Brandon Bornancin: Fighting the Negative Perception of Sales

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And this is a conversation I've been actually avoiding for a while, but really looking forward to. It's with my friend, Brandon Bornansson. He's the CEO and founder of Seamless AI. He's a three-time bestselling author, two-time eight-figure CEO, and he is on and rocking pocket ship right now, one of the fastest growing companies in America. And Brandon and I both started about 10 years ago when we met each other and he had just started his company and I had just started mine.

And at first we were pretty tight and I could tell the kid was a hustler, killing it. But then he started to take on a little bit of the persona of somebody who I really do not respect and that is Grant Cardone. And it was the same like, hey, you know, flashy cars and everything else. And so I purposely avoided Brandon for a while because I didn't want to be attached to that type of sales mentality or sales approach. But over the years I've watched Brandon grow and I know he's not what I know Grant Cardone is. Brandon has good values. Brandon does things for the right reasons and he's really genuinely trying to help other people. And so I went right at him with the conversation around the perception of him and how it's similar to Grant Cardone and Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street.

And then we dove into what he's working on, the core values that he lives by, how he grows his team, what he looks for in employees. And I learned a lot about Brandon that I hadn't known before. And now I'm happy to be realigned with him based on my understanding of how his persona is portrayed in a lot of ways, sometimes on social, but who he actually is and what he's trying to do. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and understand that unfortunately, sometimes perception is reality, but we can break that perception by having strong core values. Enjoy the conversation. What's happening, Make It Happen family. Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Vidyard, and Chili Piper.

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Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Appreciate you coming on this, man. Oh, thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here. And congrats on the new website and just everything you're doing to scale. It's awesome. Yeah, I'm trying to. It's been an interesting journey over the past couple of years here for, you know, not just COVID, but some of the stuff I want to chat with you about today is like, you know, about my dad passed about a year and a half ago. I saw your post when you met. And I saw your post a month ago when you guys got the best places to work in or best tech startups or something like that from Forbes and how, you know, you had promised your mom and those type of things.

So it's definitely put a different perspective on things, which I'd love to dive in with you a little bit. But I wanted to start right off with a conversation I've been avoiding with you but wanted to have. And it's the whole Grant Cardone, Wolf of Wall Street, that persona and how it conflicts with mine in some ways as far as – but because – and the reason I've stayed connected with you is because of the values and the thing that I see you put out there. Whereas somebody like a Grant Cardone I think is a fucking total douchebag. And you can kind of push back if you know him. If you've – I know you've had – what's his name on your podcast or you went on Wolf of Wall Street podcast, didn't you?

What's his name? Yeah, Jordan Belfort. Jordan, yeah, Jordan Belfort. You went on his podcast, right? Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, I know you're like, hey, Gary V's out there, Grant's out there, Jordan's out there. Yeah. I've got – See, I love Gary V. I love Gary V because I know – like I feel like he comes from a good place. Those other two guys, I don't. I'm less of a hater on Jordan than I am on Grant because of what Grant has done to really conflict with my morals. But I wanted to just dive into that whole theme with you and then we'll get into everything else if that's okay with you. Yeah, that sounds great. You know, I've learned this secret. You know, like there's a back story to kind of everything I do.

But my second company when I was 21 called InMobile, my partner is now at Seamless. We launched this after our first company was successful and then we launched this second company where we took all of the money from the first company into the second company called InMobile because we thought in 2007 flip phones, text message marketing would revolutionize how you communicate with people. And the reason – so we invested three and a half years building in mobile and there were two major reasons why it failed. Number one, we didn't have the list to sell to. We couldn't find the B2B marketers to sell this text message software to. The second reason was we didn't know the secrets to B2B sales. So after doing a post-mortem, you know, burning three and a half years of my life, doing a look back, I'm like, okay, why did this thing fail?

Well, the first company was successful because I was able to build a list of all the college students and then I mass emailed them and prospected them. Second company failed because we didn't have the list and we didn't know how to sell. So right at that point when I started selling for IBM, I was like, I am going to learn all the sales secrets from every single person in the world that I can learn from. And I don't know if it's just growing up or what. Like I'm from the Midwest. My father always taught me to like treat everyone with respect. Don't disrespect anyone. So I've never judged anyone that I'm trying to learn from. And I try to learn everything from anyone who has done anything, anything great.

Yeah. I mean, even if they don't do anything great, I'm trying to learn from them. We had a janitor at our office and I'm always nice to him. And because he sees us playing ping pong and it's an older gentleman cleaning our office when we had office space and he was just bullshitting with us like, man, you guys are so nice to me, blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, you know, dude, we're nice to everyone. Like you got to respect and appreciate everyone. And he's like, oh, my daughter is a venture capitalist in San Francisco. And you're just like, how are you a janitor in Columbus, Ohio, Worthington? And your daughter is now a venture capitalist. She partnered with a bunch of musicians like Jay-Z who then funded this venture capital firm.

So I got connected with her. And you just keep learning, like, don't judge anyone because you don't know them and try to learn secrets from everyone. So, like, the reason why we did Sales Secrets, which I'm so grateful to have you in the book and it was amazing hearing about your journey and your success, is there's success leaves secrets. Everyone who has done anything, there's secrets that you can learn, good or bad, to either avoid failure or achieve results you want to achieve even faster. So I've got thousands of mentors like you, like Gary Vee, like Grant, like every sales expert in Sales Secrets. So I think that the moral of the story for us and me and our company is treat everyone with respect and try to learn the secrets to do what you want to do as fast as possible.

And I love that. And I think that, you know, because it aligns with one of my 12 personal guidelines to success, which is you can learn something from anybody in any situation. To your point, when I first started selling, you know, DeWalt power tools, everybody else would go into the foreman. I would go to the guy using the tool and, you know, they would walk by all the construction workers, right? And they would go straight to the foreman to try to sell the foreman on the best DeWalt tool on the planet. And I was like, well, I, you know, yes, I've been through my boot camp. I know what these DeWalt tools do and I know the gears and how ours are metal and theirs are plastic and all that bullshit.

I go, but like, how are these applied in real world shit? So I would sit down with all the construction workers, eat lunch with them, pick their brains about, watch them how they used it. And then I would gather all that information and then use that to go to the foreman and say, hey, I've been talking to your guys. So same thing with secretaries and gatekeepers. Like I've always felt that when I was selling copiers. But I want to get your perspective because I genuinely appreciate that mentality of wanting to learn and being open to learning from anybody about anything. Okay. But when it comes to morals and ethics, when it comes to sales, okay, for instance, you know, you got the Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross is the world.

You got the boiler rooms that create the perception of our industry. Right. And, and rightfully so in a lot of ways, in the, in the sense that there are certain people that are just in it for the money. There are certain people that don't give a rat's ass of what they're selling and they just want to get their commission checks. So help me understand from your perspective, like a, what is sales to you and B what's the moral compass that, that you, that, that drives you to do sales the right way. Cause I do believe in the reason that I've, you know, stayed a supporter and connected with you is cause I believe you're coming from a, even though you have a similar persona in a, in a, in a, some of the ways of the grants and those type of people, um, there's, I know there's a good person in you.

I know you have strong values and I know you love the outcome of helping other people achieve success. And so walk me through kind of your whole philosophy around sales and what moral compass drives you and what you don't appreciate about certain aspects of sales or different people's approaches. Yeah. And I, you know, I would say our, my persona and what I do is completely different from, from anyone, right? We've all got unique stories of journeys, um, very similar to you. Like growing up, I was taught that to be successful, I need to become a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. No one ever told me in my life that sales is the greatest job in the world. And when you look at the education system around sales, it's completely broken.

And, you know, I learned it through college and starting different companies that sales is the greatest job in the world. Sales is the highest paying career in the world that no one talks about, which is complete and utter bullshit. You know, the press doesn't talk about it. The news doesn't talk about it. And sales to, to us in our company are, are these awards. Like when we, when I started seamless, I was selling and it was difficult time consuming and expensive to acquire new customers. You know, I, I was, my team and I, we were spending millions of dollars on these outdated, expensive databases. We're missing all the digital marketers that we need to sell Google to and built seamless. And I was able to achieve amazing success and become a millionaire in sales.

You know, sales to me is leveraging your success and helping other people take those secrets and maximize their success. So when I quit, you know, to go all in on helping every salesperson in the world, every professional in the world, connect opportunity and positively impact billions. Like my mission is to help every single professional in the world, connect opportunity and positively impact billions with the ultimate goal of getting a million people into president's club award, which means that they've generated a million dollars in sales. And then I spend more money than what they pay me in a license to ship this award. Because when I was selling for IBM, I was given a $25 million quota, hit the quota.

Then I was given a $50 million quota, hit the quota. And my boss was like, okay, let's give you a higher quota. There was no celebration. There was no coaching. It was always like beat you to death, have you work harder. And I'm like, I don't want salespeople to ever have to go through a hard time with generating sales results to get the products and services in the hands of the people that, need them most, need them most. I don't want people to feel like they can't create the life that they want, the family that they want, the time off that they want, the freedom that they want, because they're not generating the revenue, the income, the sales, the quota attainment to be successful. So sales to me and our company is serving your customers, impacting your customers, helping eliminate their pain, problems and barriers, and helping them achieve their greatest desires, goals and dreams and doing whatever it takes to make that happen.

And I think that's why, that's why we built the software. That's why I wrote the books and anything I do. That's why I came out with the awards is because crazy or not, we've got this mission to help every professional in the world become unstoppable, whether that's sales marketers or entrepreneurs. And so, and I love it, with that, whatever it takes has a certain connotation to it of, so what your focus is a lot is helping others achieve success, right? Which I'm on the same page with you. But sometimes that is whatever it takes is in conflict with customers, in conflict with, you know, helping a customer be successful, right? So you got all these, like, if I just look at, you know, let's look at Boiler Room for a second, right?

Like, yes, I mean, those people made fucking millions, you know what I mean? Those kids made fucking millions of dollars selling stock, but they screwed so many people. So what's the line and how do you impart that part of the equation into what you're doing here? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, everything that I talk about assumes that you are representing a product and a service that changes the people that you serve life for the better. So, like, the three things that we hire, like, let me pause for that for a second. Should you assume that? Because, and the reason I ask that is because the perception of sales is what it is. A lot of people come and see the glitzy, glamour shit, and they're like, fuck it, man.

Like, I don't give a fuck what I'm selling. I'm going to go make my millions and drive my cars and fly in my jets. So should we have an assumption that the people who get into this are getting into it for the right reasons? I think, you know, there's a great question, John. I believe I like to give people, like, I've got a big heart. Danielle, our COO, and my partner, who's also my wife at the company, you know, it's awesome to have a women-led. The fact that you guys are still married is fantastic. Yeah. When you guys are partners and still married is fantastic. Women-led leadership. Yeah, I'm lucky, you know, I'm grateful to have her on the team. And, you know, I've got a big heart to where, like, I'll over-trust.

I think you can move faster by over-trusting and giving autonomy and authority and empowerment and ability for the people that you work with to, like, go run and make a positive change. She's a super lawyer, so she is more judgmental at analyzing body behavior, language, feedback, thoughts, actions, history, posts on social media. So she's analyzing everything where if I try to judge, like, the person and the culture and, like, are they trying to change our customer's life for the better? And when you're hiring, I just wrote, I'm writing a new leadership book, and in the book, I wrote, like, I try to interview for three things. These are different than the core values. But three things I try to hire for.

Number one, intelligence. And I think this is on your board where, like, on your board, you talk about being curious and always trying to learn more. I believe in, like, the 1% rule. Every day you should try to improve 1% over the course of a year. That's 37x. You make 100 grand, you improve 1%, and you're making 3.7 million by the end of the year, which means you've positively impacted probably tens of millions of people or tens of millions of dollars in value created for the economy. But intelligence is all about having the self-awareness and the empathy and the kindness to understand what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you need to learn, where you're falling short, your weaknesses, your strengths.

Number two. So do you mean intelligence as far as EQ versus IQ in that regard, or both? I think it's a mix of both. Like, emotional intelligence and then just also the wherewithal to know what you're good at, what you're not good at. It's like emotional intelligence meets coachability meets application. And that's what I believe, like, intelligence is. And then integrity is number two. Like, do I have a history of integrity? Do I showcase that I can be trustworthy? Do I showcase that I do what I say I'm going to do? Is this someone that I could meet with and work with? And when I'm out of the room with them, are they going to talk positively about me or negatively about me when I'm out of the room?

You know, so we really try to evaluate intelligence, integrity. How do you, can I ask on that integrity piece, how do you uncover that in an interview, right? Because I could, if you ask me, are there certain questions you ask or stories that you look for? Because I always think, you know, in interviews, you ask me a hypothetical question, for instance, and I'll be the best interviewer you'll ever come across in your life. Because I'll tell you exactly what you want to hear, right? But if you ask me a situational-based question of give me an example of when. So how do you, for those, is that a pillar of yours, as it is a pillar of yours, what are some of the things you do to understand real integrity from people in the interview process?

Yeah, in the integrity process. So let's just say I'm interviewing someone and they're like, yeah, I worked for John and he was working me so hard and, you know, I didn't get a lot of FaceTime with him because he was always traveling. So, like, I'll see cues of negativity, putting employers down, putting people down. I'll see cues of victim. I'll see cues of blaming everyone and everything for where I'm at today. I'll see, you know, on resumes, fake titles, fake start dates and end dates. I was interviewing, like, a VP of finance. And, you know, they're like, oh, I was a venture partner when they were a venture analyst. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, there's a big difference being a venture managing partner than being a venture analyst.

So when you start, notice, and, like, employment dates, you know, it says June when really, you know, they were out in March. And you're just like, okay, I can't trust, like, so you look for communication of, like, what they're saying to you in the interview. And then you're also looking at the, like, the qualitative and the quantitative data to see if they have integrity. And sometimes it's hard to judge, like, if there aren't any major warning signs because of my heart and I believe people are good, I try to bring them on. And then you could see pretty quickly, are they positive, coachable, hardworking, whatever it takes. So our core values, we have 12. But to break it down into four core themes, positive, you know, do they have a positive outlook?

Do they try to be a positive impact onto others? Do they try to bring positivity and increase the positive wisdom of the crowd? Are they coachable? Are they trying to improve 1% a day when you give them feedback to improve? Do they embrace it? Do they try to change? Do they try to take action? Are they hardworking? I just believe, you know, again, with your thing, like, everything, I think on your wall, you say everything earned, nothing given? Yep, earn everything, yeah. Like, work hard and smart. People always ask me, what's the secret to success? I'm like, working your fucking ass off. Like, you know, as far as intelligence is current, I'm not a Harvard grad. I'm not a Harvard grad. I'm not an MIT kid over here, right?

I went to a state school, drank my way through four years of college, but I know I can outwork you. I just know that because it's something I can control. And so your work ethic is by far, you know, you can't teach that, right? No, no, you can't teach it at all. And that's why hustle beats talent when talent doesn't hustle. Like, you've got to work hard. That's the third pillar to, like, our core values. And then number four is whatever it takes. And whatever it takes is all about, like, going back to your question about, I think it ties to the integrity. You can have people doing whatever it takes. The boiler room and the Wall Street people that scammed everyone with the stocks of Jordan Belfers and all of that, there's secrets that you can learn from them, you know, to avoid making dumb mistakes, to, you know, be smarter.

But that is the bottom 1% that gives sales teams, salespeople, go-to-market teams a bad rap. Like, when I hear of sales, I don't think of them. I think of people that have an amazing product that need to get their products and services into the hands of the people that desperately need them. And unfortunately, why 96% of businesses fail every year, why all these companies, you see it, John, right now, all these tech companies, recession hits, everyone's laying off 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% of the employees. The only reason why they're doing that is because they are forecasting their inability to generate sales, their inability to generate income. And I believe sales is all about making sure we can help more companies, more people generate the revenue that they need to be successful to survive, thrive, employ hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and change the world.

Yeah, it's funny. It goes back to core values and knowing those and being true to those because, you know, in times, I'm actually putting together a keynote right now on this whole thing of alignment of why values, goals, and energy. And how if you have those solid, like if you know your why and you are unshakable on that and you have strong core values, you can pretty much get through everything because that's your decision stack, right? So now when bad times come, when you have to make decisions in short-term, mid-term, long-term stuff, you just run it up against your why and your values. And if it aligns with those, it's an easy decision to make. If it doesn't align with those, you don't.

And so I, you know, those pieces to me are now more important than ever. And so I love how you hire on those. What was the third one? You said integrity. And then what was the other one that- Yeah, so, oh, initiative. So you can have intelligence and you can have integrity. You know this with your team because your team does a great job of this. If you're not taking initiative and action, no matter what I tell you, you're not going to be successful. So I need people that, because we're at a fast-growing startup, you know, and thanks so much for following on the Tech Company of the Year and number one best places to work. Like, the reason why we're able to do those things is, one, because we try to go all out to serve our customers and help them generate results.

And so I've got five pillars for maximizing employees that we could talk about in a little bit. But if we really urge the urgency in taking action, don't ask me for permission. Don't ask a leader for permission. Take action. If you're serving our mission and vision and core values, most likely, 95% of the time, your action-taking will result in a positive data point or a positive result. Yeah. You know, as long as you've got that big pillar. But if you don't take action because of paralysis by analysis, because of laziness, because you're waiting for someone to approve it, you won't be successful. Seamless won't be successful. Our customers won't be successful and our employees won't be successful.

So we try to, like, in a remote world, tell people at our company, don't wait. Just go all out. If it's right, it's right. And make it happen. Help me with this theme that you hear quite a bit about millennials, about how they, the lack of creativity, the lack of doing anything other than they're told, right? The work ethic. Like, you hear these macro trends about, oh, you know, the figure it out is no longer a thing, right? They just tell me what to do and I'll do it, right? Because I'm just going to do my job here and I'm not going to go that extra mile. You hire a lot more than I do and you've seen, I think, a lot more than I have. And you're, and how old are you? I just turned 36. Good for you, fucker.

So I'm 46, right? How old are you? I'm 46. So for you. I'm trying to get to your level one day, John. Shit, man. I'm trying to get to your level. Fuck that. But, but with that, you know, you're in a slightly different generation and you get, I think, exposed to a lot of the younger generation. Are you, do you see the same trends that you hear from a macro level of lack of work ethic and those type of things? Or are you seeing the exact opposite? Because I've, I've talked to some people like, are you out of your mind? Like these millennials, some of these millennials and Gen Zers work harder than, than any Gen Xer or above will ever work. So is there a macro trend that you're seeing when you're going through these interviews that, that lean into that one way or the other?

Yeah, this is a really great question because we're, you know, we've, we've hired hundreds of SDRs. I'm actually trying to scale our SDR team to a thousand, our A team to 250, 300 people. And the amount of personalities and people you, you interact with in a hundred percent. So our company is a hundred percent remote. We are going to probably open up optional hubs again. Like we've got a big presence in Tampa, big presence in Columbus, Ohio, where I'm at currently. We've got a big presence in New York, in Dallas, in Atlanta, in California. Like there's, there's people and customers everywhere. And it's interesting doing it a hundred percent remote, not being able to meet a lot of people face to face.

I believe it all comes down to the person. Like, for example, my, my head of video came right out of school and took all of our content, all of our video shooting. We call them B-Rock. So Gary's got D-Rock. Well, B becomes before D because B-Rock is better than D-Rock. And, uh, you know, he's just a genius and he just graduated. And he, he took our content like three to five to 10 X. It's amazing. I've got an intern right outside this studio right now, Kevin, who's a junior in college, working his ass off, comes to it, comes to my house, works at my house, works his ass off on recruiting, finance, marketing, whatever. You know, so I, I believe it's, it's the person and their work ethic. Like I don't judge, just like I don't judge people and I don't group people together.

Like, oh, all marketers are bad. All salespeople are bad. All whatever are bad. I think it's the person. Don't judge a generation. There's amazing people everywhere. And you got to develop the sales discovery to interview the right people, be able to figure out who are the, the hard workers, the positive, the coachable, the whatever takers versus those that just want to get a paycheck, get by, not really work. Unfortunately, like luckily Danielle and Sam. So, so we've got an amazing group of women leaders at Seamless and they, you know, Sam and Danielle, they handle all the people ops. I get to handle the product with the product vision with Jake and Austin and our team. I get to handle sales and marketing with JP and Mike and Adam.

So I don't deal as much with like the minutiae bullshit of the like behind the scenes drama and stuff, like the good and bad of the people. I get to focus and promote like the amazing success stories of our people. Danielle, Sam and Cindy on our HR team deal with like, you have no idea how it difficult to manage 500 people remote. It's crazy. Oh, I got it. I mean, that's why I've realized over my career that I'm a pretty good leader. I'm a terrible manager. Like as far as like the way I delineate that is like, if you want to go through a forecast review, man, I am all in. I really am interested in helping you figure out this deal. Right. But when you miss your forecast, I'm like, ah, I don't want to talk.

I got to want to put you on a pip. I don't want to do any of that bullshit. Like that's just not like I just don't enjoy that. Right. So I have, you know, on my team, Megan, who's my chief operating officer and everything. It was basically who was my first hire. I mean, she's a great manager and holding people accountable and that type of thing. So I think it's nice to have that duality, if you will, of somebody who, you know, when you could split up the roles and responsibilities and, you know, you don't want to say good cop, bad cop, but have other people kind of managing some of those components. Everyone's got different strengths and, like, if you look at, this is really interesting. If you look at these companies that failed, these massive hyperscaled companies, I'm not even going to say their names.

But you know the hyperscaled, unicorn, massive companies that had epic multibillion-dollar valuations and then crashed? It was because they had a visionary founder or entrepreneur that didn't have a COO like Megan, that didn't have a COO and partner like Danielle or Sam or Cindy or Austin or Jake or Mike or Adam, where these details are being tracked, monitored, watched, improved, optimized to ensure that there's guardrails to make sure this thing doesn't fall off the waves. And that's a problem with a lot of these companies that, like, skill at all costs, grow or die. We're from the Midwest. We believe in, you know, make money to grow, use money to grow, be capital efficient, be capital effective.

And it just could be, like, you know, grew up poor with my family and I'm just, make money and then pay the bills. Like, don't take on credit card debt, you name it. I remember when I was working for Jack and Susie Welsh, I did a, you know, two-month thing where I was helping them get their online MBA program off the ground. And this is where I know, because I love being an East Coaster, playing in the West Coast world, but still staying on the East Coast. Because we're, you know, we're a little bit more traditional, a little bit more grounded, you know, those type of things. I still say I'd be a multi, multi-millionaire if I lived in San Francisco. You know what I mean? Because I could fart in a box and get $100 million.

But I remember when I was working with Susie, she's sitting down and she talked about this. You know, and I was a Jack Welsh fan. You know, I loved his book Winning is one of my favorite books of business-wise and the whole thing, right? And, you know, but now they're in a startup. Now, they had both GE, multi-million, private jets, the whole thing, and now they're doing a startup. And she was like, yeah, our marketing budget. You know, last year we got this marketing firm and, you know, it didn't go so well. And I was like, oh, cool. Well, you know, mind you, I'm coming from ground startup, no funding at all, like the whole thing, right? Yeah. And she goes – Doing whatever it takes to make it, right, John?

Like, literally, I've never gotten a dime from a single person and purposely so. But I asked her, I go, so, well, just out of curiosity, like how much did you spend on marketing last year just with this firm that you're not happy with? And she was like, eh, you know, it was about $20 million. And she said $20 million. And I literally, Brandon, I fell out of my fucking chair. I was like, I'm like, Susie, you give me $20 million – honestly, A, I don't know what I would do with $20 million. But if you did give me $20 million, I promise you that every man, woman, and child in the United States of America would know exactly what the Jack Welsh Management Institute was. And she was just like, okay, well, let's work with that.

Because I was like – because it's the mentality of, like, let's not waste that money. You know what I mean? Let's apply it. And I always – I mean, my wife's an environmental scientist. And I look at the money in Silicon Valley, and I almost throw up compared to the money she gets to do real work, right? Yeah, no. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes, and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JBSales' content, all of their training, tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day.

$365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly 100% of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our biweekly Ask Me Anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it. This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL, one more time, is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. Let me ask you something.

It seems like there was a little bit of a shift with you recently, if I was following some of your posts. Because a while back, you had posted the Lambos and you're driving in the Ferraris and stuff like that. But then I think it was about a month ago, you said it's not about that stuff. And I forget exactly what the post was. I apologize. I didn't read it right before this. But it struck me. And it's actually what got me to respond to saying, yeah, you know what? I want to have this conversation with Brandon. Is there something, because again, the kind of the perception versus reality here. And that's what I'm trying to break down with this whole thing, with this whole conversation is, you know, look, it's the Lambos and the private jets and all that stuff is fucking baller.

And I think it gets people to be like, holy shit, I could, without a college degree, achieve that level of success from a monetary standpoint and those type of things. But you did a post about how it wasn't all about that. Was there something that shifted in you or did you just want to get a different message out there? Yeah. It's interesting. My first company when I was 18, I did it all for the money, right? Yeah. Because you're a college kid, right? And it did $12 million in sales. And I was probably one of the richest kids in college at the time. And I got the cars and I got all this jazz. Like, I did it to feel successful and to show other people I was successful. And then when I was selling for IBM, Google and starting Seamless, it was only all about the customer.

And what's crazy is, like, when I obsessed over the customers and maximizing their results, I became the richest I've ever been, right? So then you go, you know, flashback, okay, Brandon starts building Seamless. You know, we launch it in 2018. Before launching it in 2018 of May, I went two and a half, three years, no salary, no money, trying to get engineers every day, 24-7, 365, broke, pitched three. You know, I used Seamless to pitch and find 347 VCs. Almost all of them told me no. And, like, you want to get beaten down brutally? Go have 350 venture capital firms, Anderson, Horowitz, like Peter Thiel's firm. All the top firms in the world, I went and pitched. You're talking and pitching. You're pitching multimillionaires, billionaires.

And they're telling you that you will never make it because sales is not a good market. Sales data is not a good market. And, you know, so, like, I think it was a culmination of grinding so hard, launching Seamless, being all in on the customer, always being all in on the customer. And then it was like, okay, I've lived purposely super poor forever. Let's enjoy the journey a little bit, which is why, like, I started screwing around with, like, the house in Florida. I got the mastermind mansion in Florida. I got actually for our employees and for Danielle and I because, like, our company, when I started the company, I don't know how my townhome didn't kick us out. We lived in a townhome. It was $250K.

At the time that we bought it, we didn't know that we could afford it because all my money was in Seamless. And Danielle, who was the lawyer working for the prosecutor's office, she's like, look, you got to go all in on Seamless. This is your dream to help people find the people that they need to contact. Because, you know, for me, I just hated using Dun & Bradstreet, ZoomInfo, data.com. And they never had anyone that I needed to sell to. So I'm like, okay, I just got to build this platform. So we invested everything, built it, went three years, no salary, no money. And then when I finally paid myself, it was like $30,000. All right, next year, $40,000. So it was a lot of, like, serving our mission, being poor, and then finally taking a step back and being like, okay, let's enjoy it.

So then, like, I started getting some toys, right, recently, last year. And it made me happy for one week. Because, like, what always made me happy was when I got to interview thousands of people winning President's Club, making a million dollars in sales. Like, when I wake up every day, I don't have it, it's upstairs. Every day I wake up at 4 a.m., I write down 100 million in ARR, 1 million President's Club winners, number one best places to work for 50 years in a row, 10 number one best sellers, 1 million LinkedIn and YouTube followers, number one world's best husband, and the world's healthiest whole food plant-powered vegan. So, like, breaking this back, I believe if we build a $100 million ARR company, we built a company that positively impacted $20 billion in economic value.

And I've got data that actually shows that we've done more than that. The million President's Club winners, so every family's got, like, 2.5 members on average. If I could help create a million people, make a million dollars in sales, that means we've positively impacted 3.5 million people, plus their companies, plus their employees, and they've created the life they want, the family they want, everything that they want in this life, right? The number one best places to work is all about going all in on our people. I believe to go all in on your people to maximize their potential and do whatever it takes, there's five pillars. Because I got beaten to death when I was selling for IBM. It was, like, a very bad culture.

So, I got to be a part of a really bad culture, and then selling for Google was an amazing culture. So, I took the secrets. This goes back to the beginning of the podcast. You've got to learn the secrets of what's bad and what's good. Combine them, and you'll create something amazing. So, with Seamless, I was like, IBM never gave a shit about me. They just kept giving me more quota. They never celebrated me. They beat me down. They were negative. They were toxic. They were yelling. They were bossy. They made me feel anxious, unsafe. They were untrustworthy. So, with Seamless, we're like, hey, we've got to, for our employees, we've got to maximize their potential professionally. We've got to maximize their potential personally.

We've got to maximize their health, their wealth, and their relationships. Because I try to think of, what do I do every day? I want to maximize my professional success, my personal success, my health, my wealth, and my relationships. If I'm trying to spend every day of my waking hour to do that, we need to do that for our employees, and we need to do that for our customers. So, we've got so much education, training, support, coaching, mentoring with our whole company. Someone's got a law problem. They call Danielle and I. Someone's going through a massive breakdown because someone passed away. They're calling our leadership team or our managers. We're really, I believe, like the way that we run this company, we're a success mastermind company for our employees.

And when you get into the group, we'll give you everything we've got to maximize your success on all these five pillars. The reason why we go all in on these five pillars is because if one of these pillars falls down, it's a negative domino spiraling effect. If your health is shitty and I see you eating bad, drinking bad, drugs, smoking, whatever, I call out our people. Dude, why are you eating that fast food? Why are you drinking every other day? Like, there is something that we've got to improve here. You know, what can we do? Oh, I'm not talking to my family. I'm not doing this. Hey, let's really try to dial that back. Obviously, there's something, there's some pain, there's some problem here.

How do we unblock that so that you don't look back and then regret something? And then the professional development and maximizing their work success is really easy. Like, that's the easiest thing. The harder thing is to actually go all in on someone's health, wealth, and relationships and personal life because a CFL doesn't see the balance sheet and the ROI of that. But guess what? We run the company the way that we want to run the company. We don't bring on investors or partners that don't back our operating philosophy of whatever it takes, of going all in on the five pillars for our employees, of, you know, if I asked anyone about, like, doing these awards and a CFL would be like, why are you spending tens of thousands of dollars to ship these awards, to print them, whatever?

Why, Brandon, do you want to put on a President's Club event, you know, like, for all of your customers and users? Just focus on selling the software, selling the software. Why do you write books? I got drilled on these books forever. And we've, you know, we've sold tens of thousands of copies. It's because we're trying to change people's lives and, like, the legacy. We want to build a legacy of legacy leaders and people that just fucking change the world. And, like, what your definition is on the new website that looks beautiful is, like, we're trying to revolutionize what people think about salespeople, what people think about entrepreneurs. Because I believe that the only people that are going to change this world forever for the better are salespeople and entrepreneurs.

And the only thing that is stopping the only people that are going to change this world forever for the better, which are salespeople and entrepreneurs, are their ability to connect with the people that can buy from them. The people that desperately need their products and services and getting those products and services into their hands as fast as humanly possible. The people who make a difference are the people who, you know, charge hard, but again, come back to those core values and are doing it for the right reasons. Because, you know, I have a similar saying. I genuinely think sales is the greatest profession in the world. When done right. And look, it's my definition of right, whatever that is.

And I've gotten in an argument with a few people like, who the hell are you to think about what's right and wrong? And yeah, who the hell am I? But when it comes down to it, ethics, morals, doing it for the right reasons, not trying to screw your customers. And that's why when you said that there's like that 1% that gives us that bad name, you know what I mean? The, the, the Wolf of Wall Street, the movies, if you will, that is that perception that is still a strong perception. And there's a reality to it as well, which is why I'm curious from an education standpoint, what you think here, obviously sales is an uneducated profession, right? Most of us, I mean, I think there's at best a hundred colleges here in the universe, in the U S now that can actually teach sales and what type of sales, you know, that's, that's questionable.

I went to one, if anyone listening can go to a sales certificate, sales college at your college, they're amazing. All the top people that I know in my network actually went to one of those sales schools. That doesn't mean that if you didn't go to sales school, you can't be successful. Cause I know way more people that didn't go to sales school that are successful, but for anyone tuning in, who's in college, thinking about college, thinking about sales, find a school that's got a sales, uh, training program because it will change, it will change the trajectory of your life. A hundred percent. I mean, that's why, you know, you got the books. I, you know, people were asking me, what am I going to write a book?

And I didn't know like what the hell I'm going to write. And I'm not a reader, but I did. I wrote the, you know, I want to be in sales when I grow up with. Oh yeah. Yeah. The kids, that's amazing. I want you to do one also for, for people like me. I just want to be in sales when I grow up with it. It's very like grownups, right? Well, I'm actually working on a, to a certain degree that, but you know, the, the, the reality is, is that people go to school for whatever degree they think they want to be when they grow up. They realize they can't either afford to be in that cause they have, they're in too much debt or they don't like it. And so they get into sales. And the problem is, is when they get into sales, they are typically given a quota and a territory and said, good luck.

And so what the problem with that is, is you take a kid who's, who's probably a pretty genuine, pretty good, you know, morals and ethics and all that other stuff. And you put them in that scenario and you say, Hey, by the way, if you don't hit your quota this month, if you don't hit your quota this quarter, you're going to get fired, whatever. You're going to take a normal kid and they're going to do some abnormal normal things. And so it self-perpetuates this, this perception of sales in the market of, you know, sleazy, you know, say whatever the hell it takes to, to get me to do something. So where do you think we need to go? And we can finish on this one, but where do you think we need to go from an education?

I think both you and I are trying to, to improve it on the backend, but how do we change? How do we fundamentally change the perception of sales and, and, and truly elevate it? Um, and, and you had some big, big, you know, be hags, if you will, as far as millions of this and those types of things. So if you were to, if you were to be able to fundamentally shift it, how would you approach it? I would start at the top and I, I believe it comes down to the leaders. Um, for example, our sales meeting today, we're 48 hours left in Q2, right? It ends in literally 48 hours. Um, I could have gotten, you know, we've got 200, 250 people in our sales stand up this morning and, and I'm going to talk about bad companies versus good companies or bad leaders versus bad, uh, good leaders.

So, so, so bad leaders, I could have, I could have been a bad leader, which, which I've had before. And I go into the sales meeting, why are sales down? Why do we not have more revenue? Why do we not have more appointments? Why are Johnny, aren't you doing this? Sarah, you did this wrong. What are you, you guys are idiots, blah, blah, blah. Right. Um, and I've been a part of these meetings where you, you get beaten down, you, you get, you know, abused in groups on Zooms or whatever, uh, and getting abused with no support, no training, no feedback, no coaching, no, no pipeline reviews, no nothing. Just generate more sales, generate more sales. And our team is, is, is luckily crushing their, their numbers, but what I did today, and it was completely unplanned, I'm working out at my house and, um, I was like trying to think of how can I visualize the impact that Seamless is making to all of our employees who are 450 people virtually right now.

I call Austin our, our VP of technology. And like, by the way, when he gets a call from me at 8am, he freaks out. He's like, shit, is the platform down? Uh, what emergency do we, like, I never call my VP attack at, in the morning, unless there's an emergency and it happens like once every year. Uh, so I call him and I immediately say, Hey Austin. And he's like, Hey, what's up? I was like, first off, no emergency. I had an epiphany. And like, he's probably heard this call a thousand times because we've been business partners since launching the company. I'm like, dude, I just had this epiphany. It's going to change everything. And he's like, okay, what is it? I'm like, okay, well maybe it won't change everything, but I think it will change the way that our company and our employees think about who, what we're doing today and what we're doing tomorrow and what we're doing every day of the week.

I was like, how many leads have been researched and generated, uh, in the lifetime of seamless? And he's like, dude, I don't know. It's going to take forever to query. I'm like, dude, you're genius. Like you are a literal IQ data programming guru, software genius. Like just do the query real quick. I was like, I'm working out. I've got some time because I was doing cardio or whatever. So he does the whole query thing in the database. He pulls it up. I've got the number because we've got it on a dashboard here. 152,343,932. So I take this leads number, like these are people researched in seamless by salespeople, marketers, and entrepreneurs. And I'm like, holy shit. Okay. You take an average conversion rate.

That means we've generated 13,046,879 appointments. That means at a low close rate on the appointments, we've generated 3,261,720 deals, which equates in revenue at a $10,000 AOV, $32,617,196. And I literally, I'm like, holy shit. So when I jumped on the team call today, I didn't talk about quotas. I didn't talk about urgency. I didn't talk about how we need to hit our number. I just started clapping. And I was like, guys, we've got some amazing numbers to go over from all of your hard work being servant leaders, going all out to help our customers, you know, create the life they want, the family they want, the time they want, the freedom they want, the sales that they want to change their life forever and win President's Club.

And I literally just went through the numbers. Here's all the leads that you've helped generate. Here's all the appointments you've helped generate. The 13 million appointments, the 3.26 million deals, the $32 billion in revenue. And after every data point, we just clapped and celebrated each other. And I just told them, you know, we, I, I ended with, you know, thank you. You've inspired me, you know, seeing everything that we've accomplished thus far. Like, I was always inspired, but like, there's little things that really take you to the next level and just give you that extra motivation and inspiration for you to sit back and be like, holy shit, what we do matters. We're changing people's lives.

We're changing companies' trajectories forever. And it was nothing about any quota, any number ever. And everyone just felt that hit of, wow, what we're doing is, is positively impacting people. And that was the end of the meeting. It was like, good luck, finish out the quarter. And thank you for everything you've done to serve our company, our employees and our mission and our users. Well done, man. And that is so actually leads me to the one thing about leadership. So you said your next book is you're writing on leadership. Yeah. Yeah. This book started because, like, I've got all these college kids that are SDRs. Like, the good part about going from, like, 30 people to 450 people in a year and a half is it creates a ton of career development and growth and professional development and promotions and raises and all of this amazing stuff for everyone that works here.

The difficult part of that is scaling. How do you take a brand new SDR who's been in the world for three to six months and then you train them on how to manage 10, 20, 30 people? There's a lot of groups, you know, I'd love to hear your point of view, like, where people will say, oh, you can't promote from within. Sales people and individual contributors aren't good managers. My belief is you can do both. You can turn individual contributors into great managers. Like, I manage a team of 450 people and I've never really been a manager. I just learned the secrets on how to do it. So I originally started writing the leadership book as, like, secrets to give to my team on how to lead. And it was really tied into our culture and our core values and our beliefs and how we manage people remote and how we coach.

You know, like you said, like the dashboard manager versus, like, an actual coach skilling you up and helping you fill in the gaps of where you're weak and strong and celebrating your successes versus, you know, hitting you on failures. So I wrote the book initially, I started writing it for our people and then I was like, this is so much bigger than just us. I was like, I'm going to do a secret a day, 365 secrets for anyone reading to become the best leader that they can be, not just specific to sales, because I believe everyone can be a leader and I want everyone to take extreme accountability and ownership in becoming the best leader that they can be. I don't know the title. All I know is there's going to be a secret a day and I've got, I write it on notes on Apple on my iPhone.

Yeah. So the three eyes that we talked about, like, I wrote that today, literally wrote like, like this, uh, June, it's June 29th. I wrote it at 6 19 a.m. You can't see it, but that, that was today initiative, intelligence and integrity. So, um, I've got over shit. Uh, let's see here real quick. And this isn't to brag. I've got 418 secrets. A lot of them are repetitive, you know, um, but different angles. And, and I keep learning different secrets that are the same theme, but you hear it differently. Uh, like, uh, the way that I talk about hard work, you know, at the, at the beginning of this podcast, I shared my story about hard work that, that gives you got to hustle and work hard. And you gave your story about when you're on the field, they're the same takeaway, but the different stories hit people different ways.

So it's a, it's a, it's a shitload of secrets to help people become the best leader that they can be. And I think if I could develop great leaders here, it's seamless. It will just help us grow faster. And then also if I could help other people be great leaders, it will help everyone that reads it to maximize the impact that they have. And it's a lot of, a mix between like empathy, kindness, servant leadership, uh, very mission core value driven and how you do all of that at like mass scale. And luckily I just had a lot of really bad leaders. Well, I mean, it, it goes, that goes to like your, you know, a lot of your core values come from to your point of what you don't like, what you've seen out there that, that really you have that visceral.

Cause a lot of, you know, I've gone through the exercise of people's like, write down your core values. Like, well, okay, I don't really know exactly what they are. Okay. Well, an easy way to do it is write down all the shit that you hate that people do to you. You know what I mean? Like come up with those examples. So now do the exact opposite. Well, that's a core value of yours. You know what I mean? If somebody not, if somebody lying to you is, is really just to your core bothers you, well then honesty is a core value of yours. You know what I mean? Like somebody not showing up and working hard and just cash and checks. Like if that bothers you, then work ethic is a core value of yours. So it's a, it's a, it's a different perspective.

And a lot of those secrets are tough to put into practice. For example, here's a, here's a good one on leadership. I know we're, we're running to time, but when we were 10 people in like every dollar mattered or, or we would be going seamless would have been bankrupt. My number one sales performer was our most toxic employee. Yeah. Made everyone feel like shit. Put everyone down. I'm smarter than you. You're dumber than me. I'm faster than you. You're slower than me. I need you to do everything for me. I will do nothing for you. He was our, he was, he was outperforming every salesperson by two X minimum. And he was nice to me as the, the CEO, like always sucked up to me and was extremely toxic to everyone else.

And because I was busy, like trying to figure out how to build and scale seamless with Jake Austin and our amazing partnership and Danielle and Sam and everyone, this, this toxic employee was like, I didn't really see it, but all of my team saw it. And I, I, you know, when you've got a team of 10 to 15, they all, they're, they're all coming to you. And you're like, okay, you got to try to analyze it. Is this person really toxic or are they jealous because this person's outperforming and that's where you just got to use your, your instinct and your gut. You start doing a lot of research, get as much data as possible. And the minute I really found out that my number one sales performer was toxic.

I believe leadership is like what you tolerate and what you demand, like you, you have to demand excellence out of your people. And the minute you start lowering the bar of what excellence is, excellence to serving the customer, excellence to serving the mission, the, the employees, if you keep lowering that bar, eventually you're going to have the worst company in the world. And I lost $2 million out of a $10 million company, you know, and actually it was at that time, I think we're only doing a few million. So like that person was bringing in two and the other five or six salespeople were bringing in like four to six or whatever. It was like a big 20, 40% of the revenue. And we just had to make a call.

We had to let them go, let that person go. And it was crazy. The minute we let go of that toxic top one performer, you just see the team unleash. And like they all started to hit, like hit or exceed their quota. Our salespeople were always exceeding their quota, but like if they were at 120, 150%, they were now at 225%, 175%. Like their, their baseline dramatically went up and I got to learn that secret a year into building the company. So then it was like zero toxic tolerance. I don't care who you are, what you do. I don't care if it's me. If I become toxic, you guys need to fire me as fast as humanly possible. The minute that I'm not multiplying you and increasing the wisdom of the crowd and your potential, uh, I got to go.

And that's the same for anyone, you know, we, we've just, we demand excellence, demand respect. And a lot of these secrets we put in the book from, from what I've learned from building seamless and working at selling for IBM, Google and other places. And, uh, the re your original question, why do, why do salespeople do shady shit or why do salespeople fail? I think it just starts at the top. Yeah. I couldn't, I think the, the, I want to introduce it to kids early so they can see it as a, as a respected profession, um, but we absolutely have to get that top down. Um, and, and you're, you're watching it happen right now. I mean, going to with all these companies and that, you know, they hire and they, they crack the whip on, you know, make more calls, do more of this in a down economy.

And they don't take into consideration any other thing other than the numbers. I mean, you're seeing, I mean, the great resignation is, you know, it's, it's real in our industry. Let's put it that way. Um, but it's real because these kids are realizing that they can, that they don't have to deal with that, that values. And there are certain things that are more important and success isn't always the dollar figure, right? I mean, for some it is sure. But to me, I told my daughter this all the time, like, especially when she was a little bit younger, I said, honey, whenever anybody asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Okay. The answer to that question is very simple and it's happy period.

So that is what you want to be when you grow up. You want to be happy. If that makes, if that means that I'm on the Gary V train on this one, if that means you make $60,000 a year and, and you get to go and take your kids to their, you know, baseball games and all that other stuff and you're happy, then fucking you win my friend. Because I know millionaires who are miserable pricks. And, and so I think, you know, taking the values, the, the right approach, the, well, our definition of the right approach and, and focusing on the bigger being other than the numbers is what's going to help shift that in, in a lot of ways. And so I, I definitely appreciate your perspective on this stuff, Brandon, because like I said, I've been avoiding this conversation with you for a while, but, but looking forward to it at the same time, because I didn't know how to position it.

Right. Because again, it's, it's, it's perception versus reality. And unfortunately we live in a world where, you know, a headline is all people read about somebody or a quick video is what they see. And they make a judgment on somebody because of it. Right. Um, I tried to take that perspective with Grant Cardone. I thought he was a douchebag early on, but then I went and saw him and, and kind of, I, I'm unfortunately I've crossed him off my list. I've actually come back around on, um, Jordan Belfort because actually partly because of his interview with Grant Cardone. I don't know if you remember that one. That was an interesting interview to say the least. It was crazy. Yeah. And so, so those are the types of things that I'm trying to break down these days as far as perception reality.

And I've always known you ever, ever since we met, fuck what, 10 years ago or something like that. Um, you know, I always knew you as a hustler and I always knew you as a good kid with good values and what you were trying to do there. And I'm, I'm glad we got this opportunity to kind of break down, um, some of what might see as a perception of a similar bucket to the reality of the difference that you're making. So I appreciate you coming on here, Brennan. Yeah, thanks. And you know, what's interesting is that that stuff is like less than 1%. 100% of the content, right? Yeah, yeah. I know. But that's the problem. It's like people catch that. It's literally like 1% of the content. And the reason why this goes to like marketing, you've got all these different things that you leverage to grab attention from people.

The thing that excites me the most is PresidentsClubAwards.com and me doing these interviews where I've got a mother, a single mother with two kids, never been to Disney, jumped on Seamless, used the platform and was able to take her kids to Disney. And she cries on video, which I've got live on PresidentsClubAwards.com. I was speaking at the Shark Tank Kevin Harrington event and I get off with Kevin and I've got a woman who's comes over to us. I don't know why I'm using two women crying, but she just starts, this just happened, both of these, she starts bawling like you helped me save my house and my family and I'm in real estate and I'm like, you're in real estate? Like this isn't built for real estate.

She's like, yeah, I'm in residential real estate, commercial real estate and I'm using your things to connect to buyers and people that I can sell to. And then I got this deal and it saved my house. It was going into foreclosure and she just starts crying. We have it on video. And like, that's what it's all about. Any, any material thing that you think, like when you talk about happiness, just for the audience, because like, luckily I've, I've, I've gone all out to serve as many people as possible. And like, I've had the experiences to have it all. And what you realize is the, the material things don't make you like, they will not make you happy. You, I always used to tell myself, once I get my ocean house, I'll be happy.

Once I get the supercar, I'll be happy. Once I get the raise, I'll be happy. Once I get a hundred million in ARR, I'll be happy. Once I get a million people to presence club, I'll be happy. And the key is to be happy right now with the journey. And that's why, you know, like when I reviewed the leads, the appointments, the revenue today, this morning, I got super fucking happy. And, and I'm like, Oh my God, like I need to share this with our team. Nothing else matters. No number, no quota, no bullshit. Nothing matters outside of what we're doing and try to, I struggle with this. Like, I think a lot of overachievers struggle with this. Like when I accomplish a goal, I'll move the goal postline.

And then you're never happy because you're always chasing the next thing. I don't know how to fix it, but I, I will promise you, I have cracked anything you buy that is materialistic will not make you happy more than delivering value in positively impacting your family, your customers, your employees, the people around you. And when you realize that, I believe you could achieve like ultimate happiness and ultimate fulfillment. And then it's just doing it all the time. You know, if you, if you're thinking about that LinkedIn posts, but you're scared, but you, you know, like when I think about doing anything, I think, can this help just one person is my, my guiding principle, anything that I do, can this just help one person?

And if it can, I do it and, and try to use, if that's a secret that you can leverage, use that as like how you act, how you operate, how you execute, and, uh, don't chase the materialistic stuff because it's all bullshit. And it only lasts a week or a month or a day. And, uh, it's all about just, you become the best that you can be and helping other people to become the best that you can be. I couldn't, I mean, the, the, the last point I'll make on that is, uh, so James Buckley on my team, you know, he goes to, yeah, thanks. He's, um, he goes to Ghana every year, like Ghana, Africa, and which is ironic because my sister's husband's from Ghana, she was a peace corps. So, but he goes there and these people literally have nothing like that you and I would consider, right?

I mean, no running water, no, like, but they are the happiest people on the fucking planet. And, and you look at that and you say, Oh my God, like these people have zero, like they literally don't even have running water or, or toilets or any of that stuff. But they're, they're the happiest people he's ever met in his life. And James, you know, James, he's one of the happier people that shows up on social, right? And, and for him to, for him to, you know, come back from those trips and talk about the, the level of happiness, those people really puts things in a different perspective when it comes to the, to the monetary things that we all kind of strive for here in Western culture, which, you know, I, I hope that, uh, I really do hope that the past couple of years with COVID has, has allowed people to take that step back and really think through what makes them happy and what, you know, what's really important to them as opposed to what everybody else is, you know, the perception is.

So love it, man. Well, look, uh, Brennan, uh, appreciate you coming on here, man, and having this conversation. I, I've been watching, uh, not even from afar, but, uh, and, and pretty close and, and been really impressed with, uh, everything that you're doing, the success that you've had, the impact that you're having on other people, uh, and the trajectory you're on here. So I'm glad we got the chance to have this conversation, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. You know, I, I know you've been a mentor to me and the team here and it's a bunch of my team members always wear that make it happen shirts and I've got mine as well. And, you know, it's been awesome to have you help mentor us and other great, you know, anyone out there that's tried to help, help us help other people.

We were grateful. We're appreciative. Thank you for having us on and, you know, hope, hope this conversation helps, uh, helps out a lot of people get to where they need to go. Definitely. Uh, any place other than seamless AI, you want people to go? Like, are you, I know you're hiring a ton, you know, you got the books come out. LinkedIn, hit me up on LinkedIn. We'd love to connect, post daily secrets there. You could, uh, get my newsletter at seamless.ai. You could sign up for free for the platform or our daily and weekly newsletter where we drop secrets to maximize your success with sales and, and with mindset and with health and relationships and wealth and personal, you name it. So, uh, we'd love to hear from you.

Oh, and pick up one of the books. I recommend starting with whatever it takes. Um, you got it. Mindset is 50 to 75% of your success. It's not some email hack. It's not some cold call opener. Your mindset is every, like your mindset will dictate your future. So I highly recommend picking up whatever it takes. It's a few bucks on Amazon and, uh, write, write a review or let me know how, how it helps you. Definitely. I'll pick one up myself here. So Brandon, thanks again. Uh, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did and go check out seamless. Go check out, um, all the book and all the, all the books and all the content, uh, that Brandon's putting out there. Cause, uh, the tips, the nuggets, the mindset, they all combine into greatness.

And if you want to be great, um, there's an opportunity to go chase it. You just need to, you know, maybe get some secrets from others. So some other people will help you skip a few steps along the way. So as always, everybody, um, go out there, no matter what you do today, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause like I always say, uh, no matter how bad your day goes, you go out there and make somebody smile today and you know, you had a good day. So thanks y'all for listening and I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads.

And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you. I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses. I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join.

And it includes membership in our on-demand platform with weekly AMAs. So you can go to jbarrows.com/open to check out the details. Thanks again and have a great day.