Noob School - Dr. Rebecca Heiss Turns the Tables at Noob School

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

In this special episode of the Noob School podcast, the tables are turned as usual host John Sterling takes the hot seat as the guest. Dr. Rebecca Heiss, a renowned professional speaker, steps in as the host to delve into John's fascinating career and upbringing. Join us as we explore the journey that led John to master the art of sales, uncovering the pivotal moments and insights that shaped his success. This episode promises an in-depth look at the man behind the mic and his extraordinary path in the world of sales. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

NewB School Welcome to Noob School, episode number 126. If you're looking for John, I am so sorry to disappoint you. I'm Rebecca, but John is here today as my guest. We decided to flip the table a little bit. That's right. John gets to interview all of these incredible people, but I frankly think John is an incredible person and we kind of need to hear your story.

Good. So let's kick this right off. I want to know about how you grew up and how that influenced who you became later in life. Well, that was not on the handout sheet beforehand. You just thought of that. I like to throw people off a little bit. Well, seeing my rough and gruff exterior today, you probably would never know, but I grew up a very privileged way. My mom was South Abroad, born, and so half my family is kind of from that part of the world.

and they'd like to say that I didn't know lemons had seeds until I went off to college. You know, everything was kind of done very nicely for us. So we were born that way and got to go to good schools. But, you know, also my mom is tough, and my dad was not raised in Charleston. So we all played sports, and we had to compete. We're expected to compete and do well. We're expected to do well in school. Sure.

And we're expected to be polite. Different kind of pressure. Yeah, yeah, different kind of pressure. So I kind of grew up in that world and, you know, very fortunate, but not, I wouldn't say, sheltered. And one thing that really helped me, because there are people who grow up that way who are sheltered and never kind of get out of that shelter, is since I played basketball, you know, I was at the YMCA. which had the basketball players from all over town. So I met people, you know, going back to eighth grade that ended up being great players at Greenville High School and J.O. Man and Wade Hampton and East Side and some of those schools.

So I have friends from all those schools as a result of playing a sport that was outside of, you know, tennis and golf. Yeah, sure. And I have to say, I was going to save this for later in their interview, but I can't resist. I heard, legend, that you played against Michael Jordan. Well, that's true, of course. Everyone knows that. Of course. You can see it on my LinkedIn profile. It's on there if you drill down a little bit.

But we did play against Michael Jordan twice. So his freshman and sophomore year, our team got to play against them. And, you know, two things. First of all, he wasn't the Michael Jordan he became. He was still, you know, 18 years old, very skinny, but he was incredibly fast. You could not, you couldn't block him out. You couldn't even put a hand on him. He was just like a cougar.

It was like, I tell people it was like a goat trying to guard a cougar. You know, that's about the way I felt. I felt with him. But we did. We got out to jump center the first time that we played them. And they had, you know, several other NBA All-Stars. They had Jordan. They had Sam Perkins.

They had Brad Dardy and they had James Worthy. And they had a little guy named Jimmy Black who was like the point guard who did not become a great NBA player. So we go to Jump Center and the other tall guy on the team was only two of us looks at me and he goes, he goes, who do you want a guard? I said, I'll take Jimmy Black. So nobody wanted any part of them. But it was a real privilege to play against them. They were amazing. Sure. I can only imagine.

So Michael Jordan was one of my role models growing up. You know, before we had Caitlin Clark, incredible times. I love her. I love her, too. Who were your role models as you grew up, and how did they influence who you became? On the tennis side of things, I played a lot of tennis also. I like McEnroe. You know, he was kind of braddy, but I liked the fact that he was, he kind of broke out of the country club mode of it.

everything so genteel and nice shot and everything. He was more of a fighter. And I wouldn't encourage anyone to yell and scream like he did. But I like the fact that he was a fighter and I like the way he played. So he was kind of a tennis role model. On basketball, you know, I think about sometimes some of my role models were so darn good. I mean, they were so, so good. Like, even the team, if you go back and look at the team that was the Olympic team

around the time that we were playing in the 80s, you know, it was just, you know, Isaiah Thomas and Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and just Charles Barkley, just like all these people. And we're supposed to be competing with them. It's almost like it was a tough head trash thing to get over that those, you know, I didn't get over it until. much, much later, but at the time, it was like, well, this, you know, this is a whole different thing.

But to get over the head trash, I would have said, those people weren't always Charles Barkley. They weren't always Michael Jordan and all these other people. They weren't always that. They were moving towards something. And they got very good. But I think a lot of us, like my basketball, I worked really hard at it. And at some point during college, they just kind of like went on cruise control. I just said, well, you know, this isn't going to happen.

So let's just play and enjoy the game and, you know, play your last couple years. And somebody like a Larry Bird, if he would have believed what he should have probably believed, he never would have been any good at all. That's probably true. I mean, he was slow. He trash talked a lot. Yeah, he was slow. You know, he wasn't tall enough to be big. He couldn't jump.

I mean, and he's just something about. his mindset made him unbelievable. So that's really interesting because, I mean, we've talked a lot about sports so far, but I'm hearing some similar themes, you know, tenacity and mindset and determination. Do you think the qualities that you sort of sought after in sports and learn to grow into in sports helped you as you moved into sales? Like, what was the transition? And you said you realized, like, basketball, it wasn't going to be it for you.

Yeah. Like, what was the switch? What was the transition? Well, I mean, business is a game. You know, sales is certainly a game. And so when I decided to not play anymore, I thought sales would be the, I couldn't enter as a CEO. So I figured sales was my proper entry point. And then it became, you know, about preparing, hustle, celebrating wins, high fives.

You know, it's kind of very similar to a basketball gamer. any kind of sport. So, yeah, I think when we recruit salespeople, we don't always hire people who play big-time sports or college sports, but we look for them. Because we know they're going to be competitive. I'm interested about something else you said there, which is you know, you're hyper-competitive,

you're pushing, you're working really hard, and then you realize this isn't it, and you go to cruise control. Do you see that in sales as well? Yeah, absolutely. do you do for those people that are like, ah, you know, I'm just going to, I'm going to dial it in, I'm going to cruise on in. Well, I think you do two things when you have a larger sales organization, and some people are just kind of making the number and they're happy and whatever.

You know, part of you says, it's okay with me, right? You're a VP of sales, and you've got someone who kind of makes their number all the time. They don't kill it. They don't cause you trouble. You're like, I'll take a lot of those, okay? I can't have all crazy. people. So, but with those people, I think, you know, for your benefit and theirs, it's your responsibility to try to coach them up to what difference would have making your life if you were making 20% over quota? And would you be able to buy that lake house or, you send your kid to a better school or something? Otherwise, if you just want to keep making quota until you're 65, fine with me. I think 100 of them. Sure. Okay. So I think you can coach them on. So I think you can coach

him up, but I wouldn't beat them up about it. I wouldn't say, ah, another quota? You could have done so much better. I wouldn't do that. The other thing you can do is you can hire to a different spec. So when you're hiring someone,

you know, there's different tests you can give them that show their their productivity towards disc profile or something. A disc or a colby or something, an AQ that will show this person will not stop.

They're not going to get, like, make just quota and be happy. They're going to want more and more and more. There's tests you can give that are economically motivated, who's the highest, you know, who wants the money the most. And I've had several people score so high on that. The testing company calls me and says, watch out for Rebecca. She might steal. Right, I'll do anything.

I'll get it. I want to get it, no matter the... And at some point, that becomes, you know, too much is a problem because they will steal from each other and stuff like that. But I think also in their background, like you see what else they've done, you know, the people who are most likely to just be phenomenally good in your company are the ones that were phenomenally good in high school and phenomenally good in college. Just a consistent matter. And then now they're just not going to not be phenomenally good. Right. You know, they're going to make the highest score and they're going to be the president of the class and they're going to be the president of their sorority and, you know, captain of the lacrosse team.

Sure. You know, and you say you pick those kind of people out and you're like, not only do we want to hire them, but we better get them on a track to do more here or we're going to lose them. Retain them. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a long answer, but that's how I handle that. No, it's a good answer. What about those that like, I mean, you just said you want to hire the person that's consistent, but life isn't consistent.

Like, we've all had setbacks. I wonder if you had a particular setback in your life where you would have been like, oh, my gosh, nobody's going to hire me or this isn't right for me or some massive thing that just sort of pulled you out. And what it looked like, A, to step back and go, wait, maybe I'm not as good as I thought. And then what drew you back in? What allowed you to keep pushing? I think this answers your question, probably one of the biggest things that happened to me in business, was we had a public company that we were growing, you know, nice and steady for 20 years. We had a nice, strong growing of the company, and we were public.

And some little thing, some auditor found some little thing in China, like a tiny office in China. And they say, well, this triggers this thing. got to do a deeper dive. And so they would dig, well, we better check out all of Asia now. Okay, okay. Now we're going to check out Europe. They literally, I think they just were milking us. They were using kind of arcane rules, you know, stringent rules to milk us for just exorbitant

fees for a couple, two years. And somewhere, I'm in charge of sales. So somewhere along this line, not only are your employees worried about what might happen. and like someone did something wrong and whatever, we literally got delisted because they would not provide an audit. They said, well, there's nothing wrong here. We just can't provide an audit

until we finish our investigation. So we're literally on the pink sheets, from NASDAQ to the pink sheets. And that was that moment where I had to just, I stepped away and I was like, holy cow, you know. And then I said, well, how about this? Why don't we just pretend like nothing happened?

Just tell the sales rep, this is just a bunch of BS. 99% of the customers won't even check. They want to know if we're going to help them or not. It won't even come up. Let's just push to make this quarter's number see if anything happens. Stay consistent. So I went from that kind of reflective, like jumping off the bridge moment to like, how can we attack this?

And sure enough, we made that quarter's number. Amazing. And then we made the next quarter's number. And we were selling people like Dell Computer, the corporate deal. And I'm out there. I'm just waiting for them to say, so Mr. Sterling, what is this about, you know, nothing? Nobody checked. No, they don't, people don't really care.

This is true. They don't care. They care about themselves. How can you help me? They care about their wise, right? It's the same thing when you're hiring people. Like you're going to have the person that's motivated by money, you're going to have the other person that's motivated by whatever they can give back. Right.

So what's your why? What is it that you do? Why do you do? What drives you? I enjoy, I enjoy accomplishing things like projects, whether it's a business project or a nonprofit I'm helping or a person or music or, you know, real estate, moving or something. Anything that's on my list that I want to get done, I enjoy kind of pecking away at it and trying to make it happen. And then it happens. And you crosses off the list. It's a little dopamine. Just work on the tiny dopamine. My dopamine probably comes probably in thirds.

The first third is when it goes on the list. Because I feel like, I'm going to do this. I love this. I love this. And that's why I've learned this. You don't want to share that with other people. because that's where you get all your dopamine from. If I'm telling you all about my one month,

I'm going to Argentina for a month in September. I'm going to do this and this and this. Got it all lined up, got a free place to stay. Hell, I've already got the dopamine. It's out. Yeah. So anyway, I get a third for putting on the list. And then a third as you peck away and make it happen,

and then a third when it's actually done. But by then, it's almost all gone now. There's no more dopamine left. It's the process. It's the exciting. the excitement of writing it down, the excitement of being in it. And then you're like, eh, okay. So, you know, the podcast is one of those things I love doing.

And my coaching business is something that I love to do. Each one of my clients in the coaching business is a project. And then I've got my Foxfire business and I've got my music, which you're such a big fan of. I am a big fan of it. I'm excited to hear you. Got a big gig coming up. That's right. Multiple gigs coming up.

That's right. Yeah. The Bohemian, the new Bohemian Hotel. And Passarral have both been very good about booking our bands. Well, I am genuinely looking forward to that. And as long as we're talking about that, tell me about your other interests outside of sales, because we know you.

Other interests. We know you here. But how do you balance your work life with, you know, and I hate these questions about work-life balance because I'm not sure that I really believe in any work-life balance? Yeah. It's all life, right? It's all life.

Yeah, work is just a little part of life. I work very hard at so I think it was Seneca who said if you want to to live a full life that you should live every day as if it is a full life. Every day should be a lifetime. That's a good one. And so I work hard to schedule every day with where I'm working on in some way on anything that's a project of mine. And those projects would include, you know, longevity is a project, like exercising.

So I do that early in the morning every day. And I work on my, well, Trabehe a Mies Español. Well, bien. So I work on my Spanish every day. That's one of my little projects. can speak one phrase in Spanish really well. What is it?

Necessiottes Margueritez? Three margueritez? Three margaretes. Okay. No ice. No ice. Lots of salt.

Straight up. Yeah, yeah. Straight up. So, so I work on that. I work on Spanish. I work on a saxophone every day. Work on Foxfire every day. I work on a coaching business every day.

I've got some, you know, wonderful friends I spend time with. They've got some great family and grandkids. And one of the thing I do that I really love, probably one of my highlights of the year, is every the first week of July, whoever the little grandkids are, or their cousins or whoever,

we have like a camp. So we do a camp up in the mountains, and I'm the camp director. Oh, please tell me you're teaching them, like, the new school. Well, last year we had, we made them learn how to do public speaking. So maybe we should have you up there to help this year.

Please. I would love. that. What a great talent to introduce you. We do a lot of fun stuff. We do a lot of fun stuff. We learned how to do the double-Dutch jump rope last year. You don't do that? You know, as a kid, I did that. And I haven't done that since. I won't tell you how many years. Well, we would play the double Dutch bus song over and over again. And then we would try to learn how to. But we would do fun stuff. But we always make them do one thing. per camp that is something that they can take on in the future.

How long is that rope so that you can get in there? I just have to know. It's pretty long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Are you participating fully in each of these events? Yeah. And I'm not saying I'm a great double dutch jumper, but I'm working on it. Hey, listen, it keeps your brain young. Do you all of these things learning every, every year, or a new skill every year? I think that's great. Yeah. We do some, we do some hiking off road, off path in the woods.

But anyway, that's one of the fun things I do. And that's, again, one of the things I've learned. is if you want to do anything on a regular basis, you kind of schedule it. As you get older, right, we have more things going on. You know, we're married and we have lots of friends and we're involved in. So, like, I've got some friends that I've played golf with every year for 14 years now. Here's the deal. When we go, we were in Austin, Texas just a few weeks ago.

And, you know, at the last night's dinner, we said, okay, pull your phones out. What is next year's date and where are we going? Yep. And it's on the calendar now. Yep. So that's another thing, you know, in terms of managing life and time is what is what is you want to do? Yeah, priorities, right?

Because this is, I don't know if I talked to you about this on the last podcast or not, but I seem to remember doing that. Priorities. Priorities. Is not a reality. Right? Like there is only one priority. Partee.

Right? It wasn't plural until the 1960s, I think. It's a priority. Yeah. So then what's your priority right now? Yeah. What's your next priority? That's fine, but it's going to have to be later.

They can't overlap in time. Right, right. And I think, you know, to your point, if you don't calendar it, some other priority is going to sneak in there. Oh, yes. People are going, listen, when we were building our company, you know, I had at one time about 100 salespeople. and so I would get to work really early I would stay really late and we would never like do anything during that time

that was not related to selling software. Never. Yep. We sold the company like a week later I'm going to lunch with people and you know my wife says do you have time to go pick up the laundry and like well yeah.

I guess I do. All of a sudden I turn into an errand man and so you know you have to You have to protect your time. You know, if you want to be helpful around the house, that's up to you. But you just have to decide. Otherwise, like you said, someone is going to take your time. Especially with the amount of social media and AI.

So that's, I want to go into that with you because I see AI, this next big front, you know, like, we've had AI for years. Yeah. But suddenly everybody's talking about it. How are we using this in business? How are you using AI in business? Are you seeing any trends? Are you scared of it? Are you excited for it?

Well, certainly not scared of it. I mean, I think, you know, technologies have come along in our life, even in our lifetimes, that people think it's going to change everything. I mean, this is a real old one, a real old one. But, you know, people thought the computer was going to ruin everything. Right. No more accountants. Sure.

Don't need any more accountants because we've got the computer now. I mean, it's so dumb. So people have to use their brains to decide how to use information. And so I think they'll continue to do that with ChatGPT and the AI stuff. Sure. You can use it to, I use it, it really is an advanced to Google now. I'll ask you a more specific question. And we're actually looking for a company to buy now.

And I'll just say, hey, give me all these types of companies and so-and-so. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Huh. But there's limitations too, right? Like, it's only pulling from, what, like a year ago? Is that true? I don't know. Well, I know at one time that was true.

I thought that had changed. I mean, it's changing so fast. This is the other thing I'm realizing is I, I'm recognizing that a part of the demographic who can easily fall behind in technology now. Right. So I'm looking at your camps and I'm like, when do the kids start teaching us? stuff right can I can I come for one of those because yeah yeah well if you have a technology question I've learned asked the youngest person in the look at it yeah

that's true and they'll be like oh tink tink that's true yeah so one other thing I want to say there's two other people um that uh that really um that were mentors or people that I modeled some of the stuff I do after and one was Ted Turner, who's, you know, long since kind of retired now. Sure. But, you know, he was a beast. I mean, he, I don't know if you ever read his biography, but, you know, he was a wild southern guy who went to Brown,

and he just hated it. And he got kicked out after, like, less than a year, because he was just a wild southern guy up there in this, you know, this Brown University. And he came back to work for his dad And his dad unfortunately died And had kind of worked out a deal The father had kind of worked out a deal To sell his billboard company to

To this big billboard company He was buying up whatever down Atlanta And They came to like Get the keys, you know And Ted went out in front with a shotgun It said nope No deal

and they backed down and he kept the company. But, you know, he was a bold guy and I would like to be that bold. I don't know if I'm about the shotgun, but he was a strong guy and he was very willing to take on big projects and make big bets. I mean, he was early on professional wrestling. Oh, interesting. He started that super station, the first kind of cable satellite station, and he was looking for programming. And so he started putting wrestling on and a bunch of other stuff and then came up with CNN and some other things. But I enjoy reading about him and how he took things on.

One thing he said, which is interesting, is he liked to compete in big markets like networked. So he took on NBC, CBS, and ABC. They're like, how would you do that? Why would you do that? He goes, well, he goes, first of all, there's only three of them. If you're in the advertising business, there's a million advertising agencies. That's right. There's only three.

Might as well go for the big guys. And they're dumb. They're run by big, dumb, overpaid people who want to keep their job. And so they're not going to do any of the stuff. Yeah. No. He wanted to go 24-7 and, you know. be in Atlanta versus New York.

And there's just a lot to learn. I just have seen over and over again, even with our data stream company, that, you know, you don't believe the hype that someone else is better than you or because you're from Greenville, you can't compete with someone in California. I love that.

I love that. And that's one of the things that I would say belongs in your biography. So we're talking about Ted's biography. What belongs in your biography? What do you think, actually I want to make that a two-part question, what do you think most people misunderstand about you? And what do you think your mentees would say about you the way you just talked about Ted? You know, I think most people, because I'm a very friendly person and a pretty relaxed person, don't know all the stuff I'm working on.

Oh, that's interesting. You know, I don't go around talking about it a lot. And so people will be like, how you like being retired? And I'm like, oh, it's okay. I work seven days a week. Yeah, I work. I literally, I love to work. So I work on the project seven days a week, that's for sure.

But I don't, long since not going to the office every day like it used to be. Sure. You go in the morning, leave, you know. I think those days are over for most people. So I think that will be one thing is that I, you know, my work day starts at, 5 a.m. I start working then and I try to get some work done on all those projects before noon and then in the afternoon I'm usually like meeting with people and trying to move something down the field. That's interesting and I wanted to give you a gift of self-awareness too because

I think you're an incredibly self-aware human and that's not something that I would have said and it lands perfectly that's absolutely true and what I was thinking in my head you're going to say is that you're intimidating. Because you're, you, you, for all that you have accomplished, like, you look at John on paper, you're like, oh my goodness, I don't know. And you're not a small human being. And yet you sit down and you have conversations with people like me that are like, I don't know what I have to offer, but like, let's go, let's have this comment.

You're willing to just kind of give people your time. True. And invest in them. And I think that is such a gift. So I think that's something people could easily get wrong about. Yeah, probably. I appreciate that. That's nice. I do try to be kind to people. I'd say, I'd say you're pretty kind. I mean, I think it's important. It's important. It's important.

I think it's a gift you're kind of giving yourself when you're kind to other people. I think that's true, and I think often in sales, like, it gets overlooked. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the mentees, you know, I think they would say that he really cared about them. more of them to have not just be successful in that job or in business but to have a successful life and but you know he would unfortunately have to fire you if you didn't make your number you know and i've had that conversation with people before too that are still my friends today i mean that's the job but uh yeah but that he so i mean we still have uh

You know, we had, again, about 100 people on the team, sold the company in 2006, and we still have a Christmas party every year, where we have 50 to 75 people show up. And it's just amazing. We might not talk to each other during the year, but everyone just kind of shows up at the place. And it's not even like John's paying for some grand party or something. It's like literally, like last year, we just went to the Bohemian and just met up there.

everyone had their own tabs and stuff so it wasn't fancy it's just like let's just meet here you've created community as a community yeah and they do help each other they hire each other some of married each other um so it's a it's a great community and i and i continue to do that today not on that scale but you know with individuals that i find that i think are special that i can help i love that i love what a great answer what what is one question that you wish people would ask you more um would you would you come help me with my sales team? There you go. John, would you come help me with my sales team?

Yes, I'll be happy to. We can talk about it. Good. You know, I think, I've been thinking a lot lately, kind of, can you help me figure out a plan for happiness? Oh. Like, I'm not happy. I'm not happy. Yeah.

How can I be happy? And I've been working on that and studying a little bit. and certainly for myself, you know, I've got a coach that I work with and just, you know, it'll be, you know, seven or eight different areas. How are we doing on a scale of one or ten basis? And, you know, where are we short? And what can we do about it? It's like, don't just wind, okay, oh, my God, on, let's just say, on the relationship with my brother.

It's a four out of ten. You know, Dan. There's not, you know. And so my coach would say, okay, so that's the number one thing on your list. Everything else is fine. Like, yeah, well, let's work on some ideas for how to fix that. What can we do, not just immediately, but like today, next week, next Saturday, repeating basis. What can we do to make this better?

And so hopefully over time that comes up. And so I did mine the other day. I did my little circle on one of ten basis. and it was like all sevens. And I thought, oh my God. I mean, I kind of like that. Because I think if you get like a nine or a 10, it's like you're getting too whacked out about that one thing.

That's interesting. You know, like sometimes I'll be working with someone and they'll just be bragging about that they're doing a triple triathlon, Iron Man or something, you know. Sorry, Rebecca. I'm joking. And they're working on it every morning and every night and whatever. It never fails.

Yep. That's not sustainable. And they get hurt and something else suffers. And inevitably they're doing that to cover up for some of the losses in other areas. Right. I didn't think about that. They're doing it too. Okay.

Yeah, a lot of endurance sports actually are tightly tied to trauma. Oh. It's really interesting. Oh, stop. Just grit through it. Yeah. But I want to come back to your comments about seventh because I actually had a coach on a scale of like one to ten, you're not allowed to use a step.

So are you more at eight or are you more a six? Because that's a nice neutral like, I'm good. I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, yeah. So that's, I want to challenge you in that because I think that's a... I mean, there would be some eight and some sixes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I like that. I like that idea. And maybe we could do an app together. Another app. The first one didn't work for us. In case anybody doesn't know the backstory, you just need to go back and watch my episode, but John, I knocked on his door a lot.

But, all right, I've got some rapid round. Are you ready for these? Yeah, I'm ready. These are kind of fun. All right. Let's do it. We'll go easy first. Favorite book?

Favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. Oh, such a good one. And I highly recommend everyone reads it. It's about a thousand pages and the print's kind of small, but it is a life-changing book. Couldn't agree more. Not just because of what you learned from it, but because you just read a thousand-page, small print book. And we used to tell people when we hired a lot of salespeople,

in the first months, they had to read that book. And I said, if you don't read the book, then you're fired. Some people got fired. That's a good sorting lot. They couldn't read the book. I'm like, 30 days, what is that, Rebecca? A thousand divided by 30. That's like 30, 30, 30, you got to read.

How many? You're asking the wrong person. I'm not a math way. 30 times 10 is 300. So you have to read 90 pages a day. About 100 a day. Yeah. Right.

For 30 days. You do that? Yeah. It's very doable. Hour and a half? It's very doable. So what they were telling me was, his job one is important enough to all.

That's right. You make time for what's valuable. Yeah. Something like, okay. Be gone. And some of them, I'm sure, skimmed it a little bit and came up with a good story.

I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. But just don't tell me no. Fair. Fair enough. Have you ever received an insult that was actually you were kind of proud of? Oh, boy, let's say.

Yeah, I mean, there was a guy that we used to play basketball with who played for Furman who was kind of my nemesis. I'm sure he's a very nice guy, but I've never talked to him. But we would bang and beat each other up for four years. And a year or two after, maybe two years after we finished basketball,

he was talking to my wife. She was a travel agent. And he said, she goes, well, I'm Jennifer Sterling. He goes, Sterling. You don't know what John Sterling, do you? And she goes, yes, my husband. She goes, oh, he was rough. So, you know, I take that.

I take that as a compliment. Yeah, I'd take that. I'd take that. I love it. All right. You have an animal sidekick for one day, any animal. What is it? Well, it would be my dog Poppy.

Yeah, of course. Tell us about Poppy. Poppy's a Boston Terrier. It's my third Boston Terrier. I've had one since I was about maybe five or six years old. And she's about 13 now, so she's getting up there in age. But she's, you know, know, she's definitely the queen of the house. She knows she can do whatever she wants. She will

jump up on the dining room table after dinner when we stand up. She'll jump up there and start grazing around and will, like, Poppy, what are you doing? She looks like, what are you doing? What are you looking to be for? My face, my table. And she also, you know, I'll say, Poppy, listen, no more of this sleeping in the bed stuff. So I'll put a little bed down there. I'll say, you sleep there tonight. She'll be in that bed of sleep The middle of the night I wake up She is under the covers With her head, like laying on my pillow right there

Looking at me like, here I am So anyway She comes with me but I play the saxophone outside And so yeah, she's my little buddy Love it. All right, last one's a two-parter Okay Who plays you in the movie And their famous line that they say

That is just you Your one line, your go-to line. What the line? Hell. Medias that. What the? Well, I would say, without the mustache, Tom Selleck.

I can see it. I like it. I can see it. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, we're the same height anyway. And then, what would he say? I think he would say, let's do it. Let's do it.

I think that is a great line. It's as classic as, our needs I'll be back. Like, here's John Sterling. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Why not?

What a great line. What a great character. Dunn, what other questions am I neglecting to ask you that the world needs to know? Well, I'm certainly willing to be helpful to any company out there that wants their revenue to go up. For sure. I don't know if there's any out there. I mean, I know. Most companies don't need revenue to increase.

Yeah. But I like doing that. I like doing it. So they can contact me, John at sterlingsales.co. So that's one thing, individuals as well. You know, I've got a weekly training class they can join. Awesome. But yeah, I think just that, just I'm willing to help people any way I can.

And I think you've got a fine job. Anything ever happens to me? Maybe you take over the new school. Let's do it. All right. You got it. Let's do it. Let's do it.

All right. Let's do it. Let's do it. Hey, listen, nothing's going to happen to you. I need you running this for as long as possible. You don't have time to do the new school. You know what? I don't have the talent yet. Yet. Yes, I'm hanging around you and I'm trying to develop myself. You're doing great.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity to interview the legend that is. Well, thank you. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Great to spend time with you. All right.