JAY AIGNER
0:14
Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Evan Yudell, the founder and CEO of Sales Made Simple. Hi, Evan. How are you? Good.
EVAN YUDELL
0:23
I'm well. How are you?
JAY AIGNER
0:25
I'm good, man. Evan drove a really long way to have lunch with me the other day. Where are you based out of now,
EVAN YUDELL
0:31
Evan? So I'm based out of well, my office is in Brick, so I drove, you know, probably about an hour, hour and a half. But it's it's home for me, so I don't mind it. I'm used to doing that with my parents.
JAY AIGNER
0:42
That's right. You do you live about or you I guess you have a house about 15 minutes from me, which is nicely. Little coincidence. Where
EVAN YUDELL
0:51
we had lunch. I actually have been there before, back when it was a totally different place and it was a different restaurant.
JAY AIGNER
0:56
It has made a major transformation. It certainly has. Yes, it has. Alms House 59. Good old shout out, right? So where did you grow up, man?
EVAN YUDELL
1:06
So I grew up not too far from that area. I grew up probably, what is it, like ten minutes away in an area that's called Holland, and apparently, depending upon whether you go to Google Maps or whatnot, it's Holland or it's Southampton or it changes, 1s it's called home. 2s As long as the house doesn't move from where it is, it'll get there.
JAY AIGNER
1:30
So tell me about Kyle college in school. Were you into sales in tech? 2s For people who don't know Evan, he's a very tall guy with big hands and very 3s powerful presence. You come across as a sales guy, but you're not very salesy, right. You're a very genuine person. Is that something that was something you found earlier, or is that something you found later in life that you enjoyed kind of 1s being a very larger than life kind of sales guy? Well,
EVAN YUDELL
2:02
I think I was always larger than life. Regardless, 2s when you're tall and you're animated like I am, I'm animated. I have dark eyes and dark hair, so people are surprised that 1s I don't have any Italian roots, but I don't. It's funny, I always had a presence. I don't know why. I don't know how. I did martial arts for 15 years, got the second degree black belt, and you talk to people that are certain martial arts, a lot of that, you develop that sense of a presence. No, I wasn't necessarily aware of it because also I still can sneak up on my family and scare the junk out of them just by walking quietly, which you learn, at least in the martial arts. I did. But I always kind of had a bit of a presence, and I'll be fully transparent here. Some people call it a presence, some people call it, like, overbearing. Like, I remember the first time we're going to take different paths. Sure, absolutely. But I remember running it to a guy who's a very good friend of mine now, and I first met him at this west with the rest of my friends, and I was, me, I'm mate, right? There's no other way to explain that. And. 2s So I met this guy. I was talking to him, and he just stared at me. And then he looks at my friend. One of my friends that has known him, grew up with him for years, and said, is he going to be like this for the rest of the night? 2s And lo and behold, there were some other things that happened in the future that kind of made us, like, very, very good friends. I have that personality, and I can talk loud, oddly at times and stuff like that, but I always had a presence, even when I was in college. 2s I spent six months living in England as part of a study abroad program. And I remembered my friends telling me at the time, even when we had parties and stuff, even when you weren't there, it felt obvious.
JAY AIGNER
4:08
You can tell when you're in the room for sure. And
EVAN YUDELL
4:10
I respond to them, of course. I'm sure the party was much quieter.
JAY AIGNER
4:15
How was England, by the way? How was your six month in
EVAN YUDELL
4:18
England? Well, it was very cloudy. It was a great time. I was there in an interesting time, too. I had gone 1s when I first started there. It was January of 2002. So we know what happened.
JAY AIGNER
4:34
Yeah, 1s and that's when I was there. So the overall atmosphere, like talking to people was interesting because good, better and different. When we live here, we will get doesn't matter whether we want to say it or not, we will get our version of what is going on in the world, but it is still our version. Right? And it's really interesting that I started talking with some people. 1s And hearing other versions of the US from what they see and what they're told. Because there's always a narrative, right? There's a narrative in every kind of information you get, whether it's on purpose or whether it's by accident. There's some sort of narrative, some sort it's like the whole thing when you're looking up information, the risk of user bias, right? Oh, yeah. 2s Seeing some of those different perspectives and hearing some of the different perspectives. Not necessarily. And I just want to say this wasn't like negative perspectives. It was just interesting to see how we reviewed and stuff like that. And I remember that's how I kind of got into the BBC news and stuff like that. So, believe it or not, when I get news, a couple of news updates like CNBC, the other one is BBC, so things happen in the United States. Hey, what is the other perspective? Yeah, there's one thing I've learned, and especially studying abroad in college, it was that the power of perspective is pretty amazing. You always got to have that. And I think that sometimes that's absent. Absent in business, 1s that's absent in the world. And I think if people were willing and able to accept as many perspectives as possible, not necessarily adhere to them, listening doesn't mean a green. 2s It's pretty amazing what you can learn and how you can approach things. But that's like, again, another we kind of took a bit of a detour. But I always had a bit of a presence, even when I was in college. It's funny. Sales. I happen to be good with people, 1s which is interesting. Interesting, right? Because if you talk to some of the people that knew me in high school and whatnot and earlier, I was always kind of outgoing. 1s But it's not like I was the popular kid in school. I was the kid who could get along with pretty much everybody. But it's not like I was like, I played drums, so I had a combination of I was the band dork, but I played drums to keep my rock band chops up. Because I was in a rock band, we would play places. So you always got to be working, right? Sure. Hello. But yeah, but when I went into college, I really had no direction or any kind of motivation to do anything, probably until high school. I know, late, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I really didn't know what I was really passionate about except for flying, and that was simply because my dad was a pilot, right? So it was kind of like in high school when I learned about business, and I remember specifically I was doing a paper on the New Deal. I just did it to the best of my ability. Hey, this looks pretty cool. And I did it, and I think the teacher was handing out name was Rick Rhodes. That teacher changed my life. I could have the worst case of Alzheimer's, and I will still not forget his name. 1s And he's handing out the papers of the class, and then he gets to me and he says, you seem you have to class. Like, oh, this is going to be wonderful. Right? This is great. It was so bad that he doesn't want to publicly humiliate me, which is fine. 1s So I see him after class, and he says, I've been doing this for many years, and this is one of the best papers I've ever read on this subject. He's like, I think you have something. I think your mind has something, so let's see if we can tap into it. And then he's he got me into Business Week. Wall Street Journal. I was a bit of a weird kid. Like, if I explained this to kids, like, back in junior high or back in high school, when you woke up, 90% of the kids I knew they woke up sports center right before they get on the bus. Sports center. There's two sounds that they knew when they woke up in the morning the sound of their alarm and the DA DA DA DA DA DA. Right? Those are the two sounds associated with the morning, at least back in the day. 2s But I was watching Business Week. I was, like, watching, you know, CNBC in the mornings every day, you know, when people were talking about, you know, back in the sports person, you name it. I was talking about, like, Sylvia Vodva and, like, Wall Street Journal and kids like. 1s Talking about,
EVAN YUDELL
9:09
right. But anyway, so I really got into it. I said, I think I want to just be a CEO of a major US. Corporation. I want to be the corporate guy. I want to get into business, right? Which is weird, but at the same time, it's interesting how life can change your priorities and change what's important. Of course, the beginning of that. So when I got into college, that was kind of my focus. I got into playing around with stocks and stuff like that. We had like a trade room, like a mock trading room. So I got played around with that. But I was always interacting with people. I always liked being associated with people. I'm also weird, too, because when I have a close knit of friends, a group of friends, I generally tend to stick to it. Right? It's like, I'm not one of those people like, hey, I always want to hang out with new people. I'm kind of like, I got my circle. You're also meeting tons of new people, more than probably normal people do, right? Because you're always so outgoing that wherever you go, you're meeting new people. So maybe that's not a thing you need in your life all the time. 1s So where did you
JAY AIGNER
10:07
go from there to saying, all right, and I know you worked at Ferguson for a long time and we can jump ahead, but I'm curious, 1s where did you pull it all together? Where did you go, I'm going to start my own business. And maybe it wasn't Salesmen simple, maybe it was something before that. I don't know. Where did you kind of get that actual bug to go, all right, I'm going to do my own thing?
EVAN YUDELL
10:27
No, it's interesting. It was so interesting because I took a different path than what most entrepreneurs take. Sure. I still listen to entrepreneurs, like how I built this podcast, stuff like that. And it was really interesting how I kind of fell into it, because most people, you know, they like, well, I realized that maybe I could help something or I see how people do things and I could do it better. There's tons of different stories, right. So in order to find the root of how I got into Sales Made Simple, which is, interestingly enough, my first business, which is not really common, 41, 42 years old, kind of developing their career and now starting a business. Sure. But what kind of created that is when I worked at Ferguson for a number of years, one of the things that I saw all the time and I didn't understand is there were a lot of people that were quote unquote, sales managers or product managers. And basically it was a really fancy way of saying, hey, 1s I'm the guy that you're going to come to if you have any questions, and most of the sales are going to come through me because nobody else is going to know it, and I saw the same hamster wheel turning for everything. I'm just going to train them on these products. By the way, the product that I'm trying to train them in, there's 30 other products right after me that have trainings, so nobody retained anything. So I remember this goes back to 2005, 2006. I'm in charge of this specific product and in charge with the growth of this product in the marketplace, right? So I said, you know what? Why am I wasting my time trying to handle all the sales? It's just inefficient, right? I'm going to work my tail off. I'm not going to grow nearly as much as I could. 2s Why isn't everybody selling this, and how do I get them to do that? So I realize people need simple, right? People, when they I realize that when we leave 1s the house, it's not like Severance, right? It's not like the Apple Show where you have two different personalities. You have your work personality, and everything you do is work behavior, and then you come home and do you know your own behavior? There's a blend. So as a result, I realized that a lot of people, when they go home, they're just like everybody else. They like using Amazon. They want it quick, they want it fast, they want it easy. How do I do that from like, just to allow my own associates to sell the product quickly, right? So I started developing these Excel tools, and I realized that these Excel tools were now kind of being used across the country that I developed, just taught myself Excel. I mean, I knew Excel, but we're talking about creating macros and all kinds of stuff, and I just taught myself to do this stuff. And I built these basic tools from Excel. And as a result, I realized that now, instead of me selling the products, I had everybody selling them, because all they had to do they were told the questions to ask, they didn't really need to memorize anything, and then it gave them confidence, and then they just started selling it. Right. 1s Fast forward. 2s I had multiple levels of bosses. Like, I had my direct boss and then and his boss and his boss and his boss, and a few levels up, it was a district manager at the time left the company, and one week after he leaves the company to go to a competitor, he calls me and says, what do I need to do? 1s To pay you? Or what do I need to pay you to build a tool for us, like what you built when you were at Ferguson and the stuff you built at Ferguson. Wow. So I kind of had just got my MBA, and where I got my MBA, I got my MBA at Drenchold. There was a lot of focus on business leadership, but also kind of like the spark of starting your own thing. Right? I because it kind of gives you that just from the networking and talking to people. Right. And I was thinking about this, and my wife has owned a business, a successful business, for over a decade. So I'm already married to an entrepreneur. Right. And I was talking with her about this, and she's like, why don't you write up a business plan? 1s I'm like, okay. And then I realized that, hey, maybe I have something here. So I kind of started it off a little, little bit. Right. And I wasn't sure if it was going to turn into anything. And then I got put in a position, full transparency, where I basically 1s sat down with my boss for my review. And he was like, hey, you can stay here. You just can't be in your role anymore. 1s And regardless, good, better, and different. Basically, it was, hey, this is no longer a good fit. Right. So for that, I'm like, well, I'm kind of already on the way out anyway. Why don't I try to make this work? Yeah. And like with any business, there are missteps, and there were a few as far as the target market kind of targeting the wrong market. And I had to pivot. And I think that was an important thing, is that I realized it wasn't working. And rather than sticking to my guns and going underwater and sinking,
JAY AIGNER
15:11
how long did it take you to realize that you were on the wrong path? What was the moment?
EVAN YUDELL
15:16
I think about a year, trying to target. I was targeting the specific customer, which was manufacturers, and not the distributors in the space I'm in. And I realized that they just didn't get it, that there was a major disconnect between what they thought distributors wanted and what they really needed, and to go through them and to try to use them as some sort of indirect marketing setup or whatever, it just wasn't working. I was dealing with people that just really didn't understand data, really didn't understand technology. They can say they do, but it's how you act. It's not what you say. And in their actions, they really didn't, at least at the time. Right. So then started targeting distributors, and it was off to the races from there, essentially.
JAY AIGNER
16:01
What's the elevator pitch for salesmates? 2s Oh, sorry. I think we got a little bit of a we had a technical difficulty. We had a spike there. Now, I was going to say, if people don't know, what's the elevator pitch for Sales Made Simple? Just from the product perspective.
EVAN YUDELL
16:19
Yeah. So essentially a Sales Made Simple is what we like to call a sales optimization platform. And the reason being is it combines two separate types of technology into one. Those two types of technology or guided selling. And guided selling software exists that basically guides you through a process of what questions to ask, what options are available, and what you should do to recommend what right. But then there's another side of that which is called configure price quote CPQ. And that kind of software basically allows you to configure with either basic or advanced equipment systems, sheds, cars, trucks, whatever. Basically configure something together, get a price for it and then be able to quote it to the customer. But do this in an inexorably less matter of time than if you were not utilizing technology. Right,
JAY AIGNER
17:09
exactly. That would be crazy. Right.
EVAN YUDELL
17:11
But the way we do it is we kind of design it where we basically are almost like a custom home builder. The basics are always there, but we design it for the client. Right. So that works. The best part about that, Jay, is that then our clients, the software are optimized for each of our clients. Meaning it's going to work and it's going to perform how they wanted to, how they act, as opposed to, hey, you need to adapt.
JAY AIGNER
17:39
So how do you scale
EVAN YUDELL
17:40
that
JAY AIGNER
17:42
if there's that kind of customity element to each
EVAN YUDELL
17:45
one? Through process. I think process is grossly underrated and people seem to associate growth with people and while people are involved and people can be a part of it. 1s They associate with, like, a really good example. If you look at what's going on in the news today with tech companies, all these tech companies, hiring, letting go of people on the tech side, even up to people like Amazon and whatnot. And their statement of why they hired so many people is always, well, we didn't want to lose market share, so we would rather just hire the people and take that than lose market share. And I think one of the things that's overlooked in many cases as process, it's not just the presence of process, but my opinion has always been you hire people and then you add people when the process itself is overworked. Meaning there is nothing more that can be done with regards to the process to make either the system or the people that are working with the system more efficient. At your peak efficiency. Then you add people or new processes and sometimes both. You know, remember that whole thing with Marcus Lamonis on CNBC? The Profit? Yeah. Where he had 2s product people or product processing people. Right. Yeah. There's many times where that's how we're able to scale. That's how we're able to scale effectively. So the first thing is the process. Not just the process in the system, which allows us to do certain things and automate without automating per se. But the second process is in the way we evaluate growth. What is our direction of growth? What is our clear? I wouldn't say path, but qualifier for our degree of growth. We do not base our growth on here are revenue targets. And we need to hit those targets regardless. We're not a publicly traded company. I don't have investors. You know, this is entirely bootstrapped. So it's not like I have a venture capitalist who says, hey, you need to hit these numbers. Because the whole premise is we want you to get big enough where we can go IPL. And I can make millions and millions and millions of dollars. Right. 2s So the way we from a process perspective, the process of qualifying our growth is, simply put as, hey, A, can we provide the same first class quality service to all of our existing customers if we take on this new customer? Right? That's the first question. If we get to yes, then here comes the second question. Okay, great. Once we bring them on, can we provide it to everybody, including them at this point? And if the answer is yes to both, that's how we go to the next level. And if the answer is no, that doesn't necessarily mean, hey, stop. Okay, we can't take them. The question is, okay, what do we need? Do we need people? Do we need process? And then we go from there. Yeah, I
JAY AIGNER
20:34
think we've got four somebody. Marcel who runs this guy, marcel runs an agency optimization company called Parakeeto, and he kind of showed me how the sausage was made one day years ago. 2s Process people, 1s measurement and then improvements is kind of how we handle it, right? So it's like you put your process in place, you put the people in place to handle those processes, you figure out a way to measure your performance, and then you bake in improvements into that process going forward. And that's how we've at least handled our sales channels, right? If we have those four things for our sales channel, move on to the next right? So that's how we've handled it. So tell me, who was your first customer for Sales Made Simple? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it again.
EVAN YUDELL
21:17
No, the first customer, believe it or not, the first paying customer I had mentioned to you, but they're actually the one that we talked about was the second one. Okay. The first one to ever give you saved it.
JAY AIGNER
21:26
You saved it for the episode, of
EVAN YUDELL
21:28
course. 2s Burying that's, right? That's right. So the first customer, and fortunately, a lot of the customers that we have have been through relationships, and we can get into that later. But the first customer I ever had was a group up in New England called the Granite Group. 1s And they are a fantastic organization, very people centric. 2s Bill Conjuring, who is the chairman and CEO, so to speak, is a very intelligent individual. People can find him on LinkedIn when he's speaking. I love his approach, his philosophy towards the future of his company and his people. I love the philosophy towards his hiring. He keeps it very simple. It's two worded. Possibly one of those words I can't use on this podcast, but it's very effective. You
JAY AIGNER
22:16
can use any words on this podcast. Actually,
EVAN YUDELL
22:20
he follows the same talent acquisition strategy that I do, which is really simple, and it's two worded no, assholes. There you
JAY AIGNER
22:27
go. That's mine, too. That's mine, too. My opinion is this, and some people disagree. I will never, ever have a company that is victim to anyone. I don't care if firing someone costs me a million dollars in business. I agree.
EVAN YUDELL
22:41
You cut the cancer.
JAY AIGNER
22:43
I say the same thing about my clients, too. 2s I turned down work recently from a client that was on a call and was belittled someone on his team in front of my team. And I was like, you know what? This is not worth 1s the exposure of that sort of toxic and negative behavior around my folks. I have such a great high form team.
EVAN YUDELL
23:06
Yeah, I've done it, too. There was one instance where I had a client that we were trying to get, and he was okay with 80%. Good. Well, as long as it's 80%. Right? And that isn't my philosophy. And if there's a conflict and a real philosophy, that could be a problem in the future for me. Now, other than that, fortunately, in the industry I'm in, I've been blessed. All my clients have been beyond fantastic. Some of them I'm friends with at this point. And more importantly, they want to see us succeed.
JAY AIGNER
23:37
I should point out that I love all my clients, too. 2s No, I know, actually and, Evan, you are a client. This is kind of talking to you, so no, I love all my clients. Clear the air. Just make sure. But,
EVAN YUDELL
23:52
yes, I'm sorry.
JAY AIGNER
23:53
No, you didn't. 1s I did it to myself.
EVAN YUDELL
23:57
I'm a Joe Rogan podcast. Yeah. 1s Anyway, 2s one of the things the Granite Group, they were the ones who gave me a shot. And the reason being is there was a gentleman, Sean Prescott, who had known who I had known for years, worked with him when we were both at Ferguson in New England, and he had seen what I can do. He had already seen what I could do with some of the Excel sheets. He kind of knew how my mind worked, and he knew that working with him, working in the trenches, I was a guy that wanted to see salespeople succeed. Right. So I developed something and I said, I really want to show you this. I really think you'll like it. And he kind of saw it, put it up the chain. They said, this is why the heck haven't we seen this before? Right? I had counter guys saying, Where the heck has this been? Like, Why is this just now we're learning about this. And that seems to be a very common 1s theme, which is why we're targeting the market. We are. That there's a great need for it. There's a lot of buy in, a lot of excitement for it, because it's like, Man, I needed this. Where was this? And I got the same attitude from my second client, who happens to be Ferguson now, the one I talked to you about. And funny enough, the biggest in the country, right? And that's so unorthodox as well. Most entrepreneurs, you got to start small and grow. That's what we thought. We thought we'll do little shops here and there, and then we'll grow. Maybe bigger distributors, maybe bigger. But believe it or not, whether it's because of the support that we can provide and how good our process is, the people that are signing up, the people that are coming on, are mid to large companies. A really good example is Ferguson. 1s But what's interesting is that the reason I think also why I got Ferguson is how I left. I think a lot of people don't put a lot of weight into if they are going to go on to another career or they're going to start a company. 1s It's really important to understand how you leave because you never know when that former employee I'm sorry. That former employer may be a potential client. Or maybe the person who helps you get potential clients. And because of how I left, I literally worked. I gave my two weeks. I literally worked until 03:00 p.m. The last day. 2s Full out, and as a result, they gave me a shot. The relationship has done nothing but grow. And I keep running into these executives that are running into me, saying how proud they are, how they love the software, and how amazed they are that I did it, how they always thought I could do it. But it's that it's the positive relationship. It's the friendly relationship that I have with these guys. So so my first client, obviously, I will never forget because they gave me a shot.
JAY AIGNER
26:44
How did you approach that? 2s You had this idea 1s you maybe went to do manufacturing. So was manufacturing the Pivot after or before granite?
EVAN YUDELL
26:58
The pivot was before
JAY AIGNER
26:59
granite. Okay, so you pivoted. We're pointing the wrong people at Pivot. And then what? So how are you trying to get this in front of people? Like, how did you make the connection for your first customer?
EVAN YUDELL
27:10
So basically the way I did it was by going through people I know. Over the past 15 years, when I worked at Ferguson, I had developed a lot of relationships. And it wasn't just about developing relationships, because I was the big vendor, I was the big guy. So they loved me, and blah, blah, blah. And they kissed your butt. And you can tell you can tell really quickly who wants to be on board, because they just want to be in the penthouse. And who wants to be there simply because they know the guy who owns the penthouse, and they just want to hang with the guy. 3s I worked very hard. 1s I believed relationships were important. I believed I didn't believe in. I tried to avoid. Some of them aren't avoidable, but I really tried hard to develop strong relationships with manufacturers and internal people. And I believed in order to do that, I needed to prove myself every day that if I was going to, as a manager, provide guidance or provide direction, I had to be there. I couldn't just tell my troops, you need to go here and fight. I would be right next to them with a gun. And doing that. And as a result, I developed a lot of strong relationships, both on the vendor side of whose product I was trying to sell, but also internally. And when these people leave, I still tap into them. I still will call them, hey, do you know anybody here? And that's how I worked with Sean. I knew Sean was there. We had a good relationship, and I did what I kind of did what's now? I guess the untraditional route, which is first, because I didn't have his number, I sent him an Im. I sent him, like, a LinkedIn message. Can you give me five minutes? Can you just give me a shot? Right? I have this software. You remember what was going on with Sales Made Simple. And I had another guy who I used to work with who worked for him or worked with him to kind of say, hey, you need to give this guy a shot. Right? So I utilize two relationships there. That's all I needed. Generally, we've been using a lot of relationships, and for some time now, your relationships get tapped, they have to do it other ways. 2s But realistically, a lot of our growth has come from relationships. Believe it or not. Some of our growth now is coming from our existing clients who are so happy that they're working with us that they have no problems telling a CEO of a non competitive person. We actually got a client through a competitive situation where the two CEOs respected each other, right? So we get to that point where they're like, hey, you need to give this I know you're busy. You need to give this guy five minutes worth your time. 1s And that's how we approach our business strategy. We believe that we are a service company that happens to provide a software platform. I think software as a service, I think people sometimes forget that last s, right? And that was one of the things that I have dealt with enough software companies and whatnot and how I get treated and how I've been treated, that I don't care if you're small or big. What I care about is how I feel I'm being treated. Do I feel like I'm important? Well,
JAY AIGNER
30:17
a sales guy creating his own platform, it's interesting because you have such a people perspective. And like you said, service is obviously going to be important to you in any company you run. Right. Because you know what it's like dealing with people and vendors and customers and all that sort of stuff. If you had to start all over again, if you had to wipe it away clean and maybe it's not made sales, made simple, maybe it's something else. 2s What would your first step be? Is it a business plan? I mean, you're an MBA guy. Sometimes I talk to actually, most of the people I talk to don't have an MBA, so I'm very curious what a guy with an MBA, if he had to start a business today, would do.
EVAN YUDELL
30:57
So that's a really good question, and I like how it was put, because that's a lot better than what would you do differently? Because my opinion has always been kind of like the Chinese farmer approach. And I don't know if you've know, the old store, the old adage of the Chinese farmer with the horses, 1s basically, it's that approach we'll see. So I never want to look at something 1s people have asked me, what do you want to do? What would you have done differently if you could, knowing what you know now? I wouldn't, because I probably wouldn't know what I know now or have what I have now. If I had done it differently, if I had done things differently at Ferguson that allowed me to not be pushed out, then I wouldn't be here talking with you. Right. So it's kind of like what The Rock has said occasionally with the NFL. It's the best thing that never happened. Right? You don't know. So something that could be absolutely tragic, you don't know. 2s But if I were starting from scratch, say, with an MBA, and I think I want to make sure I'm understanding the real question, which is, if you wanted to start a business, what would you do? If you had an
JAY AIGNER
32:02
idea, if you had a new idea, what would you do today? If you're going to sit down and go, I think this is going to stick, whatever it is. What is your first step?
EVAN YUDELL
32:14
So the first step is the first thing I need to figure out is I need to get feedback from people that have no stake in my idea. Emotionally, financially, it's a great idea. The first thing you need to find out is, is your idea a great idea, or is your idea a great idea to you and people that love you? You know what I mean? Like, if I go to my daughter and say, hey, I have this great idea. It's this thing that has ink. It's this stuff. It's ink. It's called a pen, and I can write things with it. He's probably saying, that's awesome, Daddy. It's a pen. 3s One of the things. And funny enough, I kind of fell into that, right. With Sales Made Simple, they told me, what you have is value. You have a value proposition. We are willing to pay for it. So I think that's where a lot of people get disconnected. But
JAY AIGNER
33:05
you started with a hungry crowd. You started with a really hungry and I think that's a really important point. 2s And I talk about it on the podcast all the time. I see so many people that start with a great idea with no customers, and it's like the greatest idea in the world can be the greatest idea in the world, but if nobody's going to pay you money for it, then what the hell good is it as a business, right? So you started with a very hungry crowd, which is very great avenue to go
EVAN YUDELL
33:30
down. And I think the way I did it, to keep that analogy going, Jay, is I was a guy who made pizzas, right? 1s You know what? I'll use a better analogy. There's a guy, Aaron Franklin. Do you know that person? No. He has Franklin's Barbecue down in Texas, probably one of the most famous barbecue spots in the United States. When he started, he was just cooking for his friends. 1s And then people started hearing about his parties, and they always looked forward to them. And the next thing you know, someone said, hey, I think you have something here and I think you should turn it into something. So I kind of went the way of Aaron Franklin, where I was just making these tools to make my job easier. Right. So that I was not working 14 hours a day sacrificing a personal life. I was kind of following almost a sort of four hour work week. 2s It's very easy to read a book from Tim Ferriss to say, oh, this is exactly what I should do. And that's not it. The whole purpose of the book is to kind of give, to provide perspective, context in your brain. 2s If someone comes up with an idea and it's, hey, I think this is a good idea. It's really important to understand two things, in my opinion, from my experience, and that's all it's ever going to be, in my opinion, is, first off, understand your market. Who do you think you're going to target? And then once you do that, test it. Get actual feedback. Get feedback from and understand who your focus is, not just your market, but really get down to it. I think this project is going to be great for mothers, 1s for mothers under 40. Right. Well, what is the actual population of that? I got to broaden it. Okay. It's going to be this population. You brought it a little bit. Does your idea still fit? Well, I think it does. Okay, great. Get data in god we trust. All others must provide data. So the first thing I say to anybody with a great idea is, before you go raising money, before you go really going out there, because starting a business is not like I'll start a business or order a pizza. Well, all the pizza places are closed. It's not that easy. And I think a lot of people don't really understand the risk involved and the stress involved. And I'm not saying your back has to be up against the wall in order to do well. I hate that narrative. My humble opinion is the dumbest narrative I've ever heard. Your back does not need to be up against the wall,
JAY AIGNER
36:03
not if you plan properly. It shouldn't be against the wall.
EVAN YUDELL
36:05
Yeah. And maybe you're fortunate. Maybe your wife or husband has a very successful career and is able to help fund you. It doesn't change anything. So I love these people that say, well, you need to really grind it out and have your back against the wall to do well. I'm like 1s we'll see. I
JAY AIGNER
36:25
agree. I know we talked about a lot of stuff. What are three things that you have been doing and you continue to do to kind of keep yourself healthy and keep yourself around for a while? 3s Well, one of the things that I've been really focusing on more than recently, I used to work out all the time up until even recently. A lot of it was based on just keeping, you know, I started keeping the muscles there. I started lifting back in college, probably right around when I started right when I first started college, I was fortunate enough, I became friends with some NCAA trainers, and they kind of helped me work out. And I just that became like my mindset. That became my, you know, some people joke like the Rockets even talked about getting the workout, and it's his it was almost like his therapy, right, to kind of clear his mind and stuff. And it's and it's so true. So I kind of became a big guy who just enjoyed going to the gym five days a week, starting then for many years. But more recently, as I've been getting older, because I'm 42 already, so one of the things that I've shifted and I've focused more on is longevity, right? Rather than thinking about, hey, stay big or stay really strong, let's focus on the ability to do things. We had my grandkids at 80 or 85, and what do I need to start doing today to do that? So the first thing I focus on, of course, is the strength side of it, right? I've changed my workouts and follow one guy called Peter ETIA. He has a podcast, which is fantastic, and he's a big longevity guy. And one of the key things that I've been focusing on, you talk about the three things, right? The first thing is just the proper workouts, focusing on the fast twitch muscles, but also focusing on strength and making sure that if I'm at the age of 80, I still have balance, some strengths of stamina so that if my kids want to play, I can play with them. But even more importantly, it'll minimize the chances possibly be falling, getting hurt, whatever it might be, and just being lethargic and not having energy. The second thing I do focus on my health is
EVAN YUDELL
38:31
asleep. Believe it or not, it's the most grossly undervalued thing. And the notion of I'm going to work late at night, I only need 4 hours of sleep, that is not someone who really lives in reality. 2s I just don't see that. That's not being driven. That's not understanding what sleep can do for you from a long term perspective, but also a short term perspective. Because if you're not there mentally and sleep is a big part of that, you really can't perform to your best. And if you have people whose livelihoods depend on your performance, that is the very least
JAY AIGNER
39:05
what the average nice.
EVAN YUDELL
39:09
My goal on average. Of course, I have little kids, so it's more of my prayer would be, you know, seven to 8 hours, believe it or not. Now, that's not perfect. There are times I admit I do work till midnight, but, you know, then my goal is, you know, 07:00, you know, try to get up by 07:00. A.m. 1s I don't nap a lot, but I got to tell you, naps are grossly undervalued it as well. There's nothing wrong with taking a good 25, 30 minutes nap if the time allows it and your body requires 2s occasionally. I love it. 1s I love it, especially if I know that I really want a good nap, even for 30 minutes. I just make sure that I have a team that I know is going to put me to sleep on the television, like the jets or the Giants, one of those teams
JAY AIGNER
39:59
that I know they're not going to go anywhere. Unfortunately, they're out of the playoffs.
EVAN YUDELL
40:12
I live in a place in New Jersey where I have enough Eagles fans so I can wear in your Go Birds. As
JAY AIGNER
40:19
opposed to yeah, yeah. So I think the last thing I do is the mental side of it. And the way I do that is I have trouble meditating. It's not easy to do. It's so difficult to master. And because I have a lot of energy and my mind is always racing,
EVAN YUDELL
40:40
I mean, it's like keeping a rabbit pitbull in control. It's just really tough for me. So what I've started to do, believe it or not, is I started to read again. So what I do is I start to read some really good books and that still relaxes my mind. And that's really what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to take my mind off of everything else and kind of relax it. And rather than watch TV, I've learned that by reading, I can kind of make the TV show in my head, but it also really relaxes me. So I make a point before I go to sleep to put in 1s into the books that I'm reading right now. I mean, I do like some good nonfiction
JAY AIGNER
41:18
books, but I've kind of moved over to these Jack Car novels. Jack Carr was a Navy Seal, and he did the Terminal list, which is now an Amazon. And the books, he does a whole book series with that character, and it is absolutely fantastic. And it's pretty realistic, too, simply because he was a Navy Seal. So there's two parts of the book that are redacted because he had to get it through the government. But anyway, so when I do that, I try to do that and I try to use that. That's why flying is so much more enjoyable now because I just get a good book and I can rest my mind. And it's part of my routine when I travel. The two routines I do, yeah, is read a book on the plane. And then as soon as I land, if time allows, I
EVAN YUDELL
41:57
work out. Work out right away, they get right back to going.
JAY AIGNER
42:05
So mystery question time. 2s If you could do anything in the world and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
EVAN YUDELL
42:20
As someone who had that as my dream, and then I realized you had to be pretty smart and pretty disciplined to do that. 3s My dreams fall away. Why
JAY AIGNER
42:32
would you like to fly fighter? Just because it's awesome?
EVAN YUDELL
42:37
Well, I mean, it is, but the reason why it's awesome to me is because I kind of grew up flying. I always wanted to be a pilot. I mean, there's times I still dream about flying. I want to get my pilot's license. To me, emotionally, we'll kind of do a little segue story to explain why I had an internship with Boeing and where I worked at Boeing was at McConnell, which is in Kansas. It's in
JAY AIGNER
42:58
Wichita, right across the McConnell Air Force Base. So I, during my lunch break, would just watch the KC 135 to touch the goats because it was awesome to me. And one of the guys was like, why do we do that? Because it's awesome to me. And I went the whole story, and it's just that's awesome for me. I used to use play flight simulator all the time before I had kids, and I might get back into it as they get older, and it's just one of those things that I could never do because I had asthma. And when I thought about doing R two C, I talked to some people that I trusted, and they said they said 100%, if you have asthma, the chances are good you might be able to get in, you might be able to fly planes, and at least that's how it was at the time. But you're probably going to wind up on the ground. And that just wasn't for me. 1s And I never became a professional pilot because my dad was a professional pilot for many years, and he said it was a fun job. But things have changed. It's probably not going to be as fun anymore, and I don't think it's something you want to do.
EVAN YUDELL
43:58
But if all things be equal, I don't need money. I don't need any
JAY AIGNER
44:02
of that. 1s Every single
EVAN YUDELL
44:04
day of the week after burner, every
JAY AIGNER
44:06
single day, just, like, thrown back in your seat. 2s Yeah, just to fly. Dan, I've flown before. I have flown, and I'm telling you, there's no greater freedom. Like, and I would love to do that. Just like, I got a nice flight, you know, I got to do maneuvers at night. It's just me and the midnight sky. One thing
EVAN YUDELL
44:27
I do that I'll at
JAY AIGNER
44:28
night was that. 2s You can get away with not wearing like, I don't have really bad eyes. I mean, I just have a stigmatism, which is a little bit annoying when I'm flying the daytime. At night, it makes a huge difference. Like being able to discern little tiny dots of light that are rotating and not rotating. Like, you got to be locked in visually. It's
EVAN YUDELL
44:51
crazy 2s of it the irony of it. When you fly at night, you can't rely on visual if you're not instrument rated. It's what killed Robert Kennedy. I think it was robert Kennedy that he died because he wasn't, IFR rated, tried to fly visually, got disoriented, which is easily due
JAY AIGNER
45:08
at night. So you can't even fly a night. You can't even fly a night. 2s Let's wrap it there, brother. It's been great. 2s I think we need another branch coming up soon and salesmadesimple.com. Is that right?
EVAN YUDELL
45:28
Yeah. So what is it? Www dot SMS. That's sam marysam, then@cpq.com. So www.smscpq.com
JAY AIGNER
45:43
add in the company notes. But having you, brother, I appreciate it. Let's do it again soon. All right?
EVAN YUDELL
45:51
I
JAY AIGNER
45:52
appreciate your time. All right. Thank you. All right.
EVAN YUDELL
46:19
Thank you.