The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

Membership Mindset: Transforming Customers into Loyal Partners

Scott Scully, Jeff Winters, Eric Watkins Season 2 Episode 67

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Scott Scully shares his exceptional experience staying at the high-end Rosewood hotel. This leads the hosts to explore the idea of transitioning customers into a true membership model, where businesses provide exclusive benefits and services beyond the core offering. 
Eric Watkins also dives in deep during "Mining For Growth Gold" highlighting a technique for handling the common "I'm not interested" objection during cold calls. Additionally, Jeff Winters offers advice for sales executives on finalizing their long-term sales goals earlier in the year to avoid short-term budget cuts in "Tales from Sales"

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Scott Scully:

What's up? Grow nation. We are back. My name is Scott Scully. I'm here with Eric and Jeff, and we are here to guide you through growth. This is the number one podcast on the planet, on the planet, on the planet. Don't fact check that here comes on the planet for you to engage with us, to just make it a little bit easier, and your journey go forward. We start this show off with a little segment we like to call two truths and a lie. Sheriff winters what's out there in the LinkedIn landscape.

Jeff Winters:

Welcome back everyone. Two Truths and a Lie from LinkedIn every week, exposing the liars, putting the truth tellers on a pedestal so that all can know what they should be listening to and what they cannot, because LinkedIn doesn't

Eric Watkins:

police. No, they do, no, they do not. So I will, and

Jeff Winters:

I've got some really good ones brewing today. John a cuff says, and I had an experience with this recently, and I think it's important, unless you are a surgeon on a medical call, you need to hang up the phone when you go in a public restroom. No one should be on the phone in a public restroom. Other than surgeons,

Scott Scully:

I couldn't agree

Unknown:

more. Yeah, this is important, yeah, and they're on

Scott Scully:

the phone going to the bathroom, and then they keep talking on their way out of the bathroom without washing their hands. Oh, and that you should be able to put a jacket on them, just so people would know that they just did that. You should be able to call them out.

Eric Watkins:

I actually think people should be able to talk. I'm just you disagree with this. Yeah, this should be a to do or not to do. The worst thing in it in early

Scott Scully:

The worst thing is they're like, when you're in the stall, right? Oh yeah. When you're in the old sit down position and someone's over their chat,

Jeff Winters:

yeah, and you're like, how what about nothing important,

Scott Scully:

and what's the person on the other end? Think it's a

Jeff Winters:

horror. It's, it's an it should be an arrest. Move on.

Eric Watkins:

Let's move on. But it's not even like talking about it, but it's important, yeah?

Scott Scully:

But, but it's awful. We move on.

Jeff Winters:

I'm just here's a video.

Scott Scully:

Have you ever been on the phone with somebody and you could hear them in the

Eric Watkins:

background? I can't think I can imagine. Yeah, it's awful.

Jeff Winters:

These are things we this is what the audience relies on us for. Okay,

Scott Scully:

now whether or not LinkedIn should be the place where we read this stuff,

Jeff Winters:

yeah, I don't make the rules on what can be posted. I merely police the posts that are out there. Truth, truth. Patrick Trumpy writes slightly more business oriented. If you want your salespeople to self source more opportunities themselves, you might want to give an incentive to them that specifically encourages that outcome, meaning self sourcing, meaning you need to differentiate deals that they get from enablement or SDRs or the web from deals that they self source with An incentive the behavior, meaning self sourcing, will increase

Scott Scully:

I have two answers, yeah, true and false. True, true. If you want it to happen, you need to do it. False. I think it's bullshit that you have to do it. It should be part of your job. Like and the world has gone to a place where people are unwilling to do their own self sourcing, and they want leads handed to them. So yes, in order to actually have it happen, you're going to have to incentivize them. But I don't think that that should be the way that it

Jeff Winters:

is. We do in a clever way. We incentivize

Scott Scully:

I don't to get them to do it. Yeah, I don't feel like we should have to incentivize them to do it,

Jeff Winters:

agreed, but we do it. We do it in a clever way.

Eric Watkins:

I think, Yeah, true. And thank God the world is going that way because they're using our services to generate the leads for their salespeople.

Scott Scully:

As always, you have good points. Mr. Watkins,

Eric Watkins:

but yeah, absolutely true. I think that you got to do a little yes,

Scott Scully:

no, don't do it. People don't do it. Yeah, don't

Eric Watkins:

incentivize self sourcing.

Jeff Winters:

And now for the lie.

Scott Scully:

What's the last name?

Jeff Winters:

The this is, yeah, I could never, first ever research backed lie. Oh, I've done research. To debunk this outrageous lie

Scott Scully:

you have,

Jeff Winters:

I have, okay, Stephanie posted a tick tock video on LinkedIn, which counts, and the video for two minutes I'm summarizing talks about how giving away free branded company swag to your employees is such a waste, almost insulting. The branded coffee cup will sit in the break room. The branded polo will stay on the shelf, calling so much attention and negativity to employers who give out branded swag and how awful it is, and how they should save that money and spend it on something else, because no one wants your crappy swag, a vicious lie. So I was doing my research, and I walked out of my research lab, that's the place where I do my research, into a group of employees, all of whom

Scott Scully:

same place where you can't talk on the phone,

Jeff Winters:

all of whom we're wearing our branded swag. And I said, I need you to be honest with me for a second. Take my position, my role. Take it all out, throw it out. I want brutal honesty. Do you like that branded swag? Would you do you like that? We pass out brand and all of them instantly. And these listeners are gonna go, he's full of it. They just tell them, instantly, we'd love it. Five out of five, 100% and I said, I'm sure we're all gonna work here forever, but on the off chance we don't, would you wear this branded swag if you work somewhere else, if you lived in a different city, in a different country? We love it.

Eric Watkins:

This is a lie. Who can argue with that scientific test? Science, five random people going up? He's asking a question. I mean, you can't, you can't argue with that. Facts, data back.

Scott Scully:

Were they on your team? Yes,

Jeff Winters:

they all reported. It

Eric Watkins:

was actually his kids and his wife that he brought the swag home to look, I think

Scott Scully:

I'm with you. You know, we give it away sometimes, like when you first start, or when you earn it for different things, and then we also have a store where you buy it. And I think maybe part of debunking that is that if you have a store and there's stuff in there and people actually go in and buy it, that there's some people that wanted, at least for sure, you know, people like there were uniforms growing up that helped them feel unified with their teammates or their co workers. It just makes too much sense. Yep,

Jeff Winters:

and you gotta have good stuff. Yeah, you can't have bad swag. Like my friends ask me for our stuff. That's how good it is. I think it comes down to that. But yes, that's,

Eric Watkins:

I mean, that's, it's just that's a lot,

Jeff Winters:

and now we know it from data, the data

Unknown:

out of the lab, from

Eric Watkins:

the lab next to the urine,

Scott Scully:

to where all the posts came from this week. That's right. All right. Nice stuff. I mean, you're changing the world. It's

Jeff Winters:

a great segment, right there. It

Scott Scully:

is good job. You know, I hate to follow you. Hate to follow you. We are the 50 for 50, and I like the going today. The topic is going to be, are your customers members? Okay, but let me tell you how I got here. So I, you guys know, I was supposed to go on vacation. I did go on vacation. I was supposed to go to Greece. Been looking forward to it for a long time. And then we got on a plane, and we were going to go through DC, and then, you know, on to Rome. And then we turned around right before we were landing and ended up in Columbus, Ohio. No offense to the people in Columbus, Ohio. It's a nice motel. Very nice people in Columbus, Ohio, it just wasn't Greece. So we found out that for 72 hours we weren't going to be able to go so we needed to reroute. Found that the only straight up sunny weather for a whole week was going to be in California. So I found myself in Santa Barbara. I found myself in the rosewood, which happens to be kind of expensive, but I justified it because I was no longer going to have my International. Expense. So I put it into more money in the hotel, and I got there, and the unfortunate thing is, in Denver, I lost my debit card that I use for everything, so when I was checking in, I had no card. I'm like, Kelly, we're screwed. She's like, Oh, we're going to figure it out. It's going to be all right. I'm like, All right. I'm like, I have no physical card. What are we gonna do? So anyway, we get there, and I'm like, Look, we're supposed to be in Greece. We're not. We're glad we're here, but I don't have a card. Here's what happened? And he's like, ah, happens all the time. No problem. We'll get you checked in. And I'm thinking, What do you mean? You'll get me checked in, like, and he didn't. He didn't even take, like, a picture of the card or write down the numbers or anything. He just checked me in. And then, I don't know, for eight days, I proceeded to figure out that because I was at the rosewood and I was a rosewood guest, it's like I was family and anything goes. It's obnoxious, not obnoxious in a good way. Where are you going? Mr. Scully, well, we would have an Uber picking us up. You don't need an Uber here. What do you mean? We've got a house car, let us call it around. You know, car comes or one morning, I'm like, Is there anywhere where I can get a muffin and an iced tea and and lady looked at me, I was at a coffee cart, and there wasn't. I was or I didn't think there was. I just couldn't find it. She's like, Absolutely. I'm like, really where? She's like, Well, I'm just going to go over to the restaurant and I'm going to get some iced tea for you, and they've got muffins and pastries, and I'm just going to get one of those for you now, I can be right back. Would you like that right now? I'm just thinking, you know what happens most places, no, we don't.

Unknown:

Yeah, no, sorry, just, just, no, we

Scott Scully:

don't. We do not have a place where you can get an iced tea in a muffin, even

Eric Watkins:

if they have it. But it's like a five minute walk to go get it they don't have it.

Scott Scully:

And then I'm, you know, I kept seeing the guy that carried our backs, like, to the room and Hello Mr. And Mrs. Scully, like, what'd you do yesterday? Well, here's, I would recommend doing this today. Like, and that wasn't even his job, right? Did you try this restaurant? And did you go see this little town? And I couldn't stop thinking about it. And here's here's kind of a long story to get to this, but at a certain point the hotel rooms, a hotel room, like all these nice hotels, you got same really good bed, nice art on the walls, good staff, right? But the rosewood cost a hell lot more, and I did not, and I and I spent a lot that week, and I, and you'd think after leaving, it's like, God, I just spent a lot. And I was like, it was amazing, right? Just it was amazing. It was different. That's so much different than other hotels. I did it like I didn't even think about the room, right? That's weird, yeah, like a lot of times you're thinking about the room. I was thinking even think about the room. So then I just couldn't help thinking about a lot of you that are listening, you know who think, and we know that they're not. But if you are a mechanical contractor, people might think, well, you're just another mechanical contractor. If you own an MSP, well, there's 25 in town. You're just another one of those, right? And I know that you have your own differentiators, but what if your customers were members? And we've been talking about that here, like, there are other people these days that provide some of the services that we do, but what are the other things that make them feel like a member, we call our customers partners, like, I honestly feel like we need a movement towards members, because membership is a in my head, it's a different thing. It's like, oh, it's exclusive. I'm with them. I get to be with them. They let me in. Here are the other things that I got here. Are the all the things that I get by being a member like so with us. I don't think we do a good enough job at letting people know what you get when you're a member like you get, certainly, discounts on our other services. You get an incredible referral program. You get, you know, free sales training. You there's a lot of things that. More and probably more, yeah, that we should provide, in addition to our our good services, so that somebody feels like they're a member, they're taken care of. They're bragging about it. Oh, my God, I Well, I go with abstract, because boom, boom, boom and boom. Or you're not a member of abstract you should be. And I, I know it's weird to say that, but it's and it's along the lines of customer service, but what? What if, if you started calling your customers members, then that immediately gets you thinking about, well, what are their benefits? And it would cost? Cause you to very quickly get organized around why a membership with you is different than being a customer somewhere else. And I just, we're gonna get after it here, and going down that route, I would suggest that you guys do the same. What do you guys think?

Eric Watkins:

I think that's a very interesting thing. I know we've talked a little bit about this. I didn't think of the whole membership thing, but, you know, you think about it in, uh, like, take a country club, for example, you're a member, so it also gives, in addition to you being a part of something, you also have a greater responsibility to the whole and the rest of the members, and to ensure you're bringing new members on and and I think that's in in today's world, it's okay. I'm going to sign up for your services. What do I get out of it? Versus like this is a give and take, and how can we create something special together? And I think it only happens if you pour in

Scott Scully:

a networking, networking platform, connect them, let them do business with each other, like we got to go to the next level with that stuff. Yeah.

Jeff Winters:

Also you see this, probably more so in more competitive industries, specifically where they know they have to do stuff like this, where it's commodities, credit cards, yeah, easy example, credit cards. Kind of a credit card looks a particular way. It's the exact same size. Scott doesn't know he lost his at the Denver Airport, but, if you remember, but the guy who picked it up, the guy who picked it up, knows you pay the same API

Eric Watkins:

wise in Greece, yeah.

Jeff Winters:

Why do I care? Why do I care about the, you know, the chase ing card versus the cap? Well, because one gives me$50 off Uber, and I get $20 cash back, and I get all this stuff. And I think when you start to look at though that as an example, it's, it's very instructive. We are going, we have, we got nothing else here gang to entice people to use us, other than how the card looks. What's the cachet and what are the benefits? What are the perks? And I think that people could have a tendency to think a little narrow on this, and the credit card companies didn't. Credit card companies like if somebody partnered with us and we said, you know, I know it's not like sales or lead gen or marketing related, but when you partner with us, you get a free four nights at any rates in the country. So like, whoa. Like, I get that. That's not lead gen related, but that's pretty sweet. For being a partner with you, don't think narrowly about your business, because then you're going to give stuff that people may not care about, yeah, think more broadly, like the credit card companies have,

Scott Scully:

and if you're on for a year or two years, or if you're on two services or three services, and the level of membership. And for us, I think because we try to think about how we could do it, having all these different services that we could provide at x level of membership, you could just move in and out of our services. Yeah, yeah. You need help with recruiting. Do that next month. You need a website built over the next three or four months. Put your budget over towards that. But like, the only reason we couldn't do that is because we're not being creative enough to figure out how we can just kind of build that so that the customers get exactly what they want. I'm a member over there. They have all these things they can provide. I pay X amount monthly. If I need something, they let me go get it. Yeah,

Jeff Winters:

you want Eric to come give a motivational speech to your team? Boom, yeah. He's there. Yeah. That'll

Eric Watkins:

cost you this level of membership. That'll cost you,

Scott Scully:

you know, a Friday of one of your months. That's

Jeff Winters:

a Friday of one of your months. Eric, become motivated. Lock that in, lock that in, good seats going fast.

Scott Scully:

But think, don't you think? Don't you think people should think about that though? Yeah. Like, genius there aren't many people that are listening where they're the only one providing the product or service. Most of you are in a very competitive environment, and it continues to be more competitive. So how do you provide next level? And when you do, you. Would probably be a hell of a lot more expensive than the next person, and still have customers for a lifetime.

Eric Watkins:

Here's one interesting thing about about it, because, like, the cynical person would be, like, just provide a better product and service and like, get better. It's really hard to articulate why the specific product that they're buying is why your cert, your customer service, is that much better. It's not hard to articulate for free nights at a Ritz across the country. Like, there's different. There's a benefit to having tangible things that make it we

Scott Scully:

talk about the goose like, Hey, call our accounts here. What are you talking about? Well, we have someone available. 24/7, if you and your wife feel like going out for, you know, a nice dinner, or if you're planning a vacation, just call the number you're a member, like you're a platinum member. You've got the concierge service, you've no worries, yeah, about planning your fun. From here go forward. Someone's like, I'm not leaving because but I think that that would happen. All of the extra things that somebody gets with their membership, plus good service makes you stay, helps, but you're you're good in saying it's hard to different or our services

Eric Watkins:

just yeah, we we care more, okay, we

Scott Scully:

show up when you call us yeah to clean your office, right? Everybody says, Greater we have X mount down dime time, like downtime. It's so did the last three that

Eric Watkins:

we talked to. Yeah, that's right. And that's what a lot of our a lot of the partners we work with, because they're not lying like they provide really good service. And they, when they need to come up with how they're differentiated, they lean on Well, it's just, you got to work with us to understand. It's the customer service. And it's like, that's great. It's very hard to articulate that on the front end with somebody who doesn't know you.

Scott Scully:

And American Express can't say you need the platinum card because we've been around for 50 years, right? Right? It just does not you need the platinum card because of these things? Yeah?

Eric Watkins:

So it's good stuff. You shouldn't even have shared this. That's close. You should have kept this

Scott Scully:

in house, don't you want to give it away? Yeah? Well, we're, we're like that, yeah, we are giving away all the give it out cheat codes, even if it's something we're currently working on. Yeah, that is not in stone. Very often we're sharing things that have been in practice for a long time. That's something we're working on for sure. Eric, what are we? What are we doing in mining for gold?

Eric Watkins:

Nice, nice. Yeah, so mining for growth gold. So just like Scott said, Sometimes we're sharing stuff that we've done and proven, sometimes we're sharing stuff that we're working on, sometimes we're sharing stuff that we're learning. And that's what I'm doing today. I'm going to talk to you about something our our very own EVP of sales enablement, Amy Milner shared with me on a LinkedIn post that she she found, and I do not remember the name, so we can credit that after the fact, but in a cold call, one of the most common things you'll hear is I'm not interested. Right off the bat, you'll hear, I'm not interested. It's almost like there. It's a reflex when you have somebody talk to you about a service I'm not interested in. What do most people say? Some people say, Why? Why aren't you aren't interested. That's actually a school of thought that I've been a part of, like, Okay, you're not interested. Let me understand why. And then some people say, Well, I haven't said anything interesting yet, right? Or something clever like that. The issue with those is that a lot of times it doesn't a, get the person out of the reflex, because they don't really have to think critically. And B, it kind of comes off as a little defensive. So in the post, what they talked about is when they say, you know, I wanted to talk to you about abstract services, and they say, I'm not interested. Oh, it sounds like you've done something like this before. Pause, and it actually gets them to and they will correct you, right? They will say, Well, no, we've actually never tried anything like that. Or they'll say yes, we Yes, we tried that. Or they'll say yes. And then you can clarify, and you can say, hey, I understand most people when they have an answer like that at the beginning of the call, it's because they didn't have a good experience before, and just shut up. And then now you're into you're gonna make them think critically, and they're gonna have to explain themselves or correct you. I thought it was a really interesting take on how to handle this objection. But I think the biggest thing is you're gonna have to craft this depending on the the message that you're delivering, but just, I'm sometimes making an assumptive statement and shutting up and not in sort of in a question like sounds like you've tried this before, and then letting them talk is a great way to get a prospect to open up, versus. Getting them out of that reflex.

Jeff Winters:

I dig that. I dig that. I do my reaction is always to try to make a joke, which is fine, but you can't a you can't not that I'm so funny. You can't teach people to be funny. Like, even if you give somebody a line that should be funny, like delivering it, you know, like in a way, that's the way most people would deliver it that aren't. Like, you can't teach that. And so more often than not, you're right, you're getting either bad funny, not funny, or defensive. And defensive is immediately not getting the critical thinking that's going to drive a pause and a thought and an answer. I think it's a clever idea. I like that.

Scott Scully:

I like the reason I'm slow to answer is I'm just thinking about whether or not that puts you in a puts you in a bucket with everybody else, but, but I get it. I get I just want to do anything to get them to let you talk, and then you can do the job of showing them how potentially doing business with us is not like, yeah, what they've done before. So, yeah, I

Eric Watkins:

think, I think the, you know, how do these situations get handled most the time? So, like, the worst way to handle it, I'm not interested. Well, you should be interested, because we do X, Y and Z, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, better that is, they're just not even listening to you. The second worst way is probably just not even, you know, I haven't said anything interesting yet, like trying to say a line that really has nothing to do with why they're not interested. I think the third best way is just to ask why. Well, why are you, why are you not interested? And see if you can get an answer. But I think some people are good just being like, I don't, I don't want to tell you that. And I thought this was an interesting it's really kind of like asking why, but in a more clever way,

Scott Scully:

I think that that would be good. And maybe a fourth approach is, look, Eric, I get it. I interrupted your day and your flow, and honestly, that's why I'm trying to schedule a meeting for a later day, because the type of people that we're reaching out to, like yourself, are at the top of their game, and, you know, a lot of times they don't need outside help. But what our partners have found is, once they went to the meeting, they saw that this was something that could help them increase their lead even more, you know, less less stress at night, whatever it may be, yeah, right. Just the old, typical feel felt found, which is basic, but if people are good at it, it just works, yeah, right, just acknowledging the fact that they're not interested. And why would they be like, yeah, we're just starting the conversation. But a lot of people, when they gave us just a few minutes to explain, you know, found that we could be super helpful in X, Y or Z area as a fourth, but I can see how that would help too

Eric Watkins:

well. And I think the I love, the feel, felt, found, I'm always a huge fan of that. I think the thing is, you know, we don't even know what the actual objection is yet when they say not interested, that is most of the time. I'm just not interested in talking to you right now. And so ideally, if we can find out what the real objection is, I think that feel folk found is going to land even harder there. But yeah, little thought, little thought, put it into action. This something, you know, we're testing out a little bit on our side.

Scott Scully:

I like it, what is the what's happening so far?

Eric Watkins:

I literally just got this yesterday, so this is talk about fresh off the presses. Yeah.

Jeff Winters:

Feels like are you trying to encroach on my section? I mean, that was a LinkedIn. Anyone else notice that? You know, I

Eric Watkins:

did see. Are

Jeff Winters:

you confused? You

Eric Watkins:

got sections, you got into a little to do or not to do in the LinkedIn section, so I felt like I had to fire back to protect my ground. Oh, it was retaliatory. Retaliatory.

Jeff Winters:

Interesting. Yeah, good to know. Small catch there. Small catch. I

Scott Scully:

don't even know if we voted that as a truth yet to be initiated, yeah, just sort of stick, stay

Jeff Winters:

in our own lanes. Color, it's on our own lines. Go ahead, Scott, introduce me. I'm ready.

Scott Scully:

And now bring me back. We are gonna head over to the sheriff who in this section is not the sheriff? He is the president, the king of sales. Oh, don't

Eric Watkins:

call him the king. It's fine.

Scott Scully:

Who is not open to Eric's feedback? Yeah, I'm

Jeff Winters:

going to tell you this sometimes entails from sales. Sales we do sales reps, we do sales managers, we do sales leaders. This is for sales execs. So a little tip for sales execs, Eric, what's today? What is the date today?

Eric Watkins:

19th, the 19th of September. And just for

Jeff Winters:

the people who listen to this when it's put in the time capsule, what year is it? It is 2024. Excellent. Thank you so much for your help. Now. Why is that an important date? Because last week we announced, and I don't think I'm saying anything confidential, within our exec team, we decided our numbers for what year Scott 2025 we have our numbers for 2025 and it is early September. Now, do we always do it that early? No, we do not. And I would submit to you all that this year, as in as with any year where it's a little potentially somewhat more challenging out there in the macroeconomic environment, fourth quarter's got some uncertainty. We got an election. We got a lot of interest rate talk. You need to, you need to finalize your sales number earlier in the year, because what you might be tempted to do with potential volatility is do some stupid in the fourth quarter without thinking about the ramifications for your 2025 sales year, for example, you might get real short term focused and go, Oh, we should need to cut the sales budget and the marketing budget under this and then that. And then you're gonna get to December and you go, what's the budget for next year for sales? It's like, well, we got to sell twice as much. It was like, Well, shit, we wish we would have thought about that before we let go of five sales people stupidly around Thanksgiving. The point is this to you, sales executives, get your number today. Get your number today, and resist the urge to bite off your nose to spite your face. In the second half of this year, there's going to be uncertainty. There's going to be volatility. You know it. Do not screw up your 2025 before Thanksgiving of 2024,

Eric Watkins:

I think that's really good advice. Like that is a sometimes you don't really bring it in this section, but that's the that's really good advice, because that's happening all right. Now, people are sitting in rooms and they're figuring out, Hey, we didn't sell what we wanted to or profits down a little bit. What could we cut? What could we cut? What could we cut? And they're not thinking about, hey, we have to sell revenue like we have to grow our business next year, and they're just putting themselves. They're going to end up doing it anyway, and they're just going to put themselves behind the eight ball. It's great advice,

Jeff Winters:

yeah. Scott you pine, we did this last week. We never do it this early.

Scott Scully:

We don't finalize it this early, that's for sure. That's what I mean, yeah, um, well, there's a couple of things like it just it gets you motivated to do well in the last quarter, and then it has you not readjusting your budget four or five times between now and the end of the year, and and then it has you thinking about what business is like going forward, like you guys are saying, how many salespeople will we need? Or what's our enablement look like, or what's next year look like if we only have this starting number, which can get ugly, right? You might lose a little profit this year, but maybe your revenue starting point in January, and carrying that out throughout all of next year. It's much more substantial than you making less the last two months of the year. If that makes Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. Makes

Jeff Winters:

total sense, and you're not going to make stupid, because, you know, people are doing, Eric, you said exactly right. People are sitting in rooms in late August and early September, going we're going into the fourth quarter. What are we going to do to hit budget this this month, next month, this quarter, next quarter, without thinking about the negative unintended consequences that are going to happen for next year, when volatility. I'm no macro economist. I'm no fortune teller. Volatility is going to be

Eric Watkins:

less because we we've been in those rooms, right? And who gets celebrated in those rooms? The person's that that's like, oh, well, I could, I could cut this, yeah, I could lose this, or I could cut that. Be the person that is actually standing up in those rooms being like, No, we need this for and we will thank ourselves later for it like be convicted.

Unknown:

Be convicted.

Eric Watkins:

Speak with conviction.

Scott Scully:

Jeff does the convicting. I like it. That's good.

Jeff Winters:

Thank you.

Scott Scully:

It's above average,

Eric Watkins:

but definitely above average does be convicted. Not work there?

Unknown:

I don't think so.

Eric Watkins:

I think it does.

Jeff Winters:

I think it's have conviction. We'll check that. Can we check that? Yeah,

Eric Watkins:

can we fact check that?

Jeff Winters:

Let's fact check that. Yeah.

Scott Scully:

I don't like our fact checkers currently fixing air. Correct Michael, I

Eric Watkins:

know you're not good with data, but in your samples aren't necessarily scientific, but if you don't know for sure, please don't correct me in the future.

Scott Scully:

So funny,

Unknown:

I can't wait till they cut that out of this episode. Oh, absolutely no. We're leaving it

Scott Scully:

absolutely don't cut it. We're going to head into everyone's favorite section, but before we do give us feedback, like we really are doing this, A, because it's fun, but B, which is probably more important, is that we want to provide value to our customers, prospects, people listening. We really do want to make it easier and have you avoid some of the pitfalls that we've run into. So let us know what you like. Anything you'd like us to add. We want to be a resource for you, for sure, and those of you that have been engaging with us. Thank you for that. Now, unfortunately for Jeff and I, who do not have everyone's favorite section, we go over to Eric, who's super arrogant about the fact that everybody loves to do or

Jeff Winters:

not to do or not, do or do not,

Unknown:

there is no cry.

Eric Watkins:

All right. So, God, I love you. We have a fun little trip coming up. We are celebrating our boy, Chris, 40th birthday. Chris and we're going on a little golf trip. And this probably isn't going to be one of those courses where it happens, but a lot of times when you're golfing, if you're like me, your ball ends up in the woods. And every once in a while, you stroll into what I call a little honey pot, you hit that part of the woods that's hanging out a little bit there, and you find like 10 other balls. Now there's a couple different types of people. There's the people that go get their ball, and they're like, I don't want to pick up a ball that's been in the woods or whatever someone else's etc. There's someone that might grab one or two. And then there's the person that would take will take the next hour and pick up every single ball that they could potentially find. Should you pick up as many balls as you could, or do you just grab one or two, or not take any at all? I'm looking at, jeez, God.

Scott Scully:

Well, there's some variables to this. How many balls have you lost in the round so far? Who's behind you? But I did run into this yesterday. I was golfing with my brother, Ben, and I went over, way over to get my ball by the woods, and I noticed there was a couple of balls. And then I noticed, wait, there's a big section of tall grass that was just mowed down. And as I walked forward, there was a ball and another ball and another ball. And I kept picking them up. And now I've got, like, both hands full. So then I start shoving them in my pockets, and then I just kept going. And then I stood there thinking, there's, there's people behind us. Ben's wondering where the hell I am. So I go back, I dump some in the cart, and I go back. I'm up on the green, and he starts laughing, because both of my pockets are full of golf balls. Got them all, and then he got back to the golf cart, and this whole, his whole section in front of him was full of calls too. I'm like, I don't know. I never had that happen before. I just kept seeing balls and I kept picking it up. I will say it's hard to know when to stop. I did stop. I didn't get them all, but then he got back in the cart, and then we started picking up more, because there wasn't somebody right behind us, but like immediately right behind us, it's hard to know when to stop if you run in. It is,

Jeff Winters:

let me broaden this out. This could be pickleballs. I assume could be tennis balls, anywhere where there are woods and there is recreational activity with small you ruined it balls. I'm just trying to make it more interesting for the

Scott Scully:

audience by finding pickleball. Yeah, I've

Jeff Winters:

never played pickleball, but I saw a sport with a fence. So is tennis. You never seen anything hit over a fence.

Eric Watkins:

Every once in a while,

Jeff Winters:

my point is this, don't delay the action. Carry on. I'm not looking in the woods for the pickleballs. I'm not looking in the woods or the water for the golf balls. In golf you may see people with these what appear to be almost fishing rods. They're tiny. There they extend. They become very long ladder. Ask, they're very slender, and you, you, you find balls in the water and you rescue them. No, no, no. Go on about your way. Move on about your business. I was gonna

Eric Watkins:

say it's a red flag.

Scott Scully:

I'm bringing it. It's embarrassing. And I'm gonna use it right on the 18? It's

Jeff Winters:

embarrassing to be around they're embarrassing to have these devices to rescue golf balls from the water. Go on. Move on. About your business. It is not. All of these games are meant to be played with pace. Play them with pace. Do not slow down by looking in the woods or the water or anywhere else.

Scott Scully:

This was in plain view outside of the woods, just laying in the grass.

Eric Watkins:

Did you use the thing the fishing did you

Jeff Winters:

use the fishing rod to fish them out?

Scott Scully:

No, I was shoving them in my pockets as fast as and they were all brand new.

Eric Watkins:

You heard it here. First, pick up the balls and pick up the pace. Do balls at the same time?

Scott Scully:

What do you think that the people behind you would have done? They would

Eric Watkins:

have, yeah, they'd

Scott Scully:

have picked up the ball. They would have, like, Jeff, I'm sorry. However, I've never run into a situation where I was standing in the middle of 50 golf balls.

Jeff Winters:

I don't, I don't delay the game for any reason, for anyone, for any I don't want to search around like I'm looking for a little buried treasure in the woods. It's not the end of the rainbow. There's no leprechauns play your damn game.

Eric Watkins:

Is there any other I'm trying to think, is there anything else out there where it is acceptable to steal someone else's property like it is for golf balls?

Jeff Winters:

It's a good point. I

Eric Watkins:

can't think of one other thing.

Scott Scully:

If you were skiing down the hill and there were people skiing behind you and there was $20 bills, like laid down the hill. Would you just ski over them? Because there were people skiing behind you, and you're like, I'm just, I can't slow the pace on the mountain to pick up. That's

Eric Watkins:

a good that's $300

Unknown:

Yeah, I hear that

Scott Scully:

golf balls are like five six bucks these days. They're expensive. They're expensive,

Jeff Winters:

expensive. Okay, well, that's an interesting point off to ponder that I would would it be? Would it be, would it be improper for me to provide an update on something that happened earlier in the show? No, would that be improper? Because earlier in the show, Eric used,

Eric Watkins:

can we cut this? Can we cut this? Maybe be

Jeff Winters:

convicted. And he was pretty sure that that phrase worked when trying to reference feeling passionate about somebody he it's ironic that he was so spoke about it with so much conviction, especially when it was wrong, because be convicted usually refers to being found guilty of a crime, so it's best to avoid that phrasing. In this context, you might want to say, speak with conviction or be confident in your Oh,

Eric Watkins:

you might want to say it's not, it's not against the rules of grammar to say it's just you might want to say because it gets confused. I don't think that's that sounds like a win for me.

Jeff Winters:

Just a little bit of an update.

Eric Watkins:

Yes, ding, thank you. Let's get out of here.

Scott Scully:

I am sorry. Let us know. Let us know if there's any way that we can help you in your growth. We're excited to be with you. Have an incredible week. Let's grow. Let's grow. Let's grow. I.

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