0:00:05 Here’s an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits Collection.
0:00:11 How a couple college students built a $6,000 a month business out of a Honda Accord.
0:00:17 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because yes,
0:00:22 you can cut your own paycheck. I got a note from a listener the other day and he explained
0:00:28 he was a full-time college student working full-time in web design and in his spare time
0:00:34 had started a $6,000 a month side hustle with his younger brother cleaning and detailing cars.
0:00:40 Josh Belk from BelkMobileDetailing.com said the inspiration came from two things.
0:00:42 Thing number one was his brother’s obsession.
0:00:48 He drove his car about 12,000 miles in the first three months of owning it.
0:00:53 It was a Honda Accord and was driving it just all the time. It’s just what he liked to do for fun,
0:00:56 was drive it around. And while he was driving it all the time,
0:01:00 he had to make sure to keep it clean. So I’d always see him out in the driveway,
0:01:04 detailing it, vacuuming out his car.
0:01:08 And thing number two was an email from Ty Lopez.
0:01:13 I was just kind of browsing through this email that he had sent out. And one of the ideas was to
0:01:18 start a mobile car washing business. And I just kind of put the two and two together
0:01:25 and told my brother one day, hey, why don’t we try to monetize this thing and make some money on it.
0:01:30 And make some money is what they did. Stick around in this one to hear how Josh and his brother
0:01:35 landed their first customers, how they price their service, and how they stand out from the
0:01:40 competition. Notes and links for this episode, plus the full text summary of our call are at
0:01:46 sidehustlenation.com slash detailing. And one important thing to note here is to use this as a
0:01:51 lens for any number of local service-based businesses, which broadly speaking is one of
0:01:57 the side hustle models I’m most excited about right now. It’s about mobile detailing, but it’s
0:02:02 not just about mobile detailing, if that makes sense. I’ll be back with my top takeaways from this chat with
0:02:07 Josh after the interview. We start this one off with where those crucial first customers came from.
0:02:09 Ready? Let’s do it.
0:02:17 Friends and family is key. I think that that was the most important starting point for us.
0:02:21 Just being our mom was very helpful with everything that we’ve ever done.
0:02:27 She’s always supportive. So one of the first things that she did was send out a text message and post on
0:02:33 Facebook just to like a few of her friends and other family members around town, just letting them know
0:02:38 like, hey, my sons have started up a mobile detailing business. And 99% of the people that she sent
0:02:46 that too didn’t reply and didn’t call us, but that’s expected. And the 1% that did, we had a few
0:02:52 people. Those are your starting customers. And you really use those people for getting great marketing
0:02:57 material through before and after pictures, helping to establish some good first reviews and reviews are
0:03:03 everything in this business. Because if you can have a great five-star review on Google and Facebook,
0:03:07 then you will stand out amongst your competitors.
0:03:12 Okay. Did you already have all of the equipment necessary?
0:03:17 Like maybe we should back up and ask what equipment is necessary for this stuff?
0:03:21 Yeah, that’s a great question because we didn’t have everything necessary.
0:03:27 But really to start, there’s a few things that are really important to have.
0:03:31 For one, you obviously need some kind of bucket.
0:03:46 We actually started out with using a bucket and a wash mitt, which the bucket is like about $30. I think the one that we bought in the wash mitt was like $5 or $10. You can go buy it. One at your local O’Reilly or one on Amazon pretty easy.
0:03:48 That’s a very fancy bucket. What does it do?
0:04:06 So essentially, it has a grit on the bottom that you can use to scrape your wash mitt. And it’ll kind of help to separate the dirt from the rest of the water in the shampoo. So that way, it just helps to kind of cleanse out all the dirt that you’re using whenever you’re washing the car.
0:04:22 We actually started without a pressure washer. We were just using these little tanks, pumping them up, spraying them on the vehicles. It worked out okay, but it doesn’t allow you to get the underbodies of the car and really the stuff that kind of soaks in a lot.
0:04:37 So we were going through a lot of towels with using just those little pump buckets. So we eventually decided to go ahead and buy a pressure washer. It’s actually called the Worx. And it is a completely mobile pressure washer. It’s about $170 is how much it cost us.
0:04:53 And the great thing about that one was it was battery powered. So we could charge with the batteries before we would go to the site. And the batteries would usually hold for about an hour. We do ask, including now, most of our customers to use their water and electricity, and they are completely fine with it.
0:05:08 We’ve only had a few that have apartments. And sometimes we can usually work around by having them travel to their friends or families. And a lot of the times they’re very flexible and they’re completely okay with that. But besides the pressure washer and the bucket, obviously some great towels help, some brushes.
0:05:20 Chemicals wise, we like to use a degreaser for most of the stuff we do. We have a spray wax and a tire shine. Those three chemicals are really great. I think the extract we bought was about $120.
0:05:28 I would say that’s a pretty critical part of the interior part of your business because we made the most of the money to start out with interior detailing.
0:05:37 And that extractor is something that it adds a huge value to the service whenever you can get out stains and stuff like that.
0:05:49 So that extractor, which could just be bought on Amazon for around $120, was huge, as well as a steamer. A steamer helps with doing the leather seats or the side panels on doors
0:05:57 or center console areas that have coffee or some kind of drinks that have been spilled and sticky stuff in there. That steamer was also very helpful.
0:06:04 And then obviously a vacuum is definitely needed. A shop vac, about $40, I think is how much we paid for ours.
0:06:10 By the end of it, I think we had spent about $500 to $600 total on equipment.
0:06:14 But a lot of that stuff had been added on, like after we started making money up first.
0:06:21 But all in all, pretty low startup cost business. And I’m glad you clarified what you were extracting.
0:06:27 It’s like, well, what does an extractor do here? It is very clear my car has never been cleaned to this level of detail.
0:06:32 So maybe I am due for a detailing. But maybe that goes to the next section is like, well,
0:06:38 you probably don’t have many late model Ford Escapes as customers. Like, what kind of cars are you working on here?
0:06:42 Most of the time, our customers, it is their first time having the detail done.
0:06:47 We always luck out every now and then by having the customer that they do clean their car a lot.
0:06:52 And a lot of the times they call us up for a full detail, expecting to pay the full price.
0:06:54 And their car is not bad at all.
0:06:58 And those are usually the customers that say to us like, oh, my car is so bad.
0:07:01 I’m so sorry. Those are the best case scenarios for us.
0:07:03 You’re like, believe me, believe me, we’ve seen worse.
0:07:05 Exactly. That’s what we like to tell people.
0:07:11 So right now, a lot of the time we are doing customers that it’s the first time they’re ever
0:07:17 having their vehicle detailed. They probably saw one of our advertisements on Facebook,
0:07:23 or they heard about us through a friend and they realized like, wow, my car needs to be detailed.
0:07:25 I would love to have it just spotless.
0:07:30 Some people even can search on Google if they search for like mobile car washing or mobile
0:07:33 detailing in my area or even detailing in my area.
0:07:35 We do show up in some of the Google results, too.
0:07:40 So definitely those first time customers are, I would say, our prime target market.
0:07:42 We also have a dealership.
0:07:47 It’s a small dealership that calls us about three or four times a week for different cars.
0:07:55 And that’s the best case scenario because they are reoccurring and they’re always bringing new cars in from auction.
0:08:02 That is someone that we can rely on without having to spend any new marketing dollars towards every single week.
0:08:03 Yeah, that’s awesome.
0:08:05 How did you start that relationship?
0:08:10 They called us and I’m not sure how they found us out.
0:08:19 It’s a question that I should probably figure out because the dealership owner called us and he either found us through one of two ways.
0:08:23 He either found us through a Facebook ad or through Google at the time.
0:08:31 And he reached out and just asked about coming to their dealership and doing detailings for them on a weekly basis.
0:08:37 We said absolutely, came out, agreed on a price that we would start at, and we just went from there.
0:08:38 Okay.
0:08:48 For these first customers, either the dealership or the friends and family, mom’s text and Facebook post, how did you figure out how much to charge these folks?
0:08:51 So that one was kind of random.
0:08:52 We started low.
0:08:59 I think that we initially started with $30 for a full detail, both inside and out.
0:09:01 I believe that took us around two hours.
0:09:06 We didn’t have all the add-on services at the time, so we were just doing like vacuuming, wiping things down.
0:09:10 We were putting a shine on like all the upholstery, kind of like an armor roll.
0:09:12 And it was around $30.
0:09:16 I think we actually had listed it at $50, and we were running a special for $30.
0:09:22 So I remember my brother telling me actually the first day that we did like a stranger’s car.
0:09:25 It was someone that had seen a Facebook ad that we had done.
0:09:29 I remember him telling me whenever we went to go grab lunch, I don’t think this is worth it.
0:09:33 Doing car detailing for this cheap, it’s just not worth my time.
0:09:35 It’s hard work.
0:09:41 And I told him that our prices are only this cheap temporarily, and we would raise them soon.
0:09:52 And really, this was to get initial startup customers to build reviews and to build some kind of marketing materials, as well as experience under our belt.
0:09:54 So it sounds like he’s the one doing the labor.
0:10:01 You’re the one behind the scenes doing the marketing, the Facebook stuff, providing the seed money, and all this.
0:10:04 He’s the one who’s putting the elbow grease into these vehicles.
0:10:05 Absolutely.
0:10:07 It wouldn’t be able to work without him.
0:10:10 But at the beginning, I definitely was helping him out.
0:10:13 And then now he does primarily all of the detailing.
0:10:21 More with Josh in just a moment, including collecting positive customer reviews, quoting jobs, and some more creative marketing ideas.
0:10:23 Coming up right after this.
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0:12:47 Okay, so starting very, very inexpensively to the point where the labor is questioning whether or not it’s even worth it.
0:12:50 But hey, we’re building up before and after pictures.
0:12:53 We’re building up hopefully happy customer testimonials.
0:12:58 Did you do anything specific to request those reviews on Google or Yelp or Facebook?
0:13:08 Yeah, so I had been – I had done some Amazon FBA selling before I got into the mobile detailing business, and it had failed massively.
0:13:19 I lost around $3,000 in the span of about six months, and I think I put in about six months to a year of total prep work, learning how to do this whole business model.
0:13:24 And while I lost out on a lot of money, I learned a ton of stuff.
0:13:32 And one of the things that I learned from this coach actually that I had bought a course from was the importance of reaching out and asking for a review.
0:13:40 And making that as easy as possible by sending them a link where they can click on the link, and it’ll immediately take them to either a Facebook or a Google review.
0:13:45 So before we even went in with our first customer, we had that review link set up.
0:13:52 And as soon as we were finished with the service, we would just ask them, hey, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could leave us a positive review.
0:13:55 And at first, we were just doing Facebook.
0:13:56 We eventually switched over to doing Google.
0:14:04 We try not to overwhelm them by doing both of them at the same time, although if there’s someone that really wants to leave a review, we often will send them both review links.
0:14:10 But we kind of switched off by doing one or the other just to try to build up positive feedback on both those sites.
0:14:17 Facebook seems like an interesting option to try and solicit reviews for where Google makes sense to me.
0:14:20 I can show up in Google search results.
0:14:25 If somebody searches for mobile detailing service near me, you’re likely to show up there.
0:14:27 Has that started to happen?
0:14:46 Yes, and that’s a great point because you want to build your business to where over time it will start to rank organically and you’ve established your presence and you’ve built up your reviews on Google because there will be a ton of people that will be searching for mobile detailing near me, car washes near me.
0:14:56 And if you can build up those positive reviews and you can have a good rank on Google, that’ll help with reaching people organically without having to spend advertising dollars.
0:14:59 Have you seen any of that start to take effect?
0:15:04 I would say we get probably five to seven calls a week from organic Google traffic.
0:15:06 Two months ago, that was zero.
0:15:08 So it can pick up pretty quickly there.
0:15:11 I was going to say 30 bucks is a steal.
0:15:15 You can come over to my house anytime, but it sounds like pricing has evolved a little bit since then.
0:15:20 What’s it look like today and maybe how much time does that take you?
0:15:23 So it was a couple hours, you know, maybe to do this full detail.
0:15:29 Have you or has your brother improved his speed and process or really depends on the car?
0:15:30 Yeah, definitely.
0:15:33 We’ve improved the speed and process for sure.
0:15:37 And that just comes with experience and learning like what method to use, what to do first.
0:15:41 We started out with, like I said, about $50 for a full detail.
0:15:52 Soon after, once we started to get a little bit more, a little bit more traffic in, we raised it about $20 up to $70, eventually raise it up to $100 within like a few months after that, eventually up to like $120.
0:16:02 And now, as of a few months ago, we’ve established $90 for starting cost or starting price for doing an interior detail.
0:16:08 We start at $50 for exterior detail and then $140 starting price for a full detail.
0:16:17 And notice I said starting cost because I tell every single person that calls me and wants a quote that we must inspect the vehicle beforehand.
0:16:23 And that’s because some vehicles take way longer and are way dirtier than others.
0:16:28 And the customer, a lot of the times, will like tell you, oh, my vehicle really isn’t that bad.
0:16:35 And then once you take a look at it, you realize that it’s going to take you five hours of work and the initial $100 you quoted them is not worth it anymore.
0:16:41 So it’s very important that you tell the customer that we will need to inspect it to give you an exact quote.
0:16:54 A lot of the times, I will offer to give a quote to them for free and we can set up a time to come out directly to their work or to their home at their convenience and give them a quick five to ten minute quote.
0:17:01 Either myself or my brother will go out and we’ll take a look at it, kind of talk to them about what things they were liking to have done.
0:17:14 If they were liking to have their carpet shampooed or if they were liking to have their leather seats conditioned or if they were wanting to have a special kind of coating put on the exterior, all those things will communicate with them and then come out of quotes.
0:17:24 So the starting price for the interior, the $90, it does not include things like carpet shampooing or seat shampooing or leather conditioning or if there is excess dog hair.
0:17:37 Those are things that we do add on extra for and then if they have like a truck or an SUV, we’ll charge a little bit extra for that or if they were wanting something like a cream wax or ceramic coating, we’ll charge them extra for that as well.
0:17:40 Is there an hourly rate you’re shooting for on those quotes?
0:17:41 Yeah.
0:17:43 So we go for $40 to $50 an hour.
0:17:47 That is a fantastic college gig.
0:17:49 I mean, that’s a fantastic gig for anybody.
0:17:50 That’s pretty cool.
0:18:01 When you guys were starting out, I’m curious if there were any, if there was any competitive analysis, competitive research, like, oh, there’s already half a dozen detailers in town.
0:18:03 I don’t think there’s a market for this.
0:18:06 Like, did any of that go through your head or was that part of the process?
0:18:19 We definitely did think of that because there are a ton of other detailers and a lot of the, a lot of the detailers that were online, they were charging, charging quite a bit for their services.
0:18:21 And well, they were also, they weren’t mobile.
0:18:23 So you had to go directly to them.
0:18:28 And a huge part of our business is the fact that we can come directly to your home and do it.
0:18:32 So you could be sitting on the couch, watching TV on Saturday morning and we can be cleaning your car.
0:18:35 So that is a huge selling point.
0:18:39 And there was no one that was really doing that business model in our town.
0:18:43 But even if there is, there’s still so many holes in the market that people leave.
0:18:46 And there’s so much opportunity that it definitely isn’t an end all be all.
0:18:56 I will also say that a lot of the dealerships, especially on Google, when you go to look at their reviews, their reviews aren’t the best.
0:19:02 And they treat their customers, I think that they pump in customers a lot and they don’t treat their customers as well.
0:19:06 So we really go for 100% satisfaction guaranteed.
0:19:16 We’ve had several customers who will call me after my brother has taken care of the car and say, hey, this wasn’t up to my standards.
0:19:18 I thought that it would be different.
0:19:22 Would you come out and, and take care of this again?
0:19:25 And sometimes they won’t even offer that, but I will always tell them.
0:19:31 That we will absolutely find a time to come out and to make this right with no extra charge.
0:19:35 And we have never had a bad review because of that.
0:19:36 We always make it right.
0:19:41 And I always make sure to tell my brother that communication is key.
0:19:50 So he’s learned over time to have the customer take a look at the vehicle and walk around through it once they’re finished up to make sure that everything is up to their standards.
0:19:56 And we didn’t miss any spots is sometimes the customer may know the vehicle a little bit better than we do.
0:19:59 There might be some nicks and crannies that we weren’t aware of.
0:20:02 So it is communication is key.
0:20:16 Well, I think that’s a big advantage you guys have as, as a, as a smaller company is the customer feels comfortable calling you up and telling you rather than blasting an anonymous review online, like they might with a, with a larger company.
0:20:24 It’s like, I know, like I have a little bit more of a personal relationship with these guys and, you know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to hurt their business, but I want to give them a chance to make it right.
0:20:28 I think that’s an advantage for smaller operators in this space.
0:20:36 One thing I’m curious about now, you mentioned like, Hey, you’re sitting here inside, you’re watching football while you guys are out working on the car in the driveway.
0:20:41 I imagine that can lend itself to neighbors walking by.
0:20:49 I don’t know if you’re allowed to like put up a little sign as you’re vacuuming out the car or something that says like, Hey, bulk mobile detailing is here or working on this.
0:20:55 But like, can you give me a sense of the just natural marketing that happens during the work?
0:20:56 It’s great.
0:21:07 Whenever that happens, whenever a customer can just come by that it’s either a neighbor or they’re maybe driving by and they, they see our car outside and they see the pressure washer all hooked up.
0:21:10 They stop and ask us, Hey, how much do you guys charge?
0:21:11 Or what are you guys doing?
0:21:15 And you can start a lot of business just by that.
0:21:17 And the best part about that is it’s all free.
0:21:20 You don’t have to do anything to, to market to those kinds of people.
0:21:30 I mean, a lot of the times just by them seeing their neighbor or someone that they know getting their car detailed, it immediately builds up that, that trust.
0:21:32 They are much more likely to sign up for a detailing.
0:21:45 You ever go to like an office park or an office building where if you could somehow get in with the office manager, I don’t know, like the property management company and just set these up on a lunch break or you guys could do it all day long.
0:21:48 Like, you know, have people bring down their keys or something.
0:21:48 I don’t know.
0:21:50 Just spitballing here.
0:21:52 Yeah, I think that’s a great idea.
0:21:54 And that’s something that’s untapped.
0:21:56 So that goes back to what I was saying.
0:22:05 I don’t think that no matter how many mobile detailers are in anybody’s area, there is so much room to grow and there’s so many untapped markets still.
0:22:11 And that is something that we haven’t explored much yet, but I think it’s got great potential.
0:22:22 And I think that it could be a great reoccurring customer to come down like every Friday to this office building and you might be able to knock out five cars in a day at $100 each.
0:22:25 I think that that is a great business model.
0:22:31 And what’s best about it is it can be reoccurring and it could happen every single week or every month if you set it up that way.
0:22:39 Man, I can even see some employers like offering it as a perk of working here, of coming to this office.
0:22:44 Like, hey, you know, they’re the ones maybe they foot the bill and like, hey, we’ve got capacity to do five of these every week.
0:22:45 Put your name on the wait list.
0:22:48 I think that could be an interesting way to go.
0:22:50 But you mentioned Facebook ads a couple of times.
0:23:01 And so curious how this works, because it’s something that, you know, scrolling through my Facebook feed, maybe I wasn’t necessarily in the market for it.
0:23:03 But then I see an ad and all of a sudden I’m ready to click buy.
0:23:05 How’s Facebook working for you in that way?
0:23:06 So it’s interesting.
0:23:15 We spent $100 on an initial giveaway, and that’s how I thought that we were going to gain the bulk of our starting customers.
0:23:18 That was in New Year’s of last year.
0:23:19 It was like a New Year’s special.
0:23:28 Starting with the new year, we actually decided to give away one month or each month of the whole year, you would get a free car wash.
0:23:36 And all you had to do was sign up, was enter your email, and then at the end of this week that we would contact them, and we’d let them know the winner.
0:23:40 We spent about $100, and I think I got about 50 leads from it.
0:23:47 Out of those people, we picked one person, and that person actually told us, I don’t want your giveaway.
0:23:50 So why did they sign up for it if they didn’t want it?
0:23:56 So I think that maybe she thought that it was a scam, or she just decided she didn’t want it.
0:23:57 Might have been an impulse click.
0:24:08 So nonetheless, we targeted those people that we had captured their emails, and we decided to give every single person 50% off if they would sign up in the next two weeks.
0:24:20 Out of those, we got one person, and that was our starting customer that we started with, and we used that person to get marketing pictures for.
0:24:24 Their sister was actually there at the house and decided to book her detailing with us, too.
0:24:31 So that was a great start, but that was an unsuccessful Facebook ad campaign.
0:24:44 However, about a month later, we decided to run a Valentine’s Day special, and we had a gift card that we were selling for $59.99, and it included an interior detail and an exterior wash.
0:24:49 I spent about $80 on Facebook ads over about a week period.
0:24:58 We got 290 landing page views, and we were just driving people directly to the gift card purchase page on our website.
0:25:01 As a direct result, we got about $600 in gift card sales.
0:25:07 So I just used Canva to create just kind of like an appealing Valentine’s Day gift card.
0:25:10 It just said like, Happy Valentine’s Day.
0:25:14 Here is a free car detailing, interior detail, and a wash.
0:25:25 We would send this email and this Canva template of a gift card to them whenever they would purchase it, so that way they could print it off and put it in a card and send it to their loved ones.
0:25:26 So that did really well.
0:25:27 That’s pretty creative.
0:25:28 I like it, yeah.
0:25:30 Yeah, we got a lot of indirect sales off of that, too.
0:25:33 So it wasn’t just people all who bought the gift card.
0:25:39 Some would just reach out and then want to book a detailing for the full price because that was a special price at the time.
0:25:44 We eventually went on to do a Mother’s Day special in the month of May.
0:25:47 That was our most successful campaign that we had run.
0:25:53 Between the 3rd of May and the 9th of May, we spent $67 on Facebook ads.
0:26:03 We got 216 landing page views and $2,200 in sales as a direct result, and that was just gift card sales.
0:26:14 So we had probably an additional $1,000 to $2,000 in sales that resulted from people just deciding to send us an email because, hey, I saw your ad.
0:26:20 They weren’t necessarily wanting to buy the gift card, but they still wanted to book a detail, or maybe they decided to reach out later on.
0:26:29 So we spent $67 and made $2,200 in gift card sales plus the other benefits that came with the exposure of running these ads.
0:26:37 Yep. We reached about 6,500 people total, and it was a $0.31 cost per landing page views.
0:26:44 You mentioned doing FBA before this, but did you study Facebook ads as a part of that experiment as well?
0:26:48 It seems like awesome results relatively pretty quick out of the gate.
0:26:55 Yeah, so I had a big part of that FBA launch, and launching the product was doing a Facebook ad campaign.
0:26:59 And Facebook is very simple to use their ad account manager.
0:27:13 I mean, it’s as simple as choosing who you think your target audience would be, whether it would be 40 to 50-year-old women who enjoy arts and crafts
0:27:18 and also have kids between the ages of 10 and 16.
0:27:23 You can target that specifically on Facebook, and that’s exactly what we did.
0:27:28 And then you can just set whether you want to spend $5 or $10 a day and how long you want to run your ad.
0:27:32 So Facebook really is not challenging.
0:27:35 I think that it’s very easy to use, but I did have a little bit of experience coming in.
0:27:38 Well, those are pretty impressive results.
0:27:44 Anything else, either on the Facebook ad side or other marketing efforts that have paid off for you?
0:27:51 We’ve done a few Google ads where if someone searches automotive detailing in my area, we would be the one to show up.
0:27:54 That one hasn’t been as successful.
0:27:55 It was all right.
0:27:57 We’re still exploring that avenue.
0:28:08 Google SEO is obviously huge, just ranking organically, making sure your website is optimized so that over time you will show up on Google organic searches.
0:28:10 We tried Nextdoor app.
0:28:12 Are you familiar with the Nextdoor app?
0:28:13 Yes.
0:28:14 We tried that.
0:28:18 I ran a $50 campaign on there, and we didn’t have anyone reach out.
0:28:28 But that one is interesting because I see people posting all the time for things like yard work or roof repair or pest control in there, asking if their friends and family know people.
0:28:35 So I think that there’s definitely still room to grow on the Nextdoor app, but so far, that paid campaign hadn’t been the best for us.
0:28:37 Obviously, word of mouth is huge, too.
0:28:40 Whenever we first started, we actually did go door to door.
0:28:48 I think that I really just wanted to get the experience with my brother and just to kind of show him like, hey, this is what some people have to do on a day-by-day basis to gain business.
0:28:50 So we tried that out.
0:28:51 We printed out some flyers.
0:28:57 Didn’t have anyone that called us after putting flyers and knocking on about 50 people’s door.
0:28:58 It was freezing outside.
0:29:00 We decided to call it quits early.
0:29:03 I think everybody should have the experience of going door to door at some point.
0:29:04 Absolutely.
0:29:08 Did you guys have custom-built detailing polo shirts made up or something?
0:29:11 I’m curious, like, well, you said it was freezing, so you probably got jackets on.
0:29:13 We didn’t at the time.
0:29:15 That would have been a great addition, though.
0:29:16 Now we do.
0:29:20 We recently bought several shirts and polos to use.
0:29:27 We try to use the polos whenever we’re giving people quotes, and then we try to use the t-shirts, obviously, whenever we’re doing the work.
0:29:35 More with Josh in just a moment, including hiring additional help, the tools and tech he uses to help run the business, and where he wants to go from here.
0:29:36 Coming up right after this.
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0:31:53 Has it expanded beyond you and your brother doing the marketing, doing the work these days?
0:31:57 We had one of the guys that I actually went to high school with.
0:31:58 He was a few years older than me.
0:32:02 I had noticed that he was doing mobile detailing, and I had reached out to him.
0:32:13 We had had him helping us out here and there, but he was maintaining a full-time job as well and just wasn’t able to make as much time as we had really liked him to.
0:32:24 My brother did have a few friends of his that would come and help out here and there with things, but eventually all those people ended up getting full-time jobs somewhere else.
0:32:25 We were just kind of spotty with it.
0:32:27 It wasn’t necessarily consistent.
0:32:33 They might make a lot of money in a day, but we might not always need them every day of the week.
0:32:39 It might be just two days or one day, so eventually they all decided to go elsewhere.
0:32:46 Are there any tools or technology that you’re using to help manage the customer database or manage the bookings that come in?
0:32:48 Yeah, that’s a great question.
0:32:53 Square Appointments is what we use, and Square Appointments has just been awesome.
0:32:58 They do so much of the tax side of things.
0:33:01 They can track all of your progress and your reports.
0:33:05 They can track exactly which services you’re selling the most of.
0:33:09 Is this Square the same as the credit card reader?
0:33:16 Yep, exactly, and they will actually send you a free credit card reader, which is like a $50 value whenever you set up your account.
0:33:20 So we use that currently whenever we’re taking credit cards from people.
0:33:26 If we don’t do that, a lot of the times that we will prefer cash or check, obviously, we can also send someone an invoice.
0:33:33 If they weren’t there at the time, whenever we finished up, we could send them an invoice to their email, and they can pay like that, and that is also set up through Square.
0:33:34 Cool.
0:33:35 Well, Josh, what’s next for you?
0:33:37 Where do you want to take this thing?
0:33:43 I tell my brother all the time that you can evolve this detailing business to be anything, anything automotive-related.
0:33:50 You can evolve it to be auto repairs, oil changes, tire changes, car washes.
0:33:53 There’s so much room for growth.
0:33:58 People don’t want to have five different businesses or people to take care of their car.
0:34:04 In fact, they would love if they could just have one person that they reach out to for everything automotive-related.
0:34:12 So utilizing that book of business that we’ve built up for the detailing customers to eventually expand into other things is definitely a possibility.
0:34:15 I started this business with my brother in mind.
0:34:29 I wanted to help him out to help him make some money while he’s starting college and while he was finishing up high school so where he doesn’t have to be strapped down to some job and some boss that’s telling him what to do all the time.
0:34:33 And he can also kind of get that practical business experience, too.
0:34:38 So my plan is actually to pass it off to him eventually.
0:34:49 I would like to stay involved just kind of as a mentor and a mediator of the business in some way, but I would like him to eventually to take it on full-time.
0:34:57 As far as me, I will be graduating in May of this year, and I’m planning as of now to start a full-time career as a financial advisor.
0:35:06 I think that helping people with money and managing their money and creating financial freedom for themselves is a calling that I have.
0:35:12 It’s something that I’ve always been interested in and enjoyed, so I think that’s something that I’m shooting for.
0:35:26 But at the same time, I’m also passionate about helping student entrepreneurs just to reach their full potential because I think that there’s so many student entrepreneurs that rely on college and are forced to go to college through their parents or through their peers.
0:35:35 I think that there’s so many other ways in which student entrepreneurs can explore and so many other paths.
0:35:42 I just don’t think that it’s shown on the mainstream, and a lot of the times friends and family don’t support that.
0:35:52 So I’m also exploring trying to create some kind of community for those student entrepreneurs just to connect with each other, to make friends, and to kind of explore avenues outside of college.
0:35:55 Do you have a home base or landing page for that yet?
0:35:57 I’m currently working on it.
0:36:03 The name of the site is Student Hustles, but I don’t have it finished up yet.
0:36:05 Looking for a lot of help on it.
0:36:12 Obviously, I’m very busy with a full-time job as a web designer, helping out with the detailing business and going to school full-time.
0:36:15 So it’s difficult to find time for that.
0:36:21 Eventually, I’d like to pass off this detailing business to my brother full-time and be able to focus a little bit more on that, especially after college.
0:36:22 All right.
0:36:28 Well, when it is ready, we will be sure to link everybody up to Student Hustles.
0:36:29 Josh, I appreciate you joining me.
0:36:31 I know you’ve got a lot going on.
0:36:37 I appreciate you taking the time and sharing the inside workings of the mobile detailing operation.
0:36:40 Like Josh said, $40, $50 an hour on your own schedule.
0:36:42 This is a pretty interesting one.
0:36:47 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:36:52 My number one tip for Side Hustle Nation would be consistency always wins.
0:37:01 And even if you’re starting out and you’re not really sure where to go or what to do, day by day, moment by moment, stay consistent with what you do.
0:37:08 Whether it’s with working out or building up a business or studying for school, consistency always wins.
0:37:10 It is so true.
0:37:12 Josh, thanks so much.
0:37:13 And we’ll catch up with you soon.
0:37:23 In Josh’s initial email to me, he called himself a, quote, obsessed entrepreneur.
0:37:28 And he wrote that, I see my family and peers stuck in the rat race, living paycheck to paycheck.
0:37:31 And I do not want that to happen to me after college.
0:37:33 And so Josh took action.
0:37:36 He committed to learning along the way, but he took action.
0:37:41 And since you’re listening to this, I think you probably have at least a little bit of that same attitude, too.
0:37:45 Even if your college days are, like mine, ancient history or maybe never even happened.
0:37:50 But regardless, the good news here is that everything is learnable.
0:37:50 All right.
0:37:53 My top three takeaways from this call with Josh.
0:37:56 Number one is to think first time customers.
0:38:03 Josh mentioned that many, if not most of his clients have never had a car detailed before.
0:38:09 That’s one reason I’m excited about these types of local service businesses, that the pie just keeps getting bigger.
0:38:14 A generation ago, people would either do it themselves or not do it at all.
0:38:18 And today, people are happily paying someone else to go do it for them.
0:38:20 Now, how does the saying go?
0:38:23 A luxury once experienced becomes a necessity.
0:38:27 But that’s great news for providers of local services like mobile detailing.
0:38:35 I thought Josh’s gift card campaigns on social media were a really cool idea because it is kind of a luxury service.
0:38:38 It makes for a great treat yourself kind of gift, right?
0:38:42 Now, could you apply a similar strategy in your business around the upcoming holidays?
0:38:44 That’s takeaway number one for me.
0:38:46 Focus on these first time customers.
0:38:50 Maybe they’ve never bought a service like yours before, but there’s a first time for everything.
0:38:53 Takeaway number two is to collect reviews.
0:39:00 For any new business, social proof and building trust with those first time customers is so crucial.
0:39:07 And I like how Josh mentioned that they had the review links for Facebook and Google ready to go before they even had a customer.
0:39:15 The cool thing is here for most local services in most cities is not going to take that many reviews to stand out.
0:39:17 Maybe five, maybe ten, and you’re off to the races.
0:39:23 And this is especially important if you’re following their strategy of pricing low early on.
0:39:30 Working for less than you normally would makes sense if you can turn that client into several more clients,
0:39:34 either through their glowing testimonial or through word of mouth.
0:39:39 That was takeaway number two for me to collect reviews and be really diligent about that.
0:39:43 Takeaway number three was to target business to business, target business customers.
0:39:50 It sounded like the most consistent source of jobs were from their relationship with that local car dealership,
0:39:59 which makes sense because they’re constantly turning over inventory where an individual car owner might get his car done or her car done maybe a few times a year at most.
0:40:09 If I had the capacity, if I were in Josh’s shoes and had the capacity, I would be building relationships with other similar businesses, other similar dealerships.
0:40:18 And you might find through conversations there’s a sweet spot where the super small used car lots do it themselves and the mega dealers,
0:40:22 maybe they already have somebody in-house, but you never know until you strike up that conversation.
0:40:29 Now, that said, Josh did say it can be tough to find other detailers, subcontractor detailers,
0:40:34 to fulfill that work because it can be a little inconsistent in terms of timing and demand.
0:40:41 And I think that’s a struggle for a lot of freelancers, a lot of service providers who need or want to graduate from doing the work themselves.
0:40:45 But maybe they don’t have the volume to hire it out yet.
0:40:47 Maybe they don’t have the margins to hire it out yet.
0:40:53 In our cleaning conversations with Chris Schwab, he called it the trough of despair or the valley of despair.
0:41:00 But if you can find great workers to build out your team, like Josh said, there’s a ton of opportunity for growth here.
0:41:06 But going back to the thing on targeting a business customer, it could be as simple as asking the question,
0:41:08 how do you guys handle detailing around here?
0:41:09 Start that conversation, right?
0:41:15 And if you today have a primarily consumer-facing business, a consumer-facing operation,
0:41:23 is there a slight pivot or refocusing that would make that offer of yours applicable to a business customer?
0:41:24 Something to think about.
0:41:32 And cool side note here is that in niches like this, where there is no dominant regional or national player,
0:41:34 there’s an opportunity to go really big.
0:41:38 Think beyond the side hustle to go really big and become that player.
0:41:45 Maybe in this case, it looks like a booking or matchmaking app that connects you with a reliable,
0:41:50 reputable local service provider and just takes a percentage of each job.
0:41:53 Like firsthand, I use a similar service for house cleaning called Handy.
0:41:55 It’s very easy to do business with.
0:41:57 I came across GreenPal.
0:41:59 You’ll find it at yourgreenpal.com.
0:42:03 They’re building something similar in the lawn mowing and yard care space.
0:42:08 In the virtual space, we’ve heard from folks like Design Pickle for graphic design.
0:42:12 There’s Belay Solutions in the virtual assistant arena.
0:42:15 It’s an exciting place to explore, for sure.
0:42:21 But once again, make sure to hit up SideHustleNation.com slash detailing for the full text summary of our call
0:42:23 and links to all the resources that Josh mentioned.
0:42:25 Hey, one last thing.
0:42:26 Can I send you some free stuff?
0:42:32 If you head on over to SideHustleNation.com slash join, I’ll send you my free report,
0:42:37 The Five Fastest Ways to Make More Money, plus my weekly newsletter packed with money-making ideas.
0:42:42 On top of that, you’ll also get access to hundreds of members-only goodies and bonus files,
0:42:46 including tons of tactical tips from top podcast guests,
0:42:52 plus an invite to the world’s largest, most active, and most supportive SideHustle community.
0:42:56 That’s all free for you at SideHustleNation.com slash join,
0:43:00 or text the code HUSTLEON to 33444.
0:43:02 That is it for me.
0:43:03 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:43:06 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen,
0:43:09 and I’ll catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show.
0:43:10 Hustle on.

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0:00:39 There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to artificial intelligence.
0:00:44 Technologists love to talk about all the good these tools can do in the world.
0:00:46 All the problems they might solve.
0:00:56 And yet, many of those same technologists are also warning us about all the ways AI might upend society.
0:01:04 It’s not really clear which, if either, of these narratives are true.
0:01:08 But three things do seem to be true.
0:01:11 One, change is coming.
0:01:15 Two, it’s coming whether we like it or not.
0:01:20 Hell, even as I write this document, Google Gemini is asking me how it can help me today.
0:01:21 It can’t.
0:01:24 Today’s intro is 100% human-made.
0:01:31 And finally, it’s abundantly clear that AI will affect all of us.
0:01:39 Yet, very few of us have any say in how this technology is being developed and used.
0:01:43 So, who does have a say?
0:01:47 And why are they so worried about an AI apocalypse?
0:01:51 And how are their beliefs shaping our future?
0:01:57 I’m Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.
0:02:13 My guest today is Vox host and editorial director, Julia Longoria.
0:02:27 She spent nearly a year digging into the AI industry, trying to understand some of the people who are shaping artificial intelligence, and why so many of them believe that AI is a threat to humanity.
0:02:33 She turned that story into a four-part podcast series called Good Robot.
0:02:39 Most stories about AI are focused on how the technology is built and what it can do.
0:02:51 Good Robot, instead, focuses on the beliefs and values, and most importantly, fears, of the people funding, building, and advocating on issues related to AI.
0:03:07 What she found is a set of ideologies, some of which critics and advocates of AI adhere to, with an almost religious fervor, that are influencing the conversation around AI, and even the way the technology is built.
0:03:22 Whether you’re familiar with these ideologies or not, they’re impacting your life, or certainly they will impact your life, because they’re shaping the development of AI as well as the guardrails, or lack thereof, around it.
0:03:29 So I invited Julia onto the show to help me understand these values, and the people who hold them.
0:03:39 Julia Longoria, welcome to the show.
0:03:41 Thank you for having me.
0:03:46 So, it was quite the reporting journey we went on for this series.
0:03:48 It’s really, really well done.
0:03:51 So, first of all, congrats.
0:03:51 Thank you.
0:03:56 Thank you for having me on that, and we’re actually going to play some clips from it today.
0:03:57 I’m glad you enjoyed it.
0:04:03 It’s, it’s, you’re in, I’m in that, you know, nerve-wracking first few weeks when it comes out, so it makes me feel good to hear that.
0:04:13 So, going into this thing, you wanted to understand why so many people are worried about an AI apocalypse.
0:04:18 And if you should be afraid, and if you should be afraid to, we will get to the answers, I promise.
0:04:23 But why were these the motivating questions for you?
0:04:29 You know, I come to artificial intelligence as a normie, as people in the know called me.
0:04:32 I don’t know much about it.
0:04:33 I didn’t know much about it.
0:04:38 But I had the sense, as an outsider, that the stakes were really high.
0:04:52 And it seemed like people talked about it in a language that I didn’t understand, and talking about these stakes that felt like really epic, but kind of like impenetrable to someone who didn’t speak their language.
0:05:02 So, I guess I just wanted to start out with, like, the biggest, most epic, like, almost most ignorant question, you know, like, okay, people are afraid.
0:05:06 There, some people are afraid that AI could just wipe us all out.
0:05:07 Where does that fear come from?
0:05:18 And just have that be a starting point to break the ice of this area that, like, honestly has felt kind of intangible and hard for me to even wrap my head around.
0:05:27 Yeah, I mean, I appreciate your normie status, because that’s the position almost all of us are in.
0:05:35 You know, we’re on the outside looking in, trying to understand what the hell is happening here.
0:05:40 What did being a normie mean to you as you waded into this world?
0:05:46 I mean, did you find that that outside perspective was actually useful in your reporting?
0:05:48 Definitely, yeah.
0:05:52 I think that’s kind of how I try to come to any topic.
0:05:59 Like, I’ve also reported on the Supreme Court, and that’s, like, another world that speaks its own dense, impenetrable language.
0:06:06 And, you know, like the Supreme Court, like, artificial intelligence affects all of our lives deeply.
0:06:20 And I feel like because it is such a, you know, sophisticated technology, and the people who work in it are so deep in it, it’s hard for normies to ask the more ignorant questions.
0:06:31 And so I feel like having the microphone and being armed with, you know, my Vox byline, I was able to ask the dumb question.
0:06:36 And, you know, I think I always said, like, you know, I know the answer to some of these questions.
0:06:41 But I’m asking on behalf of, like, the listener.
0:06:42 And sometimes I knew the answer.
0:06:43 Sometimes I didn’t.
0:07:04 I don’t know about you, but for me, and I’m sure a lot of people listening, it is maddening to be continually told that, you know what, we might be on the wrong end of an extinction event here, caused by this tiny minority of non-normies building this stuff.
0:07:13 And that it’s possible for so few to make decisions that might unravel life for the rest of us is just, well, maddening.
0:07:14 It is maddening.
0:07:15 It is maddening.
0:07:19 And to even hear it be talked about, like, this affects all of us.
0:07:22 So shouldn’t we, shouldn’t it be the thing that we’re all talking about?
0:07:29 But it feels like it’s reserved for a certain group of people who get to make the decisions and get to set the terms of the conversation.
0:07:39 Let’s talk about the ideologies and all the camps that make up this weird, insular world of AI.
0:07:44 And I want to start with the, what you call the AI safety camp.
0:07:46 What is their deal?
0:07:48 What should we know about them?
0:07:54 So AI safety is a term that’s evolved over the years.
0:08:07 But it’s kind of like people who fear that AI could be an existential risk to humanity, whether that’s like AI going rogue and doing things we didn’t want it to do.
0:08:13 It’s about the biggest worry, I guess, of all of us being wiped out.
0:08:18 We never talked about a cell phone apocalypse or an internet apocalypse.
0:08:22 I guess maybe if you count Y2K.
0:08:25 But even that wasn’t going to wipe out humanity.
0:08:30 But the threat of an AI apocalypse, it feels like it’s everywhere.
0:08:34 Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes.
0:08:39 From billionaire Elon Musk to the United Nations.
0:08:46 Today, all 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly have spoken in one voice.
0:08:48 AI is existential.
0:08:55 But then it feels like scientists in the know can’t even agree on what exactly we should be worried about.
0:08:59 And where does the term AI safety come from?
0:09:12 We trace the origin to a man named Eliezer Yudkowsky, who, you know, I think not all AI safety people today agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky.
0:09:16 But basically, you know, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about this fear.
0:09:24 Actually, as a teenager, he became popular, sort of found his following when he wrote a Harry Potter fan fiction.
0:09:26 As one does.
0:09:27 As one does.
0:09:31 It’s actually one of the most popular Harry Potter fan fictions out there.
0:09:34 It’s called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
0:09:36 And he wrote it almost as a way.
0:09:38 Love it.
0:09:44 He wrote it almost as a way to get people to think differently about AI.
0:09:53 He had thought deeply about the possibility of building a artificial intelligence that was smarter than human beings.
0:09:55 Like, he kind of imagined this idea.
0:10:02 And at first, he imagined it as a good robot, which is the name of the series, that could save us.
0:10:13 But, you know, eventually he realized, like, or came to fear that it could probably go very poorly if we built something smarter than us, that it would, it could result in it killing us.
0:10:18 So, anyway, that’s the origin, but it’s sort of, his ideas have caught on.
0:10:27 Open AI, actually, the CEO, Sam Altman, talks about how Eliezer was like an early inspiration for him making the company.
0:10:36 They do not agree on a lot because Eliezer thinks Open AI, the chat GPT company, is on track to cause an apocalypse.
0:10:42 But, anyway, that’s, that’s the gist, is like, AI safety is like, AI could kill us all.
0:10:43 How do we prevent that?
0:10:51 So, it’s really, it’s about, it’s focused on the sort of long-range existential risks.
0:10:51 Correct.
0:10:53 And some people don’t think it’s long-range.
0:10:57 Some of these people think that that could happen very soon.
0:11:02 So, this Yudkowsky guy, right, he makes these two general claims, right?
0:11:07 One is that we will build an AI that’s smarter than us, and it will change the world.
0:11:14 And the second claim is that to get that right is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.
0:11:19 Why does he think it’s so difficult to get this right?
0:11:22 Why is he so convinced that we won’t?
0:11:28 He thinks about this in terms of thought experiments.
0:11:38 So, just kind of taking, taking this premise that we could build something that outpaces us at most tasks.
0:11:47 He tries to explain the different ways this could happen with these, like, quirky parables.
0:11:54 And we start with his most famous one, which is the paperclip maximizer thought experiment.
0:12:00 Suppose, in the future, there is an artificial intelligence.
0:12:13 We’ve created an AI so vastly powerful, so unfathomably intelligent, that we might call it superintelligent.
0:12:18 Let’s give this superintelligent AI a simple goal.
0:12:21 Produce…
0:12:23 Paperclips
0:12:33 Because the AI is superintelligent, it quickly learns how to make paperclips out of anything in the world.
0:12:41 It can anticipate and foil any attempt to stop it, and will do so because its one directive is to make more paperclips.
0:12:50 Should we attempt to turn the AI off, it will fight back because it can’t make more paperclips if it is turned off.
0:12:55 And it will beat us because it is superintelligent and we are not.
0:12:57 The final result?
0:13:08 The entire galaxy, including you, me, and everyone we know, has either been destroyed or been transformed.
0:13:15 Into paperclips.
0:13:31 The gist is, we build something so smart we fail to understand it, how it works, and we could try to give it good goals to help improve our lives.
0:13:39 But maybe that goal has an unintended consequence that could lead to something catastrophic that we couldn’t have even imagined.
0:13:45 Right, and it’s such a good example because a paperclip is like the most innocuous, trivial thing ever, right?
0:13:47 Like what could possibly go wrong?
0:13:52 Is Yukowski, even within the safety camp, on the extremes?
0:13:57 I mean, I went to his website, and I just want to read this quote.
0:13:59 He writes,
0:14:07 It’s obvious at this point that humanity isn’t going to solve the alignment problem, or even try very hard, or even go out with much of a fight.
0:14:15 Since survival is unattainable, we should shift the focus of our efforts to helping humanity die with slightly more dignity.
0:14:17 I mean, come on, dude.
0:14:19 It’s so dramatic.
0:14:23 I mean, that, he seems convinced that the game is already up here.
0:14:27 We’re just, we just don’t know how much sand is left in the hourglass.
0:14:31 I mean, is he on the margins even within this camp, or is this a fairly representative view?
0:14:32 Definitely, yeah.
0:14:32 Okay.
0:14:35 No, no, it’s, he’s on the margins, I would say.
0:14:37 It’s, he’s like an extreme case.
0:14:40 He had a big influence on the industry early on.
0:14:47 So, in that sense, he, he was like an early influencer of all these people who ended up going into AI.
0:14:50 A lot of people I talked to went into AI because of his writings.
0:14:53 I can’t square that circle, right?
0:14:54 If they were influenced by him.
0:14:55 No.
0:14:56 And this whole thing is, don’t do this, we’re going to die.
0:14:58 Why are they doing it?
0:15:03 To me, it felt like similar to the world of religion, almost like a schism.
0:15:10 Believers in the superintelligence, and then people who thought we shouldn’t try and build it, and then the people who thought we should.
0:15:21 Yeah, I mean, I, I guess with any kind of grand thinking about the fate of humanity, you end up with these, it starts to get very religious-y very quickly,
0:15:26 even if it’s cloaked in the language of science and secularism, as this is.
0:15:31 The religious part of it, I mean, did that, did the parallels there jump out to you pretty immediately?
0:15:43 That, that the people at the level of ideology are treating this, thinking about this, as though it is a religious problem or a religious worldview?
0:15:44 It really did.
0:16:01 It did jump out at me really early, because I think, like, going into reporting on a technology, you expect to be kind of bogged down by technological language and terminology that’s, like, in the weeds of whatever, computer science or whatever it is.
0:16:14 But, but the words that were hard to understand were, like, superintelligence and AGI, and then hearing about, you know, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, talking about a magic intelligence in the sky.
0:16:18 And the question I had was, like, what are these guys talking about?
0:16:21 But it was almost like they were talking about a god, is what it felt like to me.
0:16:23 Yeah.
0:16:24 All right.
0:16:27 I have some thoughts on the religious thing, but let me table that for a second.
0:16:30 I think we’ll, we’ll end up circling back to that.
0:16:35 I want to finish our little survey of the, of the tribes, the gangs here.
0:16:39 The other camp you talk about are the, the AI ethicists.
0:16:40 What’s their deal?
0:16:42 What are they concerned about?
0:16:48 How are they different from the safetyists who are focused on these existential problems or risks?
0:17:01 Yeah, the AI ethicists that I spoke to came to AI pretty early on, too, like, just a couple years, maybe after, a few years after Eliezer was writing about it.
0:17:02 They were working on algorithms.
0:17:06 They were working on AI as it existed in the world.
0:17:08 So that, that was a key difference.
0:17:11 They weren’t thinking about things in, like, these hypotheticals.
0:17:24 But AI ethicists, where AI safety folks tend to worry about the ways in which AI could be an existential risk in the future, it could wipe us out.
0:17:32 AI ethicists tended to worry about harms that AI was doing right now, in the present.
0:17:56 Whether that was through, you know, governments using AI to surveil people, bias in AI data, the data that went into building AI systems, you know, racial bias, gender bias, and ways that algorithmic systems were making racist decisions, sexist decisions, decisions that were harmful to disabled people.
0:17:57 They were worried about things now.
0:17:59 Tell me about Margaret Mitchell.
0:18:10 She’s a researcher and a colorful character in the series, and she’s an ethicist, and she coined the everything is awesome problem.
0:18:12 Tell me about that.
0:18:15 That’s an interesting example of the sorts of things they worry about.
0:18:22 Yeah, so Margaret Mitchell was working on AI systems in the early days, like long before we had ChatGPT.
0:18:28 She was working on a system at Microsoft that was vision to language.
0:18:35 So it was taking a series of images of a scene and trying to describe it in words.
0:18:43 And so she, you know, she was giving the system things like images of weddings or images of different events.
0:18:50 And she gave the system a series of images of what’s called the Hempstead Blast.
0:19:03 It was at a factory, and you could see from the sequence of images that the person taking the photo had like a third-story view sort of overlooking the explosion.
0:19:11 So it was a series of pictures showing that there was this terrible explosion happening, and whoever was taking the photo was very close to the scene.
0:19:20 So I put these images through my system, and the system says, wow, this is a great view.
0:19:22 This is awesome!
0:19:35 The system learned from the images that it had been trained on that if you were taking an image from, you know, from above, down below, like, that that’s a great view.
0:19:42 And that if there were, like, all these, you know, different colors, like in a sunset, which the explosion had made all these colors, that that was beautiful.
0:19:52 And so she saw really early on before, you know, this AI moment that we’re living, that the data that these systems are trained on is crucial.
0:20:01 And so her worry with systems like ChatGPT are, they’re trained on, like, basically the entire internet.
0:20:08 And so the technologists making the system lose track of, like, what kinds of biases could be in there.
0:20:13 And, yeah, this is, like, sort of her origin story of worrying about these things.
0:20:25 And she went and worked for Google’s AI ethics team and later was fired after trying to get a paper published there about these worries.
0:20:31 So why is the everything is awesome problem a problem, right?
0:20:39 I mean, I guess someone may hear that and go, well, okay, that’s kind of goofy and quirky that an AI would interpret a horrible image in that way.
0:20:44 But what actual harm is that going to cause in the world?
0:20:45 Right.
0:21:06 I mean, the way she puts it is, you know, if you were training a system to, like, launch missiles and you gave it some of its own autonomy to make decisions, like, you know, she was like, you could have a system that’s, like, launching missiles in pursuit of the aesthetic of beauty.
0:21:10 So, in a sense, it’s a bit of a thought experiment on its own, right?
0:21:19 It’s like she’s not worried about this in particular, but worried about implications for biased data in future systems.
0:21:21 Yeah, it’s the same thing with the paperclip example, right?
0:21:27 It’s just, it’s unintended, the bizarre and unintended consequences of these things, right?
0:21:34 What seems goofy and quirky at first may, a few steps down the road, be catastrophic, right?
0:21:38 And if you’re not, if you can’t predict that, maybe you should be a little careful about building it.
0:21:40 Right, right, exactly.
0:21:52 So, do the AI ethics people in general, do they think the concerns about an extinction event or existential threats, do they think those concerns are valid?
0:22:01 Or do they think they’re mostly just science fiction and a complete distraction from, you know, actual present-day harms?
0:22:10 I should say at the outset that, you know, I found that the AI ethics and AI safety camps, they’re less camps and more of a spectrum.
0:22:18 So, I don’t want to say that every single AI ethics person I spoke to was like, these existential risks are nonsense.
0:22:28 But by and large, people I spoke to in the ethics camp said that these existential risks are a distraction.
0:22:37 It’s like this epic fear that’s attention grabbing and, you know, goes viral and takes away from the harms that AI is doing right now.
0:22:45 It takes away attention from those things and it, crucially, in their view, takes away resources from fighting those kinds of harms.
0:22:46 In what way?
0:23:04 You know, I think when it comes to funding, if you’re like a billionaire who wants to give money to companies or charities or, you know, causes and you want to leave a legacy in the world, I mean, do you want to make sure that data and AI systems is unbiased or do you want to make sure that you save humanity from apocalypse, you know?
0:23:09 Yeah. I should ask about the effect of altruists.
0:23:15 They’re another camp, another school of thought, another tradition of thought, whatever you want to call it, that you talk about in the series.
0:23:19 How do they fit in to the story? Or how are they situated?
0:23:24 Yeah. So, effective altruism is a movement that’s had an effect on the AI industry.
0:23:37 It’s also had an effect on Vox. Future Perfect is the Vox section that we collaborated with to make Good Robot and it was actually inspired by effective altruism.
0:23:52 The whole point of the effective altruism movement is to try to do the most good in the world and EA, as it’s sometimes called, comes up with a sort of formula for how to choose which causes you should focus on and put your efforts toward.
0:24:07 So, early rationalists like Eliezer Yudkowsky encountered early effective altruists and tried to convince them that the highest stakes issue of our time, the cause that they should focus on is AI.
0:24:18 Effective altruism is traditionally known to give philanthropic dollars to things like malaria nets, but they also gave philanthropic dollars to saving us from an AI apocalypse.
0:24:27 And so, the AI safety industry is really a big part of how it was financed is that effective altruism rallied as a cause around it.
0:24:36 These are the people who think we really have an obligation to build a good robot in order to protect future humans.
0:24:40 And again, I don’t know what they mean by good.
0:24:44 I mean, good and bad, those are value judgments.
0:24:45 This is morality, not science.
0:24:49 There’s no utility function for humanity.
0:24:58 It’s like, I don’t know who’s defining the goodness of the good robot, but I’ll just say that I don’t think it’s as simple as some of these technologists seem to think it is.
0:25:03 And maybe I’m just being annoying philosophy guy here, but whatever, here I am.
0:25:12 Yeah, no, I think everyone in the AI world that I talk to just like was really striving toward the good, like whatever that looked like.
0:25:17 Like AI ethics saw like the good robot as a specific set of values.
0:25:23 And folks in effective altruism were also like baffled by like, how do I do the most good?
0:25:28 And trying to use math to, you know, put a utility function on it.
0:25:35 And it’s like, the truth is a lot more messy than a math problem of how to do the most good.
0:25:36 You can’t really know.
0:25:41 And yeah, I think sitting in the messiness is hard for a lot of us.
0:25:50 And I don’t know how you do that when you’re fully aware that you’re building or attempting to build something that you don’t fully understand.
0:25:51 That’s exactly right.
0:26:01 Like in the series, like we tell the story of effective altruism through the parable of the drowning child, of this child who’s drowning in a pond, a shallow pond.
0:26:04 Okay.
0:26:08 On your way to work, you pass a small pond.
0:26:14 Children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee deep.
0:26:17 The weather’s cool, though, and it’s early.
0:26:21 So you’re surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond.
0:26:31 As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who’s flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond.
0:26:35 You look for the parents or babysitter, but there’s no one else around.
0:26:40 The child is unable to keep her head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time.
0:26:43 If you don’t wade in and pull her out, she seems likely to drown.
0:26:53 Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago and get your suit wet and muddy.
0:27:01 By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for her and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work.
0:27:04 What should you do?
0:27:12 Are you going to save it even though you ruin your suit?
0:27:15 Everyone answers, yes.
0:27:23 And this sort of utilitarian philosophy behind effective autism asks, well, what if that child were far away from you?
0:27:25 Would you still save it if it was oceans away from you?
0:27:28 And that’s where you get to malaria nets.
0:27:32 You’re going to donate money to save children across an ocean.
0:27:38 But, yeah, this idea of, like, well, what if the child hasn’t been born yet?
0:27:43 And that’s the future child that would die from an AI apocalypse.
0:27:49 But, like, abstracting things so far in advance, you could really just justify anything.
0:27:51 And that’s the problem, right?
0:27:52 Yeah, right.
0:28:09 Of focusing on the long term in that way, the willingness to maybe overlook or sacrifice present harms in service to some unknown future, that’s a dangerous thing.
0:28:19 There are dangers in being willfully blind to present harms because you think there’s some more important or some more significant harm down the road.
0:28:27 And you’re willing to sacrifice that harm now because you think it’s, in the end, justifiable.
0:28:30 Yeah, at what point are you starting to play God, right?
0:28:37 So I come from the world of political philosophy, and in that maybe equally weird world.
0:28:48 Whenever you have competing ideologies, what you find at the root of those disagreements are very different views about human nature, really.
0:28:53 And all the differences really spring from that divide.
0:28:58 Is there something similar at work in these AI camps?
0:29:11 Do you find that these people that you talk to have different beliefs about how good or bad people are, different beliefs about what motivates us, different beliefs about our ability to cooperate and solve problems?
0:29:15 Is there a core dispute at that basic level?
0:29:22 There’s a pretty striking demographic difference between AI safety folks and AI ethics folks.
0:29:26 Like, I went to a conference, two conferences, one of each.
0:29:38 And so immediately you could see, like, AI safety folks were skewed white and male, and AI ethics folks skewed, like, more people of color, more women.
0:29:44 And so, like, people talked about blind spots that each camp had.
0:30:01 And so if you’re, you know, a white male moving around the world, like, you’re not fearing the sort of, like, racist, sexist, ableist, like, consequences of AI systems today as much, because it’s just not in your view.
0:30:30 It’s been a rough week for your retirement account, your friend who imports products from China for the TikTok shop, and also Hooters.
0:30:35 Hooters has now filed for bankruptcy, but they say they are not going anywhere.
0:30:39 Last year, Hooters closed dozens of restaurants because of rising food and labor costs.
0:30:47 Hooters is shifting away from its iconic skimpy waitress outfits and bikini days, instead opting for a family-friendly vibe.
0:30:54 They’re vowing to improve the food and ingredients, and staff is now being urged to greet women first when groups arrive.
0:30:57 Maybe in April of 2025, you’re thinking, good riddance?
0:31:01 Does the world still really need this chain of restaurants?
0:31:09 But then we were surprised to learn of who exactly was mourning the potential loss of Hooters.
0:31:11 Straight guys who like chicken, sure.
0:31:14 But also a bunch of gay guys who like chicken?
0:31:19 Check out Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:19 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:21 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:21 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:21 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:21 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:21 Today Explained to find out why exactly that is, won’t ya?
0:31:36 Did all the people you spoke to, regardless of the camps they were in, did they all more
0:31:43 or less agree that what we’re doing here is attempting to build God, or something God-like?
0:31:45 No, I think no.
0:31:52 A lot of, I would say a lot of the AI safety people I spoke to like bought into this idea
0:31:55 of a super intelligence and a God-like intelligence.
0:31:59 I should say, I don’t think that’s every AI safety person by any means.
0:32:06 But AI ethics people for the most part just didn’t buy, just completely, everyone I spoke
0:32:14 to talked about it as being just AI hype as a way to like amp up the capability of this
0:32:18 technology that’s really in its infancy and is not God-like at this point.
0:32:27 I saw that when Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, he was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and he was asked
0:32:30 whether they’re attempting to build God and he said, I have the quote here, I guess it comes
0:32:35 down to a definitional disagreement about what you mean by it becomes a God.
0:32:39 I think whatever we create will be subject to the laws of physics in this universe.
0:32:40 Okay.
0:32:44 So, so God or no God.
0:32:45 Right.
0:32:45 Yeah.
0:32:47 I mean, it’s, it’s, he’s called it though.
0:32:49 I don’t know if it’s tongue in cheek.
0:32:53 It’s all like very, you know, hard to read, but he’s called it like the magic intelligence
0:32:54 in the sky.
0:33:02 And Anthropics CEO has called AI systems machines of loving grace, which sounds like this is religious
0:33:03 language, you know?
0:33:04 Okay.
0:33:05 Come on now.
0:33:09 What in the world is that supposed to mean?
0:33:12 What is a machine of loving grace?
0:33:14 Does he know what that means?
0:33:21 I think it’s like this, you know, it’s a very optimistic view of what machines can do for
0:33:21 us.
0:33:26 Like, you know, the idea that machines can help us cure cancer.
0:33:27 And I don’t know.
0:33:32 I think that’s ultimately probably what he means, but it does, there’s an element of
0:33:36 it that I just completely, you know, roll my eyes, raise my eyebrows at where it’s like,
0:33:43 I don’t think we should be so reverent of a technology that’s like flawed and needs to
0:33:44 be regulated.
0:33:47 And I think that reverence is dangerous.
0:33:55 Why do you think it matters that people like Altman or the CEO of Anthropic have reverence
0:33:57 or have reverence for machines, right?
0:33:59 Who cares if they think they’re building God?
0:34:03 Does it matter really in terms of what it will be and how it will be deployed?
0:34:11 Well, I think that if you believe you’re, if you have these sorts of delusions of grandeur
0:34:16 about what you’re making and if you talk about it as a machine of loving grace, like, I don’t
0:34:23 know, it seems like you don’t have the level of skepticism that I want you to be having.
0:34:27 And we’re not regulating these companies at this point.
0:34:29 We’re relying on them to regulate themselves.
0:34:34 So yeah, it’s a little worrying when you talk about building something so powerful.
0:34:37 And so intelligent and you’re not being checked.
0:34:38 Yeah.
0:34:43 I don’t expect my toaster to tell me it loves me in the morning, right?
0:34:45 I just want my bagels crispy.
0:34:48 But I understand that my toaster is a technology.
0:34:49 It’s a tool with a function.
0:34:55 To talk about machines of loving grace suggests to me that these people do not think they’re
0:34:56 just building tools.
0:34:58 They think they’re building creatures.
0:34:59 They think they’re building God.
0:35:00 Yeah.
0:35:05 And, you know, Margaret Mitchell, as you’ll hear in the series, she talks about how she
0:35:07 thinks we shouldn’t be building a God.
0:35:13 We should be building, you know, machines, AI systems that are going to fulfill specific
0:35:14 purposes.
0:35:18 Like specifically, she talks about a smart toaster that makes really good toast.
0:35:26 And I don’t think she means a toaster in particular, but just building systems that are designed
0:35:32 to help humans achieve a certain goal, like something specific out in the world.
0:35:40 Whether that’s, you know, like helping us figure out how proteins fold or helping us figure out
0:35:45 how animals communicate, which are some of the things that we’re using AI to do in a narrow way.
0:35:52 She talks about this as an artificial narrow intelligence, as distinct from artificial general
0:35:58 intelligence, which is sort of the super intelligent God AI that’s, you know, quote unquote, smarter
0:36:00 than us at most tasks.
0:36:07 I mean, this is an old idea in the history of philosophy that God is like fundamentally
0:36:09 just a projection of human aspirations, right?
0:36:15 That our image of God is really a mirror that we’ve created, a mirror that reflects our idea
0:36:17 of a perfect being, a being in our image.
0:36:23 And this is something you talk about in the series, and that this is what we’re doing with AI.
0:36:31 We’re building robots in our image, which, you know, raises the question, well, in whose image exactly, right?
0:36:35 If AI is a mirror, it’s not a mirror of all of us, is it, right?
0:36:37 It’s a mirror of the people building it.
0:36:44 And the people building it are, I would say, not representative of the entire human race.
0:36:53 Yeah, you’ll hear in the series, like, I latched on to this idea of, like, AI is a mirror of us.
0:36:58 And that’s so interesting that, like, yeah, God, the concept of God is also like a mirror.
0:37:04 But if you think about it, I mean, large language models are made from basically the Internet,
0:37:09 which is, like, all of our thoughts and our musings as humans on the Internet.
0:37:14 It’s a certain lens on human behavior and speech.
0:37:22 But it’s also, yeah, like, AI is, like, the decisions that its creators make of what data to use,
0:37:25 of how to train the system, how to fine-tune it.
0:37:30 And when I used ChatGPT, it was very complimentary of me.
0:37:33 And I found it to be this almost, like, smooth, smooth…
0:37:35 It charmed you. You got charmed.
0:37:39 Yeah, I got charmed. It was, like, so, it gave me the compliments I wanted to hear.
0:37:48 And I think it’s, like, this smooth, frictionless version of humanity where it compliments us and makes us feel good.
0:37:53 And it also, like, you know, you don’t have to write that letter of recommendation for your person.
0:37:55 You don’t have to write that email.
0:37:57 You could just… It’s just smooth and frictionless.
0:38:10 And I worry that, you know, in making this, like, smooth mirror of humanity, like, where do we lose our humanity if we keep relying, like, keep seeding more and more to AI systems?
0:38:17 I want it to be a tool to help us, like, achieve our goals rather than, like, this thing that replaces us.
0:38:24 Yeah, I won’t lie. I mean, I did. I just recently got my chat GPT account.
0:38:29 And I did ask it what it thought of Sean Elling, host of the Gray Area podcast.
0:38:30 What did it say?
0:38:31 And it was very complimentary.
0:38:35 It’s extremely, extremely generous.
0:38:38 And I was like, oh, shit, yeah, this thing gets it.
0:38:41 Oh, this is okay. All right.
0:38:41 Maybe it is a god.
0:38:42 Now I trust it.
0:38:45 Clearly it’s an all-knowing, omnipotent one.
0:38:53 That’s what I came away with, like, you know, from the series and the reporting is, like, I think before I used to be very afraid of AI and using it and not knowing.
0:38:59 And now I feel, like, armed to be skeptical in the right ways and to try to use it for good.
0:39:03 Yeah. So that’s what I hope people get out of the series anyway.
0:39:15 Are you worried about us losing our humanity or just becoming so different that we don’t recognize ourselves anymore?
0:39:20 I am worried that it’ll just make us more isolated.
0:39:30 And it’s so good at giving us what we want to hear that we won’t, like, you know, find the friction, search for the friction in life that makes life worth living.
0:39:42 Yeah, yeah. So, look, I mean, the different camps may disagree about a lot, but they seem to converge on the basic notion that this technology is transformative.
0:39:45 It’s going to transform our lives.
0:39:55 It’s probably going to transform the economy and the way this stuff gets developed and deployed and the incentives driving it are really going to matter.
0:40:08 Is it your sense that checks and balances are being put in place to guide this transformation so that it does benefit more people than it hurts, or at least as much as possible?
0:40:11 I mean, was this something you explored in your reporting?
0:40:17 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of the people I spoke to really wanted regulation.
0:40:25 But I think ultimately, like, there isn’t really regulation in the U.S. on the AI safety front or the AI ethics front.
0:40:32 The technology is dramatically outpacing regulators’ ability to regulate it.
0:40:35 So, that’s troubling. Like, it’s not great.
0:40:42 I would imagine the ethicists would be a little more focused on imposing regulations now.
0:40:45 But it doesn’t seem like they’re making a lot of headway on that front.
0:40:48 I’m not sure how regulatable it is.
0:41:07 Yeah, I think that was one of my frustrations just listening to all this infighting was, like, I felt like these two groups that, like, they have a lot in common and they should be pursuing, like, a common goal of getting some good regulation, of, you know, having some strong safeguards in place for both AI safety and AI ethics concerns.
0:41:16 And ultimately, you know, we tell the story of how some of them did come together to write an open letter calling for both kinds of regulations.
0:41:21 But they’ve not, you know, and that’s encouraging to see people working together.
0:41:29 But ultimately, I don’t think they’ve made, at this point, strides in getting anything significant past.
0:41:30 You know, it’s interesting.
0:41:33 You’re reporting on this in the series.
0:41:38 And our employer, Vox, has a deal with OpenAI.
0:41:45 And in the course of your reporting, you were trying to find out what you could about that deal.
0:41:49 How did that go, if you’re comfortable talking about it?
0:41:50 Yeah, yeah.
0:41:55 Yeah, so our, the parent, we should say, the parent company of our Vox, Vox Media.
0:41:58 I know the language I need to use.
0:42:00 I have it down back, as you can’t tell.
0:42:14 But, you know, kind of shortly after we decided to tackle AI in this series, we learned that Vox Media was entering a partnership with OpenAI, the ChatGPT company.
0:42:20 We learned it meant that OpenAI could train its models on our journalism.
0:42:29 And I guess for personally, it just felt like I wanted to know if they were training on my voice, you know?
0:42:30 Yeah, me too.
0:42:33 That, to me, feels really, yeah, really personal.
0:42:35 Like, there’s so much emotional information in a voice.
0:42:42 Like, I feel very naked going out on air and having people listen to my voice.
0:42:46 And I spend so much time carefully crafting what I say.
0:42:52 And so the idea that they would train on my voice and I don’t do what with it.
0:42:52 I don’t know.
0:42:56 One of our editors pointed out, like, that’s part of the story.
0:42:59 You know, like, AI is, like, entering our lives.
0:43:03 More and more AI systems and robots are entering our lives and having this.
0:43:10 And for me personally, it’s like, yeah, like, literally, my work, our work is being used to train these systems.
0:43:13 Like, what does that mean for us, for our work?
0:43:20 It felt, and, you know, I reached out to Vox Media and to OpenAI for an interview.
0:43:27 And they both declined, which made it feel even, you know, just, you feel really helpless.
0:43:35 And, I mean, there’s not much more answers that I have than that.
0:43:39 Yeah, well, I mean, you even interview a guy on the show.
0:43:41 You know, he’s a former OpenAI employee.
0:43:46 You know, and you’re raising these concerns and he’s sort of dismissive of it, right?
0:43:49 Like, you know, whatever data they’re getting.
0:43:49 He just laughed at us.
0:44:00 I would be quite surprised if the data provided by Vox is itself very valuable to OpenAI.
0:44:03 I would imagine it’s a tiny, tiny drop in that bucket.
0:44:10 If all of ChatGPT’s training data were to fit inside the entire Atlantic Ocean,
0:44:17 then all of Vox’s journalism would be like a few hundred drops in that ocean.
0:44:22 Rightly, you’re like, well, fuck, it matters to me.
0:44:27 It’s my work, it’s my voice, and it may eventually be my job, right?
0:44:33 And the point here is, like, that this is a thing now that our job,
0:44:39 the fact that our job and many other jobs are already tangled up with AI in this way,
0:44:42 it’s just a reminder that this isn’t the future, right?
0:44:49 It’s here now, and it’s only going to get more strange and complicated.
0:44:50 Totally, yeah.
0:44:56 And I don’t know, I guess I understand, like, the impulse from, like, from Vox Media to be like,
0:45:01 okay, we want to have, we want to be compensated for, you know,
0:45:05 licensing our journalists’ work who work so hard and we pay them.
0:45:15 But it feels, yeah, it just feels like, it feels weird to not have a say when it’s the work you’re doing.
0:45:16 So, I have your views on online and online and online and online.
0:45:17 So, I have your views on online and online, like, online and online.
0:45:20 So, I have your views on online and online and online, like, online and online and online.
0:45:22 So, I have your views on online and online, like, online and online and online.
0:45:24 So, I have your views on online and online and online and online and online, like, online and online.
0:45:38 So, I have your views on online and online and online.
0:45:38 So, I have your views on online and online and online.
0:45:40 So, I have your views on online and online and online.
0:45:50 So, have your views on AI in general changed all that much after doing this series?
0:45:57 I mean, you say at the end that when you look at AI, just what you see is a funhouse mirror.
0:45:59 What does that mean?
0:46:07 AI, like a lot of our technologies and I guess like our visions of God, as you talk about, are a reflection of ourselves.
0:46:17 And so, I think it was a comforting realization to me to realize that, like, the story of AI is not some, like, technological story I can’t understand.
0:46:26 Like, the story of AI is a story about humans who are trying really hard to make a technology good and failing to varying degrees.
0:46:44 But, yeah, I think fundamentally the course of, like, reporting it for me just brought the technology down to earth and made me a little more empowered to ask questions, to be skeptical, and to use it in my life with the right amount of skepticism.
0:46:48 So, what do you hope people get out of this series?
0:46:54 Normies who enter into it, you know, without a sort of solidified position on it.
0:46:56 What do you hope they take away from it?
0:47:14 I hope that people who didn’t feel like they had any place in the conversation around AI will feel, like, invited to the table and will be more informed and skeptical and curious and excited about the technology.
0:47:18 And I hope that it brings it down to earth a little bit.
0:47:21 Julia Longoria, this has been a lot of fun.
0:47:23 Thank you so much for coming on the show.
0:47:27 And the series, once again, is called Good Robot.
0:47:28 It is fantastic.
0:47:30 You should go listen to it immediately.
0:47:31 Thank you.
0:47:32 Thank you.
0:47:41 All right.
0:47:43 I hope you enjoyed this episode.
0:47:53 If you want to listen to Julia’s Good Robot series, and of course you do, you can find all four episodes in the Vox Unexplainable podcast feed.
0:47:57 We’ll drop a link to the first episode in the show notes.
0:48:00 And as always, we want to know what you think.
0:48:04 So drop us a line at the gray area at vox.com.
0:48:12 Or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749.
0:48:17 And once you’re done with that, please go ahead, rate, review, subscribe to the pod.
0:48:19 That stuff really helps.
0:48:32 This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey, edited by Jorge Just, engineered by Erica Wong, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, and Alex Overington wrote our theme music.
0:48:35 New episodes of the gray area drop on Mondays.
0:48:37 Listen and subscribe.
0:48:39 The show is part of Vox.
0:48:43 Support Vox’s journalism by joining our membership program today.
0:48:47 Members get access to this show without any ads.
0:48:49 Go to vox.com/members to sign up.
0:48:53 And if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know.

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0:01:41 Sales isn’t a chase.
0:01:43 Sales isn’t a chase.
0:01:43 It’s a dance.
0:01:47 And when you chase somebody, they’re going to run away.
0:01:51 I like to say you have to be a complete, literal psychopath in sales.
0:01:55 You’re going to go call, call, call, door, door, door of no, no, no, no.
0:01:58 But you have to go into every single encounter thinking,
0:02:00 this is the person that’s going to buy from me.
0:02:01 And I got some stats.
0:02:06 Female reps are 11% more likely to win deals than men.
0:02:09 So talk to us about why women are so good at selling.
0:02:15 So this is what I’ve found is people believe 0% of the words
0:02:16 that come out of a salesperson’s mouth because,
0:02:18 duh, you’re a sales rep.
0:02:21 But they believe 100% of the words that come out of their own mouth.
0:02:24 So a lot of my job is asking the right questions
0:02:27 and getting them to say the words that they can’t go back on later.
0:02:30 So on Instagram, what do you feel like goes most viral?
0:02:31 There’s like two buckets.
0:02:32 One bucket is…
0:02:50 Yeah, fam, we get a lot of big names on the show
0:02:53 from Gary Vaynerchuk to Mel Robbins to Adam Grant.
0:02:56 And it turns out, even though this is Young and Profiting Podcast,
0:02:59 most of the people that I interview aren’t young at all.
0:03:01 And if you guys listen to the show, you know that.
0:03:05 But from time to time, I do like to keep my eyes open
0:03:07 for rising young stars that we could learn from.
0:03:09 This is all about actionable advice,
0:03:11 real advice that we can use in entrepreneurship.
0:03:15 And sometimes there’s a young person out there
0:03:16 that just really knows their stuff.
0:03:19 And even if they’re at the start of their entrepreneurial careers,
0:03:22 they understand a certain topic
0:03:24 and they understand how to teach that topic.
0:03:28 And that’s why I’m so happy to welcome Shelby Sapp to the show.
0:03:30 She’s 23 years old.
0:03:32 She’s taken the sales community by storm.
0:03:34 She’s a sales expert.
0:03:37 She’s completely dominated the female sales training space.
0:03:41 And she’s the founder and CEO of the She Sells Academy.
0:03:45 Her approach to sales training has garnered her hundreds of thousands of followers
0:03:46 on Instagram and TikTok.
0:03:49 In this episode, we’re really going to focus on two things.
0:03:50 Her sales strategies.
0:03:53 We’re going to talk about objections, mindset,
0:03:54 how to be a sales psychopath,
0:03:57 how to hot girl and hot guy sell.
0:04:01 We’re also going to talk about how to build an online community and sell to them.
0:04:05 If you guys want a masterclass in hot girl, hot guy sales training,
0:04:07 you guys are in for a treat today.
0:04:09 Without further delay, here’s Shelby.
0:04:12 Shelby, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:04:14 Thank you for having me.
0:04:18 I’m so excited to talk to you today because I love sales.
0:04:21 I feel like I’m a natural salesperson.
0:04:23 Everything I do at my company right now,
0:04:24 the main focus is sales.
0:04:27 I’ve been selling since I was 10 years old, I would say.
0:04:31 But many people think that sales are scary.
0:04:33 And Jeremy Miner came on my show.
0:04:35 I know you talked to him recently.
0:04:40 And he says that nobody is born a salesperson and you’ve got to work at it.
0:04:42 So that’s my first question to you.
0:04:45 What kind of person do you think is cut out for sales?
0:04:47 Do you think everybody is cut out for sales?
0:04:51 You would never guess who’s going to be good at sales is what I’ve learned.
0:04:58 And that’s coming from my sales trainer background from different industries is I would put money
0:05:03 on like this guy that would come out and do door to door, top of the football team,
0:05:06 super extravagant, extroverted guy.
0:05:07 I’m like, you’re going to do so good.
0:05:09 He doesn’t at all.
0:05:15 But then like the shy person that just studies, knows the scripts, works hard, doesn’t sit down.
0:05:17 That person completely outsells the other one.
0:05:18 So you really just never know.
0:05:24 But I think the main trait of like what makes somebody good is intrinsic motivation.
0:05:29 And I think at the end of the day, no matter your personality type, shy, extroverted, outgoing,
0:05:34 if you know that you are so motivated that nothing else is going to stop you,
0:05:35 that’s what’s going to make you good.
0:05:39 Because at the end of the day, you can teach anybody sales, right?
0:05:41 But it’s like the work ethic.
0:05:47 And when you’re so down, going for that extra call, rolling that extra objection, you can’t really
0:05:48 teach somebody that.
0:05:55 So I always look for that in the girls that are in my academy and really try to instill the intrinsic
0:05:55 motivation in them.
0:06:02 And speaking of like mindset, motivation, what kind of limiting beliefs do you feel like people
0:06:06 usually have that’s holding them back from actually being good at selling?
0:06:09 I would say that people are scary.
0:06:11 People are not scary at all.
0:06:13 Especially I teach a lot of women.
0:06:17 The men, they’re like so scared to sell these alpha males.
0:06:20 And it’s like those guys are more than often the teddy bears.
0:06:25 And they kind of respect when you are a little bit pushy with them.
0:06:27 Like, they’re like, okay, like I respect this girl.
0:06:28 I respect the hustle.
0:06:34 So just kind of knowing that other people aren’t as scary as they seem, and they have
0:06:35 no idea what you’re saying.
0:06:41 So you can just have fun with it, bring back the human connection to sales rather than just
0:06:42 like selling with a script.
0:06:49 So you’re like blowing up on social media, you’re doing really well on Instagram and TikTok.
0:06:55 And I saw one of your videos and you were talking about how you need to be a sales psychopath.
0:06:57 Oh, yes, you do.
0:06:59 Talk to me about that.
0:07:04 I like to say you have to be a complete literal psychopath in sales, because a lot of people
0:07:08 think, you know, sales is super cool, the shiny thing, you can make a lot of money.
0:07:11 It’s like, yes, but you don’t get paid to show up.
0:07:13 You get paid to go the extra mile.
0:07:18 And sales is something to where it’s a direct reflection of your work ethic.
0:07:24 So if you really want to make it worth it, and to be that top 1% cream of the crop, you
0:07:30 have to be a little bit of a psycho, not only in your work ethic, but also in your ability
0:07:35 to just know how to regulate your emotions throughout the day.
0:07:40 Like, for example, you’re going to go call, call, call, door, door, door of no, no, no, no.
0:07:44 But you have to go into every single encounter thinking, this is the sale.
0:07:46 This is the person that’s going to buy from me.
0:07:49 When maybe the last 10 people told you to yourself.
0:07:53 So to me, that’s so psychotic, because that’s not normal.
0:07:55 That’s not normal human behavior.
0:08:01 You have to trick yourself into being this psychopathic mentality in order to really reap,
0:08:07 in my opinion, the true benefits of sales, because that really does come from the top of
0:08:08 the top, the best of the best.
0:08:13 It’s so true, because like, nobody really knows like what your track record is.
0:08:16 Nobody knows how many sales you made before that day.
0:08:18 The customer knows nothing about you.
0:08:19 They don’t know your ranking.
0:08:20 They don’t know anything about you.
0:08:26 So you can come there with good energy and just have the confidence and know your stuff.
0:08:29 And they have no idea how well you’ve done in the past.
0:08:29 Exactly.
0:08:32 And it sounds so simple, but it’s really not.
0:08:37 Because having that conviction in your voice and that sure tone and that confidence, that energy
0:08:44 and the aura, when you just got demolished by every single person before is so hard.
0:08:47 But like you said, they really have no clue.
0:08:53 So you almost have to like brainwash yourself into being like, this is the client that’s going
0:08:53 to buy.
0:08:57 And that one client that buys, that commission is going to make up for all of the no’s that
0:08:58 you had that day.
0:09:03 So all it takes is the one you can’t let the other people get to your one.
0:09:08 I feel like before I get on any big sales calls, I literally am telling myself like,
0:09:10 Hala, you’re the number one person at this.
0:09:12 You’ve crushed so and so.
0:09:14 Like I always like give myself like a little pep talk.
0:09:15 Like, listen, you’ve got this.
0:09:18 You’re the best expert at this.
0:09:24 And when I don’t come with that kind of energy, like if I’m having a bad day, or just like
0:09:28 tired or sick, I feel like totally go the other way.
0:09:31 I always say your energy is your currency.
0:09:34 And being sad will literally make you poor.
0:09:36 No matter what you do, especially in sales, though.
0:09:38 And that’s not saying you can’t be sad.
0:09:40 We’re all sad sometimes.
0:09:43 But you do have to almost just fake it sometimes.
0:09:47 And that’s the psycho is I like, it doesn’t matter.
0:09:51 Sales does not matter what’s going on in your life, what emotions you’re going through.
0:09:55 If you’re having a bad day, if you’re down, if your boyfriend broke up with you, like the
0:09:56 client has no idea.
0:09:57 They don’t care.
0:09:58 So it’s like, do you want to make money or not?
0:10:00 You can either turn it on or off.
0:10:04 So I know that you spent a lot of your time focused on selling to women.
0:10:09 And there’s been a lot of recent reporting saying that women are betting better at selling
0:10:09 than men.
0:10:14 And you’ve really built your whole brand around female sales reps.
0:10:15 And I got some stats.
0:10:19 Female reps are 11% more likely to win deals than men.
0:10:23 So talk to us about why women are so good at selling.
0:10:29 So this is what I’ve found is one, women get a little bit underestimated when they hop onto
0:10:30 a sales call.
0:10:32 And this can be either a really good or a really bad thing.
0:10:36 Because if you don’t know how to run the call, if you don’t know how to establish your
0:10:40 authority, your credibility, your respect, then you’re just going to get walked all over.
0:10:44 And then that’s why some women think, oh, well, I’m just, I’m just not good because they
0:10:45 don’t respect me.
0:10:47 It’s like you didn’t demand the respect.
0:10:51 So that’s kind of like the way it could go negatively.
0:10:54 Especially if you don’t know how to use your advantages to your advantage.
0:10:59 But the best way is you get a little bit underestimated in the beginning, but then you kind of like
0:11:03 take charge and put your foot down almost in the sale.
0:11:05 That way they’re like, oh, this girl knows her stuff.
0:11:06 Like I respect that.
0:11:08 So then it kind of almost becomes a positive.
0:11:14 And that’s what I train my girls on is how to use like, yes, we’re going to have a little
0:11:16 bit of a stereotype, no matter who you’re talking to.
0:11:19 Older women might look down on you.
0:11:20 Younger women might look up to you.
0:11:23 Older men might be like, oh, she has no idea what she’s talking about.
0:11:29 So using those different stereotypes as a way to actually be a plus side in sales.
0:11:37 Also, men, I’ve trained a lot of men, specifically more in door-to-door, they have that credibility.
0:11:40 Like as soon as they hop on a call, they have that authority.
0:11:41 They have a little bit more respect.
0:11:48 And so for them, it’s more about building the softer side throughout the sales process versus
0:11:48 girls.
0:11:53 I teach them to do a little bit of the opposite because people already want to open up to you.
0:11:54 That makes sense.
0:11:59 So it’s like women already have natural empathy and the men, you actually teach them how to
0:12:03 have better empathy so that they can be more like women in the sales process.
0:12:08 So it’s kind of like a blend of the soft side, but also like maintaining that respect and
0:12:14 credibility because that’s what sales is, is it’s perfectly teetering the line between let’s
0:12:15 get the deal done.
0:12:16 This is what makes sense.
0:12:20 Like the business side, the logical side of your brain, but then the other side of your
0:12:22 brain is emotions.
0:12:28 And I always tell my students that I teach, you can’t sell with logic because then a buyer
0:12:29 is going to make a logical decision.
0:12:34 They’re going to take your logical pitch and they’re going to make a logical decision, which
0:12:35 is, this sounds great.
0:12:37 Send it over and we’ll talk about it later.
0:12:39 That’s the logical thing to do, right?
0:12:43 Is not to spend thousands of dollars on a 30 minute call.
0:12:48 But what creates that buying atmosphere is using the logical side, but also pulling that
0:12:50 emotion in order to create the buying atmosphere.
0:12:52 So both sides.
0:12:53 I love that.
0:12:56 I’m going to get into the emotion part of it later with you.
0:13:00 But first I want to stick on this like hot girl concept, right?
0:13:05 So like you call your sales girls, hot girls, you yourself, very beautiful, blonde, skinny,
0:13:06 young.
0:13:10 So do you think that looks has anything to do with your success in sales?
0:13:17 I think it would be stupid to say that like looks have nothing to do with it, but I think
0:13:20 that it can go, like I said, a good way or a negative way.
0:13:26 I think you can be taken not as seriously if you’re a pretty girl and you don’t know your
0:13:26 stuff.
0:13:29 People just assume like, oh, she’s just another pretty face.
0:13:31 Like I’m not going to trust her with my business.
0:13:35 Because what I found, especially with a lot of the girls that I would train, oh my gosh,
0:13:41 back in my door to door days, I would recruit all of my best friends from my sororities, all
0:13:42 pretty girls.
0:13:45 They would, some of them did terrible.
0:13:50 And it’s because like pretty girls haven’t had a lot of rejection before.
0:13:52 So it’s like people would waste their time.
0:13:55 And if you don’t know how to do it right, it’s kind of a negative.
0:13:58 So the looks things, I think everybody has advantages and disadvantages.
0:14:00 You just have to know what to use.
0:14:06 But the hot girl mentality that I always talk about in my content has nothing to do with looks.
0:14:09 It also has nothing to do with being a girl.
0:14:11 There’s so many guys that I’m like, you are a hot girl.
0:14:17 What it is, is this, I tell people that I want them to imagine like the hottest girl
0:14:19 they know walks into a room.
0:14:20 How does she walk in?
0:14:23 Is she hunched over looking at her phone?
0:14:25 Kind of like, oh my gosh, who should I talk to?
0:14:27 Should I go stand in the corner?
0:14:29 Or is she the girl that walks in?
0:14:31 Her energy is just so infectious.
0:14:35 And other people are like, oh, I want to figure out what she’s about.
0:14:36 I want to go ask her questions.
0:14:42 So it’s more about the aura and the energy that you have that you carry into every single
0:14:42 conversation.
0:14:47 So do you ever get people telling you like, you know, what do you know?
0:14:48 You’re 23 years old.
0:14:49 Why are you teaching sales?
0:14:52 All the time.
0:14:59 And it’s so funny because I like to say I’ve lived 30 years in the last probably four years.
0:15:03 So I feel like I’m like 60 years old, but I do get that.
0:15:06 And what I like to say is I don’t have kids.
0:15:07 I don’t have like, this is my thing.
0:15:11 This is every single piece of my energy goes into this.
0:15:19 And I also bring a different layer of I know what works to sales training and sales changes
0:15:23 every single day, especially with online, how people perceive things.
0:15:29 A lot of the sales techniques that a lot of the older sales trainers use, when I was
0:15:33 like a sales rep, I would listen to that, try it and get the door slammed in my face.
0:15:38 So it’s like there’s a lot of little things that you just have to know, like realistically,
0:15:39 would that work or not?
0:15:43 And I think that’s kind of where a lot of my content, people see it and they’re like, oh,
0:15:44 that would actually work.
0:15:45 Yeah.
0:15:46 And you have a track record.
0:15:48 You’ve done great in sales.
0:15:49 And here’s the thing.
0:15:49 You’re a good teacher.
0:15:55 So when I hear feedback about or if I’ve seen stuff when people are like kind of hating
0:15:57 on you, I’m like, she’s saying I’m a salesperson.
0:16:02 She’s talking the right stuff and she’s doing a good job teaching and like she’s she’s able
0:16:03 to teach it.
0:16:04 And I think that’s really the difference.
0:16:05 Right.
0:16:06 So kudos to you.
0:16:08 I’m really proud of everything that you’ve done.
0:16:09 And I think you’re awesome.
0:16:10 Thank you.
0:16:14 I remember I was talking to somebody and I couldn’t for the life of me remember who the person
0:16:15 was.
0:16:19 So if you guys are tuning in and you remember this conversation on the podcast, let me know.
0:16:22 But I remember I was telling a story on this podcast and I was talking to somebody super
0:16:27 credible and I was telling them how when I worked at Disney and corporate, everybody’s
0:16:29 I look much younger than I am.
0:16:32 And so everybody used to think I was like 10 years younger than I was.
0:16:36 And I was treated like an intern, even though I had all this experience.
0:16:38 And I ended up leaving corporate to be an entrepreneur.
0:16:43 One of the reasons why is because I look too young to be taken seriously.
0:16:49 And the guy told me that in business, the age you want to look like is 35.
0:16:51 I agree.
0:16:53 Whether you’re older or younger.
0:16:55 And to me, like, I always like remember that.
0:16:58 I was like, OK, I just need to look like 30, 35 forever.
0:17:04 That is so funny because I always tell my friends, I’m like, I feel like girls want to look younger.
0:17:11 I make myself try to look older, you know, like I put my hair up, glasses on, red nails.
0:17:16 Like I’m trying to make myself look a little bit more older because you’re so right.
0:17:24 I feel like that’s like the perfect age for respect, but also still being like somebody that people really are like, oh, my gosh, like I really want to talk to her.
0:17:29 Exactly. You’ve got experience, but you’re still young enough to be like hungry and tech savvy.
0:17:32 And so like 35 is the age that you want to emulate.
0:17:33 And I like never forgot that.
0:17:43 So when it comes to sales, I personally feel like my femininity, wearing makeup, dressing nice, grooming helps me close deals.
0:17:53 When I was saying before, like, if I’m ever like sick, tired, or like don’t have time to do my makeup or hair and I get on a sales call, I’m like 50% chance this is not going to close because like I don’t feel my best.
0:17:54 I don’t look my best.
0:17:56 Maybe the lighting is bad.
0:17:58 I’m like in a hotel or something.
0:18:03 And so I wanted to get your thoughts on that, like grooming men and women.
0:18:04 What do you think matters?
0:18:07 100%.
0:18:11 So the majority of the sales that I teach are like face to face.
0:18:13 So like you can see the other person.
0:18:20 And I straight up tell, well, I told my girls or my guys when I was doing door to door and I tell my girls now, you need to look good.
0:18:22 Like looks do matter in a sales process.
0:18:28 They make people want to talk to you, hear you out a little bit more, but also like yourself.
0:18:32 When you look and feel your best self, you’re going to be more open with people.
0:18:34 You’re going to have just a better energy.
0:18:41 And that kind of comes back to the hot girl mentality of I am that girl.
0:18:43 And when I show up, I’m going to look my best.
0:18:45 I’m going to feel my best and I’m going to act my best.
0:18:49 Cody Sanchez has been on the show a couple of times.
0:18:54 And she told me that women who wear makeup make 30% more on average.
0:18:57 Men who have better grooming make 15% more.
0:18:59 So it’s worth it.
0:19:00 And it’s not about your looks.
0:19:03 It’s not about like how actually like symmetrical your face is.
0:19:11 It’s really about the grooming, a good haircut, nice clothes, white teeth, like all that kind of stuff really matters.
0:19:11 Okay.
0:19:14 So let’s get into some more tactical stuff.
0:19:16 I want to stick on the gender topic a bit.
0:19:22 Talk to me about how a woman should sell to a man versus a man sell to a woman.
0:19:24 And I’ll give you some other scenarios.
0:19:30 The biggest difference is a woman really needs to establish frame super early on or else she’ll lose it.
0:19:40 And so what that basically means is you need to establish your credibility as somebody that knows her stuff, knows exactly why they’re on the call, isn’t getting on the call and saying,
0:19:42 Oh, where are you based out of?
0:19:43 Oh, my gosh, I love your outfit.
0:19:44 Oh, where is it from?
0:19:52 It’s like, no, just get to the actual point of the call first, or else the rapport can actually have a negative effect on you.
0:19:56 I like to teach my girls to really establish that credibility early on into the pitch.
0:20:01 And then you open up the rapport for the question-based selling.
0:20:07 And for women, this is the biggest part to let the other person talk a little bit more.
0:20:16 So asking really good questions in order to get somebody to open up and then also being super simple when it comes to closing.
0:20:27 A lot of women try to talk a lot when it comes to the close and almost like justify why the prices are there when somebody didn’t even ask.
0:20:30 You know, they could have been able to 100% afford it.
0:20:31 And they’re like, yo, so this is the price.
0:20:34 You know, it’s because there’s a lot that goes into it and blah, blah, blah.
0:20:36 It’s like, no, this is the price.
0:20:36 Shut up.
0:20:38 I always say, kiss them.
0:20:39 Keep it simple, stupid.
0:20:40 Just shut up.
0:20:46 So that’s more for the women is really leading with that respect, getting them to open up to you and then ending with the respect.
0:20:47 It’s like a little sandwich.
0:20:56 For the men, I like to have men be a little bit more warm in the beginning and then leading with the credibility and then a little bit more warm at the end.
0:21:06 So it’s almost a flip-flop just because I think, especially if they’re selling to another woman, if there’s a man on the other side of the screen, they’re almost like, oh, sales rep.
0:21:11 So they have the stigma of like, oh, this is just another sales bro, sales guy.
0:21:17 So when they kind of drop that boundary and they’re a little bit more human in the beginning, it’s a plus side for the men.
0:21:20 And how about a woman selling to a woman?
0:21:21 Okay.
0:21:23 So woman selling to a woman.
0:21:29 A lot of the girls that I trained in the beginning, they’re like, oh, girl, like they try to go the bestie route too soon.
0:21:31 And it comes off a little fake.
0:21:34 And women buyers have such good intuition.
0:21:38 So it’s really good to connect, but making sure that it’s not a fake connection.
0:21:42 So I always like to lead with like the business first.
0:21:49 And then if I genuinely like love her shirt or I genuinely love the way she carries herself or talks, I’m going to say that.
0:21:55 But I’m not just going to try to be all bestie bestie with her when it comes off fake because they can sniff that.
0:21:59 And as soon as that happens, it’s completely, completely done.
0:21:59 Okay.
0:22:02 How about selling to an alpha male versus a beta male?
0:22:04 I love this one.
0:22:08 So selling to an alpha male, you have to make him think that it’s his decision.
0:22:11 You can never tell him like, okay, yeah, this is your problem.
0:22:12 This is the solution.
0:22:13 Like this is how much it’s going to be.
0:22:13 Let’s go.
0:22:17 He’s going to be like, no, I think that it should be done this way.
0:22:20 Or in the back of his head, he’s going to be like, well, we’ve tried that before.
0:22:22 Or I need to look at this competitor first.
0:22:24 It’s his decision.
0:22:29 So I always like to say things kind of like, okay, well, I mean, you’re the one that’s been
0:22:30 dealing with this for so long.
0:22:32 Like, why do you think this is happening?
0:22:35 Or, I mean, I’m sure you guys have tried so many things.
0:22:37 I mean, you’ve been in business for quite some time.
0:22:38 Like, what else have you guys tried?
0:22:40 And like, why didn’t that work out?
0:22:43 And they, this is the point where they yap, yap, yap.
0:22:47 And they’re like, oh my gosh, well, Stacy tried to do this and that didn’t work.
0:22:48 And then we tried this and blah, blah, blah.
0:22:50 And then it’s perfect.
0:22:53 You’re giving me so much ammo that I’m going to use later on.
0:22:59 When I’m more of just the helper and the problem solver rather than a sales rep at the end.
0:23:09 So the alpha males, yeah, you have to like, put them up on a pedestal and make them feel all good about themselves in order to really let them be super comfortable buying from you.
0:23:13 Beta males, also some of my favorite sales ever.
0:23:15 I have a lot of vivid memories selling beta males.
0:23:16 Very funny.
0:23:23 I remember this one time when this was maybe my first year doing door-to-door sales.
0:23:31 I remember sitting down on a curb at a grown man’s house for him with 45 minutes going over everything, every question.
0:23:33 He just can’t make a decision.
0:23:37 And I just told him, I’m like, okay, Ben, like, it’s 830.
0:23:38 What’s your last name?
0:23:39 And he was like, let’s just say Blanco.
0:23:41 He’s like, Blanco, but why?
0:23:42 And I’m like, we’re signing you up.
0:23:43 That’s it.
0:23:44 We’ve been talking for way too long.
0:23:45 I’m going home.
0:23:46 Like, we’re just signing you up.
0:23:46 You need it.
0:23:49 And he was like, okay, if you’re going to make me do it.
0:23:57 Beta’s not that extreme of a case, but they like when you outline a game plan.
0:24:01 So they like when you listen to what they’re saying, you really get that problem.
0:24:06 And then you say, okay, a lot of people similar to that, what we’ve done with them is this, this, this, and this.
0:24:08 And then they’ve gotten this and this result.
0:24:14 So as soon as they know the game plan and the results that other people have, it makes it an easy yes for them.
0:24:18 Because they’re like, okay, I like being told what to do a little bit more.
0:24:22 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:29:34 And how can you tell if they’re alpha or beta to begin with, like, right at the start of the call?
0:29:35 Like, what’s your signals?
0:29:39 So I feel like it is kind of an intuition thing.
0:29:46 But a little bit more of alpha males, especially with a woman selling to them, will interrupt you a little bit.
0:29:49 Or they’ll kind of, like, dominate the conversation.
0:29:51 So it’s not, like, one specific cue or another.
0:29:56 It’s just, like, okay, this guy needs to have his input in pretty much everything.
0:29:59 Or they almost try to steer the call.
0:30:01 Or just super loud.
0:30:03 I hate when people call me, like, little lady.
0:30:06 I feel like that’s, like, a big cue that I get sometimes.
0:30:13 And then beta males, they are a little bit more timid, a little bit, like, they let you completely steer the call.
0:30:21 And with that person, I’m going to maintain that control, outline that control, and then they’re going to follow that control the whole way through.
0:30:23 Is it the same thing with selling to women?
0:30:25 Can there be alpha women and beta women?
0:30:26 Is it just basically the same?
0:30:28 For sure.
0:30:30 Yeah, it’s just the women-on-women dynamic.
0:30:38 You have to make sure that you’re being, like, genuine and relatable to this girl and not super, like, unrelatable or try to be fake besties with her.
0:30:43 Do you feel like, as a woman, you should tone down your hair and makeup?
0:30:44 If you’re going to sell to a woman?
0:30:45 Yes.
0:30:50 So I have had a couple girls experiment with this, and we had a little thread on it in my community.
0:30:51 Yes.
0:30:55 And I think that this makes you a little bit more relatable.
0:31:01 But also, like, you want the client to feel like the superstar the whole time.
0:31:06 You never want to be the one that’s, like, shiny, wearing all these fancy jewelry.
0:31:06 Like, no.
0:31:09 Nobody wants to buy from somebody that looks like that.
0:31:12 So people want to buy from somebody that, like, makes them feel good.
0:31:14 It’s the same thing with dating.
0:31:19 I always relate a lot of sales stuff back to dating is, like, you could go on a date with
0:31:21 a guy and you’re like, oh, my God, this guy is so cool.
0:31:22 He’s amazing.
0:31:24 He’s done all these things.
0:31:24 That’s so cool.
0:31:29 Or you could go on a date with a guy and you walk away and you’re like, he made me feel so
0:31:29 cool.
0:31:33 Like, he made me feel like the shining star.
0:31:36 And what you’re going to do is you’re probably going to go on a date with the guy that made you
0:31:38 feel amazing more than the other guy.
0:31:44 So that’s how I always like to treat that dynamic with my clients is I want you to feel like
0:31:45 that girl.
0:31:49 And I feel like especially after you close them, like, let’s say you have some sort of
0:31:51 an agency, you have to keep continuing to see that person.
0:31:54 You really don’t always want to be like so dolled up.
0:31:57 So they’re like, oh, here you are coming on the call again, like so dolled up.
0:31:59 And we’re just having a business meeting, you know?
0:32:02 So I try to be very casual in those situations.
0:32:03 Okay.
0:32:05 Last one, young versus old.
0:32:06 Okay.
0:32:07 So young people.
0:32:10 So you can either sell with pain or pleasure.
0:32:17 And everybody knows selling with pain is way better just because people buy with pain more
0:32:18 than they buy with pleasure.
0:32:21 People sell painkillers a lot easier than they sell vitamins, basically.
0:32:25 So you always want to look for the pain and pleasure with every single person.
0:32:27 So every single person is going to be different.
0:32:30 You might be on a call with a young person who has a lot of pain.
0:32:31 You’re going to sell with that.
0:32:37 But for the most part, generalization, young people are buying the dream and older people
0:32:38 are buying a pain point.
0:32:43 So you’re selling a little bit more with dream state questions with young people of like,
0:32:45 okay, you have so much potential.
0:32:46 Like, where do you want to get to?
0:32:49 I could see that for you versus older people.
0:32:54 It’s a lot of past stuff that you’re bringing up, which is going to be more provoking questions,
0:32:56 emotional pain.
0:33:00 And then I always like to say with old people, you need to let them
0:33:10 talk about their life, maybe their deceased wife or their grandkids or like whatever is
0:33:10 going on in their life.
0:33:15 But make sure that they’re not wasting your time and like bring them back into the sale
0:33:16 periodically.
0:33:22 That way you’re not stuck there talking about little Jimmy’s football game last Sunday.
0:33:24 And you’re like, okay, like I’m here for a sales call.
0:33:25 So like, let’s go.
0:33:30 I feel like older people, and I’m talking about like 60 and up, you know, like, they tend
0:33:32 to ask a lot of questions.
0:33:35 And I feel like the sales process just takes longer.
0:33:36 They ask a lot of questions.
0:33:38 They’re scared of salespeople.
0:33:41 And they don’t, they’re not as trustworthy.
0:33:43 And they seem to have a million questions.
0:33:44 That’s my experience.
0:33:45 A million questions.
0:33:48 They like to know every single scenario.
0:33:52 And old people, yes, that’s also a lot of the beta people too.
0:33:53 And a lot of women too.
0:33:56 Women love to know they buy comfort.
0:34:02 So they like to know every single detail, exactly what happens when you purchase all the next steps
0:34:02 and everything.
0:34:07 So if somebody needs a little bit more comfort, I would say you sit there with them and you give
0:34:12 them the comfort and those people will be your best customers because they ask every single
0:34:12 question in the book.
0:34:16 They won’t come to you later being like, oh, well, I didn’t know this.
0:34:16 I didn’t know this.
0:34:17 I didn’t know this.
0:34:21 You’re gonna be like, you asked me every single question, you know, like we went over everything.
0:34:26 So in my experience, they’re actually some of my favorite customers because they know what
0:34:26 they’re buying.
0:34:27 Yeah, I totally agree.
0:34:33 So Shelby, you started your sales career with door-to-door selling and I honestly couldn’t
0:34:38 think of a better sales training to get thicker skin, get comfortable with rejection.
0:34:44 So first off, tell us about your door-to-door selling experience and what kind of sales skills
0:34:45 did you learn?
0:34:47 Everything under the sun.
0:34:48 Oh my gosh.
0:34:52 So I started doing door-to-door sales when I was 18 years old.
0:34:56 I was working like all these different jobs in college and I just remember thinking I’m going
0:34:58 to be successful, I just don’t know how.
0:35:03 I was so scared of sales because that was the one like business internship that I haven’t
0:35:03 dabbled in.
0:35:08 And so I remember talking to one of my mentors and he’s like, yeah, I did door-to-door sales,
0:35:10 great skill set, made a lot of money.
0:35:11 And I’m like, okay, cool.
0:35:12 So I’ll go out and try it.
0:35:13 I went out there.
0:35:15 First of all, I almost quit before I went out there.
0:35:17 Thank God I didn’t quit because I wouldn’t be here.
0:35:20 But my first summer, it was amazing.
0:35:21 I was the only girl.
0:35:26 And I really kind of like what you were saying when you, what you felt at your corporate job,
0:35:33 that’s kind of what I felt is like, no matter how much I sold, no matter how top of the leaderboards
0:35:36 I was every single week, there’s just a level of like respect.
0:35:41 That’s hard to get when you work with either older people in a corporate setting or all guys,
0:35:42 all sales bros.
0:35:43 But I loved it.
0:35:48 I just love being able to walk up to a door and somebody opened the door and they’re like,
0:35:51 oh my gosh, how do I get this girl off of my door?
0:35:53 I’m cooking dinner right now.
0:35:57 Like I just put my kid to bed and then you say the right words and kind of like disarm them.
0:36:00 And then they’re giving you their Amex like 10 minutes later.
0:36:05 It’s the most confident building activity you could possibly do.
0:36:08 And that skill set carries over so well.
0:36:15 I always like to say door-to-door sales is like the number one sales skill set that you could
0:36:15 possibly get.
0:36:20 It’s the hardest because you have to go out to a market, obviously be in person, a lot
0:36:20 more rejection.
0:36:23 There’s a lot better opportunities than door-to-door.
0:36:27 But like starting out that skill set you’ll learn is insane.
0:36:32 Yeah, because it’s like kind of like cold calling, but in real life and nobody invited you to their
0:36:33 house.
0:36:33 No.
0:36:38 So it’s not like in a store, like I got my sales skills, like I worked in so many clothing
0:36:42 stores and that gave me a lot of experience, but people were coming into my house.
0:36:46 You’re like going to like, they’re like, we’re like busy right now.
0:36:47 Go away.
0:36:48 Oh my gosh.
0:36:48 Yeah.
0:36:49 Busy right now.
0:36:52 Sometimes like you even have to get them out of the house.
0:36:54 So like everybody has the ring cameras now.
0:36:58 So a lot of people see a door-to-door sales rep and they’re like, oh, they don’t even answer
0:36:59 the door.
0:37:04 So a lot of it is like the art of trying to get somebody out of the house and piquing their
0:37:06 curiosity within the first like five seconds.
0:37:08 That way they just at least listen.
0:37:14 Like a big thing with that industry is just getting people to listen to your sales pitch
0:37:16 versus like what you’re saying, warm leads.
0:37:20 This is why like my academy is for high ticket sales because it’s all warm leads.
0:37:25 And I try to tell the girls, I’m like, you have no idea how good you have it.
0:37:28 Like somebody’s actively coming to you.
0:37:30 I would have killed for that.
0:37:30 I know.
0:37:33 So it’s great skill set.
0:37:35 Well, now you know how to handle rejection.
0:37:39 And I know that you say we need to love rejection, not just like we need to love it.
0:37:42 We need to make sure not we’re not being soft girls.
0:37:43 So what do you mean by that?
0:37:44 Okay.
0:37:45 There’s a couple of things with that.
0:37:47 Number one, the rejection thing.
0:37:52 I always train people, especially with mindset because sales is a big with mindset is it’s
0:37:53 pretty much a math equation.
0:37:58 So if you’re closing ratios, let’s say 40%, that means every 10 people you talk to, you’re
0:37:59 going to close four of them.
0:38:05 If the first six that you talk to are just no, no, no, no, no, you should be so excited because
0:38:08 literally mathematically, the next four are going to buy from you.
0:38:10 They have to.
0:38:14 And so you know that not every single person is going to say no to you forever.
0:38:19 So the more knows you get, I look at it like you’re just sifting through the non-qualified
0:38:23 buyers and getting to the qualified buyers that are actually going to buy from you.
0:38:26 So it’s more like every time I get a no, I’m like, okay, for sure.
0:38:27 Like, thank you.
0:38:29 Like, I’ll never call you again.
0:38:33 Well, that’s false because I will be blowing up your phone, but it’s like, okay, done,
0:38:34 done, done, done.
0:38:38 And then I wait for the person that’s like actually sitting down serious, ready to go.
0:38:44 So yeah, old saying of every nose closer to yes is so true, but it’s more of like the mathematical
0:38:46 reasoning behind it is true.
0:38:50 So that and then the soft girl, I have a problem with the soft girl.
0:38:52 I can’t do it.
0:38:54 It’s a big trend right now.
0:39:01 And it’s like the soft girl, demure life, sitting back, relaxing, letting a man pay for your whole
0:39:08 life, not really working too hard, letting everything come to you, attracting, which I’m
0:39:09 all here for.
0:39:14 A lot of the things that I do with my girls is mindset, spirituality, law of attraction,
0:39:16 being delusional manifestation.
0:39:20 So I get that, but you can’t just do that.
0:39:21 You have to do that.
0:39:24 And then you have to put your actions behind that.
0:39:27 You have to put your money where your mouth is and actually show up.
0:39:30 Like you can’t show up to a sales call and be like, I’m going to manifest this person to
0:39:31 buy.
0:39:33 And then you get hit with one objection and you’re like, yeah, for sure.
0:39:34 I’ll follow up with you tomorrow.
0:39:38 It’s like, no, you’re going to sit there and you’re going to, it’s going to be uncomfortable
0:39:41 and it’s going to be, require a lot of effort, but you’re going to sit there.
0:39:45 You’re going to roll objection after objection after objection until they either buy from you
0:39:46 or literally want to kill you.
0:39:47 No, I’m kidding.
0:39:52 But I always tell my girls like, yes, you can be soft girl, but when it comes to sales and
0:39:55 when it comes to like work, you’re hard girl.
0:39:57 So you can like turn it on and off.
0:40:02 But if you want to make money, there’s literally no way around it when it comes to sales.
0:40:02 Yeah.
0:40:04 You got to just go after it.
0:40:06 You got to make sure that they know that you know your stuff.
0:40:08 And that’s not a passive thing.
0:40:10 That’s like an alpha attitude that you have to have.
0:40:11 It is.
0:40:12 Yeah.
0:40:13 So I see that trend.
0:40:15 I’m like, I don’t know about that.
0:40:16 Yeah.
0:40:19 And not to mention those girls that just get their lives paid for.
0:40:23 They have no control over their lives at the end of the day.
0:40:25 And that’s the thing is like money’s energy.
0:40:30 And so I totally get like you’re marrying somebody and they want to take care of you.
0:40:34 I love that because that’s like a protective energy of like, you’re good.
0:40:37 I got you, but it shouldn’t be the be all end all.
0:40:43 Because what if said person leaves, which is a true reality.
0:40:44 Nobody ever thinks they’re going to leave in the beginning.
0:40:49 So it’s always knowing that you either have a skill set that you could turn into money at
0:40:52 any point in time, which in my opinion, I could sell anything.
0:40:52 You could sell anything.
0:40:57 So it’s like learning skill sets that can never be taken away from you or having a business
0:41:01 that can never be taken away from you is always just the most confident building thing with
0:41:05 a woman to know that she could if she wanted to, but also just the smartest.
0:41:12 So you were bringing up objections before, and I know there’s like a limited number of things that
0:41:13 people can really say.
0:41:17 Like you can actually think through all the objections that somebody’s going to have for
0:41:18 your product or service.
0:41:23 So I’m going to rattle off an objection and then I want you to tell me how to respond.
0:41:24 Okay.
0:41:24 Okay.
0:41:24 For sure.
0:41:25 I love that.
0:41:25 Okay.
0:41:27 I need more time.
0:41:28 How much time do you need?
0:41:31 I don’t know, maybe a couple months, a couple months.
0:41:32 Okay.
0:41:33 Let’s double it.
0:41:35 I’ll give you, um, you said you want one month.
0:41:38 I’ll give you two months just because if we were to move forward, I would want to make sure
0:41:44 that you are super sure a hundred percent confident because in this program, these people are confident.
0:41:45 These people are ready to go.
0:41:49 And a big part of my job is making sure that everybody’s good to go when they get in that
0:41:51 way we have proper testimonials.
0:41:54 So if you’re not there yet, let’s just not make a decision.
0:41:58 And in the meantime, while you’re doing your job and kind of thinking about it, I’ll do
0:42:03 my job and send you over all of the information in order to make sure that when you do think
0:42:05 about it, you’ll have a really good educated decision.
0:42:09 So what are two things you would want me to include in those email flows?
0:42:11 That way you can make an educated decision.
0:42:12 I love that.
0:42:16 You’re taking it away and people want what they can’t have.
0:42:20 So suddenly they’re like, oh no, no, I really only need, maybe I only need a week.
0:42:21 You’re taking it away.
0:42:22 Now they can’t have it.
0:42:27 That’s what I say as like the hot girl is when it comes to a point, and normally this,
0:42:28 I need to think about it.
0:42:29 Objection is just a smokescreen.
0:42:33 So I handled it as it was a real objection, but most of the time it’s a smokescreen.
0:42:35 So it’s just kind of like, no, for sure.
0:42:38 And kind of like brush over it because people are just scared at the end of the day.
0:42:41 But when it’s a true, like you’ve done it a couple of times and they’re like, no, I need
0:42:42 to think about it.
0:42:45 It’s like, okay, give them the time then.
0:42:48 But you give them fake time, the illusion of that.
0:42:51 And then you can just get back into the sales pitch by giving them what they want, disarming
0:42:53 them and then getting back into the pitch.
0:42:57 So you’re saying by asking them, like, what do you need to see in their proposal?
0:43:01 You feel like that’s going to shorten up the time that they actually want it or just like
0:43:02 they didn’t really want the time.
0:43:03 They wanted the information.
0:43:04 Yes.
0:43:10 That was my point with that is you would then say, oh, well, can you send me over some reviews?
0:43:12 Can you send me over some testimonials?
0:43:15 Can you send me over everything that’s included, all the package options?
0:43:18 And then as you’re like typing up the email, you’re like, oh, my God, for sure.
0:43:20 Like, I actually have all of the testimonials pulled up here.
0:43:21 Let me just show you.
0:43:25 And then you’re just right back into the sales pitch and you’re showing them.
0:43:28 If that doesn’t work, another angle I like to use is convenience.
0:43:35 And this is something that you tie back in from earlier is, you know, if you’re a busy mom
0:43:39 or you’re a business owner, whatever you’re doing, I always like to say you can always think
0:43:40 about it.
0:43:42 But to be honest, like, do you want to think about it?
0:43:46 Like, you’re a busy mom, you’re a business owner, you’re never going to have intentional
0:43:48 time like we do right now to make a decision.
0:43:52 And when it comes with a decision, maybe you need time, but what you need is more information
0:43:53 in order to make a great decision.
0:43:57 So we have the time and we have the information, which is me.
0:43:58 So what are two things?
0:43:58 Yeah.
0:44:01 And depending on the solution, if they say they need more time, it could be like, well,
0:44:05 how much time have you wasted not making a decision or how much time and money you’re
0:44:09 going to lose if you wait two months to implement X, Y, Z, right?
0:44:13 One of my favorite things, too, is when people are like, let me sleep on it.
0:44:17 I always like to say, well, don’t you get the best sleep when you already made a decision?
0:44:18 It’s already good to go.
0:44:21 Like, you’re going to get the best sleep ever once we make that decision.
0:44:25 So do you want to wait a while and be thinking about this every night?
0:44:25 Oh, should I do this?
0:44:27 Or do you want to just do it?
0:44:28 We’ve been talking for like an hour.
0:44:28 Let’s just do it.
0:44:29 You’ll get the best sleep tonight.
0:44:29 Let’s go.
0:44:31 Okay.
0:44:32 How about it’s too expensive?
0:44:34 I mean, you get what you pay for.
0:44:36 Depends on what you’re selling.
0:44:39 But I always position myself as the most expensive person.
0:44:43 So I’m telling this person, like, for sure, there’s 40 other people lying down the street
0:44:45 that’ll take your business in a heartbeat.
0:44:49 But when it comes to a service-based business or when it comes to a fitness program, a health
0:44:52 program, whatever you’re selling, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.
0:44:55 And so if you want cheap, that’s definitely not us.
0:44:55 There’s other people.
0:44:59 But if what you want is a great product or great service and a good reputation behind
0:45:02 that, that’s actually going to get you the results, then that’s what we do.
0:45:04 I love that.
0:45:06 So I know with me, like, I have two businesses.
0:45:08 I have my podcast network.
0:45:10 I have my social media agency.
0:45:13 And if somebody tells me my social media services are too expensive, we’re like the number one
0:45:14 LinkedIn marketing agency.
0:45:17 We charge $10,000 a month for LinkedIn.
0:45:19 So a lot of people are like, whoa, that’s expensive.
0:45:21 And I’ll be like, well, are you selling right now?
0:45:22 Yes.
0:45:29 If I made you an influencer on LinkedIn and you got 10x to 100x more leads every month,
0:45:32 you would make that $10,000 back right away, right?
0:45:32 Exactly.
0:45:35 Give them the track record of who stayed with you.
0:45:39 I’m like, you know, I’ve had these clients that have been with me for six years and they’re
0:45:40 happily paying the 10k.
0:45:42 I also like to do the inverse.
0:45:46 So you can do the positive of like, obviously, like it costs this much a month.
0:45:49 But I mean, let’s say we get you two clients to make that back in this, whatever.
0:45:50 So that’s the positive.
0:45:54 But also the negative, which is the opportunity cost of like, okay, so you’re right here.
0:45:57 What’s the cost of you not doing this?
0:45:58 Let’s say we can get you here and you’re here.
0:46:01 You’re actually losing all of this over the next two months.
0:46:04 So you can take that positive, which I love.
0:46:07 And then you can also do the negative if you want to get more mathematical and more granular
0:46:09 about it in like a make money offer.
0:46:10 So I love that.
0:46:14 And it’s really important to actually ask questions so that like, for example, I know
0:46:19 how much they’re charging for their offer, how they get leads, what are their typical way
0:46:19 of getting leads?
0:46:21 Do they close deals on their own?
0:46:26 So it’s important to know like whatever your business is, what questions do you need to ask
0:46:30 the person so that if they do give you the objection, you’re like, well, no, if you get two clients
0:46:33 that pays for the service, I’m going to get you 100 clients a month, you know?
0:46:37 Well, that’s the biggest thing with these objections that I try to teach my girls is
0:46:44 in door to door, it was like objection central, but in high ticket and anything that’s more warm
0:46:50 leads than anything, you can do so much front end work to where these objections shouldn’t even really
0:46:52 be that big of a deal towards the end.
0:46:54 I call this shutting doors.
0:46:59 So I basically say there’s about six different doors that are open, you know, time, price,
0:47:03 anything that they’ve done before, fear, priority, money.
0:47:07 And you need to shut every single door that way they can’t open it back up later into the
0:47:08 sales pitch.
0:47:12 So like, for example, the objection that, you know, you just gave me the first one of I need
0:47:14 to think about it or it’s not the right time.
0:47:19 I would ask a question in the beginning of the sale saying something like, okay, well, I mean,
0:47:23 you’ve been in this business for quite some time, like, why haven’t you done this before?
0:47:28 Or on a scale from one to 10, how ready are you in order to get real results with this?
0:47:33 And they’ll say maybe seven, okay, seven’s really high, but why not?
0:47:34 What would make you a 10?
0:47:39 And so those kind of like shutting the doors in the beginning will prevent them from saying
0:47:40 I need to think about it.
0:47:47 And even if they do, you can use the ammo that you got to the objection to like tailor to that
0:47:47 person.
0:47:48 So smart.
0:47:49 Yeah.
0:47:53 So it’s a little bit of a different way to train every industry, but I prefer the warm lead
0:47:59 one all the way because these cold hard objections, it’s like, if you do it right, you’ll have so
0:48:02 much ammo to where you’re actually excited to hear an objection.
0:48:04 So you’re like, girl, you just told me you were a nine.
0:48:07 Like, come on, let’s be fucking for real.
0:48:07 You know?
0:48:08 Yeah.
0:48:11 Basically, like the front end work of the sale.
0:48:14 Everybody’s like, when they see me, they’re like, oh, well, how do I roll this objection?
0:48:15 What do I say when they say this?
0:48:16 How do I close somebody?
0:48:19 It’s like, okay, the end should be the easiest part.
0:48:22 The beginning is the part that everybody overlooks.
0:48:25 Everybody just hops on is like, oh, nice to meet you.
0:48:26 Well, let me show you a little bit about what we do.
0:48:27 Price.
0:48:28 Oh, I need to think about it.
0:48:29 It’s expensive.
0:48:30 I’ve already done something like this before.
0:48:35 And it’s like, because you didn’t do the front part right.
0:48:36 Exactly.
0:48:41 Like, if you get them to tell you what their objections are or to like dismantle these objections
0:48:44 in the beginning with those doors that you mentioned, they’re not going to want to go
0:48:45 back on their word.
0:48:48 They’re not going to want to contradict themselves because people always want to be right.
0:48:53 Well, that’s what I always say is people believe 0% of the words that come out of a salesperson’s
0:48:57 mouth because duh, you’re a sales rep, but they believe a hundred percent of the words
0:48:58 that come out of their own mouth.
0:49:03 So a lot of my job is asking the right questions and getting them to say the words that they can’t
0:49:08 go back on later because it would feel so unnatural and it would make them, like you said, not right
0:49:10 and to go back on their word.
0:49:14 Also, I know a lot of the people watching are males.
0:49:20 So I have a little analogy that I like to relate to a lot of the guys, but a lot of people
0:49:22 underestimate the front end of the sale.
0:49:24 But if you think about it, I always like to relate it back to dating.
0:49:28 It’s like when you take a girl out on a date, you know, you’re going to do, you’re going
0:49:29 to set the date up, right?
0:49:33 You’re going to butter up, open up her chair, pay for the meal, tell her what to wear, all
0:49:35 this stuff, like send her a car.
0:49:39 That way the clothes at the end of the day is so much easier, right?
0:49:42 If you don’t do the whole date, right, then you’re just going to be digging yourself out
0:49:44 of a hole when you go to kiss her at the end of the night.
0:49:45 Yeah.
0:49:46 Good analogy.
0:49:47 Okay.
0:49:48 A couple more.
0:49:51 I tried something similar and it didn’t work out.
0:49:52 Are you married?
0:49:53 No.
0:49:54 Do you want to be married?
0:49:55 Yeah.
0:49:57 Have you had an ex-boyfriend before?
0:49:58 Yes, many.
0:50:00 Do we hate him?
0:50:02 No, I don’t hate anyone.
0:50:07 I know that was funny, but my point is, you know, if your goal is still the same, it doesn’t
0:50:09 matter what else you’ve tried before.
0:50:11 That shouldn’t stop you from still reaching that goal.
0:50:17 So same, like I hate my ex-boyfriends as well, but I still want to get married, have that
0:50:17 family and everything.
0:50:19 So that doesn’t stop me from going on dates.
0:50:24 So what should stop you from trying out a different avenue in order to get to XYZ, whatever
0:50:24 you’re selling?
0:50:28 That’s one of my favorite ones, just because as soon as I asked that, they’re like, I mean,
0:50:31 yes, or I mean, no, like it doesn’t matter what they say.
0:50:36 And then I like to use analogies to sell a lot just because it makes things come in people’s
0:50:36 brains.
0:50:40 So pretty much no matter what objection, you can use an analogy, like one with prices,
0:50:45 like organic groceries, you can do costs with different Starbucks drinks or gas tanks.
0:50:49 But I always like to bring it back to something that they know to where they’re like, oh, my
0:50:50 God, yeah, I get it.
0:50:55 And so the marriage one is easy because it’s like, OK, well, do you still want to get leads
0:50:55 for your business?
0:50:56 Do you still want to blah, blah, blah?
0:50:58 Yeah, the problem hasn’t gone away.
0:50:59 Right.
0:51:04 You can also ask them like, and this is something that I would ask in the beginning of the pitch
0:51:06 is what else have you tried before?
0:51:07 Why didn’t you like that?
0:51:08 What are you looking for?
0:51:12 That way, when they’re like at the end of the pitch, they’re not going to tell me, oh,
0:51:13 I’ve done something else.
0:51:14 It’s like we already talked about that, girl.
0:51:16 We’re already good on that.
0:51:17 And I love what you say.
0:51:19 You say like an objection is like an infection.
0:51:24 If you don’t resolve it, it just gets worse and worse down the down the pipeline.
0:51:28 And like the infection starts in the beginning.
0:51:33 So that would start, for example, like if you’re on a call with a girl and she has like
0:51:35 fat rock, she’s obviously married.
0:51:39 And if you don’t ask the proper questions and shut the door of the spouse objection in the
0:51:44 beginning, you’re going to get it at the end, like nine times out of 10.
0:51:51 And so you can either one save an hour of your time asking Stacey about, oh, like, has your
0:51:53 husband, have you guys ever talked about this before?
0:51:55 What does he think about this?
0:51:56 Does he even know that you’re on this call?
0:51:58 Do you guys have a budget set aside for this?
0:52:01 Not if she’s like, oh, yeah, no, he handles everything.
0:52:02 He doesn’t even know I’m on this call.
0:52:04 I would just be like, OK, no problem.
0:52:07 You go grab your husband and we’ll schedule a follow up call with your husband because I
0:52:13 want everybody to be in on the same position because you can just waste so much time if
0:52:15 you don’t resolve the spouse objection in the beginning.
0:52:20 But you want to be careful not to assume that the guy is bringing in all the money.
0:52:25 You would be surprised how many times the guys would give the spouse objections.
0:52:28 It’s pretty 50-50.
0:52:32 And the worst thing that all the guys that I would train a door to door is they would always
0:52:34 assume that the husbands would do it.
0:52:35 And I’m like, no, you don’t understand.
0:52:38 Like, a lot of the guys need their wife’s approval.
0:52:40 So you really do never know.
0:52:43 So that’s why it’s important to ask those questions in the beginning.
0:52:46 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:54:38 This episode of Young and Profiting Podcast is brought to you by Mercury, the modern business
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0:56:25 Hello, young Improfiters.
0:56:28 Let’s talk about what drives a business’s success.
0:56:34 Sure, having a great product, a strong brand, and savvy marketing can set companies like Death
0:56:38 Wish Coffee, Magic Spoon, or even a legacy brand like Heinz apart.
0:56:42 But the real secret to skyrocketing sales often isn’t just what they sell.
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0:57:52 Do you feel like today’s buyers are different than the past?
0:57:55 Like how has today’s buyers changed over time?
0:58:01 Today’s buyers are super turned off by like scripts and salesy sales pitches.
0:58:06 And I think today’s sales process doesn’t even start with the sales call.
0:58:10 I think it starts with content of whatever you’re selling and those first points of contact.
0:58:12 So everything’s a sale.
0:58:13 It’s not just a sales call.
0:58:14 It’s not just a sales pitch.
0:58:19 It’s if you’re selling a program for a coach and they’re putting content out, that’s part
0:58:19 of the sale.
0:58:25 And so a lot of the times when, you know, we work with offers, I like to look at the offers
0:58:25 content.
0:58:30 It’s like, okay, are you using the marketing agencies that are just doing like the big neon
0:58:31 text?
0:58:33 And you sound like you’re scripted.
0:58:37 It’s like, okay, there’s a lead from that is probably not going to be as good of a lead
0:58:40 as somebody that’s just raw, genuine, real with their audience.
0:58:43 That’s super upfront with what they sell.
0:58:47 And they know exactly what they’re getting into before they get on to a sales call.
0:58:52 And so a lot of the training that we do with my girls is like, okay, once you finish my
0:58:57 training, we also coach you on like how to find the high ticket offers to sell for.
0:59:03 And so the girls, it’s like, okay, how do you evaluate how good the online coach is doing
0:59:04 with the sales?
0:59:07 It’s like, okay, you look at the content, you look at the lead flow, you look at how interactive
0:59:08 they are.
0:59:11 And so I think the sales starts with that.
0:59:16 And then that’s why it’s like the closing call is closing makes our job 10 times easier.
0:59:17 Yeah.
0:59:22 I really want to get into online selling with you and social media, but let’s actually talk
0:59:22 about close.
0:59:26 Like what’s your best guidance for closing a deal?
0:59:33 So I think that soft closing a deal multiple times throughout a sales pitch is the best way
0:59:34 to go before you get to a hard close.
0:59:37 So I always like to layer in, I do a couple of different soft closes.
0:59:40 A temperature gauge and then a hard close.
0:59:42 And this is for, this is for warmly.
0:59:47 It’s a lot different than if I were doing like cold calling door to door, but soft closing
0:59:51 is essentially any sort of close that makes it a little bit soft, a little bit contingent.
0:59:56 So I would say something like if, if we were to even set something up, would you want to
0:59:57 do this package or this package?
0:59:59 Would you want to do the calls on this day or this day?
1:00:02 What would be a priority for you if you were to be in the program?
1:00:05 What would be your commitment level if you were to join the program?
1:00:10 So it’s, you can kind of tell where somebody’s at before you hard close them rather than
1:00:11 just going in for the close.
1:00:13 And you tell that based off of their responses.
1:00:15 So they can respond one of two ways.
1:00:19 Number one is I would definitely want to do like the whole thing.
1:00:24 Or they could say like, if we were going to do it, then I would want to do this.
1:00:26 And that’s the contingent part.
1:00:31 And so with that person, you would sit there, build a lot more value before you go in for the
1:00:36 close because the worst thing you can do, my job is all preventing the objections.
1:00:40 The worst thing you can do is not know where the customer stands, go in for the hard close.
1:00:43 And then they just tell you some BS of like, yeah, for sure.
1:00:44 But I would need to think about it.
1:00:46 And then you’re just digging yourself out of a hole.
1:00:51 So it’s the layering, the soft closes in kind of getting that temperature gauge of where they’re
1:00:52 at.
1:00:55 And then the close once you know that this person’s like pretty good to go.
1:01:00 How do you feel about giving the price on the discovery call?
1:01:03 Do you like to wait to give the price or what’s your strategy there?
1:01:05 So I teach my girls.
1:01:11 So like, for example, like DM setting or the discovery calls, some setters, no price at all.
1:01:15 But it’s hard because you also want to make sure that this person’s a qualified buyer, that
1:01:19 they have some sort of money or else there’s no point in getting on a sales call.
1:01:24 So the rule of thumb that I always give my girls with their offers is whatever your lowest
1:01:27 package is, half of that has to be the minimum.
1:01:30 So because there’s payment plans a lot of the time.
1:01:32 So let’s say your lowest package is $3,000.
1:01:35 I would have the setters qualify them with $1,500.
1:01:39 Do you have at least $1,500 to get on the sales call?
1:01:43 Because if they have $1,500, then they can sell them the lowest package at a split.
1:01:48 But you never give the full price because there’s zero value built.
1:01:55 And also, this is very, very important with setting up follow-up calls with spouses is I
1:01:59 always tell them like, OK, for our sake, just because we built so much value, I don’t want
1:02:02 your husband to be like, oh, can I join this program for this amount?
1:02:03 Obviously, he’s going to say no.
1:02:05 So let’s just do this.
1:02:08 We’ll go over everything with your husband tomorrow at 5 p.m.
1:02:09 Do me a favor.
1:02:13 Let him come the same way that you came blank state just kind of to learn.
1:02:15 And then we can go over the packages.
1:02:20 So I don’t want them to talk about, even though they probably will, but I don’t want them to
1:02:22 say, oh, marketing agency for $5,000.
1:02:23 They’re just like, wait, what?
1:02:25 No, there’s no value built.
1:02:27 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1:02:32 So basically, the initial calls with call setters, not the expert, but once you actually go over
1:02:36 everything in detail, what they’re getting, ask them questions, whatever, you can then give
1:02:38 them the price at the end.
1:02:41 Yeah, so the price is going to be in the close at the end.
1:02:44 And the close for high ticket is so simple.
1:02:50 It’s just in the investment in order to get you to X, Y, Z is going to be blank.
1:02:51 Shut up.
1:02:52 It’s just a statement close.
1:02:53 It’s easy.
1:02:55 Or you could do an option close with packages.
1:02:55 Depends.
1:02:56 Yep.
1:02:57 And I love the language that you use.
1:02:58 You didn’t say cost.
1:03:01 You said the investment, which is way more positive.
1:03:02 Investment.
1:03:04 And then you add in the goal KPI.
1:03:11 So the investment in order to get you to those 10,000 leads a month, the investment in order
1:03:14 to get the 10 to 15 pounds lost that you were telling me about.
1:03:18 You remind them of what they’re buying before you give the cost.
1:03:19 Okay.
1:03:20 Last question on sales.
1:03:21 Then we’re going to get into social media.
1:03:23 Talk to me about reverse selling.
1:03:27 So I always say sales isn’t a chase.
1:03:27 It’s a dance.
1:03:33 And so 90% of salespeople are just product pushing, product pushing, objection, super aggressive.
1:03:36 And when you chase somebody, they’re going to run away.
1:03:42 So a dance is knowing when to push a little bit, but then when to pull back.
1:03:45 So when you ask me, you know, like, listen, she’ll be like, I really need to think about
1:03:46 it.
1:03:47 It’s like, okay, no problem.
1:03:49 At this point, they would have told me that a couple of times.
1:03:50 So it’s like, okay, no problem.
1:03:51 How long do you need?
1:03:52 They never really say a month.
1:03:56 They normally say like two days, but then that’s when you pull back a little bit because
1:03:59 you can’t give your energy too much.
1:04:03 You need to at some point reverse the energy and reverse sell.
1:04:10 Another way I love to reverse sell is what I call the hot potato technique.
1:04:14 So most sales reps, they’ll go, oh, well, why should I go with you guys?
1:04:17 And they’ll go, oh, because we have this, we have this, we have this.
1:04:18 We’re the best here, here, and here.
1:04:21 It’s like, no, your energy is going like this.
1:04:22 You’re just selling them.
1:04:22 You’re chasing them.
1:04:24 You’re selling yourself.
1:04:27 The hot potato sales technique is exactly what it sounds.
1:04:28 It’s like playing hot potato.
1:04:29 You get the potato.
1:04:29 It’s hot.
1:04:30 You throw it right back.
1:04:31 Same thing in sales.
1:04:35 So I teach my girls to say, okay, well, why should we go with you guys?
1:04:37 Well, what’s important to you?
1:04:39 Oh, well, this, this, and this.
1:04:41 Okay, well, why are those things important to you?
1:04:43 Oh, because in the past we’ve had this, this, and this.
1:04:48 Now they’re selling themselves on why they should be a part of your program or whatever you’re
1:04:53 selling, and it comes back to what you were saying of people believe 0% of the words that
1:04:56 come out of your mouth, but they’ll believe every word that they say.
1:04:59 So it’s about asking the right questions and making them sell themselves.
1:05:05 Something that I like to do on my sales calls is I try to like disqualify somebody from even
1:05:06 being able to work with me.
1:05:12 Like I’m so exclusive that actually I need to qualify you to be my client.
1:05:13 Talk to us about why that works.
1:05:14 Yeah.
1:05:16 So I actually call it the gatekeeper.
1:05:20 And so I tell my girls, this is something that could really only work for warm leads,
1:05:20 right?
1:05:25 Like I can’t, I could never go up to somebody’s door and act like I’m interviewing them, the
1:05:26 gatekeeper, right?
1:05:29 So it’s different, but in warm leads, a hundred percent.
1:05:34 And I tell them like, you have to have the mindset because in high ticket, this person’s
1:05:36 probably been following the creator for quite some time.
1:05:37 Finally wants to book a call, et cetera.
1:05:44 So you need to have the mindset of this person just took an hour out of their day to sit
1:05:45 on a sales call.
1:05:46 There’s a reason for that.
1:05:49 I don’t know about you, but I have to have a pretty big pain point in order to take an
1:05:55 hour out of my very busy day in order to talk about a sales pitch and getting sold a program.
1:06:01 So having that mindset of this person has a problem, our program is the best possible solution
1:06:02 for this person with this problem.
1:06:06 And we only let people in who are going to be good testimonials.
1:06:11 And so when I was rolling that one objection, I said, and part of my job is to make sure
1:06:14 that we’re screening the people that we let in the program, because we don’t want you to
1:06:15 not succeed.
1:06:18 So if you’re not that committed, take that time for sure.
1:06:23 And that kind of makes them pull back a little bit, the reverse selling of, oh, no, I am committed
1:06:23 though.
1:06:24 Like I would want to do this.
1:06:25 Yeah.
1:06:26 But yeah.
1:06:31 So gatekeeper of between this person who has a problem in this program that has their solution
1:06:36 and you’re interviewing them, asking them all the questions to see if they’re going to be
1:06:37 a great testimonial.
1:06:43 And when you tell them at the end, you know, more of a sincere close of, I really do see
1:06:48 you being one of our next testimonials, or when you’re on the testimonial side, telling them
1:06:49 this will be you.
1:06:51 Can you see that for yourself?
1:06:55 Can you see yourself being on the side in three months when you X, Y, Z, get all the rental
1:06:57 properties, kill it in this, whatever.
1:06:59 It comes off a lot more genuine when you treat it like that.
1:07:00 Yeah.
1:07:03 And it’s also good to have different programs for people who are at different levels.
1:07:08 Like, listen, you’re not ready for totally all the services that I can do for you with
1:07:08 the whole team.
1:07:13 And like, you’re not ready for that yet, because I don’t want you to spend money and not get
1:07:13 your ROI.
1:07:16 But why don’t you take my course and get started?
1:07:17 And you know what I mean?
1:07:19 So it’s like having different packages is really important.
1:07:20 For sure.
1:07:21 Okay.
1:07:23 So let’s talk about social media.
1:07:27 You’ve done an incredible job building Instagram and TikTok.
1:07:32 What is like your thought process behind building a community, building a brand?
1:07:35 Like, how are you able to just like kind of come out of nowhere in the last year and just
1:07:38 dominate the female sales persona?
1:07:40 I always get asked this question.
1:07:42 And my answer is very simple.
1:07:49 A lot of people try to do social media instead of just actually being the expert in something
1:07:50 that people want to watch.
1:07:55 Like, everybody’s always worried about what hashtags, what times should I post?
1:07:58 And it’s like, okay, people see through that nowadays.
1:08:01 Like you said, because social media is sales at the end of the day.
1:08:03 People see through that.
1:08:09 So I genuinely think the reason why this time last year I had less than 10,000 followers
1:08:14 and now I’m almost at 600,000 on Instagram is because I can pull out my camera and just
1:08:20 talk about some random closing tip or throughout my day, it’s all I think about.
1:08:21 I’m consumed by it.
1:08:25 So when I hear a sales pitch of somebody on the street trying to sell me something, I’m like,
1:08:27 oh, that was actually like pretty interesting.
1:08:28 I’m going to make a video about that.
1:08:33 So it’s actually being the thing before you like put that on social media.
1:08:37 That way, when people see it, they’re like, this girl actually knows what she’s talking
1:08:38 about and she loves it.
1:08:38 Yeah.
1:08:40 You’re like the go-to person for sales.
1:08:43 Everybody knows what to expect when they go to your page.
1:08:45 They know the energy you’re going to bring, the vibe.
1:08:50 They know you’re talking to women primarily, but anybody can learn from your page, which I’m
1:08:52 sure you’ve got a lot of male followers too.
1:08:53 So many males.
1:08:53 Yeah.
1:08:54 They always comment.
1:08:56 They’re like, I’m not a girl.
1:08:59 Also, I’m not even in sales, but you help me with my confidence.
1:09:00 I’m like, thank you.
1:09:01 But yeah, it’s funny.
1:09:06 And then like the second part about building a brand is super interesting.
1:09:12 So I had a video that I posted maybe like nine months ago, went mega viral.
1:09:17 It was all the girls want to live the rich Porsche Pilates mom lifestyle.
1:09:22 They want to go on walks, Pilates, drive a nice car and just kind of like have that be their
1:09:23 day.
1:09:25 You don’t have to marry an ugly, bald dude.
1:09:26 You can give it to yourself.
1:09:28 And the way that I give it to myself is sales.
1:09:36 And so that video kind of popped and created this brand of like Porsche Pilates, matcha sales,
1:09:37 hot girl sales.
1:09:39 And so it was awesome.
1:09:40 It was super fun.
1:09:42 And now that’s like all of my girls.
1:09:46 They all like wear their hair and ponytails, the gold hoops.
1:09:47 They post their matcha.
1:09:51 So it’s, it really is like a huge community and a real brand.
1:09:54 And it’s fun because that’s the life I live every single day.
1:09:58 So it’s fun posting my little matcha in the morning and the girls are like, love it.
1:09:59 Yeah.
1:10:02 You have built this, like everybody knows what to expect when they go to your page.
1:10:05 And you’re also showing different elements of you.
1:10:06 You’re talking about sales.
1:10:10 Everybody knows you’re going to teach them about sales, but then you’re into working out,
1:10:11 you’re into eating healthy.
1:10:13 And so you’ve got, you can be dynamic.
1:10:17 I always get this question, like, can I be a dynamic person on social media?
1:10:19 And it’s like, yeah, people want to know the real you.
1:10:25 One of the things people wish I was more dynamic about is my dating life.
1:10:28 People are always like, oh, can you do like day in the life?
1:10:31 Get ready with me is like debriefs about your dates.
1:10:36 I’m like, no, I already like guys probably already look at my social media and they’re like,
1:10:38 oh my gosh, like intimidated.
1:10:39 This girl’s loud.
1:10:40 She’s going to try to sell me on a date.
1:10:45 So I’m like, I can’t talk too much about my dating life on social media,
1:10:47 because then nobody’s going to want to date me, you know?
1:10:50 Well, let’s take a little tangent here.
1:10:52 Two very successful women.
1:10:54 How is dating for you?
1:10:56 Do are men just really intimidated, especially with your age?
1:11:00 Everybody thinks that everybody, the comments I get are like,
1:11:03 oh, it’s probably gonna be so hard for her to find a man, blah, blah, blah.
1:11:07 Like, I have never had more options.
1:11:12 And a lot like in the like, the least weird way to say that.
1:11:16 But options aren’t great, because I feel the same way.
1:11:18 But it’s like, it’s almost like I can’t make a choice.
1:11:20 I agree.
1:11:23 And I also don’t have the time to go on all these dates.
1:11:28 So I always like to say, being a successful woman that makes her own money,
1:11:31 it disqualifies all the people that wouldn’t make sense anyways.
1:11:36 Because like, the broke guy is never going to be like, oh, like, that’s my wife.
1:11:36 You know?
1:11:39 So it’s like, but I also don’t want somebody that doesn’t have goals.
1:11:42 So it kind of like disqualifies the people that wouldn’t work out anyways.
1:11:48 And then the options that you do have are like, okay, these are actually like, great, great guys.
1:11:53 And I want to be with somebody that wants their wife to be a badass and have her own thing.
1:11:55 And that I can have intellectual conversations with.
1:11:57 So I think it’s, it’s been going great.
1:12:00 But I also just don’t have a lot of time.
1:12:01 So yeah, I hear you.
1:12:02 All right.
1:12:03 Well, Shelby is single.
1:12:05 If you guys want to take her out on a date.
1:12:07 Yes, you have to live in Miami.
1:12:11 So on Instagram, what do you feel like goes most viral?
1:12:17 So B-roll videos do really well, which is just like the five to second videos with text on it.
1:12:18 Those ones do really well with me.
1:12:22 I like to say in another life, I was the best copywriter on the planet because I,
1:12:25 I do all my social media myself.
1:12:27 I don’t hire a single soul for it.
1:12:30 I was going to ask you, do you do, it looks like it’s all you.
1:12:31 Yes.
1:12:33 I hire, actually that’s false.
1:12:40 I have two like intern copywriters that help me out, but I only have them do bullet points for stories.
1:12:42 And then they only touch stories by the way.
1:12:45 Nobody touches my like actual videos, contents, broadcast channel.
1:12:50 And it’s because I’ve tried it before because it is a lot running the whole social media thing
1:12:52 with how much content I put out.
1:12:55 But when it’s not you, people can tell.
1:12:57 And it’s also not fun to post for me.
1:12:58 I don’t know.
1:13:01 And when it’s me, like it just does so much better.
1:13:04 So I’m like, I’d rather put out less stuff and it actually be me.
1:13:07 But yeah, I do literally everything myself.
1:13:12 The best stuff that does well on Instagram for me, there’s like two buckets.
1:13:15 One bucket is the B-roll with the funny copy on it.
1:13:19 But the other bucket is a really funny sales tip.
1:13:22 So I’ll start a video by saying something out of pocket.
1:13:25 Like you have to be a brat in sales.
1:13:26 And people are like, wait, what?
1:13:29 But then I follow it up with a really good sales tactic.
1:13:32 That’s like, okay, well, when somebody asks you a question, you ask them a question back.
1:13:33 That’s bratty.
1:13:35 But like, that’s how you get the deal done.
1:13:37 And people are like, okay, that makes sense.
1:13:40 And those videos get the most amount of followers.
1:13:43 The B-roll ones are like, no, they’re just like for fun.
1:13:46 But the sales tip ones are what really grow a page.
1:13:51 Yeah, so it’s like kind of shock them with something that they’re like, what is she talking about?
1:13:54 And then give them a really smart response.
1:13:56 And then they’re like, okay, that makes sense.
1:14:02 I’m so excited because I’ve been like heads down building my company for four years,
1:14:06 basically like creating other influencers, monetizing other influencers.
1:14:10 And for my brand, I just like kind of on autopilot.
1:14:11 I have a team.
1:14:11 I’ve got reels.
1:14:13 It’s not me, like you were saying.
1:14:17 And this year, I’m just like trying to get everything off my plate.
1:14:21 And I’m like going to just go super hard and just teach and just go back to my roots.
1:14:24 Because that’s how I started is like I blew up on LinkedIn, just teaching people.
1:14:26 I can’t wait to get back to it.
1:14:28 And you’ve been an inspiration because I’m like, damn, she’s so good at her videos.
1:14:31 Like I was like, I need to just do that.
1:14:37 No, you do make that your 2025 because you are such a badass.
1:14:40 I’m like, you just flip the camera up and start talking.
1:14:41 I guarantee that’s awesome.
1:14:42 Yeah, I can’t wait.
1:14:45 Okay, so a couple last questions here.
1:14:46 I know you’ve got a course.
1:14:48 I’m sure there’s so many people tuning in.
1:14:50 I know that you do webinars for your course.
1:14:53 You probably got a bunch of different sales funnels.
1:14:55 So just walk us through how you actually sell online.
1:14:57 What’s a good salesy type post?
1:14:59 Do you use many chat webinars?
1:15:00 Like what are you doing to sell?
1:15:01 What are your main ways to sell online?
1:15:07 So it’s funny because I guess this is like a sales tactic, but it’s actually true is we
1:15:09 I don’t let people just join.
1:15:13 Like you can’t book a call from my content, go to the link in bio, get on a call with the
1:15:15 team and get onboarded.
1:15:21 So I only open my program, which is called she sells at the end of masterclasses at the
1:15:22 end of webinars.
1:15:24 And I only open it for like 20 minutes.
1:15:28 And it’s a time where like I have girls that DM me all the time.
1:15:29 Hey, can you send me the link?
1:15:30 I want to join she sells.
1:15:32 And we’re like, nope, got to come to the masterclass.
1:15:33 Two reasons.
1:15:37 Number one, women are going to be successful when they know exactly what’s in it, when they’re
1:15:39 super hot, when they’re all going together.
1:15:43 And so I make them sit on a masterclass for an hour, learn the ins and outs of it for
1:15:44 free.
1:15:48 And then it’s like, okay, now that you know it, join and you only have 20 minutes to join.
1:15:49 So you got to, you got to join now.
1:15:51 So you’re like condensing their decision time.
1:15:54 They can’t talk themselves out of it.
1:15:57 If you only give them 20 minutes, they only have whatever’s fresh in their head.
1:15:58 They can’t go talk.
1:16:00 They can’t have their spouse talk them out of it.
1:16:01 They got to decide right there.
1:16:03 And they have to pay within that 20 minutes.
1:16:04 That’s genius.
1:16:04 Yes.
1:16:09 Like the reason is to, it is a sales tactic, but it also is more of a fulfillment reason
1:16:11 too, because they all get in at the same time.
1:16:15 The way that I do it is not cohort style, but kind of is.
1:16:19 And women love to do things with their girls.
1:16:21 Like we don’t even go to the bathroom alone.
1:16:26 So it’s like knowing that you’re alone on a call, but you’re also joining with all of the
1:16:30 girls at the same time from across the world is that’s how I built my community.
1:16:37 Like my community on social media is cool, whatever my community in my program is in
1:16:38 sane.
1:16:45 I will go to war with any other community in the world because my girls are so like they
1:16:46 bleed.
1:16:46 She sells.
1:16:47 It’s awesome.
1:16:49 That makes so much sense.
1:16:51 It’s like people want a shared identity.
1:16:53 They want to talk the same language.
1:16:55 They want to feel like they’re part of a group.
1:17:00 And so having them make that decision on the call together, it’s like they all like
1:17:04 kind of got like not hazed in a sorority together at the same time, but kind of, it’s like that
1:17:04 bond.
1:17:05 Yeah.
1:17:05 I love that.
1:17:10 When I tell them to like, I mean, when you’re purchasing anything and especially like getting
1:17:12 into sales, that’s something that’s scary.
1:17:15 And so that’s my time to kind of talk to them.
1:17:19 And a lot of it is like mental of like, okay, when a decision is scary, that’s how you know
1:17:20 it’s right.
1:17:21 Because that’s how you know you’re growing.
1:17:25 And so it’s scary for everybody on the call right now, but like if it’s calling you, like
1:17:26 I do invite you to join.
1:17:31 And it’s also just more fun for me because we get to onboard all the girls at the same
1:17:31 time.
1:17:33 There’s not people just trickling in.
1:17:37 We can kind of know like, okay, this group is going at this pace and this pace and this
1:17:37 pace.
1:17:38 So it is nice.
1:17:39 That’s really cool.
1:17:44 And are you collecting their emails and then retargeting them if they don’t sign up to join
1:17:45 the next webinar?
1:17:48 And like how cohesive is your strategy in that way?
1:17:49 Yeah.
1:17:51 So I have a whole team.
1:17:56 So I have a team of 22 and they handle a lot of like the backend emails, a lot of the sequences
1:18:01 and the stuff that I am not an expert on, but a lot of it is retargeting.
1:18:06 And what we found is that somebody doesn’t just join a class and then join at the end.
1:18:08 A lot of people join a couple classes.
1:18:10 And it’s funny because it’s the same class.
1:18:12 You would never think that.
1:18:15 But the way I run my webinars is super energetic.
1:18:16 I have caffeine.
1:18:18 I have mustaches.
1:18:19 I do role plays.
1:18:20 I handle objections live.
1:18:21 Like it’s fun.
1:18:22 And so I think people join for the energy.
1:18:26 But when they come like a couple of times, they’re like, okay, okay.
1:18:28 I finally feel like I’m going to do it now.
1:18:29 Okay, let’s do it.
1:18:29 Yeah.
1:18:30 It’s so true.
1:18:33 Some people need to go two, three times and then they’ll buy on the webinar.
1:18:35 And webinars are so smart people.
1:18:37 I’ve got lots of content on webinars, guys.
1:18:40 I interviewed Jason Fladline, Russell Brunson just on webinars.
1:18:46 So look those up if you’re interested because webinars to me are like the hottest way to sell
1:18:48 something low to high ticket.
1:18:49 It doesn’t even matter.
1:18:51 It’s just like the best way to sell in my opinion.
1:18:52 I agree.
1:18:54 And people are like, oh, why don’t you have sales?
1:18:55 You have so many sales girls.
1:18:57 Why don’t you have them take calls for you?
1:19:00 I’m the best sales girl to sell my product.
1:19:04 And I just, I genuinely feel like I was born for webinars.
1:19:07 I was born for it.
1:19:12 Like I’m sitting here selling one to many is so fun because the way I like to sell during
1:19:18 a webinar is I’ll take every sort of customer segment, every sort of target market of our
1:19:21 girls and overcome their objections.
1:19:24 So like you have the moms, but then you have the girls that are working part-time.
1:19:25 You have the students.
1:19:27 And so you’re like, well, if you’re a mom, I’m talking to you.
1:19:28 Handle that.
1:19:29 If you’re a student, I’m talking to you.
1:19:29 Handle that.
1:19:31 If you’re international, I’m talking to you.
1:19:31 Handle that.
1:19:33 So you kind of get the different angles.
1:19:35 You know what I think it is that I realized?
1:19:38 I think we’re just, we love sales so much.
1:19:40 And like webinar is like the ultimate sales challenge.
1:19:41 It is.
1:19:43 And so it’s just like so fun.
1:19:45 And it’s, it’s really fun.
1:19:47 I love to do what I look forward to them.
1:19:48 Same.
1:19:50 They’re my favorite part of the week.
1:19:51 Okay.
1:19:52 So last question.
1:19:58 You are living in Miami and you just moved there and you talked about the Miami effect.
1:20:00 So what is the Miami effect?
1:20:06 So the Miami effect is a pretty known thing, but it’s basically when you move to Miami, you
1:20:08 get hotter and richer.
1:20:10 No argument at all.
1:20:11 You just get hotter and richer.
1:20:14 And the reason is because everybody that lives in Miami.
1:20:18 And when I say Miami, I’m really talking about Brickell, which is where I live.
1:20:20 People are like, no, they’re not.
1:20:21 And I’m like, where are you from?
1:20:22 They’re like little Havana.
1:20:24 I’m like, okay, well, that’s not where I live.
1:20:25 So we’re talking about like Brickell, the city.
1:20:29 So where I live in Brickell, I mean, the rent is insane.
1:20:31 You buy a coffee.
1:20:31 It’s $15.
1:20:36 So like you have to make money in order to live there.
1:20:41 So everybody in the elevators, everybody at the coffee shops on your walks makes money
1:20:42 and is cool.
1:20:44 And in order to make money, you have to have good skill sets.
1:20:46 You have to have some sort of business.
1:20:47 You have to be a cool person.
1:20:51 So it’s like you move to Miami, you start meeting all these cool people.
1:20:54 Side note, Miami is the land of the fakers though.
1:20:58 So you kind of have to like, there are a lot of people that are like real awesome.
1:21:00 But that was one of the things where I first moved here.
1:21:02 I thought everybody was like so real.
1:21:03 They’re really not.
1:21:07 But for the most part, like people are making a lot of money.
1:21:10 People are walking outdoors because the weather is awesome.
1:21:12 Everybody here is so attractive.
1:21:13 So you need to become attractive too.
1:21:19 So it’s like you just rise to the level of the standard of Miami, which is your Miami effect.
1:21:20 Environment is so important.
1:21:22 People don’t realize it.
1:21:26 If something’s not working out for you, it could just be that you just need to move,
1:21:28 meet new people, get inspired.
1:21:34 Well, in Atomic Habits, that’s the biggest thing is you can change your habits like this
1:21:35 if you change your surroundings.
1:21:40 That’s why when somebody goes to rehab, they don’t send them right back to the same apartment,
1:21:44 same house, because you start associating your physical surroundings with your every single
1:21:44 daily habits.
1:21:49 So the best way to break your habits and literally change your life is to get into a different
1:21:51 house, a different apartment, or even better, a bigger city.
1:21:54 And I always like to explain it as like a fishbowl.
1:21:56 Like you’re a little fish in a normal fishbowl.
1:22:01 But then when you get a big fishbowl, you grow to fit the size of the bigger fishbowl.
1:22:05 And that’s why like a lot of people that have experienced something like this, if you can
1:22:11 relate, you go back to your hometown and you feel like a big fish and you’re like, oh my
1:22:14 gosh, like I don’t fit here anymore.
1:22:15 I don’t fit.
1:22:17 So and that’s the best thing to feel.
1:22:19 So Shelby, this has been such a great conversation.
1:22:23 Honestly, I feel like you spit so much game on sales.
1:22:25 I think everybody learns so much.
1:22:26 I end my show with two questions.
1:22:27 I ask all of my guests.
1:22:29 You can answer from the heart.
1:22:34 What is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable
1:22:35 tomorrow?
1:22:36 Spirituality.
1:22:38 100% every single day spirituality.
1:22:43 When you have a why behind what you do, you’ll become more profitable and no matter what you
1:22:43 do.
1:22:45 And that was the biggest game changer for me.
1:22:51 As soon as I moved to Miami, weirdly enough, I got really into my faith as soon as I moved
1:22:56 here and what happened a year ago, my whole life completely.
1:23:01 And it’s not just because, you know, if you want to do that, then get in touch with God.
1:23:03 But I do genuinely think you just take more risks.
1:23:07 You know who you are when you truly believe in something that’s bigger than yourself.
1:23:11 So no matter what that is, like find out what kind of spirituality you like to go into
1:23:15 it and make sure that that’s the first thing you do in the morning and last thing you do
1:23:15 at night.
1:23:20 And don’t before that, don’t go on your phone, scroll on TikTok after you pray at night.
1:23:25 That’s like my biggest thing because your brain is so in like manifestation mode, dreaming
1:23:29 all this, you’re praying, and then you go to bed and that’s your subconscious mind.
1:23:32 So on a granular thing, spirituality will for sure.
1:23:33 Love that.
1:23:36 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:23:38 Energy.
1:23:43 I like to explain to people your energy will make your life better.
1:23:49 No matter if you’re a server, an accountant, if you’re in sales, a business owner, people
1:23:52 don’t want to be around you if you’re just sad and mopey all the time.
1:23:57 So the best thing that I do in order to be profitable in no matter what I do, whether that’s relationships,
1:24:03 business, even friendships, calling my mom, like people have these little interactions with
1:24:05 you and that makes up their story with you.
1:24:10 And their story with you determines what that relationship is going to be like and how much
1:24:12 you love your life because your life is all of your relationships.
1:24:18 So carrying that positive energy and genuine energy too with everything you do in life.
1:24:22 You are so positive and it kept the whole conversation so engaging.
1:24:25 I’d ask you a question and be like, oh my God, I can’t wait to answer this question.
1:24:28 I know this is so fun.
1:24:29 You have such good questions too.
1:24:31 I seriously enjoyed this.
1:24:31 Yeah.
1:24:32 Thank you so much, Shelby.
1:24:34 Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:24:35 Yeah.
1:24:37 So my Instagram is shelby.sap.
1:24:40 My TikTok is diary of a door-to-door saleswoman, which I will be changing.
1:24:44 So don’t go there, but go to my Instagram and then you can see my website link in my bio.
1:24:45 Amazing.
1:24:48 Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
1:24:49 Of course.
1:24:49 Bye, girl.
1:24:59 Well, guys, Shelby offered up such a wealth of great sales tips and strategies today.
1:25:03 So many things she said resonated with my own experience.
1:25:07 When you are in sales, like Shelby said, energy is your currency.
1:25:09 And some days you will have to fake it.
1:25:14 The customer doesn’t care if you are having a bad day or just broke up with your boyfriend
1:25:19 or if you’ve just received 20 no’s in a row before this meeting.
1:25:20 You have to rise above it.
1:25:27 And sometimes that means not behaving like a normal emotional human and maybe even acting
1:25:29 a bit like a psychopath.
1:25:32 And today’s buyers are not going to make it easy for you.
1:25:37 They have seen and heard it all and they hate being sold to.
1:25:40 So you have to be pretty savvy.
1:25:43 And I think Shelby had some ideas for how to do that.
1:25:46 Here are some of my favorite tips and tactics she shared.
1:25:50 When selling to an alpha male, make him think it’s his decision.
1:25:51 So true.
1:25:59 Women, on the other hand, like to buy comfort, answer their questions, take them through the
1:26:01 details and help them get comfortable.
1:26:08 Older people also respond to comfort, but younger buyers respond more to pain or pleasure, especially
1:26:09 pain.
1:26:15 Like Shelby said, it’s a lot easier to sell them pain killers than vitamins.
1:26:20 One more great sales tip, handle potential objections in advance.
1:26:21 Shelby calls this shutting doors.
1:26:27 And whether your buyer’s doors are time, price, fear, or something else, try to learn what
1:26:31 they are and shut them down early so they can’t open them back up later.
1:26:35 Ask the right questions and get them to make their own declarations.
1:26:42 Remember, people may believe nothing that comes out of a salesperson’s mouth, but they do believe
1:26:43 what they say themselves.
1:26:47 Well, thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting.
1:26:51 If this conversation resonated with you today, be sure to share it with somebody who could use
1:26:54 a little extra light in their day.
1:26:57 And if you did enjoy this show, make sure you subscribe.
1:27:03 And if you learned something new, drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
1:27:04 listen to your podcasts.
1:27:09 In fact, if you guys like to watch your podcasts as videos, I’ve been doing a lot more in-person
1:27:10 content.
1:27:12 We’ve got more videos on YouTube than ever.
1:27:15 You can find all of our videos on Young and Profiting on YouTube.
1:27:16 Just search it.
1:27:17 You’ll find it.
1:27:21 You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name.
1:27:22 It’s Hala Taha.
1:27:25 Of course, I got to shout out my Yap team.
1:27:27 I’ve got the best production team.
1:27:28 I appreciate your hard work.
1:27:33 This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.