What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
From Football Dreams to Sales Success: A Journey of Resilience and Redemption
What happens when life throws you a curveball, and your dreams shatter in an instant? Meet Luke Lunkenheimer, a former small-town football hopeful whose path was rerouted by a career-ending injury, leading him into the world of car sales. His journey is nothing short of a Hollywood script—from early success to a surgical mishap that spiraled into addiction and imprisonment. But Luke's story is one of resilience and redemption. With the help of a former boss, he rebuilt his life, discovering a passion for genuine human connection and creating the transformative sales philosophy, "Paid to Persuade." Tune in to explore how embracing authenticity in sales can pave the way to success, no matter the adversity.
We dive into a raw narrative of overcoming addiction, crime, and the struggle for self-redemption. Luke opens up about the chaotic grip of opioid addiction, which led him down a dark path, including orchestrating a bank robbery. His candor sheds light on the relentless hold of addiction and the drastic measures it can drive a person to take. Yet, amid the turmoil, there's a poignant turning point—a cry for help that ultimately becomes an opportunity for transformation. Luke's journey from incarceration to a successful sales entrepreneur spotlights the power of self-awareness and the profound impact of genuine connection in redefining one's path.
This episode challenges conventional sales training, offering a fresh perspective on what it takes to truly succeed. With insights drawn from Luke's own experiences, we question traditional methods that rely on scripts and the flashy allure of social media. Instead, we focus on the importance of authentic engagement, strategic timing, and understanding the psychological aspects of sales. Luke's innovative approach consistently doubles clients' incomes by correcting fundamental sales process mistakes, making his program a potential game-changer for the future of sales education. Join us for an inspiring conversation celebrating resilience, authenticity, and the transformative power of personal growth.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who?
Speaker 1:do you think, all right, another day, another dollar. Another one of my favorite episodes, because I'm biased. It's my own podcast, season four, and I gotta say what a compelling episode. Man, talk about what if it did work? Right here right now I've got a guest that you know. He overcame so many obstacles. I think he read my book even before I wrote it. He's the definition of what if it did work.
Speaker 1:Luke Lunkenheimer. His life reads just like a script, like a Hollywood script, but there's nothing fictional about it. Small town kid, sort of like what John Mellencamp sings about, with dreams of going pro in football, his future came crashing down after a brutal injury. With zero backup plan, he turned to car sales and, by his teens, was pulling in six figures. But success couldn't save him from the chaos that followed. Botched shoulder surgery led to a crippling painkiller addiction. In a moment of desperation, he got caught up in a bank robbery that landed him in prison.
Speaker 1:It was in the cell that luke hit just rock bottom and realized he had a choice let his mistakes define him or fight to rebuild. When he was released, a former boss took a chance on him, loaning him $150K to start a car dealership. Luke poured everything he had into scaling his business to three dealerships worth over $12 million by 2020. But along the way, he discovered that his true passion wasn't cars, it was people. That's how paid to persuade was born a sales philosophy that ditches the hard sell and focuses on real connections. Luke's journey taught him that authenticity is the ultimate sales tool, and now he's showing others how to succeed by simply being themselves. How's it going, luke? It's going well. Man. How are you doing.
Speaker 1:Doing great. You know how. I know you're full of passion. You're a football guy, tonight's the semifinals and you're like, hey, you know what my story me serving people, me wanting people to know about paid to persuade is way more important. I applaud you, man. Congratulations. Thank you, man, congratulations.
Speaker 2:Well, I thank you, brother. I would be lying if I said that my affinity for football had me paying that close attention to those things. You know business has kind of usurped that. But you know I enjoy the occasional football game here and there.
Speaker 1:No problem, man. So how did it start, man? Cause I mean, you definitely look like you work out, so I can tell you're a football player. So where did you go to school, man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's funny, Omar, I wasn't always this big. When I played ball I was a quarterback. Our team had, you know, think of it this way we had a small town, 87 kids in our graduating class, 11 to 13 guys that played both sides of the ball. So it's funny because many people who have met me in the latter part of my life see my size. I'm six, four, 275 pounds, and not a chubby guy for the people who are not seeing, only hearing Um. So you're seeing a big stocky, you know, bralette guy. That was not me in high school. I was six, two. I was 185 pounds. I just had a cannon. I could throw the football. You know, like, like uncle Rico says in Napoleon dynamite, I could throw a football over the mountains, right.
Speaker 1:You could throw it over the mountain, man yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, at the end of the day it was uh, it was. You know, football was the way you got out of that small town. If you wanted to try to get out, you wanted to get an education. Either you had wealthy parents, which I did not have, or you played a sport and got a scholarship. So that was, that was my ticket out, and that's why I pursued that path at that time.
Speaker 1:Did you get the scholarship or did you get the devastating injury before?
Speaker 2:So I got the scholarship and then I got the devastating injury and you know as the story goes, it was a division two school. Truth be told, I wasn't like a LeBron James or a Michael Jordan level athlete. I was a strong, tall, high-jumping, fast-running country boy who could throw the football a long ways and get hit hard and get back up. So Division II universities in the area they were prone to picking up country boys to play football and kind of kick the can around the field. I was given an academic scholarship because as a Division II school they don't give athletic scholarships. But it was very well understood that my prowess on the football field is what got me that scholarship. I was a high 80s student at best and it was even highlighted even further that that was the case when I destroyed my shoulder and I lost the scholarship, or at least a very significant portion of it. So that meal ticket was lost as soon as the shoulder came dislocated man. Then all the dreams came crashing down.
Speaker 1:Now was it. Was it dislocated? Dislocated playing football, practicing football or just fucking around?
Speaker 2:right, that's smack in the middle of a football game. So, like I said, we play both sides of the ball so I dropped back. I dropped back. The quarterback from the other team had spotted my guy coming across the center. Third, I saw him key on my guy and I committed I say my guy, we were playing zone, but he came into my zone and I saw the quarterback key on him and I was just in a great position. I read it well I picked up a very good head of steam and collided with the guy and made a tremendous hit. It was a highlight reel type of hit, but it was also devastating. I was a tall, lean guy. I wasn't made for hard hitting and you know you ask yourself why would you have your quarterback playing free safety? This was a situation where the school was so small. You know you put your best players where they could do the best work on the football field and that's where I did best. So it was an injury mid-game that crashed the dreams.
Speaker 1:Oh, I hear you, I, I know all about division two, just because, uh, my oldest daughter was at a crossroads of either playing soccer division two or na naia, which is like, I guess, division three and she saw the campuses and whatnot and she's like, yeah, no, I'll, I'll go to a big school and you know, hang up the cleats. So, but okay, they kicked you out Cause pretty much you couldn't pay. They're like, hey man, that academic scholarship, let's be real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got a letter and it basically said due to budget restrictions, you know we're unable to offer the same scholarship package and I had. You know my grades had gone from an 88 to an 86.7 or something. So if you were to go back and look at the documented history, they would tell you that the downward fluctuation in grades is what you know lost me the majority of the scholarship Of course, but you know there's politics and everything, and it's pretty obvious what the reason was.
Speaker 1:Well. But, dude, you had to go through all that to get to here. You know the universe, nothing comes easy. So it was that path, man, because, let's say, you know you would have had your, you would play division two ball, you would have gotten a degree from somewhere and you wouldn't have been the sales guy, you wouldn't have had three dealerships. So you know that adversity. That door closed because you had to go. Yeah, did you have to go through hell to get through it? Yes, you did. Yes, you did. And look at you now You're helping other people, you're servicing other people. Now, why did you want to be a car salesman? Was it because of grant cardone's path years ago? Or you're just like?
Speaker 2:no, it's. It's funny you bring up grant cardone as be. You know, in the late 2000 teens I think 17 or 18, something like that I saw grant cardone on social media. I said, man, I recognize that voice, who is guy? And I was reminded when he went into some conversation about automotive sales training that I had heard this voice before in my dad's 1997 Ford Explorer demonstrator from his automobile dealership that he worked at. My grandfather was a Ford dealer, dad was a Ford dealer. It was a dynasty of car dealers in my family.
Speaker 2:I was the guy that was going to break the curse and go play football and, you know, make it big and get a degree. But when the when the injury happened and I lost the scholarship, it was kind of the natural course of action. I was, you know, I had to take the proverbial year off, try to find out, you know, a way to solve the situation. So for me it was get a job, get insurance, get a shoulder surgery, patch the thing back together, do some physical therapy and rehab and try to get back on the football field. But you know that obviously took a drastic turn for the not so good. But that's what landed me in the car business.
Speaker 1:Well, sales, man. Sales is what makes the world go round and what people don't realize. I mean, I made more money in sales as I did with my two degrees my two degrees, I could wipe my ass with it. That, and $2.50 could get me a copy of the USA Today. So anybody always looks down upon sales. They're fucking idiots. I mean, think about it. Zig, Ziglar, Grant Cardone, all these sales. It's because, man, any major corporation too, it's the salespeople. Even they joke about it in movies. It's definitely not engineering or anything.
Speaker 1:If you want your product, the quickest way to get out of that, the quickest way to get out of hell, is sell. And we're all salespeople, Even those that think they suck. They had to lie to somebody to marry them. They had to sell somebody to hire them. We're all salespeople, Even those that think they suck. They had to lie to somebody to marry them. They had to sell somebody to hire them. We're all salesmen, we're all in sales. So yeah, that's funny, man. I just bring up GC because I know he was a car sales guy and when I think of sales I think of either Zig or. But you already have that sales background in you. You just from your family.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, grant's the original G when it comes to car sales training. I think everybody that is in that ecosystem aligns the original gangster of car sales training with Grant Cardone, joe Verde, zig Ziglar these guys what's funny when you say the big sales guys Zig Ziglar, grant Cardone, you know? How about Jeff Bezos? How about Elon Musk? These are guys you know. If you really think about sales at its core, these are individuals that had to convince rooms of shareholders. They had to convince capital investors. People who are incredibly intelligent, have terrific business acumen, can smell BS coming from a mile away. They got those guys to invest millions and billions of dollars into their businesses. Those are the biggest salespeople in the world.
Speaker 2:You know, warren Buffett was asked by a group of individuals I think they were Harvard students that were in. I don't know if there was some sort of internship. I don't want to misquote it, but the story goes like this. They asked him. He said Mr Buffett, they were in a Q and a and they asked him what, what is it? What is one tip? The word they used was tip and they were referring to like a stock tip. What is one tip that you could give us that would make us a million dollars the quickest. And he said the he goes, learn to sell. And he went on to explain to them that the ability to persuade and to influence individuals to see things your way is the single most powerful skill you can possess in business, and I think anybody that's got a sales background or has used persuasion or influence to leverage their career or their business to a higher height can tell you that without that ability they would never have reached the planes that they're at.
Speaker 1:So for me, sales goes a lot deeper than a grant cardone, word track or or a zigzag process well, dude luke friggin, think about this man, the wealthiest man, because that one time it wasn't him giving out billions throughout his life. Warren Buffett, he didn't have his Harvard degree up on this wall. He has his frigging Dale Carnegie. How to persuade, how to speak to people, how to win friends?
Speaker 2:and influence people.
Speaker 1:Exactly yeah that that's selling right.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:When I saw, when I saw your publicist and I saw everything paid to persuade, it was like bring it, man, because we're completely aligned, because people you know people lie to themselves and they say, oh, I can't sell. Or they're like, as sales, is someone selling timeshared to me? And it's like no man, everything. And you're right, if, if, when you say Elon Musk, think about how many times he had to sell. Yeah, he had to sell for PayPal, so then he, he had to sell for Tesla, then SpaceX and now the president, he had to sell him ultimately.
Speaker 2:So yeah, man persuasion, yeah, brother it. It really boils down to this. When you tattoo something with a negative understanding of the marketplace, when you give individuals a preconceived notion from nearly birth, I mean you can get into as as young as middle school, late grade school, middle school, into frosh years of high school and you'll hear references to salespeople, snake oil salesmen, used car salespeople. There are ASAPs fables that reference that. There's Shakespearean plays that reference that in in the, in that the individual who is the salesperson trying to sell the product, like the the the knife sharpener, moving house to house in the Mark Twain books, like it was always. The understanding was always that the salesperson was the nefarious, malicious actor who was using manipulation to get you to do something you didn't want to do, that also had a financial deficit to it. Now is that a reality? Yes, that exists all over, but it's like saying tattoo artists are not artists because everybody gets a kiss lips and a mom or a skull and a crossbones or a devil cross. It's a portion of it, it's a subset of it, but it's not what it is at large. Right. Tattooing is using the skin as a canvas and some of the most beautiful artwork that you can find in the world exists on the backs of individuals.
Speaker 2:Sales is any discourse that occurs between two human beings, where one human being persuades the other to a desire to end. That is it. It's not always financial gain, it's not always a tangible asset, it's simply persuasion and influence. It's a sale. It is a transaction occurring, and if people really step back and take a look at it, they'll understand that police officers are salespeople, that priests are salespeople, that grocery store clerks are salespeople. Anybody that's got to talk to you and engage in conversation to influence the outcome of the conversation is a salesperson. So we are all, in fact, by definition, salespeople at some point in our life.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, when everybody has that stereotype, the typecasting from Hollywood, then we can always put it, push it this way. I mean that's like saying every doctor just wants to. There's doctor death, all those movies on on real doctors that you know have purposely killed, does that mean all of them? No man, there's just. There's always a bad in every industry yeah, you know, is every financial advisor and saponzi schemes, dude.
Speaker 1:But you know, people just go for that and like, literally, yes, there's always a sales. The guy that sold the encyclopedias when I was a little kid, the guy that sold the vacuum cleaner, yes, that's a sales guy. But, man, that's the ultimate To me, that's the OG man. When you can go door to door and hear and know whether it's Cutco, and I know Cutco and all, there's still companies that go door to door B2B man to me, I've done all selling and you know cold calling, who cares? Somebody tells you you're a fucking idiot, you're an asshole, you're a piece of shit. Okay, hang up next.
Speaker 1:But you know, when somebody's berating you and you're sweating your ass off and you look like Patrick Ewing because you're like on your third shirt, because it's hot as hell, and you know you have another three hours of canvassing, yeah, man, to me, my hat's off to that person. That person is getting his badge. Man, and that's pretty much how a lot of salespeople start is, you know, at entry level? Yeah, dude, I have to ask you, luke, because I I know we're gonna get away from the selling, but this is compelling man, nobody from. How did you go from all that? You're addicted to pain pills. I get it, man. I mean it's easy. But then you, you, you were involved in the bank robbery and went to prison how did all that happen, dude I?
Speaker 2:was not involved. I robbed a bank. I walked in, I held the place up and I walked out with a bag of cash. That was was. That was pretty involved. That was it.
Speaker 1:It was. I thought you were going to say, hey, you know what? I was in the car or you know the? I was influenced. I drank the Kool-Aid and I was hypnotized.
Speaker 2:I was the guy brother way. It goes something like this and just to optimize for brevity, I was addicted to opiate narcotics. These are Percocets, oxycontin, hydrocodone, you know, synthetic opioids. Okay, they have a very physical hold on you as an individual. When you're addicted, it's very difficult to get off them, not only because the mental addiction and the euphoric feeling of being on the drug solves a lot of mental and physical pain, which is why people get addicted, but when you've been using them for a duration, you become physically dependent on them. You actually become significantly ill if you don't have the narcotic in your body. So I was in a vicious cycle of wanting to rid myself of the addiction. But I would have a couple of good days where I would have the willpower and I would not take the pills. And then third or fourth day, you know, the dopamine is down, the serotonin levels are low, I'm depressed, not to mention the bones are aching, the fever comes back, the nose is running. You know you're crapping your pants. I mean, this is reality of opiate withdrawals. So unfortunately, I was a slave to these drugs for a significant period of time, both mentally and physically. Now what does that cause you to do? Imagine if you wake up in the morning and you know that if you don't have this particular substance that you're going to be deathly ill, you can't go to work, you can't make love to your girl, you can't even drive your car because it hurts to hold the steering wheel. You're ultimately debilitated. Okay, you then, if you're an individual like me, who is a self-sufficient human being and is generally a high energy individual, I'm going to figure it out.
Speaker 2:And for me, figuring it out was doing whatever was necessary to put the money in my pocket to go obtain the drug. And it started with the prescription. And then it was well, I need more than the prescription because that doesn't hold me. So it was sell this prescription to get more money to get more of that prescription. And then it was okay, use the powers of negotiation to find a crooked pharmacist to write me prescriptions but to fill prescriptions rather than it was find the coordinator of the local Kenny drugs VA warehouse to divert prescriptions into totes that are marked expired so we can pull them from the dumpster of the building and pay him a thousand dollars to go sell them and get what we need.
Speaker 2:It was a decade, bro. It was a decade of a very Quentin Tarantino ask film. I mean, if you were to watch my life from the age of 21 to 29, it's an entertaining tale. It would tell you two things. Number one, that drug addiction makes an individual do things that you would never imagine doing when sober. And it tells you that the hold that that substance has over an individual causes them to do things they would never normally do.
Speaker 2:So now, fast forward, 10 years later. You know, lost the girlfriend, lost the job, everything's going to. I don't have a car, don't have a license, ultimately a bum, a junkie bum, sleeping from couch to couch under the bridge If it's warm enough, out in an, in a recyclable dumpster, if I can find shelter and it's not too cold outside. Just just nonsense. The end of the road. And I was never suicidal. So it was.
Speaker 2:I needed to influence change and consciously it was I need money to get drugs because I'm out of drugs and I'm going to be sick by the morning. Subconsciously, I can tell you now in hindsight that it was. I have to do something to influence change and take control from myself. So the conscious mind was knocking over the bank to get 10 grand to buy change and take control from myself. So the conscious mind was knocking over the bank to get 10 grand to buy drugs and move. The subconscious mind was robbing the bank to hopefully get caught, get put in cuffs and be forced to sweat it out in a jail cell. And the aforementioned held true. For about seven days. I was on the run. I got away with it free and clear. The money was mine.
Speaker 2:Day seven, I started to you allow myself to, let's just put it this way it was obvious that I wasn't doing my best to not get caught, and the landlord that owned the home we were living in started to put two and two together and she you know, she, she ratted me out, if that's the nomenclature you want to use.
Speaker 2:But ultimately, to answer your question, how do you go from there to theiration, the inability to function without a physical, without a narcotic in your body, and absolute desperation of having nothing really left and having to influence change somehow. And as far as the bank is concerned, there was just something that lived in me from a young age that I thought it would be pretty bad-ass to rob a bank. So I'm, you know, perusing the streets in my girlfriend's car. I get a wild feather up my ass and I say, well, if I robbed that bank right there, I'll have plenty of money for drugs. Let's give it a shot. Park the car, go home. I put on a different change of clothes. I strategically placed the vehicle I go in. I robbed a bank, I get out, I'm on the run for five days blowing 10 grand on drugs, and the rest is history, man, and and everything else that comes with it so literally you were you.
Speaker 2:You risk your life for only 10k dude yeah, 100, and at the time I thought it was a great idea.
Speaker 1:Like the, movies where you, you, you ran off with like 200k in a duffel bag or anything, only 10k there is quite literally no situation in present date that equates to anything that you see in the movies.
Speaker 2:Those are all done for entertainment. There's no. That dynamic doesn't even exist. There's no ear to the safe. You know using the welding or the the the plasma torch to cut the hole, with you know Val Kilmer cutting the safe open while Robert De Niro stands in the alleyway and looks both ways. It just doesn't happen. It's a thing of the past. It did occur from time to time. The reason you saw it in the movies and it was sensationalized is because the one, two or three times that it did happen in the relatively present-day 80s and 90s were so notable and significant and so glamorous that they did make movies about it. That they did make movies about it.
Speaker 2:But your modern day bank robbery brother is a junkie walking into a place saying give me the money, because they know the bank policy says no violence. If they ask for it, they demand it. Give it to them, save the day, make sure everybody is out of harm's way. And that's what they did. I knew it full well. I researched the bank's policies online. I walked in. I said give me the money. I know you got to.
Speaker 2:It's obvious what this is, the way I'm dressed like, let's get it done. Walked out of there with 10 K. But to answer your question, man, $10,000 was a fortune to me at that time. I was stealing and robbing and risking my life for far less than $10,000. I I, I, strong arm robbed a drug dealer in the upper West side excuse me, upper East side of Syracuse and what's referred to as the bricks, and went into hand-to-hand combat over a bottle of methadone pills and got shot at. I've got a scar in my left ankle from a 22 shell over a couple pills. So yeah, 10 grand wasn't a problem risk in my life for.
Speaker 1:So then what? But what you're you're telling me too. Also, since you're with your girlfriend, she didn't become the future Mrs Luke Lunkenheimer either.
Speaker 2:No, not her, no, her, no.
Speaker 1:the woman was with me at that time because if it was your wife or any sane woman, when you're like, hey, while we rob a bank, you know she'd be like are you fucking kidding me? You know she would. She'd put you on house arrest, man.
Speaker 2:So it's funny, the woman that I was with the time, both her and her father and her sister frankly, omar, they thought it was pretty sexy what I did. And when I was locked up and when they came in, I recall it plain as day, you know she looked at me and she's in tears and she knew because I had admitted to her that I had done it. And you know, her dad came in there and he looked at me and he says I got to hear you say it, I got to hear you say it, you did it. And I looked at him I said yeah, brian, I did it. He goes geez, you got a pair of balls, man, that's bad.
Speaker 2:And she slapped him on the leg and said dad, shut up. It's so far removed from even the deepest recesses of their consciousness of even thinking to do something like that. When you've done it and you're the guy that knocked over the bank, it's almost like you're a celebrity in their, in their, you know, in their presence, and that's not the right way to look at it. It was incredibly harmful, I did, you know, it was incredibly dangerous. But there's just some things. You know. It's also not the right thing to do to jump a dirt bike over 10 school buses, but people think that's pretty damn cool too, so it's kind of got that effect.
Speaker 1:Dude, I'm 51. So when you say stuff like that, it's evil Knievel or Robbie Knievel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Clearly we wouldn't do it, but it's like, yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 2:Surely watch Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'll watch someone else do it. That's cool. You want to jump the fountains of Caesar's palace? Yeah, yeah, that's that's bad-ass.
Speaker 2:Not only will I watch it, I'll gladly bet on the outcome.
Speaker 1:Exactly, Exactly. But, Luke, what was? When did you have this come to Jesus moment that you're like man, shit's not going right. I Was it in prison or was it when you were released?
Speaker 2:I was absolutely in prison. It wasn't even in prison, it was in county jail. So before I went upstate in New York to the correction system the state correction system I was in the county jail awaiting sentencing, and that's when I finally started to sober up a little bit. And about three months in it's amazing how long it takes for opiates to leave the body. But two to three months in I was finally like wow, waking up, actually having some mental clarity, actually not having deep bone aches and have to sit on the toilet for a half an hour in the morning before I could even leave the cell Like the evil had left the body.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden it was waking up and I could hear the bird chirp and I could hear the Metallica playing on the CO's headphones as he walked by and I was starting to notice things that had gotten lost in the fog of drug and you know the narcotic stupor that you get in when you're addicted to drugs and you're using them habitually, day to day. And I started to then realize the ripple effects of my actions. I started to then realize my God, how were her children affected by this? I started to then ponder what pain have I put my father and my sister through. When they've had to kind of sweep up my messes and be confronted as you're the son, the one that robbed the bank Like you, begin to realize that your actions have far greater consequences than you just sitting there in that 10 by six cell.
Speaker 2:And you know, the come to Jesus moment was when I realized that I was in this cell and the world was still spinning, that my influence on the outcome of anything didn't matter. I was locked away. Quite frankly, there was only maybe one or two people in the entire world that cared, and I started to think about the amazing people that I'd met in my life and people that I had known that have achieved greatness, and then passed on just the lines and lines and lines of people at their funeral, and I realized that if I were to pass away right now and be killed in prison and they were to hold a, a a funeral for me, there may be four to eight people that would show up, and they would do so likely out of guilt and feeling like it was the right thing to do, not wanting to be there. And that was the come to Jesus moment, when I realized I had nothing to offer the world in this current state, that there was no need for my existence, that if I were to be killed and die off, that it would affect hardly anything or anyone. And that's when I realized that I needed to make a change.
Speaker 2:Because it wasn't about money, it wasn't about being the top of the social totem pole, it wasn't really about anything other than just simply enjoying your life and having a positive effect on the lives of others. This is what existence really is about, and everybody has their own understanding of what life and success is. But and my, my that that doesn't. That's not in totality what I believe life is, but I can tell you it's a significant portion of it. And when you've done nothing but reached or or cultivated negativity in the lives of other people, you realize that you're living isn't even worth living Like there's no, there's no point of being here and again, that your living isn't even worth living Like there's no point of being here and again. I've never been the suicidal type. I've always been far too narcissistic to consider leaving this earth. There's too much to discover and learn. But you know, the come to Jesus moment was realizing nobody gave a shit. I was gone, it didn't matter, and I wanted to matter.
Speaker 1:Luke Lankenheimer paid to persuade the bank robber not the bank robber, but just a bank robber to becoming the sales icon. Dude, that that's amazing. How long, though? How long were you sentenced? How long did it did you till you finally got out? And how long from rock bottom you're out of prison to turn it all around.
Speaker 2:So people get upset when they hear how little time I did in prison. But you understand, you know lately we've seen these bail reform laws and you know guys can go out and knock over a 7-Eleven and they get an appearance ticket and they go to, you know, to the strip club later. Excuse me, that's unfortunately the cadence of things in New York state. At the time that I committed that crime, which is about over a decade ago now, there was much more harsh laws and penalties. However, when you're an admitted drug addict, there was legislation at that point where if you just threw your hands up and said, listen, I did this because I'm stuck on dope, I need help, I'm willing to do what's necessary, they would put you in a program and if you successfully completed that program and showed them, you know I'm I'm serious about getting better. I want to be a participating member of society. I want to get off these drugs. I want to do the right thing. As long as you follow through, they're actually very easy on you.
Speaker 2:So I did a total between the county time and the state time of my whole criminality career. It was just over two years, but that particular bid for that bank robbery was only one year. It was only one year that I spent locked up and, I believe, even a couple of days shy of the one year mark, and it was because I chose, I elected, to go into what's called a shock incarceration program, which basically you live in a paramilitary boot camp hell for six months and if you can hack it they let you out on parole early. So I did. I maxed out on parole, which meant I was given a one to three indeterminate sentence, which means you go to prison for a year.
Speaker 2:If you screw up in prison, you can do up to a year in prison, but if you do okay in prison, you can be let out and you can do two years on probation a year in prison, but if you do okay in prison, you can be let out and you can do two years on probation. When you go to a shock camp, they actually let you off parole three months into your parole sentence for whatever reason, and I think it was because the nature of my crime. It was a very high profile crime in my area at the time. The district attorney had a lot of pressure on him from the media and from people and families of the workers of the bank to keep me put away. They maxed out my parole, so I did three years under the supervision of the state of new york. Um, but one year was was when I was incarcerated luke.
Speaker 1:In the grand scheme of things, man, since you mentioned metallica to another singer, marilyn manson, wasn't you man? Yeah, it was the drugs man. You didn't like the drugs, but the drugs liked you man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to say that, Omar, but I liked the drugs.
Speaker 1:You're a hardened criminal, dude. And you read stories and clearly, people don't think Everybody watches all these movies on Netflix. They love to stream and they're like this can't happen to me, addiction can't happen to me. Addiction can't happen to me, dude, addiction comes from all walks of life. You're from a small town, stereotypical, only addicts are like from the hood, gangs and shit like that. But, dude, all walks of life, women, men, kids. It happens, man, and it wasn't you. I mean, clearly, if you're a sound mind and clearly, if you're with the right woman, that shit would have never happened, man. So that's why, yeah, you served your time. You, clearly, you're productive.
Speaker 1:Not only productive, but, dude, most people when they find success, they live in scarcity mode. They're not thinking how can I be in service, how can I help people, how can I create a program? Like paid to persuade? Most people are like I have my money, I'm out the effing door and who cares? So you've changed your life in many ways. Yeah, you were completely selfish and narcissistic when you were robbing banks, when you were popping pills, but, man, I applaud you, man, dude, because so many people what they do, because I love the nitty-gritty. We're going to start talking about the sales process. Most people go to instagram, facebook, social media. They think they're going to go from zero to hero off of some fucking program.
Speaker 1:Because oh, hey man, I was mowing lawns like three months ago. But if you want to become a better salesman, if you want to become a better marketer, I'm living in La Jolla. I have a mansion now for only $300. Send it my way. And so many frigging people, man, are bamboozled into bullshit, yep. So I applaud you, man. I definitely applaud you for paid to persuade. I love the fact. Applaud you, man. I definitely applaud you for paid to persuade. I love the fact that one of your rules authenticity.
Speaker 1:You know connection. When you can connect, dude, we're talking, we're having a normal conversation, like if we've known each other forever. That's selling Having a conversation. You know so many people buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Or you know they do go on Instagram or Facebook. Well, maybe I follow this random guy and I'll just start liking his posts and I'll be like buy from me. Whoa man? Oh, buy from me because I'm here. I'm a millionaire and I'm here to help you. Well, mother Teresa, why thank you, by all means? But yeah, man, so you created this system. Now paid to persuade. Clearly, this is for everybody. This isn't just the specialized auto industry. If I want to sell Hyundais or Hondas, go from mom and pop to owning 10 dealerships.
Speaker 2:Yep, paid to persuade, is a program that is meant to do a few things. We have some very foundational and fundamental teachings. One is we call the three C's content, confidence and cadence. You mentioned something about the great gurus and influencers of social media. Unfortunately, social media has such a grasp on the marketplace right now that it affords individuals with no experience and no efficacy the opportunity to look like gurus, as long as they're willing to spend the appropriate ad dollars. The people who have positioned themselves as leaders in this space are simply people who have deep pockets and investors. They can buy a lot of ad space.
Speaker 2:If you actually look at the fundamentals of the sales trainings that are offered at large in the marketplace, you will discover they are primarily and largely what I call talk training. This is the word track, this is the script. They say this, you say that, and most of the advertisements you find are I made $7.4 million in my sales career using this system and you can too. And the answer is no. You can't. You cannot replicate the outcome of another individual in a career that requires you to be conversational. A conversation has already happened. They would like you to believe that there's particular frameworks and scripted phrases that you can use in every conversation that will hold true and solve for the sale every time. And it's just not true. And the messed up part, omar, is people know that. People know that People have logic and common sense. The problem is, the biggest sales trainers in the world right now are the best marketers. That's all it is. They have the ability to convince you and convey a message that plays on certain parts of your emotion, that has you think well, there's an easy route to being effective in sales. It has you think well, there's an easy route to being effective in sales. And the reality of that is there is an easier route to be good in sales, but there is no easy route to be elite level in sales. Sales is far simpler than a lot of people would like you to believe. Okay, it really just requires you to flush out the majority of normal objections like time, money, third party, at the outset of the conversation. If there's an elephant in the room, let's get it out, let's talk about it and let's move on.
Speaker 2:But sales trainers would like you to believe that it's far simpler than that. They're going to, you're going to. They want you to show your product, present your product, do your test drive, do your demo, whatever, and then ask for the clothes and when that individual says no, I want to think about it, you say this when they say no, I want to talk to my wife, you say this when they say no, the price is too high. Well, you rebuttal with this, when the reality is, if you're a good salesperson, you're not getting those objections in the first place. Nobody in my training stable, the people that I train no one deals with those objections. People that I train no one deals with those objections, not even close. They would laugh at you If you said, hey, how do you deal with, uh, I don't have enough money? They would say I don't, even I don't deal with that.
Speaker 2:We, we, we solved that in the first five minutes of the conversation and there are frameworks that you can use. There are things we use called time gates, where you can influence the customer's thinking in that if they were to engage sooner, there's a positive outcome for them and it's a discovery tool. It's not a closing tool. Everything about effective sales has to do with compassionate interrogation at the outset of the conversation. The more information you can get the customer to divulge at the beginning, the far more effective and more streamlined, you can get to a profitable, more efficient close.
Speaker 2:And I tell you, brother, there's not a single sales trainer other than myself in the world who guarantees the outcome of their training. Not Grant Cardone, not Zig Ziglar, not Andy Elliott, not Jeremy Miner, not any of these big names that have positioned themselves as authorities in the space. You know, and I brought up those names not out of malicious intent, just simply because they are the names. When you go on social media and you look around, that's what resonates Because, quite frankly, it's directly relative. If you now Google Facebook ads manager, active ads campaign and Google who has the most Facebook ads out there, you will see that the names that are considered the authorities in sales training are simply the ones spending the most ad dollars. So the aim of our company is to do it organically. We're going to market, but we're not going to try to usurp the marketplace, putting ourselves in front of your face the most. We want our testimonials and the people that we train who are winning, to be the ones that you can't get off your screen.
Speaker 1:So, with your sales training with all your clients. You're not wearing like tight pants and screaming at them, are you?
Speaker 1:there's a guy that's got the market cornered on that okay, yeah, I, I mean, I look at that and it's funny because I I look at his content and you know, I for a short time I I unfortunately worked at value attainment so with, and I saw, saw him at a couple of patrick bett david events and everybody fawning over that and it's like why I I've never I maybe I'm old, but I'm not going to pay someone to tell me I'm a loser, I'm a fat ass, I'm a piece of shit and I should thank you. Well one. You're wearing clothes that are way too tight on you and condescending. It's like dude, it's not like. Thank you, sir. Can I have another one man, I'd be like get the fuck out of here, man.
Speaker 1:You're a clown man.
Speaker 2:There are individuals that and you know, I was interested in that as well and there's other people on social media who who behave in the same way, who have tremendous followings. What you need to understand and what people need to understand is the majority of that following are not their tribe. If you were to break down and kind of study for lack of a better word the followers, you will find that 80 of them are there for entertainment purposes.
Speaker 2:They think the videos are entertaining, they think they're funny, they like watching oh, that's one of the other people the, the true members of what marketers would call their tribe about 20%, about two people out of 10 think that that's the way forward. The rest of them are just there to get a laugh. It's like Howard Stern. Back, when Howard Stern was coming onto the scene there was. He had about a 50-50 going. 50% of the people were there because they loved him. The other 50% were there because they hated him. The other 50% were there because they hated him, but regardless they were there.
Speaker 2:Somebody like you're referring to has far less attention. You know you're talking a couple million followers. You know there's 328 million people in the United States, so it's less than a third of a percent of the country who even knows who that individual is. Okay, but the ones that do are the ones that have social media and they generally communicate with one another. So they compound this thought process that this person is an innovator and a thought leader. And it's because, like I referenced before, they have advertised appropriately, they have tremendous marketing departments, they know how to position themselves in front of as many people who will talk about them as they can, and that's how they create that prowess in the marketplace. But as far as efficacy is concerned, I will. I will maintain my professionalism, but I would say, if you're curious of the efficacy of of those type of programs, simply reach out to the people who have taken them, and if you ask 10 people, I think you'll get a temperature very, very quickly of how effective those programs are.
Speaker 1:You're going to laugh, dude. I drank the Kool-Aid years ago, most of these gurus. That's why I do videos on Dude. You don't need that bullshit. You don't need to put $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 into all these programs. Man, it's just common sense and it's just really a pyramid scheme because, like, okay, no, yes, we didn't teach you anything here, but the next program, that's where the golden ticket is and you're like oh okay, well, uh, I'm a slow learner dude.
Speaker 1:It took me a lot of money and a lot of years. Oh well, I well, this is it. This is it, man. This is the key. And, yeah, I've tried every guru imaginable and you can put them all in that, most of them in that description.
Speaker 2:I would tend to agree with that, omar, and this is really what we've solved for in sales training. Okay, we have the solution and it's not about a person, it's not me, it's the information. Okay, what I mean by that is I did an exercise last night while I was lifting weights in my home gym and I went to chat GPT and I said chat GPT. I would like you to be completely unbiased. I would like you to erase your memory of any previous conversations that we've had, of conversations about sales, sales training or, quite frankly, anything. And then it does a little thing where it says memory updated and I said, okay, moving forward, I would like you to peruse the internet and I would like you to tell me what the most effective acronym or what the, what, the, what the. I think I asked it for what is the best acronym in sales training and it gave me ADA, a-i-d-a, which is a commonly known acronym. It's I couldn't even tell you what it is, I'd have to look it back up on my phone. But I said okay, and, and I and I it was eight. It was attention, interest, desire, action. And I said, okay, this. I said this seems this. This doesn't seem relative to sales training. It seems more relative to just general overall sales knowledge. And I said, yes, that's correct. And I said, if I said what acronym best represents the most effective components needed for effective sales training, what would the answer be? And chat GPT said and you see me, I'm reading from my phone said the best acronym to represent the most affecting components needed for effective sales training is CCC Content, confidence and cadence. It goes on to explain what those three things are. These three components content, confidence and cadence are critical for success in sales because they align with both the salesperson's preparation and their ability to connect emotionally with customers, as taught in paid-to-persuade training paid to persuade training.
Speaker 2:Openai's ChatGPT 4.0 believes that my content, confidence and cadence framework is the most effective acronym when it comes to the components necessary for effective sales training. That's straight from the mouth of ChatGPT and if you ask it that same line of questioning yourself, it will give you the same answer. I've tried it with a couple of my friends just to make sure this wasn't a fluke. That occurred because it's learned off of my data. So what does that mean? That means and it holds true, omar, for places far wider than sales. It reaches far wider than sales. But if we're speaking, you know if I'm going to preach inside the pulpit here, I'm going to just keep it on sales Content. You have to have a framework by which you execute. It doesn't matter if it's my framework, it doesn't matter if it's the next guy's framework, but every time you enter into a sales now there's obviously ones that are more effective than others, and I believe mine is the most effective and you know, the data proves that. But I digress. Having that framework meaning every time you approach a sales conversation, you're compartmentalizing it in the same way Step one is here. Once I complete step one get to step two, so on and so forth until I move to strike.
Speaker 2:The reason for that. There's many, many reasons for that. The two most important ones are you're able to manage your conversations much better because it comes naturally, because there's a cadence to it, You're used to doing it and you remember it. It doesn't require you to go to deep recesses of your brain to try to pull phrases and word tracks from somebody else. Okay, and and and. The other thing. Frankly, when, when you're talking about the outset of the conversation is when you have a framework to go by, you can measure your results. If you don't do the same thing every time, you're going to have different results as the outcome of your conversations. But there's no way to know if you're getting better, getting worse, need to make adjustments if you're not adhering to a framework. Okay. So the ability to interact reflexively and the ability to measure the outcome are why it's so important to have content your framework.
Speaker 2:The next is confidence Salespeople, if you've ever sold before and you said you've sold everywhere, you know for a fact and I encourage you to refute this if you believe so, but you know for a fact as well as I do that the most confident salespeople are the best. They are the best because they're confident, because of the outcomes that they have achieved and they move forward knowing that they can get the desired outcome. The confidence, the ability to engage authentically that's what it boils down to. When you're confident, you can engage authentically. When you're not confident, you rely on word tracks, you rely on scripts. You, um, you, ah, you, er, you use filler words and you don't come across authentically. Your vocal tonalities and your vocal cadence are not strong, and that the disengagement rate for a consumer who feels as though the person they're talking to is either scripted or robotic is 70% disengagement. So the data is there to drive this. This, this point, okay. The third thing is cadence, not vocal cadence. The cadence of your practice, okay, not vocal cadence. The cadence of your practice, okay.
Speaker 2:If a salesperson is not role-playing, if a salesperson is not practicing, is not going through their framework. We have an online sales training platform that we use and if our salespeople are not daily spending time in that platform, taking training, taking modules, and they're not role-playing with either the AI tool or somebody else who is their peer, every single day, there is no way they're going to reach their potential. Furthermore, the statistics are as follows when somebody adheres, when a salesperson adheres, to a framework that they use consistently, they're 50% more effective than their peers who don't. The second statistic around confidence salespeople who exude confidence in their sales interactions. These statistics, by the way, are from Salesforce, hubspot and Forrester Research. The confidence factor when a salesperson is more confident, they are 72 to 73 is the number percent more effective than their peers who behave in a non-confident fashion. And that statistic, if you see, is directly relative to the 70% of customers who disengage if they feel that the salesperson is scripted or robotic.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, the cadence piece. Salespeople who are let me rephrase myself salespeople who engage with role playing and a cadence of practice are 50% more effective. The first one, content salespeople who adhere to a framework experience 17 to 20% higher win rates. Okay, so content 20% better. Confidence 70% better. Better cadence 50% better. This is the recipe and it carries through into most professional atmospheres.
Speaker 2:But if somebody is in sales, if they're not adhering to a framework, they're not highly confident and they don't practice and role play every single day, there, they, they, can be beaten. If you, however, do practice those three, those three, those three pieces, you, you're. It's impossible to beat. The only way that you can beat somebody who's doing that is if your God given talent exceeds theirs. And that's the old adage that if talent, talent can be beat by hard work, but if talent works hard, it can never be beaten. And that's true If someone's naturally gifted, they're always going to eat you out by the finish line.
Speaker 2:But we're talking about sales, which means that if you're highly effective, even if you're not God-given talented to the point where you're closing at 85%, if you're closing in the seventies, you're a millionaire in W2 sales. It's a fact. So I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but that's the difference, brother. That's the difference, that's the effective outcome. I can give you all the word tracks in the world and call myself a specialist and give you a black book of questions and all these rebuttals, or I can give you a framework by which to execute and you can remain yourself. And that authenticity word that you used earlier in the conversation, that you are correct is fundamental in what we do. We say authenticity sells and confidence closes. There is nothing on any day of the week that is going to beat that. I would bet my life on it 100 man.
Speaker 1:Be yourself authentic. I mean, we can. Everybody can see through the bullshit. Everybody can see you know, just not not the old, you know. Like a timeshare presentation. Oh, you're wearing a Yankee hat. You like baseball? Well, me too. It's like come on, man and confidence you have to believe in. And you said belief you have to believe in. You have to sell yourself every single day. You sell yourself first and then the product. Yeah, if you're selling a product and you think you suck man, you can have the cure for cancer. You can be selling water out in the desert and you wouldn't get any sales because you don't believe in yourself.
Speaker 2:That's a fact.
Speaker 2:You said something just now, omar. It's funny that you say that. I want to touch on that. You said that if, if, if, you um, uh, oh shit, and I just left my mind see, that's a problem with add omar. But you, right before that, you said something about shoot, now it's going to leave my mind and it was important, damn it. Well, now you guys see the outcome of a decade of drug use and what it does to your midterm memory, but anyways, I digress. If I think of it, I'll bring it up no man.
Speaker 1:Bring it up whenever you want, brother. And when you said a tangent right there, that's passion, man. Oh 100%. I remember what it was.
Speaker 2:I remember what it was. You said that an individual when they're you know the timeshare and the Yankees hat thing. Okay, that's an attempt at building rapport in the Yankees hat thing okay, that's an attempt at building rapport. Okay, traditional sales training tells people to ask the customer questions about themselves, learn things about them. Try to build rapport.
Speaker 2:The funny part is that can actually be counterproductive. Let's say you're a car salesperson. You start asking somebody about the little stick figure stickers in the back of their window. You start asking about their favorite football team. You get engaged in that compassionate discourse around what they like and that's called self-talk.
Speaker 2:When a customer engages in self-talk, their free dopamine increases by over 40%. So in that moment that individual is, their propensity to engage is far higher. Now, if that individual then goes on a test drive, comes back 20 minutes later, they're actually in what's called a trough period. Their dopamine has peaked, but now that it's been 20 minutes it's actually troughed. It's fallen below the baseline. They are now subconsciously depressed to a mild factor, without you even knowing it. So your ability to close that customer you just crushed your ability to close that customer because you brought them up here, you brought them to Disneyland, but by the time they got back they were in the doldrums, lost somewhere in the Wizard of Oz forest.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's understanding why we do what we do, not just telling somebody to build rapport and get the customer to engage in self-talk. You got to understand why you're doing it Because in that particular instance you can be counterproductive. You can hurt your ability to sell that customer when you get the customer to engage in self-talk, because if you get them to spike their dopamine well in advance of when you're going to ask for the close, you can actually tire them out and get them to disengage and be in a mild depressed state when you're trying to ask for the close thinking you did all the right things. But if you're trained in our discipline and you know that when you get somebody to engage in self-talk you're spiking their free dopamine and you need to align that self-talk engagement with asking for the close, you again increase your ability to close significantly higher.
Speaker 2:Everything we do is about moving all the needles in the direction that puts us at the advantage and closing the deal. There's no other sales training that does that. There's no other sales training that is that diverse in their teachings and getting somebody to be that effective in human discourse. So I apologize for grandstanding here, but it was important to bring up what you said, because most salespeople think building rapport is helpful. It's not helpful unless you time it correctly, because you can actually crush dopamine. So the thought again here is it's one thing to be told what to do. It's another thing for somebody to explain to you why you're doing it so you know when it needs to be done.
Speaker 1:Right there, paid to Persuade by Luke, luke and Heimer, the founder creator. Paid to Persuade. Authenticity sells, confidence closes. It's great for salespeople, great for entrepreneurs. Been both, been all three. Because in my life and I got to say so is this one-on-one training? Is it group training? Is it all the above? What do we expect? What can we expect? So?
Speaker 2:if you were to say to me, luke, what is the most effective way to get as good as I can, as quickly as I can get as good as I can, as quickly as I can, I would tell you to purchase our online training platform, which is the same. It's the same housing platform. It's called light speed virtual trading. It's an online learning platform. That's the company that houses it. Tony Robbins uses it for business mastery. The real Bradley. The real Bradley yes, actually going to. I actually train Brad's people um his light speed virtual training virtual training reps. I train them. I'm actually going at the beginning of February to a selling contest, if you will, with Brad. He's challenged me to a side-by-side selling battle and we're going to film some content around that. I look forward to wiping the floor with him. Love Brad, he's a great guy, but we're looking to disrupt the earth on that week. But, yeah, if someone wants to get sales training man, they need the online learning platform. Okay, and it's not about that it's housed on Lightspeed or has anything to do with Bradley. It's about the fact that you can access the information that you need when you need it. If you're having a day and you're suffering on building rapport. You can access that information immediately. If you're having a conversation with a customer and you were not able to price condition effectively, you can go back to that portion of the platform. You can take that content and you can learn that at that time when it's needed. But the most effective way is to get that information and get it in a very concise period of time, like classroom learning.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the online learning platform coupled with weekly coaching. Okay. Now people hear that weekly coaching and they go oh my God, I'm going to have to spend a thousand dollars a week to coach one-on-one. No, it's group coaching. It's incredibly affordable, omar, I will guarantee and I'm the only sales trainer that does this in a B2C relationship, meaning me and a customer. They come to me for sales training for less than $2,000. They can get our online learning platform and for less than $100 a month they can get in weekly group coaching with us. And if they do that, we guarantee a minimum, minimum 20% increase in their year-over-year annual income. We are the only company in the world that does that. Everybody says they're the best. Nobody guarantees a result. We are the only company in the world that does that. We also have a B2B guarantee as well. We guarantee the companies that we train that will improve their baseline by a certain degree, depending on the industry. So the best way get the online platform and then see me, because it's me I train every single group coaching call. There's no vice president of sales or lead trainer or secondary guru. It is yours truly training every single class.
Speaker 2:Now for the people who don't have 2K to spend they're still on the come up. They're brand new. They're experiencing rough times. It's the backside of Christmas. Whatever. They can engage in one of our weekly group coaching calls for $97 a month. And then there's all sorts of variations of individual training in between, and there's also private coaching relationships that far exceed the $2,000 mark. But if you're just getting started and you need some sort of help, you go to pay to persuadecom. You book a call, you sign up for the $97 a month call. You begin to get better immediately. If you're somebody who's been through the bullshit pardon my French, but I've heard you use a little bit of profanity, so I think I'm entitled If you're entitled, you're a friend.
Speaker 2:Appreciate that If you're somebody who's been through that rigmarole. They bought the 10K offer from the you-know-whos that we're talking about. They bought the $5,000 online platform and then got upsold another $2,000 and upsold another $10,000. If you've been through that, okay, I have a guarantee that I give and again, I'm the only guy that gives a guarantee and I give two of them and I've given this guarantee several times to many, many people and they would testify and we have the testimonials that it is absolutely ironclad. However, I've never had to pay it and there's a reason for that. But let me I digress. If you have purchased training from other sales trainers and not gotten a significant increase in sales, you come to me, you show me your purchase proof of what you've bought from another sales trainer and you buy my online platform and my weekly coaching.
Speaker 2:I will agree that, if we do not get you to our increase, that we guarantee that I will not only pay you back for what you spent with us. I'll pay you back for what you've ever spent with any sales trainer ever. That's how confident we are in the outcome of what we do. You find me another company that says we are so good. We will not only guarantee you a refund if it doesn't work. But we'll refund you of ours and everybody else's that you ever bought If we can't get you where you need to be, and I will stand on my head because it doesn't exist. But to the root of your question we have training at all levels, man.
Speaker 1:They just need to book a call with us get on the phone and likely they'll be speaking to me and we'll get them going. Luke at two thousand bucks. Man, that that's an investment man. That that's you're. You're teaching people how the old proverb of teaching them how to fish to to increase 20 percent in the bottom line of a business or a sales guy. That's minimum, Minimum Dude. That's life-changing, that's changing the trajectory of a family man, that's creating legacy there, man.
Speaker 2:It's life-changing. We've got a recent trainee named Brandon Self. He does gutters, he sells gutter guards. He was making somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 a week. Last week he made $7,500. There's another gentleman named Jonathan Nuzzo. He's a car salesperson. He was making about $4,500 a month in commission. He now makes $9,000 to $10,000 a month in commission.
Speaker 2:I can go on and on. I can give you Eric Helfman, I can give you a. You know, I don't want to put everybody on the spot, but these are all people that have agreed to say yeah, I got no problem with you mentioning my results, man, and they are not. Here's the best part. Most times you hear about this and there's a little disclaimer at the bottom of the screen that says these results are not typical, these are atypical results. But can we? No, these are absolutely typical.
Speaker 2:We frequently double people's income because when you understand that if you're fundamentally doing the process wrong and you're disconnected with what the reality of the situation is, it is quite possible that you will experience a fundamental increase in your income when you do get the right information. So, $2,000, man. We are relatively new to the marketplace. We've just come to the marketplace in recent years and I was so inundated with companies that wanted me to coach their people when they discovered I went into full-time sales training and stepped away from my car dealerships that I didn't even have to market.
Speaker 2:We're at the point now where we're just looking to break obscurity. We want people to know who we are because we will become the household name in sales training. We will usurp the Cardones, we will usurp everybody else that you're thinking, who I won't mention out of professionalism, but we will be the household name in sales training inside of the next 60 months and we're going to do that by getting the results that we get. So when you say 2000 is an investment, I can tell you that every day people pay over $2,000 in sales tax to buy an automobile and what they're paying in sales tax to buy a cheap used car. They could be changing the trajectory of their life and their career and their family with. People pay $60,000 to go to Harvard, they end up having a cute degree to hang on their wall and they end up managing a supermarket for the rest of their life For $2,000,. Brother, there is no better investment if you're interested in sales.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree and I'm deeply honored that you're on my show because I expect that. I expect years, 60 months from now. I'll be like you know what Luke was on my show.
Speaker 2:That guy was on my show.
Speaker 1:That guy and we had a hell of an hour, dude. Okay, before we close, everybody, go to paid, to persuade, paid. The number two persuade, peruse. I love that word, I use it too. So peruse, bring your credit card. You spent a shit ton of money on bullshit for christmas, for kwanzaa, for Hanukkah, whatever the hell it is that you celebrate. Do it for yourself, Buy yourself this present. It's not a depreciating asset. Either you're growing or you're dying, and this will help you supersize that growth. Brother, I've got one last question for you, because I can talk to you on and on, but people are busy, man. They're doing other shit. Instead of being on your program learning how to create money, they're watching their money burn. So here's the question.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:What do you have to tell the person they own a business? Business sales have been flat or decreasing. The sales guy it's his third, fourth, fifth, sixth. He goes job to job, can't sell for shit and he's like maybe it's just me, luke, maybe I just can't sell, maybe that's it, man, it's not for me. What would you tell that person?
Speaker 2:I would tell that person, the only reason sales would not be for you is if you were unwilling to continue to try. If you had just hit your mark, you'd got all the gas gone out of your tank and you, you didn't even have any interest in trying anymore. But I would also tell that person, I would ask him this question and I would pre-frame them, the same way we teach people to pre-frame in our sales training. I would say let me ask you a question have you ever seen a sales trainer that spoke the way I did, that spoke about objection handling as a secondary, as an ancillary thing, a very, not a very important thing? Have you heard somebody talk about role-playing in practice as severely as I have? Have you had somebody dismiss all of the sales training that has existed since Henry Ford put the first crank in the front of the model T and be this passionate about the fact that everything that has been done to present day is wrong? Have you ever heard anybody speak that way? Well, no, okay, well, that's step one, step two. Have you ever heard a sales trainer guarantee the outcome of their product, as in if you don't get the sales that we say you're going to get, we're going to give you all your money back, no questions asked. The answer would, course be no.
Speaker 2:And then I would say do you believe that Steve Jobs was a smart guy? And if you could go back in time, would you invest in the iPhone? And they would, of course, say yes. And I would remind them that in 2004 and 2005, steve Jobs said he was going to reinvent the way that we communicated. He said the telephone was done wrong, that it was deeply flawed and there was a way to improve that device to the point where everybody would carry around a telephone in their pocket. They would put it in their pajamas when they went to bed. They would get anxiety if they got anywhere away from that phone. Furthermore, he would make it so sexy you would want to lick it and you could actually see somebody in Bangkok, thailand, face-to-face in a millisecond, over a feet.
Speaker 2:He said all these things and everybody said he was nuts. They said the telephone's been around since Graham Bell. It's not flawed, there's nothing wrong with it. You might be able to make a better cell signal, but that's about the size of it. They told him he was crazy. The same way that Steve Jobs talked about the iPhone before its inception is the way I talk about sales training. So that last question would you go back in time and would you invest in Apple if you had the opportunity? And the answer is a compelling yes, then I say to you this is the 2004 of Apple for sales training and we are the revolutionary, disrupting entity that is going to change the landscape of selling forever. And if you got $2,000, you best shit or get off the pot, because we're moving in that direction and we're changing the world and if you want your life to be changed along with it, jump in with both feet.
Speaker 1:Thank you, luke Lankenheimer. Thank you for the time, man, Thank you for the opportunity of just learning, because either we're growing or we're dying, and just within this hour, and yes, I'll be perusing. All right, man, thank you for your time, thank you for everything, brother.
Speaker 2:60 months hey, when you're big time you, you're gonna be back on my show. Oh, we'll do, we'll do, we'll do a five-year anniversary podcast.
Speaker 1:No more, no problem sounds good, brother, I'll be here. Thanks for everything, man.
Speaker 2:You got it living inside of your purpose. What if it did work? Right now you can make the choice to never listen to that negative voice no more. The hardest prison to escape is our own mind. I was trapped inside that prison all for a long time. To make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work? World.