when I first was kind of wrapping my brain around everything and I'd have like an area that I was working on or there would be, you know, a specific... section of a map that I was going to go work.

10:35 Right. And I'd have to go out and figure out like who owns the mineral rights on all these properties that are in here. And then I'd have to kind of compile a list of like, okay, you know, what's their name? What's their address? That kind of thing. And I remember spending a lot of time on this list, not just after I first got going, I just felt totally disorganized. I didn't really have a system for tracking my conversations and also like... highlighting who was like a hard no, who just needed more follow-up, like what were their hang-ups, what were their questions, that kind of thing. And then also tracking from a dollar value figure, like basically what did this represent?

11:22 If I went out and I acquired this lease, like what did it represent? And it was actually a little bit of an inverse situation because basically, While technically I was really selling something, which was the opportunity that was involved if you go sign the oil and gas lease, I was definitely buying something from them. And so I always knew I had a number associated to it. And I would also... I would also rank them based on like if somebody had a huge amount of acreage, but it was sort of like way on the fringe, like, you know, but if it was like right in a core area, I would rank it.

12:05 And I would also rank it based on what I perceive to be their influence in the community. And I'll never forget at the beginning is funny because my dad calls me up one day and he's like, hey, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm like, oh, I'm at the coffee shop. I'm just working on my, you know, I'm working on my list right now. And he's like, Ryan. the fuck are you doing working on your list like get in your car and go fucking talk to some people and i'm like you just hold the phone here i i know what i'm doing i gotta figure this out i can't i can't do it that way it's not how i work and at the end of the day just in case anybody wonders i was right because there isn't anybody that i've ever known that can buy leases better than i did um not anybody Uh, so it worked system.

12:55 Can I, can I, I want to rewind one piece that you just had in there. Cause I think it's so critical and it is literally, it's the crux and why so many people don't follow up. And so there's something you did that was really magical within that, that most people skip and it's why they dodge it. So something that you hit in there was you put a value to the person or the contract or the deal that was there. Yeah. And why I want to double click on this. The number one reason people avoid follow-up is emotions. They get pissed. The person didn't buy. Now I got to follow up with them. Now I got to chase them. They're probably going to dodge me again. We go through this whole story and we take it personal if somebody moves into a follow-up zone.

13:39 And you did something really, really magical. And so in my phase one, I was not that attuned to my follow-up procedures. It was very, right, highlighters. That was the game. But for you, you did something really, really critical that I think is often skipped, which is you put down the opportunity cost. And so when you track that opportunity cost, so when I went to phase two, by the way, so when I moved on up in the world and I went digital. You went moving on up like George and Wheezy. Moving on up. So I did the same thing. So I had like, here's the name. I ABC'd one, two, three. I was way more pimped out than highlighters.

14:20 But I also did the same thing. I had my opportunity cost there. And I had a tabulator so I could always see. And the way I talked about it in my own mind, I'm like, what's in my vibrational escrow right now? So this was back in the Abraham days for anybody who saw the secret back in the day. For our woo crowd. But it was literally titled Vibrational Escrow. And it would tabulate that total amount that was sitting out there. And that's the part that would get me fired up to want to go chasing. Because I was like, man, I don't have to go get new business. I don't even have to have new conversations. I just have to go back to the people who I already made the investment in. And I got to help them navigate through their fear. And that became way more important to me than drumming up new.

15:01 So I thought it was an interesting piece read. Yeah. Well, thank you for highlighting it, because I think it's something that that I didn't even I don't know that I realized the importance of it until after, you know, I started closing bigger and bigger deals. But I expand on vibrational escrow. How do you describe that? So. All right, so I'm going to go to... So business number one, they were like, there's no such thing as the follow-up game. And I'm like, oh yeah, we'll prove you wrong. And we got about a 10% to 15% bump. When I switched into... Actually went to work for Buffini and Company. So this was more of a... Well, I shouldn't say more of. This was an actual coaching sales gig, right?

15:44 So I was selling coaching. I was selling coaching services. Like that was the shoot and match. When I went into the digital tracker... It was a way, way different piece. Are you getting dogs in the background? My dogs, my dogs came to say hi to everybody today. So I can't control them. They're, they're on the other side of the house. So they're going to be on the, on today's episode. But when I went to Bethany and company, I really wanted to, to look at who are these people that are out there that need our help. There was a different game of what I was, what I was actually selling because I, I truly saw it as a transformational thing. It was a transformational product. So the vibrational escrow piece was, okay, I've made an investment.

16:26 I've planted a seed into the universe on this initial sales engagement I had with this prospect. So to me, I'm like, I've planted a seed in the universe that just hasn't sprouted yet. And so follow-up for me was a reaping the harvest. So I really got into this whole like mindset game of like, am I hunting or am I farming? Just so happens to be that was our theme for last month within our mastermind. It was. But... The first call for me was I'm in hunting mode. Any moment I went into follow up, I was like, I made a mental shift, a state change of now I'm going into farming. And it wasn't that it was dead. Like, oh, I took my one shot with my rifle.

17:06 I had one bullet and now I missed the elk and now I'm going to go home empty handed and I can't feed my family. I was like, okay, I took the shot in that first call. Now, instead of thinking like, okay, great, I missed out on that opportunity. Now it's like, okay, great. I planted a seed and I'm going to come back and I'm going to water the seed and I'm going to love it and I'm going to stroke it. I'm going to, sorry, Tommy boy reference. I know. That's one of my favorite clips in that whole fucking movie. My little pet. And then I kill it. But as it related to this, it was, okay, I'm going to give myself, and this is crazy when I give you the number on it because it ties into so many reports. But I'm going to give myself five follow-ups.

17:48 So five times going to the garden to see a fruit ended up on the tree. And if there's no fruit on the tree after five go-rounds, okay, great. That tree is not going to bear fruit. Now, metrically, reports, data, however you guys wanna look at this, how you wanna splice it, there's so much research that has shown that it's after the fourth and fifth follow-up that is your most likely chance of getting somebody to enroll and purchase from you. So, yeah, it was very cool how that played out. But there was definitely a psychological shift that played that wove into the approach. Here's the lesson in that. If you are transactional, if you approach this transactionally, this does not work.

18:33 Period. End of story. It just doesn't. And so what I want you to do is I want you to wash out that nasty commission breath that you got going on. Put some fucking heart-centered mouthwash in your mouth and, you know, get the commission breath gone. Because the deal is... I love the way that you phrase that. And I also think that in order to do it well, you have to be willing to invest in a relationship. Like when you go back to my oil and gas days, like that was a necessity. I could... It was so...

19:13 It's so interesting because in so many of the sales situations that exist today, especially in the world that we play in most often, which is where we're doing sales calls on Zoom or on a phone call or something like that. If you... if you piss somebody off, well, the call just, you know, call ends. You, you know, you're done with zoom, whatever. You're never going to see him again. It's not an issue. In my case, when, when I was, you know, when, when I was out there, you know, being a land man, relationships were everything. I couldn't go in and I couldn't even like going in and making a deal that wasn't totally above board or that I rushed somebody into or something like that was the kiss of death because it wasn't the only deal I was gonna have to make.

20:07 I was gonna have to talk to a whole bunch of other people in this community and if I hadn't fostered and cultivated relationships, I was dead in the water. And so it was the opposite of like in, you know, an instant transactional game. And I love that you had these, you know, kind of this rule of five, so to speak. I think that's really a great way to look at it. And I mean, I've I've certainly found something similar at the end of the day. This boils down to the willingness to have conversations and. And not just one, but, you know, but multiple conversations. Essentially, it's an ongoing conversation that you, you know, that you have with people at the end of the day that ends up getting better results.

20:54 You said something that was really critical. Dude, you keep having these golden nuggets today. I'm like, what? You had your Wheaties. It's going crazy. So... Being relational and making that full commitment, if we look at our lead management, if we look at our business, like, again, I know everyone talks about the word pipeline, but I think that over the course of the last five to 10 years, people think of pipeline of like, lead gets generated, gets automated email, gets sent to this, gets on my calendar, and then they die or they enroll. Right. There's the pipeline stops there. But if we went old school, if we went back to how business used to be done, like Main Street business.

21:35 right? You had to go out and meet people. You had to shake hands. You had to go cultivate and build relationships. And to your point, bad news, or a good news travels fast, bad news travels faster. Yes. And today we have a different animal that's here too, which is you piss somebody off, they'll go postal on social media, or they'll go hit the, you know, the different review websites and you can get nuked in a heartbeat. And you're not just nuked for the moment or to that one person that they told you're nuked for forever. Cause now it's online. Right. So the follow-up game is becoming more critical, I believe, just so that we don't go so heavy-handed in our sales game that we tarnish relationships. But we have to look at our business as a relationship engine that we're constantly building.

22:18 We're adding new people to it, that we're deepening those relationships. We're getting, and again, especially bringing AI into the whole ecosystem. If you have a transactional business, I'm just going to call it tight right now. You are screwed. Because if you are straight transactions, that AI is going to do transactions better than you within six months from now. It is a guarantee. I mean, it's technically already here. It's already doing it better than a lot of people. Yeah. So if you don't have the relationship piece, if you don't have that heart and soul connection component woven into your business, I hate to say it. If you're in the coaching world, you're toast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think one of the other components I want to hit on before we move into the process and all of that good stuff and exactly the nuts and bolts of what it is.

23:06 I think that one of the things that's really important is to boil this down to what we're actually here to do. And I think you're listening to this right now. You need to ask yourself, when you're going out and selling your service, or if you've got salespeople, your salespeople are going out and selling your service or your product. What are you actually there to do? And I want to make a bold statement right now that flies in the face of pretty much everything that we hear in sales, which is that we are not here to close people. We are here to guide decisions. Let me just say it again. We're not here to close people. We are here to guide decisions.

23:47 And when you take, notice just the difference between the two. One feels harsh and rigid and transactional. The other one feels fiduciary. There's a responsibility there, right? And I think that if you can anchor into that second one, it changes everything. Because if you're truly there to guide decisions, well, some people are going to be ready to make decisions quickly. Some people have context that other people don't. Some people have come to a point where that, you know, the threshold for the pain that they're in. is at a high. Some people, it's still just sitting in the background.

24:34 But if you're really the guide in that journey, it's also something that's done with somebody instead of to somebody, which is one of the biggest complaints that we get about sales in general. If someone has ever had a bad sales experience... Or if you have a perception of sales as being icky, yucky, you know, I don't like to do that. Well, it's probably because you've had somebody do something to you. Or you've been told that you ought to act transactionally and go out there and be doing something to somebody. And this is how we're going to quote unquote close. Stop closing. Start guiding.

25:14 Everything changes from that place forward. And I'll double down on that with you. I agree 1 million percent. And I know there's been a lot of people out there that have said, don't coach in your sales process. Don't coach on the call. We're full agreement. You shouldn't be coaching people to full-blown breakthroughs and an initial sales engagement. But when their fears come up, which is just a fancy way of saying objections come up, we over the top, heck, coach them through their fear. Coach them through, help them get a breakthrough when it comes to their limiting beliefs as it pertains to moving forward and staying stuck. So yeah, sales...

25:54 Sales should feel amazing because you're helping people transform. You're helping people on their journey. You're helping people, to your point, using the word guide. I think it's such a perfect word for this. But yeah, I'd say let's dig in. Let's dig into the whip. Let's actually get into the meat and potatoes of this bad boy. Let's whip it. All right. So the first piece of this, before we even dive into the different components, is the presupposition that you are doing what you need to do, which is foundational to your business. And Brooke and I believe wholeheartedly that that is having conversations. Before you're going off, this goes back to what we call our pre-marketing pyramid, right?

26:35 where before we're going off and doing things like running paid ads and worrying about lead capture and all of that kind of stuff, we need to get comfortable, especially as a business owner, having conversations about our service, about our business with people in our network. And... I want to kind of start there because in the absence of the willingness to have conversations, everything that I'm about, everything we're about to go through is useless. So I just want to say that right now. If you're not willing to have conversations around your business and or at worst, you have someone who is going to go have conversations about your business, you might as well shut this fucker off right now.

27:20 If you are, then it's good. We got something for you. But I just want to ask you really quickly. Why not just go? Why do we even have to have the fucking conversation? Why not just go buy leads, you know, and straight into paid advertising and try to send people direct to cart? Why do we have to have a conversation? So some businesses can, right? And we see that. We see a lot of stuff that's just sold online. This industry, this business, here's the reality. It's an intangible. So you sign up for coaching. What can you take, put in a wheelbarrow, walk out the store with like there's literally nothing there.

28:03 So you have an intangible. And even though coaching has been around now for, let's just call it 20, 30, 40 years, somewhere in that range in terms of as a concept, it's still not a widely understood thing. And each person's approach to coaching is radically different. And at the end of the day, it's, If you're a really good coach, you're selling on emotion, not on logic, because if this was a totally logical sale, it would be, oh, I buy this widget to solve this problem, take my money. I'm going to go do a thing with it. That's not what coaching is. That's not what consulting is. That's not what therapy is for that matter. So in my opinion, why we need to have this, it's, well, let me add one other piece to the mix.

28:44 If you have a very, very low ticket offering, you can play that game because of very low risk to the consumer. Yep. The moment you move into mid pricing to high ticket, high pricing to super high pricing because of the value you bring. you're going to have to be able to engage and have a deep conversation that gets into the freaking heart and soul of things. Yeah, I agree with that a thousand percent. And I would just simply say as well that on that front, you know, this is, if you deliver, and this is just about coaching, as you said, a couple of other words in there, therapy, you know, consulting. I think if you deliver a service in some way, shape or form that is a premium value, this is applicable.

29:30 And here's the interesting thing. There are a lot of businesses that sell things that are inexpensive enough, and it is maybe even service-based things that are inexpensive enough, that a conversation isn't required. The only problem with that is that that then gets you into the volume game. And when you're in the volume game, you're also going to end up at some point or another, probably in the price game. And that is a fast race to the bottom. So specifically who we're talking about here, look, if you've got some kind of widget that you're selling, this conversation is irrelevant.

30:11 Um, but if, if you, if you sell a service, if you do workshops, if you take, if you're a practitioner and you take people in person for one thing or another, um, we would certainly advocate that you get yourself to a point where you're charging a premium price for what you're doing. So you don't have to play the volume game. It's better for you. It's better for your customer. And when you get there, it absolutely is going to necessitate a conversation. Um, so now that we know, you know, okay, we're in agreement, we're going to go out and have conversations in our business, kind of breaking down how we put together, uh, you know, what we call our whip list, our work in progress list.

30:54 One of the things I think is really key about this dude, uh, is, is, you know, I, at the beginning of the episode, I talked about this kind of being a tool to cultivate abundance. And I want to explain why I, I, I, I said that. I think that in business, especially when you're running your own business, and even if you're a sole salesperson, a lot of times it can feel this way. We can oftentimes get into situations where maybe revenue, if you're a business owner, is not super smooth. If you're a salesperson, maybe your sales are kind of up and down a little bit. And... Anytime that we're the one at the end of the day, if you eat what you kill and you're the one that's going to be responsible at the end of the day, when the money's not there or you perceive that the opportunities are not there, we go into scarcity.

31:50 And if we go too far down that rabbit hole, we all know, I'm going back to the secret law of attraction. We're just going to get back more, right? We'll just get back more. And that's a danger zone because we were in danger of staying stuck there. So first of all, I really believe that this is a tool that helps us to stay in abundance because... We start with the conversations. We commit to those conversations, right? And as we're having them, we then start to document the people, the conversations, the opportunities, all of the things. And that then becomes the reminder that, oh my gosh, right?

32:34 Okay, wait a minute. I don't actually need to go get, you know, 5,000 new email addresses to get, you know, to get to my monthly goal. Holy shit, it's all right there. Talk about this for a minute because you and I have seen it. Like, we've been in this game together and have done this process together multiple times when we were at stuck points or thought like, oh my gosh, we've got to do something that, you know, we've never done before when we realized like, oh my gosh, it's all right there. Fire drill. No, it's interesting. So I want to set one framework within this and then I want to share a couple examples that I think are pertinent to it. This is really a smaller piece of a bigger fundamental.

33:17 And the fundamental is lead management because that's really what we're talking about. So you have lead management on the front end of how well do you steward your leads on the front end before you actually have a sales engagement. How well do you manage your leads after you've had a sales engagement on the back end? If we want to go biblical for a minute, I'm going to grab my pulpit. For those of you that don't know, my dad was a pastor growing up. So I'm going to make a biblical reference here. But the parable of the talents. If you really look at your business, like what are the talents that are actually given to you in your business? It's your leads. How well you manage those talents is going to determine how many more you are given. And so I think there's a bigger piece of this, which is how well do you manage the leads on the front?

33:57 Are you only going to talk to people that self-schedule on your calendar? Or are you going to actually work and cultivate the leads on the front and so in the front, so in the back, right? And we reap what we sow. Oh, we're going to drop a bunch today. But I think there's this piece of how much do you care about the people you're working for? Right. And this is a key distinction. How much do you care about the people you're working for and not letting them give up on their dreams because they give into their fears? And are you going to build a system that supports and edifies that belief? Because you and I have talked how many thousands of coaches have we spoken with that go? I love my clients. I'm here to transform humanity. We get into follow up and they're like, fuck them.

34:41 So true. It's like a polar, like, wait, I thought you cared about this. I'm so confused. It's like, no, you don't actually feel that way. You're just pissed because you feel like you're wasting your time and you go back in the spiral. So I think there's a fundamental piece that's behind this. And it goes back into like, how well are you going to steward your business and how well are you going to steward your clients? Now, all of that said, I want to use a different industry for this because I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense. So we had a client who came to us beginning of last year. So early 2025. Okay. So his industry is high end home build. So design, custom home build, remodel deal, right?

35:24 He was stressing because his cashflow was not where he wanted it to be. He was not set up. He was looking at like his world of his business and he was freaking out. And my first question to him was, what's your pipeline look like? And his response was, what are you talking about? What you talking about, Willis? So this is a $10 million a year business and no pipeline. Okay. So the first thing we did was we pulled up our iPhones at the same time. I created a little note and I shared it with him so that way we both could see it. And guess what we've done for the last year and however many months it's been is Every single week, the first thing we start off the meeting with is celebrations.

36:06 We then immediately look at what's in the pipeline. And at the top of the pipeline, it says, what's in your vibrational escrow? And it says the total dollar amount and his job every week. If he gets a new lead, he gets a new conversation. If anyone on his team is talking to somebody, it goes on his whip list. Hmm. And now here's the fascinating piece. He crushed last year's numbers and he's on pace to do almost 50 to 60% more this year. That is literally the foundational fundamental piece we look at. Now, every single lead that goes on there, first column is ABCD. A's are, I have very high certainty that this person is going to enroll. B is, okay, maybe there's a strong chance, but I got to do some massaging.

36:46 C's are, I have no freaking clue. D's are the donkeys. It's like, oh, man, I have this conversation with them. I don't even know if I want to work with them, but I'm going to put them on the list because God or the universe may have a different idea here. And that's literally been every single week we meet the first 30 minutes is looking at the pipeline. I love this. And first of all, I love it as a core process. And by the way, you're listening to this right now. If you've never done this, I'm going to make a challenge to you. Go find an accountability buddy. If you are part of our mastermind, come on the sales call every week. Get an accountability buddy. And talk about your pipeline, even into text message.

37:30 Hey, what's in your pipeline this week? you will be amazed at what happens. And there are two things I want to pull out of this. First of all, just staying on this really quickly, and we're big fans of the Tony Robbins saying, where focus goes, energy flows, right? So if you're consistently looking at the opportunities that are available to you, That's exactly where your focus is going to go. If every week you're not doing that and you're going, oh, my God. Oh, yeah. But and you're looking at your bank account. Oh, but it's not. But, you know, I don't have enough money and I don't have enough leads.

38:12 And you're in lack and limitation. And you're talking to everybody in your world about, oh, people ask how you're doing. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, it's just really tough right now. I'm just, you know, just really kind of struggling, you know, whatever. Where are your opportunities and how much are you focusing on that? That'd change everything. You mentioned this earlier, right? So it's a domino effect because if you don't have a pipeline where you're seeing opportunity, our neural connectivity to what is wrong or what's going to hunt us, like back in the day it was saber-toothed tigers. Now it's, I don't have enough leads. Yeah. Same neurological response takes place, but this is where it dominoes in. If we're in lack and limitation and we're in that space of, oh crap, I don't have enough.

38:56 And then we do have an opportunity that comes on. Guess what we see? And we, you and I've seen that. I don't even know how many times they're not qualified. Let me tell you all the reasons. They're a happy client. We see what's wrong in the person. We see what's not an opportunity in front of us versus seeing this is why they need me. This is how I can help this. Oh, thank God they put them in front of me. I am the person to transform their world. I see all the opportunities in this situation, in this engagement. And if you don't, you end up getting commission breath and then you go transactional because now you need the sale versus having a desire to serve the person. It all starts with the pipeline domino.

39:36 Are you tracking and measuring your opportunities? Are you staying in a space of abundance? Are you paying attention to that vibrational escrow? Or are you just consistently rewiring limitations, lack, scarcity? Oh, shit. I've got to close them. I've got to close them. I've got to close them. Now I feel out of alignment. I'm an asshole. This is icky. I don't like sales. Like, no, you're just doing it wrong. So true. And I'm going to drop a little grenade in the pond because we've been talking about like, you know, really kind of connecting with your heart to what to these people and what they need and our fiduciary responsibility and our our, you know, vibrational escrow and all the things. Here's the one sticking point for those of you that are going, yeah, oh, man.

40:20 Oh, I love that. That feels really good. Here's the sticking point for you. Listen in carefully right now. you are going to resist tracking this. I fucking promise you will. In fact, I would be willing to bet you have not done it up till now. Like you're all like, Ooh, yeah, that feels really good and warm and fuzzy. And now you're starting to get me to like sales track. What? I don't want to do that. Listen, let me just be straight up with you right now. If you are a business owner, and you are not tracking key metrics in your business, you might as well just get out of business right now because you're going to fucking be out of business anyway before too long because that is not sustainable, period, end of story.

41:07 But Ryan, I don't like being micro-matched. But I worked for somebody. I didn't like having to track everything, so I wanted to work on my own and be an entrepreneur. You're going to track your metrics and you're going to like it. Here's the thing. You have to come strong today. You have to track this. And this one is a great one to start with. Because to be honest with you, honestly, Brooke, I just built this brand new shiny dashboard, which I'm really excited to unveil to our clients. But... The truth is that a lot of times people don't track because they get overwhelmed with understanding the numbers and things of that nature.

41:51 This is so simple. If you cannot track this in particular, if you won't or feel like you quote unquote can't track your conversations, You don't have any business being in business. Sorry. Straight up. Okay. So the first key is having a notepad, a spreadsheet, whatever. And you've got the names of the people that you're in conversation with. You've got their details on there, phone, email address, other things that maybe are pertinent to your specific service or offer. You have the opportunity value there.

42:33 On our super simple one, we've got what is the potential cash opportunity, meaning what would they pay up front if they said yes. We have the total contract value. Um, and then we've also just got like a couple of dates on there. Like we've got a date that says, Hey, this is the date they said yes, or they, you know, committed or they paid me. And then we have last contact date and we've got some notes. Um, and I don't want you to don't scramble to write this down because we're actually going to do you a solid and we're going to give you, uh, we're going to give you our whiplist tracker along with some simple instructions on how to do this.

43:14 We'll link it up in the show notes. Uh, so it'll be there whether you're listening to the podcast or you're watching on YouTube. Uh, we'll link that up so that you can go grab that. I'm going to highly recommend that you do that because again, this is, this is vital. But one thing I want to go back to really quickly, uh, that I think is really important to hit on is going back to this scoring thing. Uh, As a business owner or purely as a salesperson, one of the things that we must do is we must manage our time properly. And if you're not taking the time to evaluate, not just put your opportunities on paper, but actually evaluate the opportunities and score them A, B, C, D, which is the way that we do it.

44:00 then you're in danger of somebody who is a D score getting exactly the same amount of time on your calendar as somebody who's an A. That is not a recipe for good business or good sales. No, and the reality is this, you know, this concept of everyone's equal. Yes, everyone's soul is equal in the grand scope of things, but how people behave is not equal. And so you want to be really mindful that you're allocating your time. You want to be giving 80% of your activities to the 20% that's going to turn the needle. And so really, really look at this tracker as a way of going great.

44:41 How am I prioritizing my tasks? Where do I need to put my attention? The other thing that I think is really important, and just I referenced the gentleman who has the home building business. Now, instead of him freaking out, he doesn't have enough in his pipeline in the totality of it. Now he's on a hunt to how do I get more A's? I need to have at least 10 A's in my pipeline. And his focus has shifted to not the pipeline in general, but specificity within it, because he knows if he has enough A's, he will always hit his targets. So there's this element, you know, you mentioned earlier where focus goes, energy flows. But I will tell you one other really critical piece. What gets tracked and measured improves. Yes.

45:21 So you want to make more money, you want to grow your business, what gets tracked and measured improves. And if you want to know the number one thing like this, we should actually title this episode, the cornerstone. This is the cornerstone of your business. If you don't track pipeline, you're missing your cornerstone and your buildings very crumbly. Amen. Amen. Very crumbly. Speaking of which, total sidebar, but you know I was totally on the crumble cookie thing for a while there. I knew that was coming. I needed an intervention. And actually, crumble is crumbling. It's not going so hot. Oh, yeah. I don't have a pipeline. That's exactly right. Not enough pipeline because their service is maybe a wee bit too niche.

46:05 Uh-oh. Uh-oh. But anyway. Yeah. Crumbles crumbling. Anyway. Dude, this was so good. I love all the insight. And I hope that you found this to be a really simple process. Here's the truth. Good business is about fundamentals and simplicity done well done right over and over and over and over again. All the other whiz bang shit is a nice to have. This is an absolute must have. So hopefully this was helpful for you in understanding the why behind it. And again, we'll link up. a downloadable version of our whipless tracker, uh, in, uh, uh, in the show notes, uh, both on audio and on YouTube.

46:47 And, um, uh, until next time, I just got one thing to say. Whip it. You were most good. Thanks, everybody. See you next time. Thanks for listening to the Path to Mastery podcast. If you got value from this, leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. And if you know another entrepreneur who needs to hear this, do us a solid and send it their way. We'll catch you next time on the Path to Mastery podcast.