Today, on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with Carlos Garrido, a former investment banker turned sales trainer, about his unique career journey and the power of selling.

He shares his experiences navigating cultural accents in business, outlining how a northern English accent benefited his role in American sales environments while American accents in the UK gained new prestige over time.

Carlos runs a high-performing sales training program, and we talked about separating 'lead getting' from 'lead convering' and the sometimes lengthy process that can frustrate some sales teams. Carlos shares his experience working with business owners without robust sales skills and the challenge of natural salespeople, and we talk about finding the right mix of high-value, high-volume opportunities.

This is a really fun conversation with lots of takeaways.

Summary:

1. Carlos, shares his journey from an investment banker to a successful sales trainer, discussing the advantages of a northern English accent in the American sales environment.
2. He explains his process of settling in Miami, learning Spanish, and the role of language in sales.
3. He delves into the significance of lead conversion in any successful sales strategy.
4. We discuss how some business owners and leaders generate revenue without strong sales skills, indicating the challenge of managing natural salespeople.
5. They explore the 'before' and 'during' units of the sales process, providing insights into lead management and conversion.
6. The conversation shifts to business scaling and selecting a target market, emphasizing the economic relationship between business owners and customers.
7. Carlos shares his views on the differences between a self-serve environment and a membership program, and the complexities of pricing services at different points.
8. They discuss the power of market targeting, highlighting the potential it holds in high volume and low ticket strategies.
9. The podcast examines the impact of accent on sales success, especially the benefits of a pleasing northern English accent in the American market.
10. Carlos reflects on the challenges and rewards of his sales training journey, emphasizing the impact of sales skills on an individual's financial independence.

Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
90MinuteBooks.com

Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 255

Dean: Carlos, Good morning to you there he is Well. Welcome aboard. Welcome to the more cheeseless whiskers podcast. I'm excited that you're here.

Carlos: Very excited to be here. I'm just fixing my camera. Camera's fixed, microphone's fixed.

Dean: Where is your outpost in the world? I think you're in Miami, right Is that?

Carlos: I am. I'm based out of Miami, exactly right.

Dean: Perfect. Well, I'm excited to get to know you a little bit here about the Carlos story and what we're going to focus on today. So let's, I'd love to hear what you're, what you're up to.

Carlos: So I have a business down here in Miami, dean. We, we train sales people. We teach sales people how to sell, we train sales leaders, we consult with companies on their sales strategy, their scale strategy, and we've been doing it now for about a dozen or more years. The market has been very kind to us. I have to say I mean it could be kinder. The market has been extremely kind. I've been, I've been. We are replete with clients, which is nice, nice.

Dean: I love that. Well, that's I was saying you know you have. If you were going to craft your sales avatar, you would select I would select a pleasing northernish English accent. Yeah, north of the wall.

Carlos: No, I think that's the thing. Very good, windsor's coming, windsor's coming, yeah, from Winterfell. Yeah, okay, that's great. Yeah, where are you from? I'm from Manchester, okay, I don't say like I didn't want to.

Dean: I'm getting pretty good at like detecting the different things, but your accent particularly yeah, is one of those. That is exactly what you would dial in if I could dial in. I think a pleasing personality with a northern English accent is a sales advantage.

Carlos: I think you're exactly right, dean. You know it's especially in America it is.

Dean: That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, now, do America, do the English? Are the American accents looked upon as favorably as British accents are here, or they look down on in the UK?

Carlos: You know, I think it's evolved over the years. It's an interesting question. I think it has evolved over the years. I think the it I don't think it used to be an advantage in England to have an American accent. When you know, when, in like the eighties and nineties, when England still had this delusion that they were the masses of the universe, 90s and early 2000s, when, despite all evidence to the contrary, england still felt that it was, you know, the master of the world, and I think at that point in that period the American accent was kind of sniffed out a little bit as the young upstart, you know, the upstart superpower. Yeah, I think that if you were to go and do the same analysis today, I think I believe that the that Britain has finally taken a very clear look at itself in the ugly mirror and recognize that it's it's standing in the world is now in a. It isn't at the top of that standing. I think.

America is very clearly in that position and so they've discovered that that actually, if you speak in summary, the American accent they probably are somebody should pay attention to. I think that's. But that's an evolution over my generation, in my lifetime. Yeah, fascinating.

Dean: How long have you been in America?

Carlos: I came out here in 2009. So 14 years ago Wow, okay, yeah, 2009 for a corporate gig we were running, I was asked to come in. I'm an I'm an X investment banker, so I did a lot of M&A work and I was asked to come. I was working in house investment banking for a for a big corporate pharmaceutical company, and they were interested in making some acquisitions and some power moves in Latin America, and their Latin American regional office was based in Miami, and so they asked they actually thought I spoke Spanish, which I don't.

Dean: Well, carlos, let's look down the list. Carlos Reno, let's send him, he's gonna be perfect yeah.

Carlos: I actually got a call from the CEO, Carlos we we have a real exciting brick strategy. Do you remember when everybody had a brick strategy Brazil, Russia, India, China, emerging market strategy? So we got a really exciting emerging market strategy. So, obviously, because you speak Spanish, we want you to go and lead the Latin American. And at my mouth open, I was about to say well, I don't speak Spanish. And he said but of course you're gonna have to move your family to Miami. And I thought I could learn Spanish. I'm a fast learner.

Dean: Yeah, I'm a fast learner.

Carlos: Miami. That's pretty cool. I grew up in the 80s watching Miami Vice and stuff. I could learn Spanish. So I I just said, oh cool, but I never told anyone I could speak Spanish, I just didn't correct him. Then I came over to, I came over to the US and I was in and out of Latin America like Mexico and Argentina, and I, you know, I would be in and out almost every week to speak to somebody and I discovered very quick that their English was way better than my Spanish was ever gonna be. You know, if you're in a proper professional role in Latin America, your English is extraordinarily good, yeah, exactly, it's still good.

And so why do I need? You know, I just didn't need Spanish. The only place I actually, in my experience, the place that didn't have great English was Portugal. It was Brazil and you don't even need Spanish for.

Dean: Brazil, they need.

Carlos: Portuguese. So it was. I ended up not learning Spanish. Oh, there you go. I now am married to. You're faster, I'm an imposter. But I'm now married to a Colombian lady, and now it's an advantage, because if I could speak Spanish, I would know what her mother was saying about me, and I don't think I want to know what she's saying about it. There's a look on her face that makes me think I think we're all happier if I don't know what you just said. I think that makes us all happier.

Dean: Because I went to smile. Yeah, that's funny. So how did you evolve then into the sales training business?

Carlos: Well, it's interesting. So I was living over here and my brother was a client of a company called Sandler Training. They're a sales training business and he was. He used to come from the UK to. He used to have to go once a month to Once a quarter, I think it was to Dallas to do a two-day bootcamp with this sales trainer. He was a buddy of mine now and he used to fly through Miami because he wants to see his bro. We used to have a weekend together and then he would go to Dallas. And one time he turned up and said hey, can you help me out? I really love Miami because he's been experiencing Miami. And hey, guys, if you've not been to Miami, do yourself a favor. It's like the place. So come to Miami. He was. So he came to Miami and he was like you know, I'm looking at, I'm thinking about opening up one of these sales training businesses and I want to come to Miami. And he actually said to me do you want to do it with me? And I said I've absolutely no interest in doing that with you. Thank you, buddy. And he said well, can you help me out?

Because I was a banker and I used to write business plans a lot. He said can you help me out? Can you write me a business plan? Because I need a business plan for immigration purposes. When you get an investor visa you've got to present it with a plan. Yeah, so I spent the next three or four months writing him a business In my part time, writing him a business plan on the you know, and so I really dug deep into the market, the model.

I looked at the economics of it and over that period I fell in love with just the business of it. I also met a lot of people who had life had been changed materially by. I mean, it sounds so crass, it sounds almost it really doesn't sound right, but I met so many people whose lives had been changed by the economic impact of learning how to sell properly. Oh man, I bet you know it occurred to me at that time that there was no skill that was as impactful on somebody's economics, somebody's financial independence, than learning to sell. And you know I was speaking to and subsequently I have had clients who are surgeons, lawyers, you know real, I have a surgery team who is a client and the impact we have teaching them to sell People that you wouldn't think even know how, don't need to know how to sell. It is an extraordinary impact.

So I fell in love with the business and I ended up doing it with him. And then, about a year ago, he retired to France. Antonio, when you watch this, antonio will definitely watch this. He's a Dean Jackson superfan. So when Antonio watches this, when Antonio retired to France last year after having been We'd been in partnership for 10 years, but he's a lot older than me Did you hear that, antonio?

Dean: A lot older than me?

Carlos: He's not. He's a little older than me, but he retired to France and I'd bought him out of the business. So now it's me, but Antonio is still my conciliary. Ok, but yeah, that's why I did it. I was writing a business plan for my brother. I discovered what a fabulous business it was and what extraordinary impact it can generate.

Dean: And I fell in love with it. What a hotbed Miami was going to be for business as it was. I mean just picking the right thing. You know what I love it. One of my realtor clients told me the thing that her clients all love about Miami is that it's so close to America.

Carlos: So close to America. Exactly so close to America, that's right. Yeah, the logistics into America are so easy.

Dean: That's right. Oh man, well, I love, I mean, I have such a fondness for sales in you know, my, it is that a book called Convert More Leads and that what you just said about the, the ability for people to sell, which is exactly what lead conversion is in combination of yeah, you know, through email, through you know asynchronous things and and in person, it's such a gateway. I find so many people. You know we talk about our eight profit activators and our before unit, during unit and after unit. So, soundly set in the before unit are the first four profit activators and selecting a single target market, compelling your prospects to raise their hand, educate and motivate them and make compelling offers. That's the four things. And so the educate and motivate and the making compelling offers fit perfectly together to make that lead conversion element.

And I find so many people when we do our profit activator scorecard that the other so many people who are crystal clear on who they want to attract and they're very strong on delivering. The dream come true, the dream come true results for people when they find them. But there's a big dip in their ability to get in front of the right people, and so I'm, I'm Whenever there's somebody who has this is like the, it's the. I think it's the number one skill that you can have that will determine your fate is your ability to, when you're in front of people, find the Transfer. You that's all really sales is right to transfer a belief, alex.

Carlos: Hamosy calls it a transfer of belief over a bridge of trust and the? And it isn't binary, it isn't you've got trust or you've not. No, the trust. Some bridges need to be stronger.

Yeah, like you know that if you've got to push a hell of a lot of belief over that bridge because you're fighting fighting is a terrible world You're countering or counterbalancing your prospects, belief set. So if your prospect has got an extraordinarily big belief that they don't need any help to make the decision they should buy on price, they they shouldn't trust the, the sales guy, this isn't a decision that needs making today. This is a commodity. And I could go on and on about what the prospect is believing.

Then the amount of counter belief that needs to be pushed over that bridge can either be a little belief, which only leads a little trust, or a monstrous, you know, like a monolith of belief that's got to get over that bridge and that needs a lot of trust and it's an it's. It's interesting to to think about it through that lens and so many. It's such an interesting puzzle to develop sales people because everybody wants to sell and, by the way, a lot of people think they can sell. And when you really get you know, when you really start to pick away at it and start observing them and start talking to them, you realize that they're order takers and salespeople.

They have been fortunate or unfortunate to be in an environment where either you know that there's such strongly generation that they don't need to be good at selling. They're just, you know, just the natural conversion of some de minimis level of lead is good enough, or they are. They've just got such a good product that it just kind of closes itself, so differentiated. And so they're in this environment where they've been taken orders. Someone's told them they're in sales, so they think they're a sales guy and there's really they're not inspiring any good decisions. They're just taking orders and because it is such a good product and because it is so difficult, it's such a heavy lift to develop Salespeople, a lot of business owners, without even realizing they made this choice. They chose To be okay having a team of order takers. They didn't even know they were making that choice.

Business owners and and leaders. They've made a choice that you know what. I can't seem to solve this sales puzzle. So I will create a lead engine which gets me off the hook, or I'll set my pricing at a point which gets me off the hook, or I will. You know, I'm just gonna take sales out of the puzzle without Knowing. That's what I did, yeah, and it was out of out of years of frustration Because it's hard to train salespeople, to get salespeople and good people good, natural salespeople are Really hard to manage. So even when you get a superstar, it's misery and heartburn. So it's. I find a lot of companies have just bitten the bullet without realizing it and just said you know what, I'm gonna find a way to create revenue without Strong sales skills. A lot of companies on that yeah.

Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting because I look at the. You know the two sides of the before unit and we treat the before unit as a Supplier to the during unit. And the during you, of course is the part that does whatever it is you do. It's once somebody's made, you know they've decided they're on board. Most business, most businesses, are Really good once people come on board. I think they have good intentions and they're able to get people a result. But their ability to identify the people first off who could use their help and then Enter into a dialogue that leads them to doing that, is where they fall down. And of the two parts, we take the before unit, where I just get people to think about it as Creating a supplier to their during unit, as a separate business sort of thing, that the two elements of that are generating leads and converting leads. And generating leads is a Science. You can do that. I can set up for anybody. A system that Generates leads in a really leveraged way without the book is a perfect example of that of being able to. That's why we created the 90-minute book. Yeah, company is to brilliant genius to help people Create books that get people in the conversation like I look at it.

If somebody and this is our you know front-end sort of lead generator that if somebody goes to converting leads, calm, and they download a book, this book, I know that what they're interested in is they want to convert more leads. That's the thing that they're, that they're raising their hand and I've even I created an acronym for leads that I Call a lead instead of, because it's kind of dehumanized. I talked about them as leads. I think about it as one person showing up at your door and saying let's engage and do something. That's what they're saying. If somebody raises their hand and says I'd like the convert more leads book, well, and your turn. It does what it says on the tin. It does the. The job is what they're Indicating, that they're interested. So I say to them Imagine that your opt-in page is like a magic portal and as soon as somebody presses Download or send me my book, they're magically transported to your office. They poke their head in the door and they say I'm here about the convert more leads book.

Now, how would you start that conversation in a real situation? And that's where it really comes down to this conversational ability to identify who are the five-star prospects and that's where you know we look at Five-star prospects, being people who are willing to engage in a dialogue, they're friendly and cooperative, they know what they want, they know when they want it and they'd like us to help them. That's the bridge we're trying to cross right, but most people start the process at the bottom. They start and say here's what we got. You need to buy this right now. We're starting with that's the thing, without doing any investigation of any Conversation to find out whether this is the right thing. You know.

Carlos: You know this, this idea of I often think of a similar scenario that when I'm helping clients, they are. Somebody pokes you head in the office and says, hey, I'm interested in you. Know, I've got a need, I need somebody, I've got somebody, something I need help with. Are you the person to help me? I've just poked the head in and, and I often ask clients to imagine that this office they were staffing Mm-hmm, was an alcoholic synonymous office, mm-hmm. Okay. So somebody pokes the head in hey, I'm thinking, is this the right place?

you know a little bit uncertain, a little bit uncomfortable, mm-hmm. If the person in that chair says you're in the right place, buddy, coming here, you'll never take a drink again, do you know? That's not what an alcoholic wants to hear. Right, right, you want to shoot, you want to chase that guy away, tell him out of the gate how good it's gonna be when he went with, when you work with them. Right? Alcoholic doesn't want to hear you'll never take a drink again. Alcoholic wants to hear hey, the, I know you've got some troubles. I understand. You Just come in and stuff a chat.

That's what an alcoholic wants to hear. When that head appears at the door, like through your portal, which I think is a fabulous mental model, they come through the door, the messages, and we can help you. The message is I understand you. The message is you safe here? Let's have a conversation Because you can. I think that a lot of salespeople run way too fast at that gate, don't you, dean, when you see them? They run way too fast at that gate.

Dean: That's it that they start right away with making prescriptions without any examination.

Carlos: Yeah 100%.

Dean: So where? What was your idea here of us Getting together? What's the thing that you want to kind of talk about or focus on here?

Carlos: Well, well, first of all, I'm a super fun. So it's like just talking to Dean's pretty cool, right? That's a pretty cool prospect. So I was, I was just thrilled with the opportunity to come and speak to you and you know I'm you're the master, right? You're the master of generating leads, and and and. Then I'd love to know more about how, because I'm a bit of a dinosaur. This whole world of lead generation I'm dipping my toe in. I consume guys like you, gary Vee, Alex and Mosey, and the list goes on of people who know how to play that piano, that lead generation piano, in a very modern world, and I play at it. You know, I have a cool podcast. I have a cool, you know, youtube channel. I have some. I play at social media, but I'm playing. I'm on a sub therapeutic dose of almost every, of almost every medicine, right? I mean, it's a therapeutic dose of all these different medicines.

Dean: I love it. Those are great words, yeah, but it's true, right.

Carlos: Yeah, I'm on a side of a sub therapeutic dose of everything. I'm trying a bit and and I don't even know how to think about this in this modern world, and I thought you know the kind of business I've got I'm trying to, I'm trying to magnetize. Well, I'm not trying to listen. I'm fortunate my problem isn't sort of my, my business isn't starving, but it's scaling and it's scale that I want to bring to my business.

It did have a, you know, every business is starving for two years, right, and then every business that it's interesting you go quickly from starving to indigestion, right, so they go. It goes quickly from it starving to death to actually it can't support the clients. It's got, yeah, and I've kind of got it now even Nice. You know, I have like 200 clients, I have like 1000 learners, 500 to 1000 learners at any point in time within a nice basket of clients. But scaling is is a different. That's different, that's done differently in this modern world and I don't understand it, dean.

Dean: Well, let's let's break it down a little bit. So, if we take your ideal prospects, the people that you're looking to serve, are you working within a geographic area? Are you in South Florida, or are you working with people all over the world, where?

Carlos: Okay, so there's eight billion, but there is a waiting. There is a waiting to South Florida. I mean, I was too casual with that. I would say, if you looked at it from a dollar flow perspective, 50% of my dollars are flowing out of South Florida and 50%, and then another 20% 30% are flowing out of US outside South Florida, and then maybe another 20% out of a global marketplace If you were to wait it that way with dollars.

Dean: So if you could. The biggest shift that I often help guide people towards is this shift from I love these sub therapeutic doses of all of the things. You got the YouTube channel, you got the social media, you got the podcast. You're doing all those things and my observation of it is that when people are doing those, they're doing those things in hopes of being seen and selected right.

Instead of selecting a single target market, we're talking about profit, active air one being the active choosing of the target audience, rather than putting things out there and hoping that people select you. So we want to cast the most. The natural tendency is to want to cast as wide in that as possible, because that opens up where we serve clients globally. That means anybody can. It seems scary to say we work with people in South Florida, in Southeast Florida particularly that it seems like a scarier thing, right? So part of the process that goes through in analyzing this is thinking okay, if there are 8 billion people on the planet and some number less than 8 billion would be the ideal client for you. So if we bookend this with saying about 7,900 million, so we look at that as you know.

If we were to say what does scale mean to you? What does how many people can you accommodate, how many people you know, and what kind of what's the economic relationship that people have with you? What is your product line from low to high kind of thing of how people can engage with them?

Carlos: So I have some clients who are our engagement is extremely passive, our relationship is extremely passive. They are buying content from me through our learning management portal, like you know, 1,000 bucks a year, something like that, and sometimes that's an individual and sometimes that's a team. So a team might be if it's 10 people.

That have been 10,000 dollars, like $1,000 ahead that kind of for the year and they are, and they're in a curated program of how to improve sales and design a sales system and all the stuff. But it's self-serve, it's a self-serve environment, then.

Dean: I have those Membership.

Carlos: Sorry.

Dean: It's a gym membership. Come on in. Yeah, all there.

Carlos: And you know some people do really well with that and some people you know some people. There are some people that joined the gym on January the 1st and they're still going and they're looking great on December the 31st. And then there's those people that taper off in the summer and then there are those people that get to Easter and then they just like it slips, and there are many people that have a great first week and then, you know, you go and have a look at a gym on January the 2nd. Oh yeah, yeah, it's ACT.

Dean: Exactly.

Carlos: January the 16th. No problem, you can get on everything. So and by the way, it's interesting because some people say, well, they lack desire. No, they don't. Everybody who was in there on January the 2nd really wanted to get in shape. Yeah, absolutely, it wasn't a desire issue.

Dean: Yeah.

Carlos: It was a. The issue is have they got an app? Are they comfortable with change? Yeah, were they really prepared to change? That's it. It wasn't desire, it's change, but anyway. So I've got that. We're off on one of my favorite topics, so I've got that kind of low point pricing. Then I have those people who are in like our weekly program, which is that low point, which has got that LMS tier with added into it a online, you know weekly live training, okay. Then I've got those people who then include like back for the team or for individuals, including coaching. And then I've got those people where it's a real sort of partnership with the leader on strategy and sales strategy and helping them recruit salespeople, and so you know it goes. So it goes all the way from this like $100 point all the way to. I've got clients paying me $400,000 a year, well, and it goes. And I've got individuals that pay me $600,000. $60,000, $70,000 a year, just for one person.

And so it's a, it is a very wide. You know there's a very wide window there to play into operating.

Dean: So if you wanted to scale that, which would be what would be your preference. Would you rather get more $400,000 clients or more $60,000 clients or more $1,000?

Carlos: I think what I've realized in terms of being able to scale, I've got this. If you were to, if you were to draw a sort of a distribution, I would have a very normal distribution right, the typical normal hump distribution, where most of my dollars sit in the middle and then I've got these few outliers at big dollars and then I've got these few outliers at small dollars. And I think if I could invert that shape because the scale happens at the two ends doesn't happen- in the middle.

Dean: Right.

Carlos: And yet my business, 80% of my business, sits in that middle, which is, you know, a sales team of 10, you know a heavy lift from me and a lot of support and a lot of coaching. And then my calendar, or my team's calendar. I've got a cool team. My team's calendar is smashed to pieces by this middle of the hump, Whereas at the extremes you've got the super economics, which is worth the time, at the top end, and then you've got the $100 end, which doesn't, which is entirely scalable. I mean, it has that has. No, there's no limit to that end. So my and so my problem is I'm operating in the middle and I need to operate at the ends.

Dean: So what would be your current strategy for, like, if we were to take let's take one of the ends, let's take the high end of the thing.

Carlos: That embarrass me, dean. I haven't got any strategy.

Dean: Okay.

Carlos: I've got a great strategy for the middle, which is why that's where all, the volume is Well, you know what you've just made me think, because I'd never thought about it like this before that's the value of mentors, right? That's the value of guys who know what they're talking about. What you've just made me realize is I do not have a strategy. Well, again, I kind of have got a strategy for the bottom end, which I'm just starting to operate, which is this subtherapeutic dose of 15 different techniques and channels and modalities. So I'm doing it badly at the bottom end. The top end, I don't really that kind of that. Those elephants, when they kind of fall at my feet, I'll take them and help them.

Dean: And it's great.

Carlos: Where I struggle is as a business, because I went through that phase of starvation that every business only goes through, and so when something works well, it's hard to let go of it, even though that's the thing that's holding me back. You know, if you ever read, 10x is easier than 2x. Dan Sullivan and Benj, benj, hardie, benj and Hardie yeah, that is such a great, such a great analysis of the fundamental change you have to go through to get to the next level and what you've got to leave behind and the and that evolution, and it's I'm struggling with that, dean yeah, of stopping doing what got me here, right, this is part of the exciting thing is that we're when I we're talking about a before unit for you.

Dean: I've got no doubt in the capabilities of your during unit. You know what to do, you know how to do it, and I've got no doubt in your lead conversion abilities if you get in front of the person who would be a good match for that. So this is going to be a pretty easy fix for you, I think, oh, fantastic.

Carlos: Yeah.

Dean: But it's going to require this idea of selecting a single target market to begin with, out of time. And I often say, you know, people often get scared when they hear or think about narrowing their focus because nobody wants to narrow anything, everything that feels limiting. Right, it's risky to narrow, but I always use Procter Gamble as an example of a company that has, you know, 23 individual billion dollar brands that are all run independently and are serving what seems like competitive parts of the market. They've got five different laundry detergents that do a billion dollars each and they're all serving a very specific attribute. Right, like they've broken down rather than saying, like a big box retailer might say, let's do laundry detergent and call it laundry detergent, and put it in the box and get it in front of a bunch of people so that they've got the widest possible audience for it.

But Tide knows that there's a specific segment of the market that what they're really motivated by is they wanna get their clothes as white as possible, and that's what Tide is for, right, right, white people. That's it. They've got scientists and whole teams of people dreaming the day away of how to make clothes white. Urr, then they are now. And then there's a whole other segment of the population that they wanna get tough stains out, so there's era for that segment of the market. And then some people just want their clothes to be soft and smell nice, so there's sunlight for that. And then there's others that just wanna throw it all in and not ruin it. And that's where cheer comes in All temperature cheer. Don't worry about ruining it, throw it all in there and go ahead and that's the whole.

Carlos: We'll white some colors together. Everything just gets thrown in.

Dean: We're not gonna ruin it. You're not gonna. No more pink underwear, right. That's the thing. So all of those exist and serve individual, totally viable markets, but they're micro segmented, right? So if I say, out of the 8 billion people, let's just even say in America there's 28 million businesses that are in existence right now, six million of them are employer businesses, meaning they've got other people. Most of the businesses in America are one person operations and so if you get to, if we were to narrow down it's this going from reach, which is 8 billion people on earth, down to relevant, which is right in your backyard. Like, if you were to think about it, if you were to say, are you calling your 60 to $70,000 clients, would that be on the top end or the middle, in the middle? They're in the middle. And so if we were to go on the, where does the top end start? Would you say six figure clients from there?

Carlos: Yeah, yeah, 150.

Dean: Yeah.

Carlos: Okay, usually with a sales team of around 20 people. You know it's probably more like 200. I would say it starts at 150 to 200. Let's say 150. And we're talking about kind of 20, 30 plus sales guys, including customer service and sales leadership, and you know people that are involved with helping customers make great decisions. You know I like that.

Dean: So if we take that, how many of those businesses do you think there are just even in South Florida?

Carlos: Let's just narrow, take a bubble here and see I'm gonna bet I'm gonna guess there's 200,000 of those, and even in South Florida, in Florida 200,000. Maybe that seems too much. If you took Tri-County, go everywhere Orlando South, it must be right. It's a lot of businesses there.

Dean: But the fact that you don't know.

Carlos: Oh yeah, that's very telling. That's very telling yeah.

Dean: Noable number right.

Like we can know that the thing I do a lot of work with financial advisors and one of the realizations I had was all these guys, a lot of the advisors I work with, are national advisors, like nationally ranked and Kiplingers and all the stuff, and they're putting out all this content, writing articles and Kiplinger doing all these things, and they get selected because of that exposure and being there. But they never know what they're going to get right, they're not selecting. And when I really got down to it with one particular advisor and most of them that I've talked to, if they're in assets under management kind of mode, they'll really say that their ideal sweet spot is someone with a million to $3 million in their 60s who's transitioning into retirement. They need to turn assets into income and all the navigation that goes on in that transition, and so I pointed out to them that they're surrounded by these people.

Like we did a search on people within 20 miles of this advisor's office there were 13,800 people couples who have a million to $3 million, are 62 to 67 years old and are homeowners. That group and I realized in that moment that a million, a thousand people with a million dollars is a billion dollar honey hole. That's like if you're fishing in a pond and you knew that it's stocked with a thousand people. With a million dollars, that's a billion dollars in potential assets under management, right.

Carlos: And so there's never a shortage of market right. There's never a shortage of market dollars, ever and so.

Dean: I look at that for you. If we said 150 to 200,000, that every five to six or seven of those is a million dollars in revenue. Right, like taking those strides, million dollar strides. So you wonder how many of those could you accommodate If I could snap my fingers and deliver them. How many could you accommodate right now, or how many could? Is there an onboarding process that you would need to take yeah, we have a beautiful system. A month.

Carlos: We have a beautiful system that onboards and we have a great customer journey. When I say great, we have a customer journey that has.

that isn't. It's not where it needs to be, but it's pretty good. Yeah, I could accommodate of those businesses right now with me and my team I could manage 20 of those now I have about of those top end guys, I have 10 now I could probably do for 30. I could probably triple what I've got at that top end. But hey, the economics that flow out of that gives me the ability to invest in much more bandwidth. I mean there's no, it's beautiful economics that flow out of that end of the of the business.

Dean: So, listen, so we've got 20 that we're looking for more. Yeah, it's not a lot, right? We've narrowed down from 8 billion people. We're looking for 20 decision makers who are in charge of 20 to 30 sales people and making that decision to engage with you. Right, that's who we're looking for out of the 8 billion. Now, surely how far do you live in Miami, or you live in, for where are you?

Carlos: down deep in the depths of Miami. Yeah, I mean I'm in South Florida, South Miami. Yeah, in Brickle or that area, like I mean I'm just a palmato bay, just need pine press.

Dean: They're cargables, yeah, cargables, beautiful, so I bet that right there. I don't know how we have to go too far to find 20 people that are Nope. Ideal right Nope you're right, I just look at that as like, but it is interesting that your instincts move to the other end of that distribution curve.

Carlos: See, my instincts pushed me to the other end, which is would I rather have a million people at the small end and create a net that catches that million? That was where my instincts was, which is why I'm at this sub therapeutic dose of all these different things. Your instincts were to go to the other end, to go to the large client end.

Dean: I want to go, you want. Why deprive the world of your highest investability, right? Like that's kind of a thing? You can have a much bigger impact on the world with reaching 400 salespeople through 20 relationships that are going to impact hundreds of thousands of lives. Right, that's really the bigger impact that you're having.

You're very familiar with Richard Mill watches, you've seen so all it's a, you know, high end watch that, like the watch that Raphael Nadal wears and all these zero, they're very expensive watches, and I was. I spent a lot of time in Toronto and where I stay in Toronto, in Yorkville, there was at the hotel where I stay, there was a Richard Mill watch store. Their flagship Canadian store kind of thing was there. There's not a single watch in the place under $120,000. And what he did was really pretty brilliant. They he wanted to build the very best watch that you possibly could. So he teamed with you know Swiss engineers and making the watch, he wanted to make it the most durable and his approach was let's make the very best watch possible and then let's figure out what it needs to cost. And so he did that and they landed that. Their average price is 185,000. And in you know last numbers that I heard.

In 2020, they sold $540 million of these watches and he said in an interview that they sort of ended up alone in that market because there's lots of 50, 60,000 dollar luxury watches and there's other million dollar, you know, museum piece kind of watches that are delicate, that you don't wear. But there are $185,000 watch and if you've got a $20 million yacht, of course you're going to have $185,000 watch. If you've got super cars, of course you're going to have another one that you can wear on your wrist. You know, it's all, it's that same thing. Nobody needs five super cars, just like nobody needs all these watches. So I learned a lot through that. It's starting with what's the very best thing that you can do, you know, and let's do go for that. And so, if you look at it, that finding who those people are, finding those 20 is going to be much easier than finding what would take the equivalent of 20,000 people to get to the same level on the low end, right, it just seems like it's interesting.

Carlos: So what you're describing is a sales puzzle, and so I've got a choice I can either solve the sales puzzle at the large end or I can solve the marketing puzzle at the small end. And I've been pointing my efforts at the marketing puzzle of the smaller, the lower part of the distribution curve.

Dean: But I think you could just as easily take and solve the turn the top end into a marketing puzzle.

Carlos: That's why I need Dean, right yeah, so explain that In the last five minutes. Explain that to me.

Dean: Oh, and we both got to run it. Yeah, it was a fascinating conversation, you know. So I worked with Alex Epstein who wrote the moral case for fossil fuels. He's a high end like guy. He works with energy companies that are, you know, he helps, speaks at their engage at conferences, helps them with messaging and shareholder, you know, messaging to all of the people and he's also helping to always on the side of shining a better light on fossil fuel traditional energy companies. And when we realized that there there's only 250 people in North America that could hire him, right, that are, these are the CEOs of the largest energy companies in country because he's a high end consultant and, you know, keynote speaker at big events. So it's not mom and pop shops that are hiring him.

But once we identified that there are those 250 people, it's like now it's about how many of those people we talk about this idea of know you, like you, trust you. Everybody here you hear that that you. But everybody kind of looks at it as one destination and we talk about it as that and they don't properly revere the leap from not knowing you to knowing you. And once they know you, it's a much shorter bridge to liking you, and I don't mean liking you personality wise, but the more they hear about you that you're resonant with what they think, right, I like, I'm like, minded with Carlos. He's making sense to me. I like what this is and over a period of time they trust you and from that foundation you can make the leap to a collaboration.

Right yeah part of it is making that, getting that identity there. You know, if you look at one of those clients, if we found a thousand of those clients, a thousand of those candidates, right, those companies, and just adopted those 1000 and started marketing to those 1000 in a way that is going to show up on their radar, and now you're a known quantity. Because if we did that thing, we did the, if we identified those 1000, odds are that very few of them know what they're doing and if they know who you are, know that you even exist, oh, without a doubt and my mind, this is my kind of self limiting belief that those guys that you've just described live in a very noisy world.

Carlos: Yeah, there are hundreds of guys with a that are looking for that attention, and so I have to ask myself some questions. One Do I want to do I have the, do I have the chops to stand out in that crowded market, in that noisy world? Why have the chops for it? Is it even doable that I'm I, you know? Is this a fool's errand? And I think this is these, these questions that are holding me back.

Dean: I know you got a run in a couple of minutes. So let me ask you this If you could, if we could create a vending machine that had them on the cover that if we could push a button and deliver $150,000 annual client, you keep them for multiple years. Oh yes, how much you be willing to pay on the to push the button?

Carlos: The economics are that I could pay and make a reasonable business. I could pay $100,000 to push that button If the, if I had a 100% closing rate. Now my closing rate is good for an engaged, so I can close. Do you mean the button gives me a client or gives me a lead? No, the button gives you a client. That's the then I. Then. Reality is I could pay $100,000 to push that button. Perfect, because then I've got the next year and the next year and the next year for free. You know, do you think?

Dean: if we launched a marketing approach campaign to 1000 people with a budget of $100 per person over the next six months, that we could find one of those clients and that this is that's a question.

Carlos: that's like asking me, you know, what's the right way to approach a heart replacement surgery. I have no idea. That is not an area I'm expert in.

Dean: That seems like a pretty manageable.

Carlos: Well, you're the expert. If you're telling me, yeah, that's doable, then that's doable. I believe you, you know.

Dean: Well, I think we should continue the conversation, but you're I know we've both got a run at the top of the hour here. Very interesting, though right so far. What's your thoughts so far in terms of what we've?

Carlos: done? I think you've completely. I was expecting you just because of what you do and yours Again, I had this in my mind there's one end of this curve which is a mark. I hadn't even thought of, that mark, that I've never even thought about inverting that you. That was an aha moment for me. And then, in terms of the scale, happens at the two ends, not in the middle. So that was an aha moment. And then I would imagine I was going to imagine that you were going to drag me, which is where I wanted to go down to high volume, low volume, high ticket and you pulled me hard high, low volume, high ticket and that now I don't. I still don't see that because we haven't spoke long enough about it. I don't see that as a marketing puzzle. I see the high value, high volume, low ticket as a marketing puzzle and the low, the low volume, high ticket, as a sales puzzle and conversation for the future.

Dean: It's all a marketing puzzle and a sales puzzle. You still got to have sales on the low end and to say the same thing, but yeah, I'm super excited, we had a great cover. So I'm glad we're able to kind of think that way. But let that percolate for you, it will. Thank you, dean, these, these people so.

Carlos: I'll let you go, take care, nice to meet you. Bye, bye.