Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Meet Luke Lunkenheimer, a seasoned salesperson with an extraordinary story of resilience and triumph. From the small town of Cato, New York, Luke takes us on his inspiring journey from humble beginnings to entrepreneurial success. He explores the timeless debate of nature versus nurture in sales, revealing how his unique background and personal challenges have shaped his approach to achieving greatness. With a mix of humor and sincerity, Luke shares invaluable insights for anyone looking to sharpen their sales skills or seeking motivation to rise above life's obstacles.   Embrace the rollercoaster ride through Luke's life, from his early days in the car sales industry to his outrageous and often hilarious experiences with customers. He doesn't shy away from discussing the raw realities of addiction, candidly sharing his struggles and the pivotal moments that led him to redemption and recovery. Luke's compelling narrative underscores the perseverance required to rebuild one's life, offering hope and inspiration for those battling similar demons.   Unearth the secrets behind Luke's remarkable sales achievements as he dissects the transformative power of confidence and the art of negotiation. Discover his effective sales strategies, from mastering emotional intelligence to the finesse of persuasive communication. As we celebrate authenticity and the importance of personal branding, Luke's anecdotes serve as a testament to the power of supreme confidence and its role in achieving sales success. For those seeking to elevate their sales abilities or simply captivated by stories of resilience and triumph, Luke's journey promises to inspire and motivate.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - Overcoming Adversity (02:15) - Small Town Success Story (08:21) - Car Salesman's Crash Course (17:50) - Car Salesman's Wild Stories (25:40) - Addiction (31:53) - Addiction's Destructive Grip (37:20) - Toxic Friendship and Overdose Rescue (46:24) - Successful Bank Robbery Attempt (48:47) - Bank Robbery, Prison, and Redemption (54:22) - From Bank Robber to Car Dealer (01:00:47) - Effective Sales Training Techniques (01:11:54) - Confidence in Sales Success (01:16:24) - Legendary Car Salesman Mike Zaga   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #lukelunkenheimer #sales #resilience #triumph #entrepreneurialsuccess #naturevsnurture #humblebeginnings #motivation #rollercoasterride #authenticity #personalbranding #confidence #negotiation #emotionalintelligence #addiction #overcomingadversity #smalltown #carsales #wildstories #toxicfriendship #bankrobbery #prison #redemption #effectivesalesstrategies #trainingtechniques #confidenceinsales #legendarycarsalesman #personalbrand #socialmedia #luxurycars

So here's my favorite car story business. And this is a little terrible. All right. I'm going to preface this by saying this story is terrible, but it must be told, but it must be told and it might get me canceled. I hope it won't get me canceled, but it's a terrible story. And now escaping the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you want to pad the greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Welcome back to the program everybody. As in set in the opening, man, the podcast, it gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in studio, I got a dude.

I mean, this is a dude when it comes to sell and stuff dude If you are somebody that is in sales at all You're gonna want to listen to this because this guy is one of the best out there at not just selling stuff But teaching how to do it. He's also got a cool story of overcoming some serious adversity that I think that uh If you hear this you're gonna going to be like, Whoa, cause I was kind of like, Whoa, when I just heard it. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program in studio today. This is Luke Lunkenheimer. Luke, what's up brother? That Lunkenheimer. I nailed it. Nailed it. Nailed that thing.

Stressed out about it. Not gonna lie. I mess it up sometimes. I know I was a little stressed out about it, bro. Thanks for coming in, man. It's good to see you. I'm not gonna lie. I mess it up sometimes. I know I was a little stressed out about it. Bro, thanks for coming in, man. It's good to see you. I know these Vegas podcast tours can get a little arduous and I don't, what conversation are you on right now with me? How many have you had in the last 48 hours? Oh goodness, not as many as last tour,

but enough to make me run out of breath. Yeah, it's a lot, dude. There's too many of us in Vegas. Now, but see, here's the thing though. If I was in like Des Moines, Iowa, yeah, you come into Des Moines, Iowa. That's very true. It's not, it's an easy sell. And it's like, come here,

go to the Pelagio, go to STK for dinner. It's an easy sell. It is easy sell to get you in. So man, you're just not born a great salesman. So I always like to start with like the nature versus nurture part of this. So tell me about how you grew up, tell me about mom and dad, tell me like how you became an entrepreneur. Tell me, tell me about little Luke and how you became either either the,

the super villain story or the superhero story. Well, there's a little bit of both, man. So, uh, I, you know, I had a decent upbringing, you know, mom and dad, very, very small town mind, very simplistic, very minimalistic scarcity kind of where, uh, Cato, New York. So yeah, if you were to go to Syracuse and watch an SU football game, you would go about 20 minutes north and another 10 minutes west and you'd hit Cato. That is that is LeBat's blue country. Brother, for context, there are 82 people in my graduating class. So it's one of those towns where everybody knows everybody in a good way and everybody knows

everybody in that not so good way too. So very difficult to get away with anything in Cato New York. So just man, I grew up at a pretty good upbringing. Just it wasn't, you know, you come to a place like Vegas and you meet people and this guy's dad is a multimillionaire real estate broker and this guy's dad invented some app and this guy's dad and these young- What do you mean by kid?

Right? You know, these kids are growing up and they're affluent and they have, you know, access to a lot. In Cato, New York, you have access to maybe a car when you're 16, if you're lucky, and your dad's one of the wealthier people in town. My father made $75,000 a year. We lived in a $68,000 house,

and we were one of the better off people in Cato. So what did dad do? Dad was a used car, well, excuse me, not a used car dealer. He worked for a new Ford franchise for a company called Piro Brothers, which kind of followed in the footsteps of my grandfather who had Lunkenheimer Ford in Hannibal, New York, which is another one-horse town. So my tale kind of goes like this man. Was a good honor roll student, was a good athlete, good. When I say good, I stress the word good. Wasn't really exemplary at

anything until I got kind of into high school and you know how you get your senior superlativesatives most likely to succeed Most likely to stay in town. Yeah, I got a bone to pick with that. Okay. Yeah, dude, literally I just told this another podcast, but I was randomly somebody posted, you know, sometimes you get on those holes on the internet Yes, somebody randomly posted like my ninth grade yearbook But in a digital format where you could go back and see it Yeah I randomly posted like my ninth grade yearbook, but in a digital format where you could go back and see it. And this was where I was also from a small town.

I went to school, like ninth grade wasn't in high school. It was in junior high. So like if you were the ninth graders, we were the kings of junior high, getting ready to go to high school. Cause like high school in my town was 10, 11, 12. And so when they had the superlatives of my ninth grade yearbook, I got most accident prone.

And I'm thinking, and so then, this is the whole like going, and I look at the dude that they said most likely to succeed, and I'm like, let's see where this dude's at. And let's just say I looked him up, and yeah, there needs to be a fricking recount. Junior high school, Lake City, Florida. Yeah, I need a recount on that,

because I think the kid here is doing it better. Just saying. Anyway, so go ahead. You weren't watching his podcast. No, I'm not watching his podcast. No, I'm not. Anyway, back to your superlatives. Yeah, brother. So, uh, best schmoozer, because they couldn't use the words best bullshit artists. Okay, good. I don't hate it. Just minding the rules of the pot. Yeah. So basically best BS or it was me and this other girl, Paris Brown, who was also very good at getting herself out of trouble.

Let's put it this way. I got into an altercation with the captain of the wrestling team, put his head through a trophy case. It wasn't pretty, and I ended up getting sent home for the day to play Nintendo and come back to school. So my question is, does the coach of the wrestling team come to the next day like, hey buddy, might wanna join the team.

I mean, if you take out the captain, I mean, his job is to get the best kid in the seat. This is true. This is true. But you know at the height I was at, the height to weight ratio, I probably would have gotten whooped because I was a tall skinny guy at that time. No resemblance to what I look like now. So my story goes, I knew that in order to get out of that town, my parents didn't have the money to put me through college. They didn't have the credit to co-sign to get me through college. I was stuck working at the local mill or selling used cars or something. So I decided to focus my energy on something and that was football. I loved football. I was the kid in the front yard tackling weighted garbage cans to try

to toughen myself up. And I just, you know, ran and did everything that you could imagine the sequence in an action movie where the young kids coming up through the ranks would do to try to play like the karate kid music and he's running the sunset so so I did that and at seventh grade I made the modified football team which was kind of unheard of it was eighth grade and up when I was in eighth grade I made the bar excuse me ninth grade I made the varsity team which was also unheard of so I was good I was good I was above average and I was very fast and I could jump very high we discovered in my senior year that I could throw the ball very well. So I became a quarterback. I got some looks

from nothing crazy, a couple Division II schools but enough to get my schooling paid for. Sure. Division II schools can't give an athletic scholarship so the fact that I was a scholar athlete and I was a good athlete, it was a good pairing. Very quickly when I got injured, got my shoulder dislocated in a game which was my throwing shoulder, very quickly learned that the politics of Division 2 athletics, you can very easily get an athletic-esque academic scholarship but you can just as easily lose that even though it's an academic scholarship. Oh really? When you blow your shoulder apart. Oh really? It's a tough phone call to their athletic director like, how can you

take away my scholarship? And well you know, geez, it's a combination, it's a constellation of things and so imagine you're this young kid who had his meal ticket right and you were gonna get out and you like the school and you're ready to go and now all of a sudden it's just the rugs been pulled off from underneath. This was in high school years? This was in high school yeah this was how I was gonna get to college. So they rescinded your offers essentially? Yes yeah they sent a second letter which was a revised offer based on. Yeah you can come to school here but you gotta pay for it. 100% and it was like my scholarship went for,

it was like a $31,000 a year school. I had a 29.5 scholarship. I had to come up with like 1500 bucks and it went to like a $6,000 scholarship. So directly out of reach. So at this point, you know, it's kind of like, you know, breaks and screeching halts and the record coming off the,

or the pin coming off the record sound effects, just like this holy shit moment. So, you know, I had to, I had to come up with a plan. The plan was I was going to go sell cars cause that's what my family was known for. My family was good at, my father had experienced success doing that. So I did the proverbial take a year off and figure it out, went into the car business and just really started doing well, started killing it, selling cars.

So let's see. So I So I appreciate the car business so much because when I left, when I used to be in the bar and restaurant business many years ago, and when I got the news from my, essentially my doctor, and my bleeding ulcers at 27 based on my lifestyle, he said, yeah, you're gonna need a life change.

So he told me. So I was like, oh shit. So I called one of my buddies. Meaning the debauchery of the activities of the car business. No, the bar business. Oh, excuse me, the bar business. He was like, you know, so I was like, oh shit. So I called one of my buddies. Meaning the debauchery of the activities of the car business. No, the bar business. He was like, you know, tell me about your diet. I'm like, makers marking cigarettes.

And he's like, how many hours a week you're working? I'm like, a hundred and, how many you got? You know, cause somebody's always stealing. And you know, he said, you need a life change. And I called my buddy at WorldCom, who was a vice president. I said, I think I was, I was always said, I should be in sales, Give me a job in sales. And he goes, man, I can't give you a job off the streets, you know, selling telecom. I can't do you gotta

get some experience. I said, what should I do? And he goes, you got two choices. I said, what's that? He goes, you can go sell Kirby vacuum cleaners or you can go sell cars. He goes, either way in 90 days, you'll have a PhD in sales. I was I was like, there's no way. I would agree with that logic. I was, I was like, there's just no way. There was one more. It might've been copiers, maybe IBM or copiers or some, I don't know what it was, but there was just no way I was going to go sell Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door, man. I was like, all right, I'll go sell cars. So that's where I also learned how to cut my teeth, uh, doing that, which was funny. And we'll tell some stories about that.

It's a crash course. So, so your, so your experience with cars, this is going to be good stories. So tell me about that first week. Obviously you were, you grew up with it. So you've been around the dealership a little because dad was there. So you, you had a little bit of foresight here. Not only did I have foresight, I also had confidence. You know, I went into the dealership. I'm mind you, I was young. I was naive. I was, had blinders on, I hadn't confidence. You know, I went into the dealership. Now mind you, I was young, I was naive, I was had blinders on, I hadn't experienced the world. So I'm like, I'm a

Lunkenheimer, you know, Lunkenheimer Ford, John Lunkenheimer is the general manager. I am genetically predisposed to success in this business. I'm a robot. I just go in here and turn the switch on and here we go. So I got to be honest with you and not to sound braggadocious, but that's exactly how it went. I mean, I walked in there and what I noticed immediately was the nature of a car dealership. There's one or two horses, guys that are just doing the job, working the program, doing what they know they need to do, following, sticking to the script and selling a lot of cars. Then there's the mix of the mediocrity which are the people that are you know, blowing lines in the bathroom, going out to liquid lunch, you know this is central New York so this is a thing. I'm pretty sure that's everywhere. Pretty sure too, that's what led me to my aforementioned

question but then I forgot you said you're in the bar business. So and then there's like the the four or five guys that are just sitting around smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, doing nothing and getting no results, go figure. So I was the tenacious young whippersnapper that came in and was taking all the ups and then I started catching hell for taking all the ups but then the manager started paying attention and my closing ratio was better than the ups. And then I started catching hell for taking all the ups, but then the manager started paying attention and my closing ratio was better than the top guys. So they're telling these horses that have been around for 10 years,

like guys, he can't bitch at the kid, he's closing everything he touches. So, you know, unless you see him do something in egregious violation of our policy, you got competition, Merry Christmas. I'll say that was my first experience in my working order because I come from, you know, corporate restaurant businesses, business into kind of

my own stuff and doing my own deals and, and running my own stuff. So it was always very amicable. You know, everything was always about like, you know, when you're doing schedules for staff, it was just like, Oh, make sure everybody gets even, you know, everybody's happy. You try to accommodate as many of their requests you can when you're handling

your staff. That was the first place I ever worked where it was like, yeah, dude, we don't care. We really don't care. Like there's no such thing. You want fair. It's down there. They sell cotton candy. There's a fair. So this ain't here. This is go get it. And you're right. You're a hundred percent. Right. Cause in my situation, there was a couple of dudes like this one dude, Feroz. All right. He was situation, there was a couple of dudes like this one dude, Feroz. All right. He was a, he was a, of a person. I love watching car guys tell car stories.

Now, dude, you watch your eyes lift, you get into it, your temperature rises. These are the real stories. Cause this dude, like this dude, Feroz was the best dude. Right. And how he did it was really smart. And this is, this is great lesson for business. Right. So this cat had the office right by the receptionist. So he would listen to her answer the phone, and he would walk into his office, when she would go sales call 100,

whatever. So he was grabbing, he got every single phone up because he could do it. So I just started watching him. And when he when I saw him look at her, and then he turned to go in his office, I started beating him fast to figure because I figured out a time it. Yep, I started beating him fast to figure because I figured out how to time it. I out timed him on picking it up and he didn't like that, that was bad. So what I would, and that was the first place A

that didn't care, but I'll tell you my favorite car story business and we'll get back to you. Because I don't want to monopolize this. So here's my favorite car story business. And this is a little terrible, all right? I'm gonna preface this by saying this story is terrible. But it must be told. But it must be told. But it must be told.

And it might get me canceled. I hope it won't get me canceled, but it's a terrible story. So the used car manager at this place for our work. Now granted, I only worked there for about 90 days. In my first month, I sold 30 new cars. First month, that's like bowling a perfect game. That for the audience listening, that is bowling.

That's bowling a perfect game. Your first month, yep. They moved me immediately from Nissan to Highline, to Infinity, right? Sold me. First month. Yep. They moved me immediately from Nissan to Highline to infinity. Right. So 24, my second month, third month, about the same. And then I quit. Okay.

I quit that owner of the dealership called him was like, I lied for why I was quitting because I was going to start another company with my sister. Okay. I just did it for the experience. Yep. And I was like, Oh, my, my, my roommates moved out. So I'm going to, I'm going to move to back to Florida. This isn't Atlanta.

So I'm going back to Florida. And he's like, I'll, I'll be a roommate. Like what are you talking about? He goes, how many rooms do you have? I'm like I'm gonna move to back to Florida. This is Atlanta. So I'm gonna back to Florida and he's like, I'll be your roommate Like what he's talking about. He goes how many rooms you have? I'm like I got four He goes I'll pay for fifth year rent all the bills. You'll never see me. I'll never come over. I'll never be there but I'm like, huh? And he was like, yeah, don't leave and I'm like, oh I'm good at this. This dude doesn't want to Sounds like I'm actually going to open another company with somebody else. Not a private, but anyway, long story.

Boring. But this story I'm going to tell that it's going to get me canceled. So where this place was in Atlanta was in Decatur, which has a heavy Indian population. Okay. Now I don't say this is a matter of race. I say it as a matter of culture, culture, the culture within the Indian community, from what I have personally experienced and heard and seen I feel like I know they are

ruthless negotiators They're not happy until literally they're yelling at each other. Yeah, right. That's that's when they're happy is they're yelling at each other hundred percent and Anyway, I I had never negotiated against people of that culture. Okay, and because where we were it happened all the time to negotiate it against people of that culture. And because where we were, it happened all the time. So one day, right, like my first or second week, now the used car manager here was a dude named James Myrick. And he was ghetto Don King is the only thing I can say.

Had the gold tooth, had the chains, had the, I mean, had the rings. I mean, you take a car up there and be like, oh no, this calls me more times than Joe Lewis. I mean, it doesn't matter what you took up there to get a praise. Oh, this thing's hit more times than Joe Lewis. I mean, it's no matter what you took up there to get a phrase. Oh, this thing's a piece of junk. I don't even, let's go make it back down the hill.

Everything has a mouth. Anyway, so one day some Indians came in and they were on the ad car. Of course they are. They were on the ad car, which doesn't exist. Sorry, I don't make the rules. I didn't do this. It's just, I work there.

So they grab another car and then they start grinding that we want the same price. So we just want that. No, we don't say. And I'm like, bro, bro, bro. And this was on a Saturday, which is like in the car business, we make your money and this went on all day. Right. Like you said, it went on like two and a half hours. I miss lunch. I miss this. I see people just cars fly out the door and I'm just, these people wouldn't leave. I'm like, guys, seriously, we're not, nope, we're not leaving.

We're not leaving till they would not get out of my office. Until finally, I'm like, I'm like, I'm just not coming back until finally they back down and they finally left after like three hours. And I'm just fuming that this went this long. Lost the whole Saturday, whatever. Here comes James Maher again. Because he kind of saw what happened.

He goes, that's your first group of hard negotiators? I said, yeah, it's my first group. He goes, okay, come on, do you get lunch? I said, no, I miss lunch. He goes, come with me. I said, no, I don't want to eat anything. He goes, just come with me anyway. I'm gonna teach you something.

I said, all right. So we walk across the street and there was a blimpy sub shop there and we walk in and he's talking to me. He's like, you sure you don't want anything? I said, no, I don't want anything. He goes, give me a foot long Turkey. And the little guy is making it. And because again, we're in Decatur, so a heavy Indian population there, this particular location was also owned by Indian business people. He's like, you know, telling about the car business and man, well, you can't,

you can't let people do that. And you can't, oh yeah, put some more tomatoes on that. No, no, do this. Put some onions on that. Okay. No, no, you gotta do this. But okay. No, can I get some extra oil? It gets to the end. Guy rings it up and goes, that'll be $6 and 50 cents. He looks at him and goes, Oh no, I get that same sub for $2 down the street. He goes, I'll give you $2 drive out for it. The guy's like, what? He goes, I'll give you $2 for that sub drive out. No tax. That's all I'm paying. And the guy, he got so furious and threw us out of the blimpy. And we walk out of the blimpy and he looks at me and goes, you feel

better? I was like, no, I don't know how that was supposed to be a lesson for me, but yeah, that was welcome. I think his thing was to get one back at the other team. Yeah, but that was, that was welcome to car business for me. That's hilarious. That was it. But enough about me, dude. We didn't get you to come on here to hear me talk. Listen, man, people watch podcasts for entertainment. That's a good story. There's a, you know, at any car dealership experience where you worked at it, there's always going to be stories like that. I've got a hundred like that. I could tell just what's the craziest thing you ever happened to you at a car

dealership craziest thing that ever happened to me at a car dealership. Um, well, I had, I was on a test drive with a stripper and we got talking about stripper and all respect to my wife, Nikki, I love her to death and she's the reason I'm here today. So we'll preface this story with that for the haters out there. But this was 20 years ago. And it was a little French blue Ford Focus and she gets in the car and we're driving

and she's like, do you mind if I take it to my house and make sure it fits in the driveway? I'm like, yeah, sure. So we go to her house and she's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go in real quick and grab something to eat. Do you wanna come in? And I'm like, I gotta get back. I am so naive, brother. I'm not thinking anything.

I'm just thinking, I think I'm happy. I can't prove her income. How am I going to get her approved? She's got, you know, cash tips. That's where my head was at. Right. So, uh, let's just say that I ingress the establishment, this little double wide trailer on Byron Road in New York. And, uh. We're not heading that out either. That's a good joke. Cause look, I mean, now we've gotten full stereotype.

Now the stripper lives in a double-wide on the wrong side of the tracks. Oh, we're there, bro. We're there. Yeah. So I, uh. So this is like, this is not your Friday night stripper. This is like day shift, Daytona Beach.

Well, for those that know anything about, shift well anything about yeah yeah this is there's a there's a there's a club in Fulton New York called the WUSA lounge and a common joke if you see a dastardly unattractive overweight non-becoming woman is to say something like oh she probably works at the WUSA so that gives you any indication although I will say this for this young lady she was put together she's a good-looking girl. She was Latina She she was eight out of ten. Yeah, she was certainly overqualified for the wusa. So I go in there and she's like, okay Classic line brother. I'm going to just put on something a little more comfortable

Okay, walks away. I'm sitting on the couch She had grabbed me a Gatorade or something and there's a pit bull sitting next to me. And this dog is just, eyes are trained on me, kinda almost like someone's been here before and he's seen this movie play out before and he's watching me like, how are you gonna handle this situation? What is it with strippers and pit bulls? Bro, it's just a thing.

Like you don't get a poodle, you got a pit bull, right? And five inch clear high heels too, it's a thing. So she comes back out and she's in a white lace negligee and there's a, conveniently a bed in the living room, just a mattress and a box spring on the floor. Yeah, this is that side of town. And dude, she just posed herself on the couch and asked me if I would like to join.

And we'll leave the remainder of that story to another day. But as a young guy in the car business, coming back and trying to join. And we'll leave the remainder of that story to another day. But as a young guy in the car business, coming back, I'm going to clarify this before he met his wife. That's why that wasn't real clear. 20 years. Okay, yeah, that part that part was real clear. Yeah, so I had a good story to come back to at the dealership. And you know what the best part about it was, it was one of the first experiences I had with telling something that you know is the absolute truth but nobody believes it everybody says you're full of shit but

you still feel okay about it you don't care if they do or don't believe you because you just know that it's grounded in truth not a single soul in that dealership believe that that transpired the way it did but it didn't that's tattooed and scarred my soul forever. I think my favorite part of the story is what you didn't tell us when you got to walk back into your cubicle go, I'm sorry, you don't qualify for. I'm laughing so hard. Tell her she didn't qualify.

Plug that back in because I, you're absolutely right. So I'm sitting in the cubicle and you know, we're, you know, fit as a fiddle at this point, talking, having a conversation. And I go back and Doug Cress, the business manager, who's a legend in the local car business, he goes, Skywalker, you know, he does what they call me. I'm like, yeah, he's like, you ain't got a prayer, bro.

She's like a 489, hasn't paid anybody, she's behind on her Capital One card right now and I can't prove any of her income. And I said, bro, she told me she's like a 700 credit score. He's like, yeah, I probably told you she was clean. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, I have to come back out. And then I came, you know, it came to fruition that I realized that the escapade that I just went through, she had done to ensure that the automobile was going to be hers, right? So it was not a kind parting of ways.

That was trying to earn extra credit, if you will. Yes, sir, it was. If you will, that was extra credit. Or any credit. Any credit. She just wanted credit. So, you know, that was, I was 18 and a half years old, something like that, and that was one of the earlier

wild stories of the car business, but I think it probably provides the most entertainment value for the audience. No, I love it. So you're back. I actually had a guy drive the car through the front of the dealership, too. People say, I'm gonna come back here, and I'm gonna drive my car through the front of the dealership. Somebody actually did it. So you're back. Actually had a guy drive the car through the front of the dealership too. People say, I'm going to come back and I'm going to drive my car through the

front of the dealership. Somebody actually did it. Yep. Now the funny part was it was on accident. So he came in, gave the pitch, the speech, you know, I'm going to drive my car through the front of the dealership, went to leave, did one of these things, put his arm around the arm rest, turned around, looked back out the car and then drove to the front of the dealership. Yep. So you guys just all sitting there like watching the carts. Honestly brother, we didn't move. We all just kind of, it happened. It came in and pushed the wall in. It was like one of those

lower like metal with the upper glass and just kind of bent everything in. And the guy looked up, looked at both of us or three of us, put his car back in park and reverse and drove out of there. Immediately thought about his life choices and was like, maybe this wasn't the best move, I'm gonna go ahead and leave. Yeah, and I think probably somewhere on the way home, he had a little bit of validation about the fact that he actually did what he threatened he was going to do, but I don't think he was happy about it. Oh, geez.

All right, okay, so you're in the car business, 18, things are going well. Yeah, man, doing well. How long before you're the top guy? So, within a week or two. There was one guy that was, his name's Roy Heath, hope he hears this, pay him the appropriate homage, but he's a real good car seller. He's in the business as a salesman to this day, has his own podium in the

corner, doesn't even work out of an office, just a runner and we kind of went back and forth for the top spot and you know, that segues kind of into where I later found out that I had a love for sales was a thing that happened between me and Roy but it got very dark quickly, you know, just to kind of move the story along. The dynamic at this dealership, like I told you, was a big group of guys that were just, they called it liquid lunch, they would go and they would drink at lunch, they would come back, half of me wiping their nose, they'd go out every night and I kind of slipped into that dynamic and it was augmented by the

fact that I wanted to go back and play football. The car business for me was a I kind of slipped into that dynamic and it was augmented by the fact that I wanted to go back and play football. The car business for me was a means to an end. I knew I could do it. I wanted to go in, I wanted to make a few bucks. I wanted to get my surgery. I wanted to go back to playing football because I wanted to go to college.

I wanted that experience and I wanted a degree. To this day, I'm glad everything worked out the way it did, but you know, at that point in my life, that was the... But dude, I get it though, man, because it really does. There's something about a car floor right like I said I only did it for a short amount of time but I found myself even as is even though I was leaving you really feel like you're kind of part of a gang when you're when you're in if they're running the dealership right I think that's how the salespeople kind of

feel you think that sales in general or do you with teams do you think that's how the salespeople kind of feel. Do you think that sales in general or do you with teams? Or do you think that's a car thing? No, no, no, no, no, no, because I think it's, um, I think, I think it depends on the long sale or the short sale, right? And car sales is a short sale to me because people are walking a lot, they buy a car and it's like, Oh, it's quick. It's not a slow moving process. I find in those slow moving in the, in the, in the, in the fast sale, in the, in the, in the, in the fast sale, right? The quick sale, when you have that killer be killed, eat, eat, which kill,

you know, there is no fair. You have that mentality or die. Yeah. It almost becomes like a rite of passage to earn your spot in the tribe. It's a very tribal thing. And I think with long sales, not so much, just because, you know, a lot can happen. I mean, I've got a really good team that works for me here that handles, I don't, unless it's, unless it's a really large transaction, I don't do personal real estate anymore.

I still do it for my clients when in their large transactions. But you know, most of the, most of the other stuff goes to my team. So I have, you know, we have a total of about 585 agents that work here for me overall, simply Vegas, but I've got 10 of them that work directly for me on my team, right? And I would say that, yeah, you know, I've gotta constantly be working to create that tribal team environment for them.

Whereas I think, I don't think the dealership did anything other than create the situation. So I think it depends on its long sale or short sale. I think I would tend to agree with that. I think I would tend to agree with that. I think I would tend to agree that I also you know with a longer sale there tends to be more self-contained apparatus, meaning more research, more time spent in the cubicle, more time spent prospecting. I think there's a lot of ancillary activities that pull away from that kind of tribalism and I also feel like you know on a slow short day at a car dealership, it's a slow short crappy day for everybody. Whereas in a long sale,

I think there's more room for people to be having varying weeks or months or who's experiencing what at what time. So I agree wholeheartedly with what you said. So you joined the trade, even though it was a mean certain ends, you know, the reason that you fell into that hole is because you became part of the tribe.

Yeah, that and there was, you know, there was addiction that ran rampant in my family. You know, dad was an alcoholic, mom was a speed freak, their parents were addicts. It was just, it was something that was you know there was addiction that ran rampant in my family you know dad was an alcoholic mom was a speed freak their parents were addicts it was just it was something that you know I should have been educated about when I was a kid now that's one thing that you know bone that I have to pick with the school system is they educate you know the dare guy comes in and I don't know if you guys have that out here but they have drug abuse resistance education in New York you know they tell you what pop looks like and smells like

they tell you what cocaine looks like and smells like they tell you what a drug deal I don't think they tell you what pot looks like and smells like. They tell you what cocaine looks like and smells like. They tell you what a drug deal looks like. I don't think they tell you what it smells like. The cocaine really not. But I do remember them showing us what marijuana smelled like and having the drug sniffing dog and then they put it in the locker and the dog found it and stuff.

But what they don't do is they don't educate you about addiction. Certain traits that you may have or behaviors that you may exude that should show you that you have a propensity towards addiction so you can take the appropriate safe. I think now with kids it's incredibly apparent what that is. Yeah man. It's this right here. Yes. It's this. I mean if you're like and that scares the shit out of me with my kids. You mean as far as the kids

being addicted to the device. Yes. You can look at it like dude, every like you look at these kids now and they're all so head down in these phones just as fast as they can go from there. There's neck conditions that are coming to light now that kids have because they're constantly like this. Their shoulders are hunched over in their heads down. It's sad. You know smartphones are kind of a double-edged sword because the access to information and resources that kids have now and the things that they can accomplish and do at a young age like my kid the other day I mean he's editing a video in CapCut and putting this little montage together I'm like dude that's badass how'd you figure out how to do that oh I went on YouTube I watched a

tutorial and then he figured it out all on his own and then hindsight makes you go when I was a kid if I had access to these tools you know what could I have done differently with my life but it's a double-edged sword because it's like I watch my son and there's days where I'm like, bro, you gotta get away from that thing, right? And we limit their time and we've created, you know, times and schedules that they can do it and so on and so forth. But it's very easy to see how a kid could just, especially a kid with a rough upbringing, could get lost in that and then take it a step further and you talk about VR, excuse me, virtual reality and AI and the Oculus glasses

and these meta environments where these kids can literally become white skin, blue vein, skinny, ribsy, malnourished bots that are just living in this virtual reality world. So it is crazy. But just on the addiction thing, man, I, I you know if I had been educated about addiction and understood what to look for and knew that because it ran rampant and my family that there was a high likelihood that I was gonna go down that path, obviously would have made some different choices but I just remember me, I'll never forget, I was at work and I had had you know I had a shoulder surgery. I got a good insurance policy. I was very excited. I was on a

waiting list for the surgery with a really good doctor. Doctor told me when we're done with you Luke, 95% of what you had you're gonna have back and I could throw a football. I mean I can't cite for you the yardage now, it's been a long time but it was almost as far as I recall Donovan McNabb threw the football in the carrier dome at the combine. So just to give you an understanding, I had one hell of a cannon for a skinny country kid and that was about it. I was fast and I could jump high but there was nothing to me. So I was going to make a great division to quarterback, they had me convinced of that and that's where my mind stayed. So I got the surgery done and after the surgery man, it was pain pills,

you know, it was a pain pump and pain pills. And I remember, you know, today if you get a significant injury, you're hard pressed to have a doctorate of prescription for five to 10 pills for follow-up pain therapy. We're talking in 2005, I believe it was, brother. They gave me two separate prescriptions. One was for five milligrams of OxyContin, which is a smaller dose, but they gave me 160 pills for the month. And then they gave me a bottle of 10 milligram hydrocodone, which is I think that, yeah,

loratab. It's like the strongest dose you can get of that with a small Tylenol and it was like 120, 160 of those. I literally had four or five of each of those to take a day. Bro, there are stage three cancer patients that don't have that kind of pain therapy, you know? So I recall one day I just, you know, what it did for me, you know, if I'm being honest, is it really numbed the emotional pain of, you know, what it did for me, you know, if I'm being honest, is it really

numbed the emotional pain of, you know, rough childhood. It numbed the fact that I was no longer on this trajectory to be this great athlete. It numbed the fact that if you had a bad day in sales, yeah it's okay, we'll go get drunk. You wake up the next morning, the hangover goes away in 30 minutes when you take a couple Laura tabs. Like it was just, it was just a miracle drug for me, man. And it was too good to be true. You know, and when I took the drug, I would be just this incredibly talkative, confident salesperson.

You know, there wasn't that social awkwardness or anxiety when you're talking to a customer. It was just, it was incredible. And I remember at one point I had, I heard something in a book somewhere about addicts have a romance with their drug. And I thought to myself, I had, it was like an epiphany moment. I'm like, wow,

that's I thought about it. I'm like, well, I sneak away from the family gatherings and I spend time with drugs. You know, I hide in the corner and I do my drugs and I have my little drugs that I keep a secret from everybody else. The day of reckoning for me, when I realized there was an issue, I was walking through the wash. How long did this go on? This epiphany that I had was six months in, but the addiction itself was a decade, brother.

It was 10 years. And it ended with one hell of an exclamation point. Was it always pills or did you graduate to the artist? So I graduated to heroin at one point, but it was only because I couldn't get pills. Truth be told, man, the entire, the whole way through, I thought street drugs were disgusting. I knew they were made in a nasty redneck lab in some double-wide somewhere in some you know hood

apartment with needles laying or I just knew that and I didn't want any part of it but when you get so ruthlessly addicted to a substance that if you don't have it you can't be physically well yeah don't sick yeah right so I'm walking through the wash bay and Benny Green this biggie they call him big Montana just as big you know burly country boy and I'm walking through the wash bay and Benny Green, this big, they call him Big Montana, just this big, you know, burly country boy and I'm like dude I feel like absolute dog shit and he's like oh you're not feeling well? I'm like yeah. He's like well just pop a couple of your hydros man you'll feel great. I'm like no dude that's the thing man, I can't even do that, I don't have any.

He's like what? I said I ran out like two days ago. He's like and you're sick? I go yeah he's like and you think that's a coincidence? So what are you talking about? He goes, bro, you're dope sick. I said, bro, I don't do dope. There's no way you can be dope sick if you don't do dope. He goes, man, what do you think Oxycontin and Hydroquin and all that stuff is? That's how naive I was, man. So that's what I mean when I'm just shoving these narcotics into my body in copious amounts because I feel good. Having no idea that the repercussions that laid on the other side of it. Now truth be told if I'd have known that would I have acted

any differently? Probably not when I experienced that high. I probably would have gone the same way but I just remember in that moment it was like this darkness fell over me and I was like I'm addicted to drugs because in my head I went I can't get off these. I don't want to get off these. I sell too well. I do too well and at that time it was incredibly inexpensive. We had a plug. We get them for a dollar a pill. You know, you sell one good car a week and your drug habits taken care of it. I was certainly selling plenty of cars. So that moment for me was like, okay, I have a problem. And then every day from then for the next 10 years was keep the problem hidden away from people. Continue to try to act like nothing's wrong and maintain my life. and bro, I bought a house. I got a good credit score. I bought a new Mustang. I bought a crotch rock. You're high functioning. You're high functioning. Very high functioning to the point where I was doing more, far more than anybody else my age and even people that were five, ten years my senior but I

still had this crazy habit and the people around me that were close to me knew what was going on and everybody would just tell me you know this this is a means to an end you're gonna crash this cannot sustain it's gonna be more and more and more and of course me being the arrogant best schmoozer in the year book I'm like dude I'll figure out a way so it graduated from doctor giving me pills me taking some pills selling some pills to me taking all the pills to me taking some pills buying more pills selling the pills for profit to cover my pills, to eventually I got tied in with a guy that was a wholesale distributor for a Kenny

Drugs warehouse with a VA and talked him into expiring pills early to give me the overages to wholesale and piece him back. At one point bro, I was moving through thousands of pills on a monthly basis. Good Lord. Having no idea that when you put 80, 120, 160 milligrams of Oxycontin in your body at one time, you're just putting your tolerance level to a fact that when finally the drug is absent and the system is vacant, you're done. You are toast bro. Dude, I had an assistant years ago, I won't mention her name but we have a rule if you work for me, nobody gets paid until I get paid. I mean obviously,, payroll is fine, but like bonuses on deals that I do

and things that we do and bonus to commend. If it's a piece of the action, the piece has gotta be there. I gotta get my piece before each piece. And this particular, this is years and years ago, and this particular assistant, one time, and my wife was doing the payroll at one point, and she mentioned, she said,

oh, I did this payroll, this person asked me to do their payroll early. And I was like, what? And this is a person who's been making great money for me. And I was like, I do her payroll early. What are you talking about? She goes, yeah, she asked me to do it. So I was like, something's wrong. So me being me, I feel responsible for all my people.

So I'm like, we live in Vegas. I'm like, she's gambling. She's fucking gambling, we live in Vegas. I'm like, she's gambling. She's fucking gambling. Cause she was beast like, like hammer down job performance. Great. She's gambling.

I'm like, I gotta talk to her about this. So she comes in my office the next day and I go, hey, I gotta talk to you about this advance you need. Like you just got like X amount of dollars last week. There's no way I know your lifestyle. There's no way you should need this. What's going on? Do you have a problem? And she goes, yeah, I got like X amount of dollars last week. There's no way I know your lifestyle. There's no way you should need this. What's going on? Do you have a problem?

And she goes, yeah, I got a problem. I said, okay, is this a problem you've had for a while? She goes, yeah, it's been going on for a while. And I said, have you had it before? And she goes, I said, have you gotten help for this before? And she goes, yeah, I have. And I said, where did you get help? Like who, like, did you go to a meeting without me? I'm still thinking about gambling.

Right. She goes, this place, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, okay, well I'm going to call them and see what we need. She goes, well, they're going to want me to impatient. I'm like impatient. She goes, yeah. She goes, yeah. And I said, I said, okay, what should I tell them when you, when I, I'm going to call them. What should I tell them? She goes, tell them I relapsed. And I said, okay, what should I tell them when you, when I, I'm going to call them. What should I tell them? She goes, tell them I relapsed. And I said, okay. And she goes, tell them I'm going to need to detox.

And I was like, oh, detox. I go, I'm still thinking about gambling. I'm like, what do you have in your system? She goes, heroin. I was like, what? Yeah. What in the app? What?

Like, and then I just. Mine starts going, what have I been missing for the past month? And now I'm like, and then as soon as after the meeting, I'm like Googling it and Sarah like, I'm like, yes, she does look a little gray. Yeah. I mean, yeah, her eyes are a little pinned or whatever. I'm like, yeah, this is a little, yeah, dude,

this is not good. So anyway, I ended up sending her rehab. I made her pay me back for it. Because I said, if you don't pay for it, you're not gonna appreciate it. Right. Thanks dad for lessons like that. But yeah, dude, so pay me back for it. Cause I said, if you don't pay for it, you're not going to appreciate it. Right. Thanks dad for lessons like that. Um, but yeah, dude, so I get it, man.

And in the same thing with her dude, she had gotten hurt and started on Oxy and whatever else and then couldn't get it and then moved on to the hard stuff, dude. That's all, that's how it starts, man. And what happens is it's, it's very terrifying. I'll tell you a quick story. And this is just so the audience can understand the danger of this type of thing. So the guy that I was telling you about, the wholesaler that I was able to get the copious

amounts of pills from, I met him, I used to make weekly stops at his house and the way we met is somebody plugged me to him and I walked by him one day, dropped a business card, winked at him that had my number on it, you know, and caught the connection and we're meeting on a weekly basis and he's opening this century to century fire safes, the deep pile ones. He opens it up and I'm looking at this thing and it's like when the guy gets to the end of the search and they open up the box and the thing glows gold

in his face, right? Exactly, and I'm like, holy shit, it's the Mecca. So I'm like, all right, well, what do I, he's like, a dollar a pill, whatever you want, as many as you want. And brother, for people that have Acumen in this area, we're talking methadone, oxycontin, suboxone, buprenorphine, dilaudid, fentanyl.

I mean, it was the entire pharmacy in as much volume as you wanted. It was heaven for a drug addict. So I'm like, well, how much for the whole thing? And he goes, I'm not giving you the whole thing. I said, why? He goes, because I know you take these things and you'll die.

So there's no way. So long story short, we're doing our thing. Then it kind of became a friendship as a lot of times things will happen in business. And obviously it's a weird business to be in, but then stop by, we'd get high, we'd smoke a joint, eat some pills, play some PlayStation, whatever. And I became very good friends with him

and his three-year-old, two-year-old daughter who would walk around while we're doing drugs and his wife who's sniffing coke off the counter while the kids there. You know, at this point in my life, man, you're not realizing what's going on. You're not going, oh my God, we're doing narcotics and there's a kid here. You're like, I'm here with my friends. It was just the culture of what you did. You know, it's a very messed up point that you can get to in your life. So I'm sitting there and he pulls out this little zipper bag. Like it looks like a little, you know, Barber's toolkit or something like that. And he opens it up and I look and he's like, dude, you want to get real high?

And I'm like, yeah, sure. What do you got in there? I'm thinking he's got a big pill or something. And he opens it and there's a spoon. There's a syringe, there's a rubber band and just a whole, the whole kit for heroin. I've seen the movies. Yeah.

They call it a rig. And I'm like, he's like, that's it. Rig, not kit. He's like movies. Apparently. That's a good thing. You don't know what that is. So, uh, I'm like, what do you, what are you doing? Are you crushing up a pill and shoot? And he's like, no, bro. And he pulls out these two little wax bags and they've got this cute little cartoon stamp on them. I said, is that heroin? And he goes, yeah. And I remember John, in that moment, just thinking, I felt so dirty being next to this

person. I'm like, you inject this into your veins? Like you disgusting excuse for a man. He looks at me and he goes, bro, you go into 7-Eleven and you crush up pills on the back of a urinal that other people have splashed piss all over and you snort them directly up your nose, which goes through your mucous membrane into your bloodstream. And I'm like, damn, you're a good salesman.

But, uh, I watched the ritual. I watched him tie himself off, fix up the rig, shoot it. I mean, bro, it was the most disgusting, but also eerily erotic thing that I'd ever seen. Just the romance that this guy had with this ritual and just the look of glory that was on his face, knowing what was about to transpire. And I'll never forget. He pulled back and I saw blood under the plunger and he pushed. And the next thing I know, he tips forward,

waxes head on the air conditioner and boom, he's down on the ground. And I said, Elena, he just passed out. He whacked his head. She goes, oh no, no, no, no, no. He's fine. I'm like, okay, you wanna give me some context here? That didn't look good. She goes, he's on the nod. And I'm like, what's that?

She goes, well, when you're on heroin, you nod. You kinda nod out and you come back and you nod. She's like, trust me, he's enjoying himself. And I'm thinking to myself, what is possibly enjoyable about this? When I would do pills, I'd get the talkies. I would, you know, get, I'd go play basketball. I'd go to the casino, gamble, play poker.

It was like a super drug for me, but this guy's laying on the floor. So I start to feel a little responsible. The little girl's running around, daddy's on the floor. I'm not feeling right about this anymore. This is a dirty needle laying there. This went Appalachia real quick. What movies are made out of is what I'm thinking. I'm like, okay.

So I prop him up on the couch and I can't, he's like a limp stuffed animal. Every time I prop him up, he flops over a problem. And I'm like, this is not okay. And as I'm looking at him, you know, skin is getting whiter veins are turning blue colors, leaving the face lips are turning purple. And I'm, I said, Elena, he goes, he's dying right now. And she's like, no, he's not. And then I licked my finger and I put it up to his nose. There was nothing.

Put my hand on his chest. Nothing. Felt his pulse. Faintest pulse. So for whatever reason, man, I just responded. I, I said, call 911. And she goes, I'm not calling 911. I said, your, your kid's father's dying right here. And she goes, he's not, he's going to be fine. So I picked up the phone. I called I told the opera I said we have a drug overdose we need somebody dispatched immediately she'll give you the directions and I handed her the phone and she was pissed bro and I remember thinking to myself in that moment like I need to stop this because if somebody's

upset that I'm calling the ambulance to save her dying husband this is not okay. So I just kind of surveyed the situation and I realized unless air got into his lungs, because he was experiencing respiratory depression, that's what happens when you do opiates, he was gonna die. So I took a deep breath and for the first time ever, I started giving a grown man mouth to mouth. And then it was over.

Notice he said the first time, not the last time. That was the last time too. Okay, well fair. Well I'm still alive so you never know. We'll get that in, we'll get that in. But I'll never forget, bro, the atrocious smell of his breath that would just in that moment you go, what the fuck am I doing? Like, what has this come to? So I gave the guy CPR. I gave him chest compressions. I gave him air for probably three or four minutes. The first responder shows up and

I'll never forget, he cracked the door open, he comes in. I knew the guy. He was a mechanic. That was a volunteer. And he's looking at me like, what the fuck? He's like, what are you doing here? You doing here bro, right? And I'm just like, bro, just... He goes, keep doing what you're doing. I said, that's your job. He goes, man, if you're doing it and it's working, just keep doing what you're doing. The medics will be here soon. So the ambulance showed up and they're all nonchalant about it and the one guy looks at the other guy goes What do you think one or two? Yeah, probably two Narcan rise and shine off to the hospital Doctor told me that he'd be dead without me. He gave me a hug cried when he hugged me held me for a minute

Well, he cried all over me. Thank you so much for saving my life my poor little baby. Da da da da da Wife told me later two three years later. I saw her at a rehab and he was going, how's Josh doing? Oh, no, he was still alive, but he just, um, she left him because after I left on their way home from the hospital, he asked her to stop at the dope spot so he could fix up cause he was still sick from the Narcan. So that just gives you some context on how evil the addiction can be and what it can cause you to do. And you would think man that that moment I'd have been done with it and walked

away from it. And I tried, but the addiction was so physical man. It just this. What finally got you out of it? Bank robbery is the easy answer. All right so walk me through the bank robbery. This is okay here we go. So this is now probably seven years later okay and the the seven years was sales jobs doing well always a leader but just burning every bridge you know coming into place like a whirlwind selling

everything becoming the number one guy month one month two month three then month four slip a little month five slip a little more month six get fired move on to the next place I was like a parasite and burning every bridge is on you know along the way I got to the point where I had exhausted every option I lost my driver's license I got in a every option. I lost my driver's license. I got in a DWAI accident, lost my driver's license. So now my meal ticket was gone. You can't even sell cars. Yep. So I started doing door to door and did very well at that. But I was able to manipulate the people into giving me cash for a discount. So I was just walking up to doors, selling them on a

subscription, taking the cash, going and getting high, moving on to the next place. Hopefully they never called the number. Right. So one day, it's kind of like a snowball is building momentum behind you when you've done all these nefarious things and you know that it's going to break at some point and there were warrants for my arrest from not showing up to court. There were women that were not happy with me. There were, it just, you're waking up in the morning with your heart blasting through your chest with anxiety because number one, you know you need drugs to calm down and get, you're waking up in the morning with your heart blasting through your chest with anxiety because number one, you know, you need drugs to calm down and get, you know, get right. Number two, any sound of anything striking, anything that could resemble a

door knock, puts your heart into your throat because you're afraid it's the police coming for you. You're just in this constant state of panic at all times. And unless you're not just high, but really high and probably drunk, you can't shake it. So it just becomes this cyclical wake up, steal, get drugs, get high, get drunk, go to sleep, wake up, do it again. And that's how people get and I was there. So I had my girlfriend's car and I dropped her off at work and I was getting ready to go to the pawn shop and pawn her TV to get drugs, to be able to go out and steal more that day.

And I'd had enough with it. And you know, I say, when I tell this story, I say that at that time I didn't know it, but subconsciously I was giving up. I was giving in. I wanted to get caught. Yes, sir. I did. And you know, this wasn't a master plan with like in a basement with like the plans. No, this was, Hey Google, how do you rob a bank? I mean, geez. So, I actually did some research. Ocean's one. Ocean's point five. Yeah, point five, there you go.

So I found out real quickly on the internet that there were certain things you could do to try to ensure some more success. I also found PDF security protocols online for the bank I was looking to rob and discovered that if I didn't pose a threat of violence, that they're not calling the cops or anything until you leave and if you demand the currency, they have to give it. They're not supposed to be confrontational anyway. So I went and I went home, I got a sweatshirt and a matching, you know, a tracksuit basically. I went to the gas station, I got a pair of sunglasses and a bandana, pulled the car. You know, there was some instrumental, you know, process to it. I put the car a few blocks down, I walked

through the woods, I wasn't seen on the CCTV and I walked into the bank, man,, process to it. I put the car a few blocks down. I walked through the woods. I wasn't seen on the CCTV and I walked into the bank, man. And I, to this day, good afternoon, ladies. I think it's pretty obvious from my attire, what's going on right now. Two of you please place the currency on the desk. Today's take no banded money, no tracers, no diapax. Like they had those things at a credit union in New York. And I thought it was Daniel Ocean at the time.

And I said, get it out and I'll get out of your hair. And then the panic struck because they didn't do anything. They just sat there and looked at me and I kind of looked around and this footage is on the internet. You're like, maybe I shouldn't have been so cordial. I'm like, maybe I should have brought a gun or maybe I should have never walked in in the first place.

You didn't have a weapon. Brother, I didn't have a post-it note. Like I had nothing. I walked in with a plastic grocery bag. So, you know, and in hindsight, there were so many things that could have gone terribly wrong, but it went exactly as you could have hoped it would. They didn't do anything and I looked at them and I kind of looked around and I went move and then he started moving. He took the money out, they fanned that out just as I asked. I put the currency in a plastic Wegmans

grocery bag. I took it from the second lady, I wrapped it up, I put it in my sweatshirt, turned around, tripped over the little velvet rope that divides the aisles, which otherwise it would have been very smooth looking on camera. But that's the only flaw in the video if you go look it up, because it still exists out there. Oh man.

And I egressed to the bank and went out into the woods and ran to the car, got in the car, and what I had done was I had put in dress clothes, kind of like what I'm wearing now, underneath the sweatsuit. So when I got to the car, I took off the sweatsuit, stuffed that stuff in the car and what I had done was I had put in dress clothes kind of like what I'm wearing now underneath the sweatsuit. So when I got to the car I took off the sweatsuit, stuffed that stuff in the trunk and I was just a simple businessman in a polo leaving the parking lot and I got away with it for just shy of a full week. It was about five and a half, six days later that you know I was on my way home from the laundromat. I just, everybody asked that

question and it's such a pain in the ass to admit but it was no fault of mine. Okay I did everything as good as you could possibly do it, likely by accident. It was the landlord of the home that we were renting. When I came home to switch into the robbery outfit, she was there. Excuse me. And I didn't know she was there because her dogs weren't barking and her car wasn't in the driveway but her car was in the shop that day and her dogs were getting primped and cut. So everything that would have indicated she was home was gone. I thought it was just me.

So I walked out of the house and into the vehicle with the whole get up on. And that day she was like, well, that's kind of weird. And not until the police released all the footage, she goes, holy shit, that's the guy living upstairs. Yeah. And I will give it to her. She held it down for a couple of days. But then finally her boyfriend,

who was a retired sheriff, was like, something's wrong here, you're not, like, what's up? And she's like, I think the guy living upstairs robbed a bank, they put two and two together and they watched the film and saw the car and her car and they put it together. All right, so they arrest you. Yep.

Did you call your parents? You know what the most bittersweet thing was? Did you call your parents? I did not call my parents. I went to the DMVtersweet thing was? Did you call your parents? I did not call my parents. Oh, okay. I went to the DMV that morning and paid with the robbery money to get my license back. So I had my license. I had my tickets to ride.

I could go sell cars again. Stopped at the laundromat on the way home. How much did you get from the bank? Ten grand. Nothing crazy. But it's more than you should get from a teller. More than you should get. Yeah.

All right. So. So, get locked up. I don't call my parents. I call my girlfriend and she knew, you know, she knew I'd been acting funny and she knew that I was, you know, ruthlessly addicted to drugs and I'll never forget. They came to visit me and her father who I loved to death. He's the nicest guy in the world. Um,

he comes in the visitor and he sits down and he's just looking at me like this. It's like a deer in the headlights. I'm like, what's up, Ryan? He goes, did you do it? Tell me you didn't do it. Tell me you didn't do it. Man, tell me you didn't do it. I said, I've never lied to you and I'm not going to start today. Did it. I did it. And he goes, dude, you got balls of steel.

He goes, that's awesome. No, no, it's not. No, it's not awesome. Then his, his, his daughter, my girlfriend at the time waxes, like, he goes, dad, shut up. And then he just looks, he was the most immature, nicest teddy bear in the world. And I remember that moment being like, well, I'm glad I did your proud big guy, but yeah.

So man, I went away to prison. I did some time upstate. I went through a shock camp. I got home, only spent in that bid, other times I was in jail, but in that bid, I only spent a year behind bars, came home. And that was what it took, man. So-

Because it wasn't armed robbery. Correct. They originally tried to hit me with seven to fourteen years for that But there was just it was just robbery none of the the the witnesses and nobody would testify cordial They're like he was nice. We felt safe. He said we'd go home There's no problem like it was about as nice as you could be but it was it was the culmination of a decade of drug addiction Getting to a point where I needed release I needed out. I could not do it myself. You got clean obviously in jail. I'm clean as a whistle. I mean when I was in jail, it was just withdrawals and just vomiting and

defecating on your side. Just too colorful to admit, you know, to speak about on this show, but just imagine hell. Pour some salt on it and that's what it was. Yeah. But when I got out man, especially, and then there was kind of a blessing in disguise, I got put into a shock camp, which most inmates would tell you is hell on earth. It's a paramilitary boot camp and it's meant to get time off your sentence. But if you're been in there long enough and they just need somewhere to put you because they're overpopulated, they'll send low security inmates, which I was because I was nonviolent, they'll send you to the shock camp.

So I got sent to a shock camp to serve out my last six months. You know, basically you go from sitting in a prison to training, you know, training exactly, five o'clock in the morning running all that stuff. But I'm glad I did. It was kind of like the last little stretch of cleaning my body out, getting good blood pumping, fresh air into my lungs. And I went home, man. And it was all history after that. Yeah. So you got back into sales, obviously. Yeah, I got home. I was, I didn't want to. I, I had told myself that the evil was sales. Sales was the evil that got me into this mess and I was never going to do it again. And what I later learned was sales had nothing to do with it.

You could have been doing anything. Exactly. It was the behaviors that I associated with it. So I went to work for a body shop, got fired from there because he found out I was a bank robber. Um, dude, so what, tell me how that is, man. So you, so you think I'm back on the straight and narrow. I'm starting my life over here. I am.

And you get a job and then the dude walks in and goes, Hey man, Your background, what makes it even worse, John is I went and I asked him, I said, pull out my employee file. Cause he's handing me my last check and there's tears in his eyes because the best part was I had started working for him as a, as a claims adjuster doing collision work and Parlayed that into I heard some of the other people like selling detail packages and paint protection film

And I just started up selling all the body shop customers I was putting an additional eight to ten thousand dollars in the till every week and he's like dude who the hell is this guy? He offered me a store. He had another location north of there that was kind of struggling. So you're five weeks out of a prison bid for bank robbery and a guy's telling you, I want to promote you to run one of my entire operations. And now he's telling you that... And then all of a sudden it's, hey come in here, yeah here's your walking papers and I'm like, Sam, what the hell? Do you think your life was, you think you were just some screwed in that moment? When that happened, you know, honestly no because I didn't like the job and I didn't like the guy and

something in me has always known that I can survive. I can, I'll move on to the next thing. I'll figure it out. I've always been that guy. But it was very devastating that I had some cadence and some rhythm going in a job to go to. Money in my pocket. And all of a sudden it was all pulled off underneath me

because I was trying to get my license back. That was, you know, I was back in that dammit again of needing my license. And I remember he pulls up my employee, if I goes, what do you want this for? I said, turn to the last page. That's the last page. So see where it says,

have you ever been convicted of a crime? What's that say? Felony bank robbery. I said, yeah, he goes, well, I didn't see it and neither did such and such. And it is what it is. I'm like, so I'm being punished for being honest to you and the fact that you didn't do your diligence.

He didn't care. What it was, was people were coming in, recognizing me and saying, oh, you employ the bank robber and his ego couldn't take that. So did you have to get away from the hometown before things took off? No. What ended up happening is another individual who I knew who had small talent could be hard stuff like that. Syracuse, even though it's a bigger city, it's, you know, this,

we're not talking about in Cato suburbs. Yeah., but you're in the suburbs. Yeah and there was an individual that I knew who I knew was an addict, who I knew was kind of a nefarious actor but he had written me one of two people, the other my girlfriend, wrote me while I was in prison, sent me some money like was trying to keep the tie which I later learned was because he had an agenda and he had started a used car dealership and he was failing miserably and he knew that that was my area of expertise so he reaches out to me he goes hey I heard you got fired from Sam's, why don't you partner with me in this car thing? I'm like dude I don't have any money to

partner with, I'm broke. He goes I'll put up all the money. Bring your experience. Yeah he goes just basically you take my checkbook, you take the cars, you take the trailer, you do everything and we'll split it down the middle. So I chose to do that. Within about 11 months, I'd made us 360 grand, which in central New York was a decent living. You know, we had to split it obviously, but I just, I was clicking now. I was back selling. I was doing it honestly.

So what do you think he saw in you that made him believe in you in that way? We worked together. So he just knew. And he saw me in action. He just knew. Yes, and he saw that at, you you know for him, he came in, his company bought out my company that I worked for and he came in and saw that there was a 21 year old guy sitting in the general manager seat. He's like what the hell are you doing here? I'm the general manager. He goes now that ain't gonna last. After a couple weeks he's like you're pretty good at this man and then we made a lot of money together and then he would start you know there'd be a few deals that he couldn't close and I'd say I'm gonna come in and

to this deal you ain't to own my deal if I can't get it you can't get it until one day I said you don't have a choice I'm your boss I've never thrown my weight like this before but I'm doing it now because that's a fucking deal I went out there I closed the deal we came back in I looked at him and I was just messing with my crumpled up the four square and bounced it off his head and I said yeah I suck don't I he jumped across the desk we tussled and I looked at him and I was just messing with him. I crumpled up the four-square and bounced it off his head and I said, yeah I suck don't I? He jumped across the desk, we tussled and wrestled for about five minutes until somebody called the owner and the general manager, it was the the best friend of the owner's wife and it was a weird dynamic but she came in

and read us both the riot act but he during that time he had seen what I was capable of. He saw me appraise trades, he saw me buy inventory so he knew I knew what I was doing and he also knew I was in a bad spot and I probably wasn't gonna scrutinize the fact that he had a Winnebago trailer on a gravel parking lot in the Swiggo New York so and he knew I needed the money so I did it and we did very well for a while and then it ended ugly. He told his boss off and decided to come back to work at the place and the whole premise of the agreement was you and I can't work together. We're volatile. Just let me run the thing, collect your paycheck once a week, call it a day. Well his ego

wouldn't let that happen and he came in and he destroyed the whole thing. So you know, it is what it is. But what happened and what transpired because of that, I went back to work for a guy who owned a Z-Bart franchise and which is a rust-proofing and vehicle protection company in Central New York and on his sales floor I was very productive for him before I had gotten fired for theft of services because I washed a few buddies cars for pills and he reached out he was a friend of the family says I hear you're doing okay now I'd like to offer your job back and I made a buck sixty buck eighty working for him so this was

a welcome thing so I said I'll be there as soon as I can start. He goes get there Monday. So I started working for him and John what happened is... Well that's what the small town pays off though because he heard you were doing better. Everybody knows everybody. Yeah, do your thing. So I tell you what man, what you don't realize until you get to Las Vegas is it's very dry out here. Yeah it's very dry, sorry. No it's okay. I did a convention and I was giving away gifts and they're like dude give away lip balm. Like why would I give away lip balm? Oh you know now. It's the time of week in Vegas and you know now. I know. Yeah so that's why the water goes with me everywhere but so he comes to me after about a week or two. No no excuse me, it

was about a month and a half, month and a half, two months. He comes in and he asks me kind of what the agreement that me and the last guy had and he writes it down. And then he comes in the next day and he writes down some new figures that were a little bit more beneficial to me, draws an X and a line and pushes it across the desk to me. I say, what's that? He goes, you need to be a business owner.

He goes, you should not be working for me. He goes, but I know you're in a position right now where you don't have a choice. So instead of letting you work for me, work you like a mule for 10%, he goes, I'm going to do what you're one day going to thank me for, which is stake you to open your own business and let you make 55%. And then one day, if I ever need to call upon you, kind of like, you know, on the day I don't have to It'll be a favor. It'll be a favor. I'll call on you.

So it was kind of like that, very much like that. If you knew this guy, you'd understand that that was pretty relevant, that for him but um let's just put it this way that there's no you know yes if i didn't pay back the loan it would have been a bit of a problem concrete shoes no question in my mind so i knew that but for once in my life john i knew that i could do it and i knew that i didn't have a vice and that business took off and if i was going to fail it was going to be because i wasn't capable i know, I would pay him back earnestly and I would move on, but I didn't plan on failing. So obviously that business took off.

That became CNY Drives, which is now a three car auto dealer group in central New York that does primarily used cars and sub-prime credit. It's a very, it's a nice little profitable company and it's served me well. Well, before we get onto now the national training of sales agents, salespeople everywhere, I wanna talk about, let's do this. Let's do true or false.

Okay. Which is my opinion from working at the car dealership. This is the things I tell people they should do when they buy a car. And you tell me true or false. Number one, in every car dealership, there's a, there's a board somewhere in the car dealership that has every salesman's name on it with X's and lines on it showing half deals or whole Deals that they've done that year. I recommend you walk in and find the worst salesman and ask for him true or false True, I would say maybe one up because that guy's usually about to get fired Okay, you want to follow up and the reason being is that dude is desperate for a deal and he is not gonna fight at all

He's got plenty of time to spend with you. He's not gonna fight for the pencil at all. He's gonna fall over and tell you exactly what you can get. True, definitely true. Number two, you should buy a car on the last day of the month. Very true. And the reason for that is. They got numbers to hit and they'll give a car away

and they'll slam dunk themselves into a trade in. And isn't most interest on the auto lines figured on the first of the month. Yes. So anything still sitting on the lot, they pay interest on. So if it's gone, they pay less. Okay. Number two or number three. Here's my third one. You should go 20 minutes before they close on the last day of the month. He true. I see where you're going with that. True.

Finance manager wants to say finance manager finance manager wants to get to that part. He wants to get to that dinner, buddy. He's done. And you're sitting there grinding them for everything. You're not going to get the full menu on that day. You're going to get maybe a warranty and that's it. That's it. Yeah. But he's going to fall over when you push back on all of the garbage that he's patting on you in the box. You're going to say sure. No problem. I'll start his truck and go better because I'm giving people good advice. So there you go. That's it. So let's vice validated. All right. There it is. So let's talk about a little bit about, about you training people nationwide. Let's talk about that. It's really simple how it became

I realized eventually after several years of doing it that I was not a good car dealer I was a mediocre car dealer, but I was Incredibly effective at training salespeople people would come into my store vendors and they would be like bro Where did you find these people? I'm like, what are you talking about? Your sales staff, they're assassins. They were like, well, that guy came from Securitas, he was a mall security guard.

That guy worked for Fryhoffers, he drove a bread truck. This girl over here was a stripper, oddly enough. Some synchronicity there. But there was no rhyme or reason to where these people came from. They had no common ground, You just made them that way. I taught them a process that I call compassionate interrogation. And I teach them a process called the big three framework,

which not to get into coin phrases and things like that, but very simply, it just means that you don't show a product and sell the product and then ask someone to buy the product and then overcome objections and then close the deal. The sale is not showcasing the product. The sale is an interrogation process to find out why is the customer here, what type of car are they looking for or problem are they looking to solve depending on

what a tangible asset or a service or whatever it is. Going to a discovery exercise with this customer that and we teach them a way to do it that pays a lot of respect to the human condition. So it's all about the customer. It's not interrogation. It's not, John, are you trading? It's EQ, it's EQ.

It's conversational. It's EQ. And it's comfortable, okay? I would agree with you. And it's a way that the, and the thing, the most important, or one of the most important things, I probably say the most important thing 100 times a day.

One of the most important things is the fact that the salesperson remains abundantly confident because they're conversational. When you teach salespeople word tracks, they're the words of another human being. They're never going to say those words with the same tenacity and efficacy as they would their own natural conversation. And when they believe they possess the ability to interrogate out of somebody all the components they need to put the deal together, they're extremely effective. they possess the ability to interrogate out of somebody all the components they

need to put the deal together. They're extremely effective and when you get to the end of a sale and somebody can't say well I need to talk to my wife because you flush that out the beginning, you use something that we call a time gate which essentially incentivizes the customer to move sooner and it's not about solving whether or not they can do it now or do it without their spouse and that's a common misconception in sales, I think. And I'd be curious to see what your opinion is on this. But you're not, if your wife said, John, don't you dare buy a boat without going by me for,

I want to know the payment. I want to know the color. You can do it, brother. You're getting divorced. Yeah. Are you going to buy a boat without her? No, of course not. Okay.

But if you go out to a place to buy a boat and you're not a hundred percent sure you want that boat or you can say to the guy, well, I need to talk to my wife about it. No, that's, that's the, I gotta talk to my wife or talk to my spouse is always the bullshit to just get off. Well, that's what I'm saying. The question I had was if you don't like the boat, but you like to salesman, he's a nice guy. You don't want to say, dude, I don't like your boat. You're never going to see me again. So what's your

pivot off of that? What's that? What's your pivot there? You're talking about when that comes to fruition? It's not gonna happen because at the outset of the conversation I'm gonna say dude John, have you talked to your wife about this? Well not even have you talked to your wife. It's like so are you gonna be in the boat? Does the wife like to swim too? You know we got nice bathing suits and jet skis. Oh yeah she loves the boat. Cool man. So she just you guys are landing on a black one that's what she sent you out to buy. It's an inferred statement, right? Yeah. And it's, well, no, she hasn't... Oh, so you guys haven't talked about it yet? Oh, okay. Well, she's probably gonna want to be a part of the process, you think?

I mean, yeah eventually. Oh, Jesus, bummer. Okay. Well, listen, let me ask you a question. Before I move forward, there's two ways I can quote you, okay? Right now and then you create the urgency. Right now, we're having a three-day sale and this is conveniently day three. And I'm saying this now, John, because I don't wanna say it at the end of the conversation because you're gonna think it's some sales trick, right? I'm just honestly, at the outset of this conversation, letting you know there's two ways I can quote you today.

I can quote you on that boat in stock with a deal that we have going on that's knock your socks off and what most people, you weave in the human condition, what most people are doing to get good deals right now, like the people that are walking out of here with the killer deals, that's what they're doing. But it's not gonna make sense for me to do that

if you need to talk to the wife, do it a month from now, whatever. So which way would you like me to quote you today? And you put the onus on the customer and it's called a time gate. And if the customer, like they could do it, they don't need the wife, they want to know, like they're compelled. They want to know what that price is.

They're so thirsty to know what lays behind door number one, they're going to give in and they're going to say, no, you can, you can show me the sale pricing. And then you just reiterate, okay, well, I just, you did hear me say that's a decision that would need to happen today. Right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not pushing you to make a decision. I want you to understand that's a today price.

I just want you to make sure that you don't call me in a week and ask to See the but no no and then you confirm. Oh, so if the planets align then you could pull the trigger just out of curiosity Yeah, I mean I'd say okay good move on very nonchalant very conversational versus want to buy it. Well, I got to talk to my wife Well, why do you really need your wife? It isn't anything worth doing tomorrow worth doing today And does your wife love you does she want you to be better and more confident? What's be more confident with all that horse shit, man. You can't do that conversational, right? No, no, I find that with our process,

cause again, in real estate, it's a long process. It's not short. What we do is it's much easier, cause we try to cover as many of the things that could happen through the process of buying a house and get clients comfortable with hypotheticals and get them to agree to hypotheticals way before it happens. So for example, like, like if the market's hot and there's a lot of competition, it's like, look, you know, we're going to go out, we're going to see, we're going to narrow

it down to three houses and we're going to say, do you want to write an offer on this house, this house, or both of them? And a lot of people like you write an offer on both more than one house. Like, of course you can, sure. You can't get the seller take more than one offer. Yeah. They can look at more than one offer. We're going to write more than one. And having them agree to that hypothetically before it becomes reality in front of them makes it much easier to go down that road. When it is in front of them, you have them agree to all of these things. Hypothetically, you know,

we talk about the inspections at detail. We're like, look, when the inspection comes back on the house, the idea is not necessarily to get the house back to 100%, perfect like it was the day they built it. We're looking for any material effects of value or is health and safety. And that way when it comes back,

and if you've ever bought a house, you've seen the inspection, it's like 50 pages of everything. They don't freak out, right? You're like, okay, we're going to go through this and do what we talked about and do this. And I think just prepping people, it's the same as what you're talking about, but just effectively prepping people for what's coming saves a lot of problems. I agree with you wholeheartedly. So, so what you and I are talking about is very much the same thing,

which is using your knowledge of what is about to be to stop that from happening before it happens. Like if, if you know that you're, for instance, you've got a customer and I keep it on the car business just because it's the easiest thing for me to iterate off the tongue, say I own three car dealerships, but customer comes and says yeah I'm looking to be and here's the bane of my existence. I love when car salespeople do this. Well what kind of monthly payment are you looking to be at? Oh I want to be under 400 bucks a month. Great congratulations dickhead, you just painted yourself into a corner. Go now

spend the entire afternoon talking yourself out of that. How are you gonna ask somebody a question when if they give you an answer you don't like, you're going to hold it against them. Yeah. You know so it's not what kind of monthly payment you're looking to be. It's a price condition. Hey man, generally these trucks run you know with no money down anywhere from 800 bucks a month up to 1200 bucks a month depending on rate and terms. You want to keep looking? Oh I mean geez I had no idea that one. Okay well we can look at something cheaper maybe like a compact pickup truck. Well no I need a truck like that. Well there's things that'll affect the

payment. I mean if you have a trade and you have some cash down. Well yeah I'm putting some cash down. Oh okay so you're putting some cash down. That helps. You know other things too like you know credit worthiness and things like that. I've been 800 credit score. You'd be amazed what you can find out in a discovery process when you just do a conditioning exercise like that. So what we do with salespeople is we essentially number one we have something you know and you always have your coin terms so people can remember things right. So we have the three C's content, confidence and cadence.

Would you agree that a salesperson cannot be effective to their potential unless they do a similar framework every time they sell. Yeah, process matters. You have to have measurable results. If I'm using a different process on four different people, I don't know if I missed here, made there, or if my trajectory is upward. Yeah, consistency is the key. Right.

Because you cannot evaluate quality KPIs unless you're using the same process every time. 1000% and a fancy word like KPIs, key performance indicators, unless you're doing the same thing each time, it's like running a hose down different places of the concrete and trying to figure out where the water flows the best. It's got to be consistency, right? So that's content. So that's a framework. That's a sales framework. It's not word tracks. It's not one-liners. It's not these are my brain-based questions to get the customer. No, it's not. These are the rebuttals you use when the cut. No, it's a process. Number one, why are you here? Yeah. Why are you here? Well, I'm looking to buy a car. Everybody's looking to buy a car to car dealership. Why are you here? Well, because I need a truck, right? But why today? You know, the craziest thing ever,

somebody say when I walked out to a dude in the lot one day, I think this is the only time I've ever been speechless in sales. So be good. This is going to be offensive. Just just selling it sales. So be good. This is gonna be offensive. Just just throwing it out there. I didn't say it until a story. Right. I walk out to this dude. Hey, dude, man, you still because I'm doing good.

It was a stuff on the lot. And I go, think about getting a car. Like somebody goes, oh, man, I'm thinking about pussy. I gotta buy a new car. I love that. I was like, uh, okay. I was speechless. Dude, I love that. I was dead speechless. We, we train salespeople like,

please don't hold that story against me people. That really happened. It's not my word. It's not, that is not a word I use a lot. It's not anything that's not believable, man. You get those people and it's like, you ever notice this when you're in sales, you get those guys that feel like they have to arm themselves for the conversation. Like you start walking towards them, it's like you see them sharpening a knife,

metaphorically, yeah. And you come over and it's like, hey man, how you doing? I'm just looking, man, I'm just looking. It's like, yeah. Well dude, you talk about that, right? You talk about that. And this is why I teach everybody that sells with the phone.

The worst thing you can ever say in the phone is, hey, Bill, blah, blah, blah, how you doing today? Because when you say how you doing today, people are so programmed. Like we are programmed. Like when you drove over here today, did you almost die? Yeah, I could have many times. Yeah, you're in a 10,000 pound,

you're in a 6,000 pound death machine, going 70 miles an hour down a road with somebody else in a 6,000 pound death machine coming the other way. down a road with somebody else in a 6,000 pound death machine coming the other way, at any time, they could have just swerved over and killed you. Whoever's driving, sorry about that. As you guys leave, you'll be thinking about that now. But you could have died.

But here's the thing. The way I drive, she's already been thinking about it. No, but here's what happens. So the brain conditions yourself to understand that that's not probably gonna happen so you don't even think about it. Otherwise, we would be walking around like, oh God, like all the time, like fight or flight.

So you condition things to eliminate them. So it's just like when that person, when you're, are you a person in a clothing store that likes to be helped? I don't, right? So you're in the store, man, you're looking and you see them coming and you're just waiting for them to get closer to you and you say,

I'm just looking, right? They could be walking up to hiding you a million dollars and you'd be like, no, no, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. You don't even want to hear it because you're conditioned to what they're going to do. And if you're selling with the phone, when you call people and say, Hey, how you doing today? That's what every telemarketer in the world says when they call, Hey, how you doing today? I am like, their brain shuts completely off to this is a telemarketer. Again,

you can be calling to get my million dollars. They're not even going to hear it. So it's those patterns and those frequencies that are so important. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Something that we teach is you know, the frequency of authenticity. So you cannot read off a script, you cannot use a canned statement, you have nothing that you can do with predetermined language is ever gonna come across authentically. It's the same way that you can watch Donald Trump speak and when he shifts this way, you know he's looking at the starboard teleprompter and when he shifts this way, you know he's looking at the starboard teleprompter.

And when he shifts that way, you know he's looking at the port teleprompter. And then when he looks at the audience, he's talking nothing. No, but really we've got the worst people doing the worst things and we know what we're doing and we're gonna do it the best way. And frankly, frankly we're gonna do it the best way.

It's gonna be huge. And our administration served you for four years. It's like, oh, he's back on the teleprompter. And it's obvious, right? Now it's not, and that's what kills me about the sales trainers that are out there. And I'm not vilifying anybody. These guys make lots of money. They help lots of people, but there's a difference between getting somebody

from zero to 60 and zero to 100 or 60 to 100. And if you want to take a salesperson and maximize their efficacy and get their potential out of them, they have to watch, Like you're, I can tell you're a gangster. You can sell anything to anybody and you believe you can, don't you? Oh yeah, for sure. 100%. Right. It just reeks off of you.

It does off of me too. And you're sitting here right now and I'm like, I'll sell this motherfucker. How good is he? Right. We're both doing it because that's what we do. Right. Tell me I'm wrong. No, we're going to buy a house here.

That's, we're just going to make that easy. So, I mean, you really want to go back to New York? You want to go to Vegas? No, I don't. We've already established that. We're just gonna make that easy to do. I mean, you really wanna go back to New York? You wanna stay in Vegas? No, I don't. We've already established that. We're a shoe in, brother. It's Miami or Vegas. So the bottom line is when you have a salesperson

who does not have that, like you're at the top of your food chain because you have that, okay? Along with many other things, charisma and determination and all the other things that make you you. When you can take a salesperson and you can give them intrinsic confidence, real true

confidence, you bring their efficacy far higher than you ever could with word tracks or scripted rebuttals or practiced questions. Because when somebody has an asset that came from somewhere else that they're using as a key to plug into a lock, it's like you go home and you got your key, you put it in the door. There's always the hesitancy, is the door gonna open? Lock gonna be frozen and bring the wrong key? Like you're not connected to it versus no lock being on the door, you just walk into the house. And when somebody is supremely confident as a salesperson and they know they can

handle themselves conversationally, no matter what somebody rebuts with, no matter what objection they give them and when they know that at the outset of the conversation They can solve for what we call the triple threat time money third party. They know they can do that brother They're just a level of their efficacy goes through the roof and that's what we train people. It's so funny, man It talking about confidence and sales. I got a guy that is English that works for me Matt and One of the most my business partners also. And one of the biggest unfair things in the world of business is this. You can take the smartest dude from America

and drop him off in London, and those limey bastards will be like, this idiot, what a moron. And conversely, you can take the dumbest person from England and drop them off in America, and everybody's like, oh my goodness, this person's a genius. So just to prove a point I wrote three nonsense words or

nonsense phrases on cards and Matt got on a phone with a client just supreme confidence. Oh I love this. And it randomly and he was on the speaker it was during a meeting and he was talking to this client and I would randomly hand him cards and he had to say what was on the the card and he'd be like, Oh, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to dodger your uncle's tractor, aren't you Roger? And he'd be like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Dodger the tractor.

And it just went down so smooth because it was the supreme level of confidence. It's the, it's the supreme level of confidence. Quick, very funny 32nd story guy by the name of Mike Mike Zaga, okay and I don't want to do him any injustice but or injustice but I believe he's a Lebanese. His family is Lebanese and he's a car salesman. Legend in the car business in central New York. And he's working at a car dealership and this was one of my first tastes of kind of like when they told you that they would be your roommate because you were so good. You're like, wow I'm actually good. This is, they're paying me to stay. I had a similar thing when a dealership called me and said,

what's your salary? 200. Okay, here it's 500. Do you have a demo? No. You have one here, you know, company car. And what's your percentage? 10. It's 20 here. When are you starting? Holy shit, right. So I moved, I'm starting there and this dude used to, just to give you some some backstory, he would come, I'd be sitting with a customer, he would come in with a pot of coffee and a towel over his arm like a concierge or like a waiter he'd come in he'd pour everybody coffee sitting in there and he died like he was my butler just for kicks right just cuz he enjoyed it was fun guy comes in one day he's like the typical dealership stroke we all have when the guys in there once or twice you know a

month just stroking everybody he comes and he's looking at a truck and he Mike comes over and he's like oh hello sir how you doing? He's like, I'm pretty good just you know I had to deal with this weather. He goes, yes I'll tickle your ass with a feather if you'd like. And the guy goes, huh? He goes, the weather was terrible. He goes, yeah. And he's like, yeah okay. Yeah I'm looking for a truck. I need some. I was like, yes you can go fuck yourself. Right over here are the trucks and that dude he did it for a solid hour and the guy never I mean subconsciously he felt something was wrong. We're over it holding ourselves trying not to pee we're laughing so

hard but it's just a perfect example of when you have that supreme level of confidence you can convince somebody else that something that's not real is real much like your guy with dodge on your uncle's tractor. Amen. Amen. Well dude we're gonna leave it with that dude If they want to learn more about how to sell with supreme confidence, how do they find you, bro? So Instagram, all the social medias, it's at Luke Lunk, L-U-K-E-L-U-N-K. YouTube, we're paid to persuade, paid the number to persuade. If they're interested in the sales training, it's paidtopersuade.com, paidtopersuade.com. One of the big things that I'm big on, a lot of sales trainers in this ecosystem,

they put out clips hoping to go viral with cute one liners and phrases and things and taking guys shirts off and everything else every day, at least every day. I could tell you the worst, agreed. So what I do and nowhere near as popular because it's not entertainment value. Sure.

But I give out free. Oh, I'm pretty sure. Look, we entertained today. I mean, we definitely offended some people. Again, the thoughts and views of myself do not reflect the thoughts and views of myself. That's what it's supposed to say, I think. I think that's.

The fine print. Just apologize now. Is there, do I need to go to rehab? Is that, I'm gonna spend some time getting, like, I don't know. I think they're here because they like it. I don't know who Ty Lopez is. I do know Ty. Ty, I was talking to Ty, we're doing a podcast and I'm like, Ty, you know, like truth be told man, candidly, like I just, I give tremendous amounts of value. Everybody that I train gets incredibly successful. Like, but on social media, I just never blow up. He goes, dude, you're not pissing anybody off. Yeah, that's a good point. And he goes, if you want to be famous on social media, he's like, I can show you how to get 600,000 people to love you, but you gotta understand there's gonna be 400,000 that are going to despise you.

Well, dude, that's why I gotta tell you, my good friend of mine, Kent Clothier, who I love, always says, dude, I'm polarizing on purpose. Yeah. Cause I want, dude, he goes, I am unapologetically me. And when you meet me, I want you to love me or hate me as quickly as possible. Cause I need to sort people. That's right. You know, that's, I appreciate that.

I don't have time. I got to sort. That's what I'm doing. So guys, there it is, man. If you want to, uh, Oh cool. My car's on its way back. Love that. It's always a good way to get home.

That's what it was today. So what'd you get? It's pretentious and stupid, but it's okay. So it's a ghost or a close. That's a, what's it calling in? Not a calling. No, I don't know anymore. Rolls Wraith Wraith. The Wraith, the other one they say in rap songs. Why didn't I guess? No, it's not put 24s on it. Yeah. It was on his way back. I wrote and Brad's a ghost the other day and looked like an idiot coming back from the protein house because I couldn't figure out how to open the door.

I drive a one ton pickup truck with a big diesel motor and leather seats, bro. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. No, this thing's like driving a fast couch. It's great. I love it. It's good.

So there we go. What do I do? If you want to learn how to sell with more confidence, look at my man, Luke. He will sort you out. Pleasure having you, bro. You're welcome're welcome anytime. She ain't you want to come back, dude? All right All right, guys. We'll see you next week unless we're canceled then you'll never see me again What's up everybody thanks for joining us for another episode of escaping the drift Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.