Making Sales Great Again With Ryan Stewman

CEO of Hardcore Closer – Ryan Stewman

The ONE thing you should start doing right now to make your sales great. How to find the right people that WANT what you’re selling AND have the money to afford it. (And how to never ever attract a wrong prospect again!) How to turn your sales into the easiest thing in the world. (If you ever felt selling is like pulling teeth for you then you need to listen to this.)

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• 10DayHustle.com

Check out HardcoreCloser.com for more info.

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I am Jamie Masters and today on the show we have Ryan Stewman from HardcoreClosers.com or Hardcorecloser. You're amazing. We've already been laughing like crazy. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Ryan:	I'm excited to be here. I think this is the first video show I've ever done with a hat on so I feel like I'm wearing a shower cap like I rushed to get my make up on. [Inaudible] [00:04:40].

Jaime Masters:	Exactly. Because I told you this after that fact.

Ryan:	This could be a new look for me.

Jaime Masters:	I was like "Oh, by the way. It's a video. We told you that, right?" He's like "Ah, yeah, no. No. No. You didn't." Sorry about that, but it looks awesome and I love your background. So impressed with that so make sure if anyone's not watching the video right now that they go check it out because it is awesome. And check out his hat. Tell us what you do at HardcoreCloser.com.

Ryan:	I sell digital products, e-learning products to sales people. Right. To - in all sorts of industries to help folks out. I've been doing this for seven - yeah, six years now. Almost seven years. It's crazy how fast time flies by, you know? But we're one of the largest providers of digital learning products to the sales force. We have a lot of companies on board with us and individuals and stuff. It's really cool. So - 

Jaime Masters:	So, do you normally work with solopreneurs or companies as far as sales? Or is sales the same across the board no matter what?

Ryan:	No. Sales isn't the same across the board, but over the years that I've been doing this we've created different products for different - so we have stuff for solopreneurs. We have stuff for business. We have stuff for car sales people, insurance sales people, mortgages, real estate so we've niched it out and adapted it into each, I guess, niche or whatever that's out there that people have asked us for.

Jaime Masters:	Are we trying to get those used car salesmen to be less sleazy?

Ryan:	It's - these days thanks to the internet it's really hard to rip somebody off on a car unless you're just dumb enough not to go to the internet. You gotta know to go to the internet, right? But, yes, I'm trying to make the sales respectable. Like make America great again. Making sales great again. Right? That's me over here.

Jaime Masters:	I really appreciate that because people know my story. I hated sales when I was younger. I worked for Kirby Vacuum Cleaner and thought all sales was stupid. And then moved in and found a mentor that actually taught me how to do sales in an ethical, awesome way. So, let's actually go and dive into - because I want people at the end of this podcast to go "Oh, my gosh. I feel like I can take away a sales skill or two that will actually make me more money." So, Ryan, please help us. What do we do? If they're a solopreneur or maybe have a couple employees. What's the best No. 1 sales skill tactic that we could do?

Ryan:	Well, honestly, you're probably expecting some kinda fancy word tracks like "Look, you say this and all of the sudden they're like "Take my wallet."" Right. But that's not what happens so -

Jaime Masters:	Darn.

Ryan:	Honestly, the best think that you can do in sales because sales is a series of agreements. The close is the part where you get paid. Right? So, you could be selling all the way through the whole process and then you don't get paid until you close which is where they exchange money for whatever it is that you have. Well, what happens is a lot of people - they start selling the wrong stuff on that path to the close and so the biggest advice that I would give anybody and I think the most important thing about sales is get clear on exactly who it is that you want to sell to or that can buy your product. Right? Because a lot of people, they get into something like Kirby Vacuums. 

	You might think everybody that has carpet needs a Kirby Vacuum, but I promise you the people in the trailer park up the street, they don't have $1,200 for a vacuum nor do they want to clean their place. You know what I mean? And so you make sure that the language you use when putting yourselves on the process you're on runs those people off and attracts the right people you want. And so, again, it's not some sort of fancy set of word tracks or whatever. The best advice is you need to get clear on exactly who it is that you can sell to or that can buy your product and then make sure you're inside their head and do everything you can to make sure they buy your stuff.

Jaime Masters:	Okay. So, how do we find those right people? A lot of people ask that question.

Ryan:	So, think about your - that's a great question too. Right? So, how do you find out who it is? Well, you know there's a - what do you call them? There's a prototype. Right? There's a person that is out there that your company sells to over and over again. Sometimes we sell to just men. Sometimes we sell to just ladies. Sometimes we sell to people that are in the fit industry. Right? It might be someone who works out or it might be someone - so you have an idea. The best way if you're already making sales is to think about the last 15 or 20 sales that you made and the people that you liked working with. Write down their qualities and why you liked working with them. 

	And the people that drove you nuts that you wished that you wouldn't have taken their money. Write down what drove you nuts about them and then you start getting real clear on what you want from the good customers and what you don't want from the bad customers. And you'll use that language accordingly. Like, for example, when I first started my sales pitch was - and I started off with loan officers only and I was like "Hey, if you're not closing at least $2,000,000 a month in mortgages then fill out this form for a free strategy session." And I wasn't really clear on who that was other than somebody that was struggling. And that isn't who I wanna work with. 

	Then I get a whole bunch of leads and everything, but then the problem was that none of them had any money. And I bet a bunch of solopreneurs listen to this or are watching this right now going through the same thing. They're like "I get a bunch of leads, but nobody has any money." So, I changed my pitch up completely and I said "Hey, listen if you're not doing at least $2,000,000 a month then I don't want to work with you. Please don't waste my time and fill out the form." Well, I went from like 100 leads a day to 3, but guess what I would make 2 sales. Right? 

	Because I got clear exactly - I was like "Hey out of all these hundreds of applications that I'm taking I'm certain I don't want these people anymore so I switched it up." Next thing you know the sales actually become easy because I'm actually doing something for the right person with the right product and everything else.

Jaime Masters:	I love how you use the copyrighting on that side. Because usually people will go "Well, how do I know who actually has the money to pay me?" Especially, let's say your niche is service professionals and you're like "Well, I have no idea how much money they actually made." So, that way I don't know if they have enough money to pay me or not before I hop on the phone with them. So, how else can we figure that out?

Ryan:	Well, so, I'm pretty blunt. On our applications it says you must be making at least $20,000 a month to be able to fall into this program or $50,000 a month to fall into this program. So, we're pretty selective about how we do stuff kinda like you're selective on who you have on the show here. Right? You had me write a bunch of stuff down about how much money I had and all this other stuff. So, we're kinda the same way because we know that you're gunna have to get in, you're gunna have to buy technologies, you're gunna have to run advertising campaigns because people don't just know who you are. There's like all this other stuff that is involved in sales in the modern marketplace. Alright. 

	Sales isn't just a "Hey, pal. What brought you in today?" anymore. Right? It's getting on the internet, getting in front of people, getting the message out there, getting them on the phone, having a conversation with them and getting some money from them in exchange for the product that they wanna buy from you. And so one of the best things to do is like be very specific in the language that you use. Who it's for and who it's not for. I used to say in my blog posts ' I don't have to do this anymore because it's assumed at this point. But when I was first starting out as a solopreneur my main thing was I would say "Hey, listen. 

	If you're lazy, if you don't like to work, if you're looking for a push button scheme, if you're looking for something that's gunna be only a couple hours a week that you're gunna have to get into, I'm not your guy. Please don't fill out the form because this won't work for you." Meanwhile if you're one of those guys that likes to work 12 hours a day for 90 days straight and punish yourself until you're done with something, we're gunna get some shit done. Right?

Jaime Masters:	It's so important to be able to qualify because I remember when I first hopped online. I was like "Oh, leads." And then after hours on the phone of helping people, that was nice, and making no money at all. I was like "Oh, this is learn my lesson." I'm not gunna do that again. And so the hard thing is a lot of people go "I don't wanna ask people how much money they're making. Or I don't wanna be that specific." I loved how you specifically said "If you're lazy." How do we figure out what those things are so that way we only talk to those people?

Ryan:	Perfect. So, I get it. In the beginning I didn't want to ask people how much money they made either. At this point, I'm like "Ah, if you don't fit, you don't fit."

Jaime Masters:	Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan:	But in the beginning you've got to be a little bit more selective because you're looking to make testimonials out of people and everything else. So, what you can do is you can figure out the per transaction cost of every deal that they do. So, what I do even sometimes today is somebody gets on the phone and I'll say "How many insurance policies do you write in a month?" If they say 90, I know the average policy is $200. Then they're making almost $20,000 a month. They're doing good. Right? And so if they say "Oh, I'm only writing 20." Then I'm thinking "Oh, they're probably making $2,500 to $4,000 a month. They're not a fit. 

	You know? And so the same thing if somebody gets on the phone with me and "How many mortgages did you write last month? 3"" Unless they're in California it's probably not gunna fit the deal. And people don't mind telling you how many deals they did. They don't like to tell you about sexual stuff between them and their significant other. They don't like to tell you what's in their bank account, but they don't mind telling you how many deals they did last month. And so it's like really minimally invasive to ask somebody that stuff. And they're usually relieved that you didn't ask them about money and they're like "Oh, yeah. I did three deals last month. 

	Thank God you didn't ask me about money or who I was gunna vote for." [Laughter]

Jaime Masters:	Seriously. It's funny we ask - especially if you have day job, what your day job is. You can actually look up whatever their job is and find out how much money they make anyway. So, thank goodness we have the internet nowadays. So, tell me about this though because I love the prequalification that you have, but when we start backing up a little bit more we also get asked the question "Well, how do you even get those people to your website to read the thing that says that?" Do you guys talk about that or do you only talk about the close?

Ryan:	No. So, the close is really the given part in all reality. And so what I believe is the sale is broken down into segments like this - you've got the first sale is for them to read whatever headline is on your advertisement or maybe see a picture or video if that's the case. The second sale is to get them to do whatever that headline tells them to do which is probably see the rest of the advertisement whether it be on Facebook, Google or whatever. The third sale after that is to get them to follow the call to action. In the advertisement you told them to do some quick link, watch a video, whatever the case may be. 

	The fourth sale is when they get to that page for them to read the entire page or watch the entire video or whatever else. Fifth sale is for them to do the call to action on that. Maybe check out. Maybe fill out a strategy session, whatever that is. Then, the sixth sale is once you are in contact with them is getting them to confess whatever their real problem is. The seventh sale is getting them to reveal that they need help from you. And then the last one is when you're like "Okay. I can solve your problem?" and ask them for the business. And that's the close. But we've had to go like eight or nine steps to be able to make it. And it may be 20 steps in your business. 

	It just depends on what you do for a living. But we've had to go a significant amount of steps before we earn the right to close. And so many people are like "Hello. Hey. Give me some money and I'll sell you this product." They skipped all those eight steps in the middle and they go right to the end and wonder why they don't make any money.

Jaime Masters:	See, no wonder. People are probably having aha moments going "No wonder why I can't sell crap because there's nine steps that I haven't even been able to get them through yet." So, I really appreciate you putting it sorta in that. We talk about conversions and stuff, but that means then you have to be an expert at every step of the way. How can you help us get better at all of those steps?

Ryan:	Well, selling is selling. Right? And so you just have to break it - so this is the funniest thing is I have - last week, as a matter of fact, I had 55 entrepreneurs that paid around $5,000 a ticket to be here at an event that we did. So, it was like a pretty good size high-end event that I run four times a year called Break Free Academy. And one of the first things I have everybody do is to write down their sales process, that outline that I just gave you for their business. What happens is once you write that down, guess what? When you hire somebody else you're like "Here's our process." 

	And so not only are you clear which we talked about earlier, you're clear on who you wanna work with and how you're gunna get them to work with you. Now you've also got a duplicable system that's real easy. It didn't take any huge brain power to be able to hand to the next person when you pass the baton down for them to start running. And it's an interesting thing about sales. We tend to overcomplicate everything. We tend to try to explain all this backend structure and everything else, but we don't have to. It's like the simple things that move forward, but you'd be surprised. 

	All these people that are making $100,000, $200,000 a month that come to these events - they have never even thought about breaking down that sales process. And it's not that you have to be an expert across advertising or anything else. You're like "If I was them." But yourself in their shoes. Like, if I was - let's say you're a mortgage person and you wanna work with somebody who wants to refinance their house. Let's just give that as an example. Nobody's like scrolling through Facebook going "I wanna look to refi my house. I'm gunna refi my house. There it is. That's the ad. That's the one I was looking for." 

	If that's the case they're like on Google and then, again, when they type in refinance my house there's hundreds of sites that show up on that front page, all the ads and everything else. It's very competitive, right? So, what you wanna do is you would run an ad that was like "Bills stressing you out? Leverage your house to bail yourself out of debt." That's a little bit of something else. Or if somebody's like wanting to work - buy a house we know they need a real estate agent. But instead of being like "Hi. I'm Ryan. Use me as your real estate agent." We're like "Hey, looking for houses? Use this website to find out the top ten available houses and the best deals in the marketplace today." 

	We're thinking "What would they want?" If someone is wanting to refinance their house, they need more money. Most likely its debt. So, if they see an ad that's like "Get out of debt and leverage your house. No Money out of pocket." They're like "Dude. This is exactly my problem because I need extra money." They're not sitting around thinking "Refinance my house or my car? or any of that stuff." Same thing - so that's the first sell. The second sale is to show them compassion and get them to obviously follow the process that we outline. And it's not that you have to be an expert on every level. Think of it as individual sales. It's like "Okay. How would I sell them to look at this ad? 

	Okay, cool, now they've looked at it. How am I gunna sell them on reading what I wrote here. Okay, cool, I'm selling them on reading that. How am I gunna sell them into - just think of it as individual sales because when you micronize stuff it makes things a lot easier. Now, a lot of people hearing this they may think "Well, you have to be an expert on? - again, they're going form step one to step nine. If they're worried about being an expert at another level they're skipping those eight steps in between because if you just make that sale and compartmentalize it makes it actually really easy.

Jaime Masters:	So, what happens if they're going "Okay, I understand the eight steps and yet I feel like nobody's getting past step whatever, 2, 3 and then they're stuck." And they're like "I'm not an expert at this. I don't - apparently my position - something's wrong and it's not working. What's the best way for them to start figuring that out?

Ryan:	Yeah. That's a good question. So, the good thing is if you have eight steps let's say in your process and you realize that everybody's dropping off on step three, that's the sale that you're blowing. You need to figure out what's wrong with that. Maybe you're not offering them what they want. Maybe you made it about you too quick. Maybe you're already trying to presell them and they see it because it's blatant or something like that, but you need to work on that one individual step because you know the first two steps work because you're getting traffic down the line. Then once you get that up and running they may make another two steps and you may have another broken part of your sales circuit. 

	The key is to fix it and tweak it. It's just like having a - for those of us that do online stuff, having a sales funnel. When you're testing stuff you're like "We got traffic to this page and then it significantly dropped off." Well, this page sucks. Let's fix it and make sure it does a better job of selling people into staying on. It's all the same thing.

Jaime Masters:	Though this is the thing that's a huge pain the butt about sales funnels too, right? Is that you don't totally know who you're getting toward the end until they fill out the form that says "I make $200,000 a month or whatever it is. You don't know even though your sales are technically - your conversions or whatever it is are working as we're going through. You don't know who we're getting until we actually get the people on the other side. So, this is what I see with people they'll - even super simple sales funnels like this. Like, add to whatever. It feels like a ridiculously long process to really get all the steps even working enough because let's say we have eight steps. 

	We have five steps go through the whole process and none of them are really, really a great fit. So, then you're not sure where in that sales funnel it's messed up for that. Does that make sense? So, how do we - I just see so many people frustrated with this side where they're like "Okay, I feel like I got the pieces." We've got some movement in between, but I have no idea how to diagnose." And this is, of course, a high level question. It depends on who this is, but what do you have for advice on how we start trying to deconstruct to what's working and what's not working.

Ryan:	Well, actually, it's kinda like my loan officer offer that I was talking about. If people are just sliding through you're probably not being harsh enough on your offer and you're probably being too general. Because, like I said, I went from 100 leads a down to about 3 to five leads a day. At first, I was scared to death. I'm like "Dude. I'm used to getting four to five leads an hour. What's going on here? Nobody likes me anymore. That offer's gunna kill my whole program. I'm gunna have to file bankruptcy. I'm gunna have to jump off a bridge. It's gunna be the end of the world."

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Ryan:	Then all of a sudden when I called them I was like "Dude, I only made one call today and I closed the guy." And then the next day I was like "I made two calls today and they were both on board. Like, no questions asked." And that's when I realized that I had carried the same message. If somebody's got people sliding through that don't fit the program they need to figure out - maybe you're saying "Hey, free video, free series, free consultation, free strategy session? and you get a bunch of free people showing up. You can't be mad at them. Right? You keep giving them a bunch of free stuff. They'd be a sucker not to take advantage of it. The problem is you keep offering free stuff. 

	Maybe it should be free video, $5 for this, $27 for that and then $1,000 to get on a strategy session or whatever the case. I don't do free strategy sessions anymore. If somebody wants to get on the phone with me it's $1,000. You know what that does? That runs off 99.9 percent of the people out there. Most people would be scared. They'd be like "But you're running off 99 percent of people you could've sold something to." But it's like "Yeah, but I only gotta deal with the 1 or 2 percent that actually wanna take action and do something because if they're willing to give me $1,000 to get on the phone with me, chances are they wanna do something a little bit bigger than $1,000 phone call.

Jaime Masters:	Heck yes. Okay. So, tell me how you get those people to know, like and trust you especially at the beginning. Do you know what I mean? If they don't necessarily - they must know or think that you have the answer in order to pay you $1,000 for hopping on the phone.

Ryan:	Here's where most people fail. And I realized this early on in the game fortunately. I realized it on accident. It's not like I was analyzing data. I was like [inaudible] [00:22:41] and everything. It was nothing like that. But I realized that it took eight months for someone to trust me. And it still takes about six. And even with 115,000 Facebook fans and 21,000 Instagram fans, like we have a  big following at Hardcore Closer and it's still like it takes four to six months right now. And before we had this huge following which has happened in the last year, the wave has tipped in the last year to see what you see in front of you, before that it was a struggle. A year ago, like, I mean, it was a struggle to make bills and stuff. 

	Because I was investing so much into the company. The company was making $50,000 a month for the last three years prior to this last year, but I was dumping every dollar I could back into the company because I wanted to see it grow. Now, we're making $400,000 a month so it's like a complete game change within the last year because I've been able to scale this thing. So - and a matter of fact this is the first video interview I've done from my new office with the Benjamin Franklin behind me and all that stuff.

Jaime Masters:	Okay. I have a thousand questions on this, but continue. Six months. How did you figure out the six month thing?

Ryan:	Alright. Because people would - they would get on the phone and they'd be like "Man, I've been following you for six months." And those would be the people that bought. The new people would just kinda call me and they would heckle me. They're like "Ah, I just wanted to see if you were a real closer or not." And I'm like "If you don't wanna work with me, I don't wanna work with you." That's not a closer thing. We're gunna teach you how to close, but we're gunna be friends and stuff or it's not gunna work out for the two of us. And, but anyway, I realized that people would say "Hey, man, I've been following you for eight months." I'd be like "Yes. They're at the tipping point. They're about to buy." [Laughter] 

	Most people switch their offer up 50 freaking times within eight months and then the people that would come to them and would normally had been that eight month - because they're looking from consistency from you. They're coming to you - I've consistently been Ryan the Hardcore Closer Stewman for six years now. They see that as consistency. I've consistently blogged. I've consistently put out podcasts. Even when someone shows up that eight months went down to four because they can see all the amount of material that's still been the same and I've still been on the same consistency with the same damn offer since 2010. 

	And so - but most people - they can't even keep the same offer eight months because they go for a couple of weeks and they're like "It doesn't work. Ah!" And then they kill it and they come up with another one and they're like "This doesn't work either. Ah!" And then the next thing you know the whole marketplace that's been watching them, they're like "Dude, I'm totally confused with what Ryan's doing over there so I'm not buying anything form him, but I'm gunna go through his funnel and try to ask him what the hell he's doing so at least I could try to help him out. But I'm not buying nothing from him because he's not consistent." 

	And so that was what was fortunate for me was I'm just hardheaded enough to say consistent for eight months because there's like three phases with my clients. And I know this like the back of my hand. Phase one is "This guy is a complete douchebag. Who is this in my newsfeed?" They think that about me. That's their first impression always like "This dude's full of - yeah. Whatever, Douchebag. Right?" The second thing "Oh, but wait, wait, he's actually saying something that's kinda - well, I wonder what else he's got around here?" And the third one is "I'll be damned. He's right. He's actually not that bad." [Laughter] 

	It's like these are the three phases that everybody goes through that sees me for the first time. And sometimes it takes four to eight months and back in the day it took eight months to be able to build that "Oh, dude. He's right. He's not going anywhere? kinda thing.

Jaime Masters:	That's amazing. Okay. So many questions having to do with what you just said. So, No. 1 I love that everybody thinks you're a douchebag at first. I think that's great. At least I've got that going for me. Nobody thinks that for me at first. It's way easier to get someone to like me.

Ryan:	At least I'm aware.

Jaime Masters:	Seriously. That's the thing that people don't understand.

Ryan:	It doesn't bother me.

Jaime Masters:	And so you actually knowing that and being cool with that is very impressive, No. 1. And No. 2 I love how you said there was like this tipping point for you specifically. So, what was that tipping point? How did you go from $50,000 a month to $400,000? What did you guys actually do that made a difference?

Ryan:	So, that didn't happen overnight. We just kept climbing. I'm like a blue chip stock. I'm not trying to - I see a lot of people have meteoric rises and that thing fall right back down in the Atlantic Ocean. And I don't wanna be that. I just wanna be somebody who has consistent growth and so that's what we've done since 2010. But in the last, let's say 18 months and really in the last year, it's turned up. The thing that allowed me to go from $50,000 was I started selling digital products. I used to just do coaching. So, I had a tribe of people that paid $30,000 a year and I had their residuals coming in. I had quite a few people there. 

	It took some support staff and stuff like that to pay and things like that, but I had so many recordings that I was like "Why don't I just turn these into products and organize them and start selling them." And then a hired and trained outside sales team that I took in that works fulltime for me, put a CR in place and trained all of them. And now they sell digital products in what we call the elevator to the top. Somebody may buy a book for $10 or a training program for $27 or a training program for $1,000. But whatever level they get on the elevator at we take them to the next sale. 

	So, when somebody buys something from us for $100, we call them back two weeks later we're like "What's up boss? Did you make some money from that? Is everything working well for you? Hey, listen, if you like that you can bolt on this other service with these autoresponders and stuff like that and then what happens is you get even more traffic so the deals you're doing now escalate. Because if we started trying to sell them top of the line what we have from the beginning, that's like taking someone that's in kindergarten and trying to tell them here's how you pass the bar exam. It's just not gunna happen.

Jaime Masters:	Thank you so much. So, you're getting the leads up front. They're starting to know they can trust you enough to spend $2,700 or whatever. But then you actually hop on the phone and talk to them which nobody really does because in this digital space everyone's like "Oh, we just put them through a funnel and all will be well in the world." But you actually call them.

Ryan:	Oh, you wouldn't believe what we do. Like, we treat people like gold even for $27. This is what happens. So, for $27 you buy the product. You schedule a time to get on the phone with one of our concierge people and they make sure you know how to use the digital product and what the videos are about.

Jaime Masters:	I like that.

Ryan:	We want you to win and then from there my team follows up with you two, three weeks later and they're like "Hey, did you make any sales from that? Do you have any questions for me? Awesome. We'd like to invite you to have exclusive access to X, Y, Z program. It will even credit your $27 towards that." Then they get back on the phone. Concierge walks them through how to use the program again. We treat them like gold all the way up to our $30,000 which is our top of the line product. Does everybody buy the $30,000? Of course not. We have like 60 people that are on that program right now. So, it's not a huge program. Numbers wise it is, but it's not like a lot of people that are on that. 

	But in our Break Free Academy program which is really where most people stop which is really between 2 and $5,000 depending on how you do it. There's 600 people back there on that program. So, most of them start off with $27 and then they bring their offices. They're mortgage, insurance, car sales. There's other people around them. They give referrals. They invite their people. It's like we created this whole little feeding frenzy now.

Jaime Masters:	See, I'm so impressed that you actually are having both online and offline tactics because I feel like a lot of people are like "Digital! That's where it is." And I grew up - well, my mentor way back when was sorta an offline this is how you do it kinda guy. And being able to marry the two and actually check in on people is huge. To me, real companies do that not like those digital marketing, like internet, skeezy, we're just trying to get your $27 and whatever I can do to try and convince you to go higher and higher with 1,000 e-mails and gosh darn sales letters. 

	So, how many sales people do you have on your team and what are they consistently doing every day? Just randomly calling people or scheduling stuff or what?

Ryan:	No. So, I have about eight sales people on my team, but they're not all in direct sales. So, we have two levels. We have the customer service department which is calling people that haven't bought from us and asking them why. Is everything okay? You know our shit's good, why aren't you buying it? A little nicer than that, but you get what I'm saying, right? 

Jaime Masters:	[Laughter] Our shit's good. Come on. 

Ryan:	And then we have the frontline sales guys that we get about 300 leads a day. And so they're trying their best to call, e-mail and reach out, but it's not auto responders. It's real people. My top sales guy, Johnny, closed like $140,000 in sales last month for me. So, we've got guys that are - but here's the thing. Jamie, I made more money than I thought I would ever really make, right? And I got nicer stuff than I should probably own, but my mission when I got in this business was to - there's like 300,000,000 sales people out there. 

	And everybody that's leading them wearing a suit and tie and telling them how they should go to church on Sunday, shouldn't smoke weed, shouldn't be drinking scotch, shouldn't be doing - all these things we're supposed to do as sales people. Drink scotch, smoke weed, do what - how are we gunna deal with this stress, right? We got all these people telling us to get in church on Sunday. Sunday's my only day off and you want me to do something else? And so I wanted to be the real voice for sales people which a lot of people - everybody knows about it, but nobody wants to talk about it. Right? 

	But I come from a real checkered past and it's pretty much an open book on that on the internet. So, I just got it out there and I've been able to connect with so many more people. So, at this point even if somebody doesn't buy our $27 deal and they read one of my 2,000 blog posts and they never say anything to me, the fact that I helped them maybe shift their mind or maybe go make another couple sales even if they're across the pond or on the other side of the planet or whatever the case. Even if somebody's in other planets reading our stuff, if I helped them in some way, that's what it's about at this point more than the money. I wanted to be something that was different. 

	I wanted to speak a different language than the other guys. I wanted people to see when I showed up that I was covered in tattoos and didn't have a suit on, that I'm just in a t-shirt getting back from a CrossFit workout which is what most sales people do. And they hate suits, right? So, I'm like "We all hate them. Why would I quit my job wearing a suit as a suit person in a suit organization and then come over here and then put one on again when I hated that stuff when I worked for somebody else? Why would I hate it working for me?" No I'm gunna wear a t-shirt and shorts.

Jaime Masters:	Seriously.

Ryan:	And that's kinda the dream for sales people, right? To be able to sell enough in any corporate company to be able to dress and act and walk and talk how you want.

Jaime Masters:	Yes. My mentor made me wear suits and red lipstick. And I was 24 and I was like "No. Not cool. I can wear whatever the heck I want? hence you start your own business. Alright. So, tell me - and we live in such an amazing world that we can actually put out free content, have people read it and whether we know who they are or not we can affect people. That's utterly amazing. But let me ask you this. Because you're getting a ridiculous amount of leads, where right now is the best place for you to get leads? Is it Facebook ads, Google? Like, are you doing a lot of paid advertising? I know you're doing content marketing too. 

	What sorta the most bang for your buck for where you're going right now?

Ryan:	So, I have about 50 sources of traffic. I spend a lot of money on this stuff and, first of all, you can tell who's on your website. There's a software called Kickfire and it's about $500 a month. Tell them the closer sent you. They love me. And it's caller ID for your website. So, they don't even have to convert and become a lead and you have their contact information because it cross references their IP with their Facebook and LinkedIn and everything. Oh, dude, it's gangster. So, we call people -

Jaime Masters:	[Inaudible] [00:33:48] but then you don't actually have their e-mail so then you have to try and target on Facebook.

Ryan:	Yeah. We get it all.

Jaime Masters:	Ah.

Ryan:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	Is that weird? Do you call people or you e-mail? What do you do?

Ryan:	Yeah. We call them. We're like "Hey, man. We've seen that you were on our website 15 times. Dude, we just wanna reach out and help you." And they're like "Woah, dude. You know I'm on your website?" Like, we're that good. And then there's that moment where it's like "Dude, take my money. I wanna be like y'all." That's what happens. They're like -

Jaime Masters:	Give me the secret to success.

Ryan:	Yeah. We call general managers and we're like "Dude, there's 15 people from your sales team logging on a daily basis. Your people are starving for this. Let us do our free webinar." Then we pitch everybody. So, like, we got a crazy system. We've got a machine that I've built, but so you can check into that. Now, for my traffic sources, I use Google, Facebook, LinkedIn. I write. I have my own contributor column for Entrepreneur so like Get What Gary V has. I've been a contributor for Entrepreneur for like two years and then they just - they're like right now constructing my own personal author profile or whatever they publish your profile. So, they're gunna put all my YouTube videos and everything on Entrepreneur.

	They're doing the same thing for me on Huffington Post. They're doing the same thing for me on Forbes. They're doing the same thing for me on Addicted to Success. So, they've got all those set up really well. It turns out Hits Like Editor is from Dallas too.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, no way. Really? 

Ryan:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, that's awesome. Tell me though how it's actually working for you? So, a lot of people are like "Ooh I finally got an Entrepreneur. I finally got- " Like, I've had a bunch in Huffington Post and gotten like literally 12 people coming to my site. So, tell me more about if that's actually giving you traffic that works. I know it's great for freaking credibility, but numbers wise is it actually working for you?

Ryan:	I write really good headlines. One of my articles on Entrepreneur is "How I went from the Penitentiary to the Penthouse." It has like 20,000 shares on it. People are gunna read that. I'm writing outrageous headlines. I was like "Hey when you wanna give up, right before you're about to pull the trigger, stop because of this." Like, I put clickbait shit on there and everything. I pulled no bars whatsoever when it comes to that stuff. So, we get pretty good traction on it and usually Entrepreneur will put me on the front page of their website even before I had the contributor column because it would be trending because we would write really good headlines. You can see. 

	They're all still up there, but I - and, again, when somebody else has written about me like I've been in Ink and some of these other ones, it hasn't had the same effect as me writing it myself. Because then Entrepreneur wants to lift me up which then send s traffic to my site because people are like "Who is this dude?"

Jaime Masters:	Because it's like [inaudible] [00:36:18].

Ryan:	Yeah. Entrepreneur tweets it out - and, yeah, they tweet it out and they put it on their Facebook page and stuff like that because they see it trending on their site so they wanna continue to get people there. And so it helps everybody out.

Jaime Masters:	See, that makes so much sense. And it matters.

Ryan:	But the best place is Facebook though.

Jaime Masters:	Okay.

Ryan:	We're seeing - in the real estate industry we're seeing $11 a lead on average. In my business I'm seeing $40 a lead on average. It's a little less than that, but let's just call it $40. And in my business, like I said, I'm running everybody away. It's like "Don't fill this out if you're lazy, if you're broke, if you've got this problem, that problem." Like, I'm the exact opposite of a drug commercial. I'm trying to run everybody off and tell everybody that this isn't for them. And so for us to still get them for $40 is pretty good. Now, you've got to remember I've been spending $30,000 a month consistently on Facebook for two years now - almost two years. And I've been advertising - well, let me rephrase that. 

	I've been spending $30,000 a month for a year now. I've been advertising about $5,000 or more a month on Facebook for a little over three years since 2013. So, I've been building that for a long time which I'm really in tune with my audience. And, again, the right headline, the right call to action inside the blog post when they're reading it and you guys can check it out at HardcoreCloser.com how I do it, but all that works together to drive a lot of traffic. And I always - I've found a really cool way. I call it secret selling. Where on the cool I mention something that I'm doing. 

	So, like right then I was like "Hey, you can check it out at HardcoreCloser.com and so you don't think nothing of it, but then again, some of your people are gunna go there, they're gunna read it and they're gunna go -Son of a bitch, I'm getting on the elevator."

Jaime Masters:	[Laughter] I know what you're doing to me and I still like it. Darn it.

Ryan:	Getting on the elevator. It's nice though. There's a chair in this one.

Jaime Masters:	[Laughter] There's a chair in this one. Sit down. It's gunna be a long ride. [Laughter] That's killer though. So, a lot of people, though, spending $5,000 on Facebook - you must have gone through a lot - or paid advertising in general you must have gone through a lot of crap. Why didn't you ever stop? Because this is what I see and you see too. So, people will keep going and start putting money in and then be like "Well, three months, $15,000, that didn't work." Or "Six months. This didn't work. Now what do I do?" So, how did you keep pushing and keep trying to get it - were you seeing traction and therefore you kept pushing it anyway or what was the - or you're just stubborn?

Ryan:	No, well, so what happened is I was at my friend Kevin Nation's house in 2013 and he introduced me to this dude who I'm now really good friends with, AJ Roberts. And AJ, he's like "Come over here man. I'll show you how to run an ad on Facebook. And so that was a pretty good AJ impression. Anyway, so -

Jaime Masters:	That was actually a good AJ. [Laughter]

Ryan:	I'm like "I nailed that, right?" And so he takes a video from my YouTube channel and makes a little lufu for him and puts $25 behind it or $100 or something like that. By the time we went to lunch I had like 40 leads. And I was like "Oh, man this is like really happening right now." And Kevin's like "The guy can sell." So, he kinda put me on the spot in front of everybody. So, I called them all and was closing them by the time I left Kevin's house that night. And I'm forever thankful for AJ for hooking me up like that, but he opened the door to me and it was like "Dude, for $100 I got like 50 leads." I'm all over this. The next day, the next day, the next day, and then I called one of my friends over. 

	I'm like "Here. Come help me sell this stuff man." But then after a while - here's what happened in all reality. There was this instant gold rush for about a month and a half, two months and we took quite a few leads in and we're nurturing them and we didn't have all this elevator to the top and all this stuff in place yet because I was brand new at it. We've evolved quite a bit, but what happened was, you know, I let people call me a douchebag and all that stuff in the comments and stuff would really get to me so I stopped advertising for a little while. And I'm like "They don't love me no more." 

	Then I go by myself. And so I went back to prospecting organically and things like that, but then I realized about eight months into people are like "I've been watching your stuff for eight months man. I'm glad I finally decided to come in here and be a part of this." And after I heard that over and over again I was like "I just gotta push through that eight month period." There's gunna be some people calling me names along the way and telling me that I don't sell stuff and I live in mom's basement or whatever they're gunna say, but I just gotta be able to push through that and eight months from now see the other side. 

	And once I put my head down and I push through it that's when things really started getting a lot busier. And people - when I started ignoring those kinda people and stuff like that or even when I would fight back with them like "Oh, really. Well, here's this." I posted my paycheck stub for the day like "OH, really? I can't sell nothing? I just made $20,000 this month." You know what I mean? And it's like I never faked till I maked it, right? I fought the whole way and then now we're where we are now, but the biggest thing is definitely pushing through that period. And we all have it because we've all seen somebody flutter up in multilevel marketing, right? 

	Like "I just got a job with Amway. I'm buying a Ferrari tomorrow." We've all seen that and then two weeks later we're like "Hey, man. Can I get some of that soap for my dishwasher?" And they're like "Oh, I'm not doing Amway anymore."

Jaime Masters:	Yeah.

Ryan:	Right. So, people are watching you so that if you are claiming to be an expert or if you're claiming to be able do this that you're even gunna stick with it because we live in the ADD generation and most people fall victim to it.

Jaime Masters:	I technically do have ADD so, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I love what you said though about your mindset in general because that stuff does get to you no matter how cool and self-esteem you are. When people just be mean online which, you know, it's the internet, they can do whatever the hell they want, it will actually stop you. So, tell me more about how you got past that because if you actually had enough to stop and be like "Okay, I can't do this anymore." You had to get past that somehow. Give somebody advice that's going through that right now.

Ryan:	Well, I used to fight people. And while that may be good for edge rank - by fight I mean like argue back and forth with them, but that gives them justification and while it may give you same edge rank or help your - because people wanna see the conversation and stuff like that. It really is a waste of time. I find that if someone's mad at you if you just like post a picture of a cat or maybe a video from YouTube of cats, they usually calm down. Cats are pretty calming animals. It's kinda a cool effect that it has on trolls. Trolls don't like cats. It's just the thing. They're just like "Oh, shit. It's a cat. I'm out of here. I should leave this guy alone." There's something about it. 

	Just like cats don't like cucumbers so if you're getting trolled by a cat, just grab a cucumber. These are things that are on the internet you folks gotta pay attention to.

Jaime Masters:	This is worth the whole interview. Thank you so much.

Ryan:	Yes. There's the hierarchy. It's like paper, rock, scissors. It's cucumber, cats, trolls. It's the same thing. You gotta put it together.

Jaime Masters:	My life is complete. Thank you Ryan. This is awesome. [Laughter]

Ryan:	And so it is hard to deal with that, but here's the thing. If someone is complaining about it my team just now deletes and block it. I make all the posts on Facebook. They answer all the questions and all the private messages because I can't keep up with it. It takes six of us to operate the page. Because, I mean, people hit us up and we're not gunna tell them "Hey, pay us or were not gunna help you out." If they ask us a question we're like "Oh, here's this and here's a blog post." We're putting them on the elevator to the top. They just happen to be on the free floor. They're in the basement, but we'll get them there. And so getting through that mindset of the trolls is like first it's gunna hurt your feelings. 

	The best thing you can do is not acknowledge them. Just delete and block them or if you want to respond to them, respond to them in a dignified way as like "Hey, you know what? All these people and you're over here hating. What does that say about you?" We say that all the time. That's a play I took out of Jay-Z's book. It's like it says a lot about you if you're not feeling us. Right? So, if you don't like what we're doing over here and we're 100,000 strong, what are you doing? Or tell people to beat us. You're like "What we're doing, take the title from us." That's been a big deal too. People always say "If you don't like the government, vote." Or "If you don't like this, go do something about it." 

	We're trying to do what we can about a part that we see in the marketplace, but it's not gunna be for everybody. But if you see a problem too then by all means you should try and handle it or beat us to it.

Jaime Masters:	I love that. Put it to them that way they'll be like "Oh." Then they back away because, yeah. Nine times out of ten. Awesome. And we have to start wrapping up. I didn't realize how fast the time went. Good job, Ryan. So, the last question I always ask is what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Ryan:	Take the 10 Day Hustle. I'm gunna throw you out on left filed here. It's completely free. It's this thing that I put together about two weeks ago. And it's evergreen so you can get on it and it's absolutely free. You go to TenDayHustle.com. You can check out the 10 Day Hustle hashtag on Facebook. There's tons of people doing it. But if you're gunna get into a million, you're gunna have to discipline yourself to take actions every single day. The 10 Day Hustle is 10 days of 10 different actions per day. At the end of 10 days, the 100 people that you've talked to - we give you a 100 person prospect list where we've checked everything for you. You're gunna absolutely love it. 

	There's nothing for sale. It's 100 percent free. Just go check it out. That's something we put out there to help people make more money and we've had a lot of people make 40, 50, $100,000 from doing this thing because they got out there. Because, look, Jamie, there's a lot of people that watch us on Facebook, but don't have any clue what the hell we do for a living. You know what I mean? They're like "Oh, Jamie, man. She's really cool. I wonder how she makes money."

Jaime Masters:	Yeah. Totally. Seriously.

Ryan:	But if you were to reach out to them and be like "Hey, I help people with this and I do this." People's - "Dude, I need that." Or "My cousin needs that." But if we don't reach out to them we're not top of mind to them. The 10 Day Hustle puts you top of mind to 100 people. You can't not make a sale because of it. And the fastest way to get to a million is to make some sales, right? Because without sales there's no check exchange and you won't get a million dollars.

Jaime Masters:	Exactly. Million dollar skill sales. Go sell the crap out of this. Okay. Perfect. Thanks so much. It was TenDayHustle.com was the website?

Ryan:	That's it.

Jaime Masters:	Alright. Everybody go check that out. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really, really appreciate it. You're fantastic. I took two pages of notes.

Ryan:	Awesome. Hey, I'm glad I was on here and hopefully we made everybody laugh. I try to always get everybody - whoops. See, there I go being a clown. I always try to get everybody to hopefully laugh more than they get educated because anybody can come on here and drop a bunch of smart stuff. I try to be the smart ass. See, it's totally different.

Jaime Masters:	Cats don't like cucumber. Yeah. I'll always remember that. [Laughter] Thank you, Ryan for coming on. I hope you have an awesome, fantastic, wonderful day. Take care.

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: best sales tips, business customers, customers, making sales, marketing, millionaire interview, Online Marketing, Online Sales, Ryan Stewman, sales, sales tips

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Featured Millionaire Interview, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews, Online Sales, Sales

---