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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome guys and gals to The Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and personalities to teach you how to crush it in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We ve created one of the premier lifestyle shows available anywhere.
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We may not have all the answers, but we do have a lot of the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up for the newsletter at theartofcharm.com.
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We ve got a lot of in-depth articles on these topics.
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You can engage with the AOC team there as well.
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Or if you re new to the show and you want to find out more about what we teach here at The Art of Charm, you can go to the website and we ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that cover topics like body language and nonverbal communication, dating and attraction, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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We ve got our live programs running every single week here in Los Angeles, California, and we ve got guys from all over the world, which shows that no matter where you are, you can make it here if you want to learn and grow.
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We re sold out a couple months in advance, so if you re even thinking about it a little bit, get in touch ASAP by phone or email me.
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I m Jordan at theartofcharm.com.
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Get some info from us now so you can plan ahead.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at AOC.
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Today we re talking with Steli Efti.
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He s a badass sales guy, moved to the United States with a couple bucks in his pocket, a one-way ticket, failed a few times, and now he s killing it.
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We re gonna talk about his formula for hustle, not taking silence as a rejection, and following up mercilessly, staying out of the maybe zone, and of course, just cutting through your own inner dialogue and self-sabotage to do it anyway.
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So enjoy this one with Steli Efti.
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So, Steli, tell us what you do in one sentence.
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All right.
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So, I run a company called Close.io.
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We help sales teams win and we help salespeople close more deals.
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Awesome.
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How did you get into all this?
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Because it seems like, yeah, there s a lot of salespeople out there, but, you know, what makes you special?
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I think that the reason why I do what I do and I do it well and the reason why we re successful with the business and we seem to have an impact in terms of what people and businesses are telling us in the sense of the influence we ve been having on their business and their success.
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I think it s the result of many, many little things that happen over a long period of time and now having
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some perspective over that, I can make up a great story on why we re so successful and why we re killing it.
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A bunch of that was by design, a bunch of that was just luck.
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Personally, from a sales perspective, I think I had a pretty eclectic sales education from dropping out of high school when I was young and starting my first business and basically using the superpower of hustle and sales to succeed with the first business over to doing sales in one way or another for my entire life.
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And then more recently, running the biggest outsource sales consultancy of Silicon Valley, we were running a business called Elastic Sales, where we basically helped over 200 venture-backed startups to develop a sales model that was both predictable and repeatable and scalable, and then help them scale those sales models.
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All of that brought together, put us in a pretty unique space in the way we think about sales and our approach, our thoughts, and the way that we build products for salespeople.
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Right, because you can attack sales from different angles for each of these different companies and build around their specific problems.
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So you get a much more complete picture than somebody who s like, this is how you sell a car in this town.
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Exactly.
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Like most companies out there that have built software traditionally for salespeople, the paradigm that they used was that
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They knew one way of sales.
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There were sales managers or sales executives in one particular type of company and industry.
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And they thought, well, I know that we could do a better job if we built this a little differently.
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And then they go out and they raise money and they build this thing.
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And it might work for a very specific type of sale, but it then sucks for everything else.
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I think we were the only company in history of sales software that had the perspective of doing sales
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across different businesses, different industries, different sales cycles.
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And they gave us a pretty unique insights of what we thought good sales software would be and how to help salespeople crush it.
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So how did you start in all this?
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I mean, you re not, you have a little accent.
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Where are you from?
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That s a good question.
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So I m originally from Greece, born and raised in Germany though.
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So I have the best and the worst that Europe has to offer.
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Right.
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So that s kind of where my accent comes from.
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I moved to the,
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to the US eight years ago and people are so confused, my name, my look and the accent, they really have a hard time placing a finger on it and I like to keep people on their toes.
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But yeah, Greek by origin and my passport is Greek but I grew up in Germany and I ve lived now almost a decade in the US.
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Okay, did you just come here for the American dream then?
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Yeah, I think so.
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I mean, it was a version, a flavor of the American dream.
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I mean, as I said, I dropped out of high school when I was 17 to start my first business.
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I ve been an entrepreneur my whole life.
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I m completely unemployable.
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I have zero credentials or education or anything like that.
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So I did a few really small bootstrap non-technology based businesses back in Europe and I did them very successfully.
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And then eight years ago I had this idea, this great dream of building a massive transformative technology company.
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And I had no clue about technology and I knew nobody who did.
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So, I think the legend of Silicon Valley was super appealing at that moment.
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And also, to be honest, I was kind of sick of Germany and Europe and I wanted to go somewhere else.
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So, putting these two things together made me think, well, hell, why don t I just sell everything I have, buy a one-way ticket, let s just go to Silicon Valley and see if I can build this company there.
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And I say, like, when I arrived here, I was
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so painfully clueless, like I arrived at San Francisco airport asking someone how to get to Silicon Valley, which if you know the area, you know it s not a city or a place, it s a description of an area, but there s no way for people to type that into their Google Maps to arrive somewhere.
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So I really didn t know what I was doing, but the reason why I came was a flavor of the American dream, it was the legend of Silicon Valley and building a big technology company here.
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So you came here with a one-way ticket, instant overnight success.
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Oh, exactly.
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Yes.
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Yes, almost.
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So I came here with very grand ambitions, right?
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I came to Silicon Valley, I thought I would change the world that would impact over a billion people the next 10 years.
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Secretly, I was hoping and planning for being Time Magazine s person of the year within two years of arriving.
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And it didn t quite work out that way.
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my first business basically turned out to be a kind of a soul-crushing defeat and failure.
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I worked on that business for five years.
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It was basically a debt company within probably 18 months and then I was just carrying it around as a zombie startup for way too long, not accepting that it was dead and carrying a skeleton of a company and a business and product around and just trying to force it into life, into reality and ultimately at some point I was so
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bankrupt in terms of my emotions, my financial bankrupt, emotionally bankrupt, just at the end where I had to accept defeat and death and that allowed then for the overnight success of what happened afterwards.
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Interesting.
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So how come you didn t give it up sooner and what finally caused you to give it up when you did?
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The reason why I didn t give it up sooner is that I had a bunch of ideas about how success works that
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very much didn t allow me to give up on something once I was committed to it.
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So I was a big believer and still am to some degree, but a little bit more nuanced.
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I was a big believer in like perseverance and like sticking to something and being committed.
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And also like being an 80s baby, I watched all these movies where the hero is typically like
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being beaten up pretty heavily until at the last act, it turns into this meteoric success.
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And so I had this, I think, mental mind frame, a mind of success, that success is something that s going to be painful.
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And that the more I suffer today, the bigger the success is going to be tomorrow.
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And that once I m committed to something, I can t just give it up.
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And then also, to be honest, like, with that particular business, I felt
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very strongly about the idea to the degree where I thought this was the reason I existed.
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This was my purpose in life.
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So, it was hard for me to give up on that because I was so attached to it.
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And it was hard for me to realize what was in front of me, which was that business was just not working.
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So, I think that s one of the main reasons why it took me way too long to just shut that business down.
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When it comes to like the reason, like what was the thing that allowed me to do it, it was really two things.
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One,
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was that there was just no place to go anymore, like I was just out of money and out of people to ask for money.
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And the entire business was the same way, like just everybody was completely bankrupt financially and also just emotionally.
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And at some point, there was just no way anymore to continue.
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And then what we did is something I advise a lot of people to do is we were not strong enough
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at that moment to just accept defeat.
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We didn t say, all right, this is it, this business is done, let s just shut it down.
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We just couldn t say these words, we couldn t do it.
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So what we did is we used a softer way out, just psychologically, which I think is a good idea, which was that we had a big meeting in the team, we basically said, all right, so we re kind of fucked right now, we re out of money and out of resources and out of everything, so here s what we need to do.
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We need to take a vacation from this business.
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We need to hit the pause button,
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Everybody gets three months to find a job, make some money, figure out what they want to do.
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And in three months, we ll come back together and we ll see if we can resume this once we have a bit more energy and we re back on our feet.
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And honestly, that was kind of easier for us, an easier sell to others and to myself.
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And we all kind of nodded and agreed and felt good about that as a plan.
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And within a week,
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of that meeting, I think everybody knew we re never coming back.
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This thing is dead.
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But it was just hard to accept that and say these words.
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So we just needed a story that we were able to go with at first.
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And then after a few days, everybody kind of just realized, no way, man, this thing is dead.
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And we re glad that we finally accepted that death.
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So a lot of times today when people ask me when should we stop or should we not stop and how do you know when to pivot or change what you re doing, it s a complex and difficult issue.
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My general advice is every company and every startup runs on morale.
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You have to have internal resourcefulness and energy and inspiration, motivation.
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And once you get to a point where the majority of your day, you re not believing anymore in what you do and you just have moments of belief and inspiration, motivation,
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it s probably a good sign that you need to take a quote-unquote vacation for what you re doing.
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If you never want to come back from that vacation, then you know that you shouldn t and you should go on and do something else.
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Gotcha.
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So how do you pick yourself back up once you have the funeral of your first child?
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or 15th business or wherever you are, how do you then dust yourself off and start again?
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Because that can be really demoralizing.
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There s a lot of sunk cost.
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There s a lot of, well, I m just not cut out for this.
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There s a lot of the big lull.
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Maybe your team splits up.
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You don t know what s next or you feel like your next idea is the same or not any better or you re unsure of yourself and you lose confidence.
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How do you then get up and do it again?
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You know what, in this particular case, it was a little bit different because this was a company that was dead after two years and we kept going for another three.
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The moment where I accepted death, it was just so freeing.
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Like I felt like this massive, massive weight was lifted off my shoulders.
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And I felt all of a sudden, I felt like I could move a lot faster and I had a lot more energy.
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And so it wasn t that thing where I accepted defeat, but I still had doubt about like,
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Should we have done it or not?
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Are we made out for it or not?
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Also, to be honest, because I ve been an entrepreneur my entire life, I never had the existential crisis of asking myself, am I really made for this?
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Can I be an entrepreneur or not?
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That was not a question that crossed my mind.
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was very self-criticizing and was telling myself that I suck and that I failed and that I m not living up to what I could and not living up to my potential.
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So, I was like beating myself up but never questioning myself in terms of will I be able to do this again or will something in the future, will it ever work out for me?
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Those were not questions that I had to be honest, which is different than most people probably that are going through this.
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And then for me, it was just a very freeing moment.
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Oh shit, you know, finally I can let go of this thing.
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And then for a hot minute, I was thinking, let s just get a job.
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Let s try that out.
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Although I think ego-wise, I was a little conflicted about it.
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Really, do I want to work for somebody else?
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It seemed like a step back and it seemed like it would be a weird thing for me to tell others.
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Oh, I m not the founder and CEO anymore of my business.
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I now just work for somebody.
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But I think at that moment, I was cool with that idea and I started looking for opportunities.
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And then, you know, what happened is the typical entrepreneurial thing.
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I stumbled in and I kind of accidentally stumbled into my next startup.
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So a friend of mine basically just called me and was like, Hey, Selly, I have this idea.
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What s your feedback?
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And I love the idea.
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It seemed pretty simple.
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And I felt that I could now utilize all the lessons that I had learned to help somebody else.
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So I was pretty excited.
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We started meeting and I helped him and I put him in touch with investors and connections.
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And all of a sudden, we were both working on that thing.
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And then in the next moment, we have funding, we have a team.
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And for the first, I would say, six months,
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I felt amazing because a lot of the mistakes that I kept making for five years, I was able to now avoid.
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And a lot of the lessons that I d learned in a very painful way, I was able to apply.
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So, the first six months or so of that business,
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where basically we were insanely successful because we were able to utilize everything I had learned and things were moving really quickly.
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We built a cool team, we launched the product, we had growth, we got press, we got investors.
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All the things that I struggled for five years to get happened in six months really easily for the next venture.
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And then we got into a new phase that I was not as experienced in and then we struggled again.
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But that was kind of what happened afterwards for me in my particular story.
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Do you have a formula for the hustle?
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Because it sounds like, one, you definitely have a lot of hustle.
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It s like your middle name.
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What about somebody who s doubting their own ability to do that?
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Or just young and thinks, okay, maybe I ve got it.
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How do I know if I ve got it?
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How do I work on it?
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How do I build it?
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Do I believe that some people have more hustle in their DNA than others?
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I think so, right?
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But do I think everybody can learn the hustle?
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Fuck yeah, absolutely.
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The hustle is nothing.
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It doesn t require any amazing amount of intelligence or anything like that.
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It just, it requires a certain attitude.
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So to me, yes, I do have a very simple formula for the hustle.
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It s not rocket science.
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To me, the hustle is just really three simple steps.
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Number one, you have to show up.
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Number two, you have to follow up and follow through.
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Number three, you have to go for the close.
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We can talk about each or every one of them a little bit, and I can tell you a bit of the philosophy, but the math is really simple.
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Like all you have to do in life, and if you re hustling, is the very first step is you have to show up.
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And showing up could mean you go somewhere physically to meet somebody or some team or somebody.
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It can be physical.
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It can be showing up can mean that you pick up the phone, you call.
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Showing up can mean that you send an email.
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Showing up means making the first step to allow a connection or an interaction to happen, right?
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You want to get a customer, an investor.
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You want to get press.
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You want to get interviewed for a podcast.
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You want somebody to join your podcast and be interviewed.
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Whatever it is, you have to show up first.
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That s, I think, something that most people, like still a lot of people have a problem with that, but I think that actually that s the simplest step for most people.
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And that s the step probably the majority of humans that are hustling a little bit, that s the step most people take.
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People are showing up all the time.
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But then the second step, that s where winning really happens, which is in the follow up and follow through.
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And that means that you have to realize that
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Once you ve showed up, now it s on you to have the responsibility to champion whatever it is that you re trying to accomplish with that other person or the group of other people that you re trying to accomplish something with.
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Since it is your responsibility to champion that, you should never, ever, ever stop following up and following through with that first interaction you had until a result is reached.
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So I ll give you an example.
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If you meet with somebody and you present them with your product, you give them a pitch and they seem interested and it seems like they re a good fit as a potential customer and they go, you know what?
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This looks really great.
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We ll talk to the team.
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Let s talk again next week.
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and you send them an email to schedule a call and you don t hear from them, and you send them a follow-up email and you don t hear, and you send them a follow-up email and you don t hear.
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Most people at some point, usually within the first to second follow-up email, will stop following up and they will make up a story in their mind that goes something like this, I guess they don t like us, I guess this means that they think we suck, I guess that they are assholes, they re so arrogant, they don t even reply to my emails, they re so like, we don t want to do business with people like that.
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Whatever it is, you come up with a story in your mind that s basically, you re taking that silence as rejection, and you re coming up with a story in your mind why they have rejected you.
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If you just stop doing that, because that s insanity, and you just have a new attitude when it comes to follow-up, which is the one that I have, which says, when somebody doesn t respond to my emails or to my calls or whatever, I just assume they re busy.
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I just assume I m not the center of their universe.
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They have other things to do.
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So I m just not their highest priority right now.
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And it s not their job to reply, respond to me.
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It s my job to make sure that we move this forward until a result is reached, either yes or no or next step.
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But I m not going to let anything stay in the maybe zone.
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Because the maybe zone is where companies die, where careers die, where any value creation dies.
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Yes is good.
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No is also good.
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It s a clear result.
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We can shut the case.
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We got a no.
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We got rejected.
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We can move on with something else.
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Maybe we can learn something from it.
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But maybe
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That s what s killing us, that level of uncertainty.
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There s nothing to learn here.
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There s no clarity in what happened.
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We can t really make decisions based on a bunch of first meetings that went well and then we don t know what s going on with them right now.
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So maybes are really the worst thing and the thing that you re trying to avoid.
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So what you want to do is you want to take responsibility for the following.
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and follow through, and when people don t reply to you, you wanna follow up indefinitely until they do.
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Indefinitely, really?
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So like, over and over and over and over again.
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Do you automate that, or are you like calling these dudes like, hey, you still haven t replied, and it s been like two years?
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So it depends.
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The question is this, there s two questions.
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Number one, how important is this to me and my business?
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And number two is how urgent is this?
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So the urgency level will determine the medium in which I follow up.
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So let s say if it s not urgent at all, I would probably use email as my chosen medium to follow up.
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If it s a little bit more urgent, I might pick up the phone and call you.
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SPEAKER_01
And if it s very urgent, I will show up at your office.
2
SPEAKER_01
You will show up at my office?
2
SPEAKER_01
Of course, of course.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know how many multi-million dollar deals were either saved or made by somebody, quote unquote, being in the neighborhood and just dropping by.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like I was just talking to somebody, you know, a month ago or so, and they were telling me that this big enterprise client, multi-million dollar deal, that we re working on that for nine to ten months.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then they get the call from their contact person at that enterprise company and the person tells them, listen, you guys got to the final stages but I m sorry to tell you that we just in the morning meeting today selected your other competitor and we re going to go with them.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what they did?
2
SPEAKER_01
They hung up the phone.
2
SPEAKER_01
They bought a ticket.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was a client that was based in New York.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those guys are based in San Francisco, bought a ticket, flew to New York.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the next day showed up at their offices and were like, well, we had a bunch of meetings today and we thought we were so heartbroken that you guys said that you chose a competitor that we thought would drop by and would just say hi, get to know you.
2
SPEAKER_01
They come out, you know, and it s hard to ignore somebody when they re in your office.
2
SPEAKER_01
So they come out, they take a small meeting, which turns into a longer technical discussion, which then turns into a more in-depth technical analysis, which then turns into that company changing their mind and going with them versus their competitor.
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SPEAKER_00
Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
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And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
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Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now back to Steli Efti.
2
SPEAKER_03
Excellent, so right, because of that personal connection and people who ve listened to the show know damn well that we recommend that, and over and over, of course, face-to-face, nonverbal communication, all that stuff, Trump, so it makes sense that that would work if you show up in person to make the sale or close a deal.
2
SPEAKER_03
I just think it s funny that you show up unannounced and they don t get annoyed.
2
SPEAKER_01
All flavors apply.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some people just show up unannounced.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some people send an email and say, hey, I m going to be in the neighborhood next Tuesday.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can we just have a quick coffee or something?
2
SPEAKER_01
It depends, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It depends on your situation, on your style, whatever is authentic to you.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I can tell you that I follow up with people 48 times, 50 times, 60 times via email.
2
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, that is something you can t do on the phone.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t just leave you 60 voicemails.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I can, but it makes it very hard.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I can for sure not show up 60 times at your office, not without being arrested, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So the medium you choose, if you escalate it up from email to call into in person, it gives it, it s harder to ignore for the other person, but it also takes away how much of that you can do, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I would only call or show up if it s something that s more urgent.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it s not urgent, I would choose email.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then when it comes to the frequency of the number of times,
2
SPEAKER_01
Or if I do it personally versus automating it, it depends on how important it is to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it s very, very important, I m not gonna automate it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m going to use any kind of tool.
2
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t really matter if you put this in your calendar, if you use a tool like Boomerang or followup.cc or some kind of email reminder tool that you can send something to and it bounces back into your inbox a week or a month later to remind you to keep sending an email about it if you haven t gotten a reply or whatever it is that you do.
2
SPEAKER_01
The technology is not that important, but if it s an important deal, I will not want to automate it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll do it personally.
2
SPEAKER_01
things that are not as crucial, then I ll automate it and I ll use a drip email system to make sure that these people keep hearing from me in a very personalized way, but without me having to remember to do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I tell this story all the time, this piece of feedback, the follow up and how important it is and how much of a game changer it can be, that s something that
2
SPEAKER_01
is literally the highest ROI piece of advice that I give because measured by the amount of emails I get every day from people telling me that we just closed a $10 million venture round and the last investor only came in because I followed your follow-up advice.
2
SPEAKER_01
We just got this big customer and it s all was because we follow up 15 times and then X, Y and Z happened.
2
SPEAKER_01
We just got this press article because
2
SPEAKER_01
There s so much evidence at this point that this works from so many different people, not just from me.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s not that complex.
2
SPEAKER_01
All you have to do is you have to
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, make an attitude adjustment and say, moving forward, I will start following up until I get a response.
2
SPEAKER_01
I will never ever stop following up.
2
SPEAKER_01
And magic is going to happen in your life.
2
SPEAKER_01
I guarantee it to you.
2
SPEAKER_01
I tell this story and I want to share it quickly with you as well and your listeners.
2
SPEAKER_01
One of our biggest investors, billionaire, a guy that built a product that all of you have used, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t name the name, but it s something so transformative.
2
SPEAKER_01
Everybody has used the product.
2
SPEAKER_01
He was introduced to us when we were fundraising a few years back from another investor of ours.
2
SPEAKER_01
And those guys were good friends.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, there s an email introduction that s been made and that billionaire investor guy replies and says, yes, I m interested.
2
SPEAKER_01
I want to meet with you, Steli.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I get all excited.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re running around the office, high-fiving everybody.
2
SPEAKER_01
I reply instantly with different times and dates and making myself completely available.
2
SPEAKER_01
When can we meet?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I don t hear anything back.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, two days later, I ll send a follow-up email.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t hear anything back.
2
SPEAKER_01
Three days later, I send a follow-up email.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t hear anything back.
2
SPEAKER_01
48 emails later, 48, I get a reply.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what is the reply, Jordan?
2
SPEAKER_01
Hey, Steli, thank you so much for following up and following through with this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had this big crisis.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had to leave the country.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was so busy with other things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sorry about all this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m back in San Francisco.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you come to my office tomorrow at 1 p.m.
2
SPEAKER_01
and let s meet?
2
SPEAKER_01
And we did.
2
SPEAKER_01
I met with him the next day and he invested in the company.
2
SPEAKER_01
And this is just one story of many I could share with you of like magic happening just by simply following up and not taking silence for rejection.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, why don t more people do this?
2
SPEAKER_01
I think because, I mean, you know, because we are all afraid of rejection.
2
SPEAKER_01
And every time I send you an email, you don t reply is another emotionally felt rejection.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like you slapping me in the face in a very soft way again and telling me I m not worthy of a reply.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s one part.
2
SPEAKER_01
People just don t want to be rejected.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when you keep sending somebody email and they keep ignoring you in your mind,
2
SPEAKER_01
That s just like you voluntarily getting more rejection into your daily life, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like I just need more rejection every day.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s one reason why people don t do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
The other thing is I think that people don t like the idea of being annoying or being needy.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they feel like, oh, if I follow up, I ll seem desperate, I ll seem needy, I ll be just an annoying person.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we all don t want to be that person.
2
SPEAKER_01
And a lot of times I have people ask me, hey, Steli, but what if you annoy somebody really badly and they really hate you?
3
SPEAKER_01
because of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m telling them, listen, honestly, I want to be loved by everybody, but that s not my priority in business.
3
SPEAKER_01
In business, my number one priority is to create value, to make shit happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
If there s 10 people that are interacting with me and six of them think I m an asshole and I m super annoying and four of them love me and we create value together,
3
SPEAKER_01
I d rather have six people hate me, four people love me than have ten people that are equally different about me and where we have not accomplished anything other than wasting each other s time with having calls, emails and meetings and nothing happened afterwards.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think it s a question of like priority.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t – my number one priority in business is not to –
3
SPEAKER_01
not be annoying, my number one priority in business is to create value, to make shit happen in the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I don t worry about that as much and I think people worry about these things way too much and it s an emotional thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not rational.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not that it s a difficult strategy to put in place like never stop falling up.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not that hard to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s the technology out there to make this even easier for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s an emotional issue.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re all afraid of rejection.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t want to keep getting it if we don t hear back from people.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we all don t want to be perceived as needy or as pushy or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think that we all have to get over ourselves because at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, why are we here?
3
SPEAKER_01
What are we trying to accomplish?
3
SPEAKER_01
And if we re here to create value, to make things happen, then we need to follow up and follow through when others don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the great thing with this is, even if, let s say there s a listener out there that says, I will never follow up indefinitely.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, fair.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I ll reason with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s get to a compromise.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just take the amount of follow up that you do today, maybe you send two emails or three, just double it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just double that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I guarantee, and do it for one month.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you don t get a significant win, that will convert you to the follow-up indefinitely camp, then please send me an email to steli, S-T-E-L-I, at close.io, and let me know about your story, because you d be the first person I d want to learn more, and maybe I need to think about it differently.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I have hundreds of people that have done this, and done it insanely successful.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I love it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve definitely probably quadrupled my follow-up as well, and of course I ve automated plenty of stuff as well, but the initial follow-up is actually manual, and it s only after I get repeated low ROI specific individuals that they get thrown into a bucket, but it s helped tremendously.
3
SPEAKER_00
I might follow up six, eight months, or a year later with certain people, and they go, oh yeah, it s just funny you should reach out, because I m definitely interested now,
3
SPEAKER_00
And I kept telling myself for the past month or so that I should reach out, and I always forgot.
3
SPEAKER_00
But here s your email, and how do we get moving?
3
SPEAKER_01
Jordan, you are awesome at this.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, you send people that are invited to be part of the show, and thanks again for the invitation.
3
SPEAKER_01
You send people a pretty long kind of questionnaire, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you want to, you prepare them, and you want to really understand them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s an intimidating email to get.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I remember, I don t think I replied immediately, a week passed or something.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you re on your shit, like you sent me a cool reminder via email, you texted me, like you were top of mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then when I had a quiet moment, and I got another little ping from you, I was like, all right, all right, you know, now I have the time, I have 30 minutes, let me bang this out, let me answer these questions.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I hit reply.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s other people that have sent me emails like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And like a year later, too, I forgot it, they forgot about me and nothing happened.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we had like, we could have created value, we could have had a, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
had a show together, so I definitely admire your follow-up game, and in my case, it definitely led to me delivering what I had promised to you, which was a reply with my answers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it works, so there you go.
3
SPEAKER_00
In case anyone s wondering whether or not anyone s put that into action, I still do it, and we still do it here at AOC.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you make yourself do the follow-up, or do anything, in fact, in a company or in your personal life, when you just don t feel like doing it?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you master that consistency?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was the biggest struggle I had for most of my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was always inconsistent.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had these huge ups and downs and I used to have weeks where just brilliance happened and I hustled and make these big deals happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
I closed these very tough negotiations and I felt amazing about myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I had the weeks afterwards where I just didn t feel like doing things and I cancelled meetings and the more I cancelled meetings, appointments, the more I wanted to cancel the next one and it just, it turned from like a bad, like an hour where I felt a little down, a little depressed to like a whole week or a whole month of me just like...
3
SPEAKER_01
being really bad and cancelling lots of things and really not creating any value.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, I always had these big swing up and down swings and being super inconsistent.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at some point in my life, I realized I always try to fight that and I always had like self-hate and self-criticism for myself about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, I would always tell myself, you have so much more potential, why can t you live up to that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Why are you so inconsistent?
3
SPEAKER_01
I was always just like punishing myself and just making it worse.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I tried a ton of things, you know, to overcome that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think it always started with trying to fight that emotion.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, when you have this disabilitating emotion, the emotion that kind of takes away your energy and makes you either doubtful or hesitant or whatever it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
I always felt like guilty of feeling that way and I tried to fight that feeling.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I always, always lost that fight.
3
SPEAKER_01
One day I heard this quote, and this is something I d heard before, I think.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it was just, you know, sometimes you hear something multiple times and then there s just, you hear it again, but it was just the right moment and it clicks.
3
SPEAKER_01
And all of a sudden it makes a difference or you apply it or you internalize it at a totally different and a deeper level.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for me, I heard this quote of somebody saying,
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, the difference between the coward and the hero is not that the coward is afraid and the hero isn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
They are both fucking afraid.
3
SPEAKER_01
The difference between the two is that the coward lets his or her fear stop them and the hero isn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
The hero acts despite his fear versus the coward being held hostage by it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I heard that quote and it really clicked for me, and it made me realize that, you know what, when I feel really bad, that s fine, and instead of trying to fight that emotion, let s just go ahead and do whatever I wanted and needed to do despite the fear.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I started internalizing a mantra, which basically goes, who gives a shit, do it anyways.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, like let s say just before this podcast, right, before this interview, I m a little sick, I m coughing my head off the entire day, I m not feeling that great,
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I m thinking, oh shit, today s the big day.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve scheduled this a long time ago and I had this interview with you and I was looking forward to this for weeks and weeks and weeks.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s this small voice in my head that goes, oh shit, you re going to do bad today.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re not at your best.
3
SPEAKER_01
it s a better idea for you to just reschedule the podcast interview, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s a small voice.
3
SPEAKER_01
What would happen a few years ago is that I would push that thought away, and then a few minutes later it would come up again and again.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then at some point I would give in to that feeling.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the moment I would send you an email going, Jordan, I suck, I m so sorry, but I need to reschedule.
3
SPEAKER_01
I send that email and then my day is fucked because I would feel so horrible that I would cancel my next call and my next meeting and I wouldn t be able to do any of the work and the entire day would be fucked because of that guilt.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then the more of my day passes without me being productive, the worse I feel, the less productive I get.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, that s kind of a vicious circle.
3
SPEAKER_01
What happened today was I was thinking, I have this voice that goes, oh shit, you feel really sick and you re not going to do that great of a job, better reschedule the call with Jordan.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I have another voice in my head that goes, who gives a shit, do it anyways.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I go, yeah, but I m not going to do a good job.
3
SPEAKER_01
Who gives a fuck, do it anyways.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but it s going to suck that one interview in such a huge show and you want to do a great job and you re probably not going to be as inspiring or cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
Who gives a fuck, do it anyways.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do a bad job, but do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do whatever you committed yourself to.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know this is not rocket science or anything, but I don t know why this is working for me, but it s changed my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like for the past two or three years, I ve not had a single bad week.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had bad hours.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
maybe even a bad day, I don t remember, but I used to have like bad weeks frequently.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this does just not exist anymore in my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I don t have these like things that start out small and then they go out of control and I feel just depressed out of my mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
Usually I feel bad and then what happens is I overcome it by telling myself, well, just do it anyways.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the moment I do it, right after this podcast, I m going to feel great because I didn t cancel and because I did the interview.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I m going to go, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_01
I feel a little bit better, let me do something else that s important.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll turn around my day and at the end of the day I m gonna feel proud and excited and pumped so tomorrow I ll start my day with the right energy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s gonna turn into a great week versus a shit week.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is a virtuous cycle, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I have a similar sort of thing where, this is rare, just to my credit, but I ll wake up in the morning and I ll be like,
3
SPEAKER_00
I do not want to go to the gym.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to go see my trainer.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just, I feel tired.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know, occasionally once a quarter or so I ll text him when I feel like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ll go, Hey man, I m just not feeling it today.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m so tired.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s raining.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I just don t feel like it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m still sore from Monday or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he ll go,
3
SPEAKER_00
All right, take care of yourself, you know, because he can get another client in two seconds or just take a break.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s not hurting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I sleep, you know, for another 30 minutes and get up and I feel like a total frickin bum.
4
SPEAKER_01
for the rest of the day, because I started my day with just a failure of willpower, a failure of motivation, a failure of work ethic.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, back to Steli Efti.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s one of the worst feelings.
4
SPEAKER_01
I actually sent a whole email to the Art of Charm list about how I just had a terribly unproductive day and how crappy I felt.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I got hundreds of responses from people who were like, I m really glad to hear this.
4
SPEAKER_01
That means I m not the only one who does that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s interesting because, you know, I say once a quarter it happens because...
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not that I only feel that way once a quarter, it s just that the next week or whatever, which is literally the next time I feel that way, I go, yeah, I feel that way, but remember how crappy you felt after you actually didn t go?
4
SPEAKER_01
Remember how much you beat yourself up over that laziness?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s what s gonna happen today if you don t get your butt out of bed.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I get my butt out of bed and I go, okay, that was better than,
4
SPEAKER_01
Going to the gym, even though I was sore, even though I was non-motivated, felt a lot better than being a lazy SOB and hating myself for the rest of the morning.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But you know what s interesting?
4
SPEAKER_00
This strategy that you re describing, it s awesome that it s working for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I had too bad of a memory or too good at being compartmentalizing things.
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That strategy never worked because I literally would start, let s take this example, I would literally start waking up and thinking, I don t feel that great, maybe I should cancel my gym thing.
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What I would do is, in me, something would tell me, oh shit, you know how this is gonna end up.
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It s gonna end up like a fucking shitty week if you make this bad decision now.
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But then I would push that voice away and I would just repeat the stupid pattern from last month or last week.
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And I don t know why, but making myself relive the pain and the consequences of last time I made the bad choice and then using that pain as a way to avoid it,
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just never worked for me.
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Maybe I m not smart enough, but that never worked for me, unfortunately.
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So, I don t know why what is working for me works for me today, but I think that the takeaway is that, number one, everybody has this.
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Everybody, like I give about one conference talk, a keynote a month, and I speak in front of large audiences sometimes, thousands of people, and every time I talk about like this,
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like making bad decisions and being debilitated by your emotions and the inner voice that tells you, ah, you re going to do a crappy job, just cancel this thing.
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And then how it turns into a whole week, like the audience always collectively nods and people laugh and cry and start.
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And there s a big response.
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And you just can tell we re not alone with this.
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Like everybody feels this.
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So, I think that that s good to know.
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And then the other thing that hopefully people can take away from this is, A, two distinct strategies on how to overcome this, like yours and mine, but also the thinking, if you try Jordan and my strategy, it doesn t work, try another, try to figure out one.
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Because I was stuck in a strategy that didn t work for me personally for years and it sucked.
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So, know that there s multiple ways to find a way to overcome this.
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But for me, the funny thing is that once I realized that I don t have to fight that emotion,
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The gym is an interesting thing.
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I just started going to, for the first time in my life, I m 33 and just this year started working out, doing any kinds of sport really.
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And I started doing kickboxing.
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And for one reason or another, I liked it.
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So I kept going and keep going now for months.
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And whenever I don t feel like going, which is rare, but when I don t feel like going and I m like, I really don t feel like going, again, I just go, well, then go and do a shitty job today.
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Like just go and have a bad workout.
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Who cares?
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Just go.
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Yeah.
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And usually when you show up, that doesn t happen.
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Yes, I mean, usually just because the fact that you showed up, although you didn t want, once you start getting into it, you start feeling proud of yourself, you start feeling good about that decision, and then it perpetuates to you doing a really good job.
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And the moment you walk out of the gym, you re like, fuck, I feel fucking amazing.
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I m so glad I went and now I m ready to do other things that I would have wanted to avoid today, right?
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You re now emotionally charged up to do another thing that you
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would have had a hard time to tackle just because when you overcome yourself, when you do something, although you don t feel like it, you feel proud.
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You re proud of yourself.
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And that feeling puts you in a state to do more of that, which then puts you in a state to do more of that, which is exactly the kind of dynamic that you want in your life versus the opposite dynamic.
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Perfect, yeah, I definitely understand, and I think it s interesting to see how you can turn these negative cycles into virtuous cycles by forcing yourself to go through with something, even if you don t feel like it, and then being proud of the fact that you built, because I feel like every time you do that, you build a little bit more self-trust, and you go,
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even if something s gonna suck and I know it s gonna suck, I can still go through, handle it, and the outcome will be good.
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And that s a really interesting skill to have because as a salesperson, as a business owner, one of the scariest things you can deal with ever is risk.
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And if you know that often when you take a risk, even if it s just a risk of having a bad workout, or wasting a personal training session, or trying to go for a run of a long distance and you can t do it, or starting a business and failing, if you know that usually the outcome is not nearly as bad as it seemed in the beginning, or always turns out better than you would have supposed in the first place, that builds a lot of confidence.
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Not just situational confidence in business, but confidence, period.
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If every time you walked up to somebody you didn t know and started talking to them and they liked you, you would, very short order, you would stop being afraid of talking to strangers.
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And the same thing is true in sales, and the same thing is true in business, and the same thing is true with getting your butt to the gym, right?
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Even if you re thinking, I really don t wanna be here, you show up, you have a workout, you feel good, it reprograms your brain.
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But you know what, the funny thing is, we had this discussion in our sales team the other day and people were asking, what is the source of confidence?
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And I truly believe, of course, success is one of it.
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But I think overcoming struggle and then succeeding, that s even a stronger part of what really builds your confidence.
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So I think that if you go up to somebody and you speak to someone and they instantly respond positively and you succeed, that s awesome.
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And if you do that 10 times and every time you succeed, it s going to build up confidence, but only to the degree where you get instant gratification.
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You get no friction and no kind of challenge whatsoever.
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But the moment you get challenged by somebody, you re going to be crushed because that confidence was built on pure success.
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Whenever you have to overcome some challenge and then you succeed or you fail and then you dust yourself up, you pick yourself up and you go again and you fail and you do it again and then you succeed, that to me builds a totally different quality of confidence because you know
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both your limits, but you also know that you re able to overcome them.
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So I think both success and failure can, if you have both in your life, it creates a different level of confidence.
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And I think that when you feel great and you do something and it turns out good, I think that can be
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creating positive dynamic for you to do more good things in that day or be more productive that day.
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But I think if you feel shitty and you overcome yourself and you do something great, I think that that creates a totally different momentum and different energy for you to go and crush it that day.
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I don t know why.
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I started calling this like emotional alchemy, right?
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You take a shitty emotion to cure gold.
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internally, and it s just by, in my case, not fighting that emotion, but accepting it and embracing it and going, you know what, if I feel bad and I think I m gonna do a bad job, so be it, let s go and do a bad job, but we will do what we committed ourselves to.
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And then just by doing that, you start feeling great, you re doing a good job, and then you re off to the races.
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Excellent.
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To sort of switch topics here, how are you getting people behind
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your vision and your mission, because you run a company.
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How do you convince, and by the way, I m glad we got you on a sick day, because I can only imagine the amount of energy that you have when you re feeling 100%.
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But how are you getting people to follow you into the fire, running a company in Silicon Valley, and you re this like...
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energetic dude with this weird rando accent, and you re just like, hey, you should move away from home, quit your successful job, and come work for me.
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And they re like, okay, and they re doing it by the dozen.
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What s your story there?
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How do you do that?
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So there s two things.
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Number one, I think you do it by leading the way, right?
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I mean, people sense authenticity.
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I think we all are good at sensing authenticity.
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who s authentic and who s not.
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And when somebody s authentic and somebody doesn t just talk the talk, but you can sense that they walk the walk and you can see them walk the walk, then the question is, is this somebody that lives a life and accomplishes things that I want to do as well?
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And do I believe they can teach me that?
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And if the answers to those two basic questions are yes, then people want to follow you, right?
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People want to follow you because they think they can
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learn from you how to live a life that they want or accomplish the things that they want and they believe that you will teach them and show them.
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So I think that that s a big part of it.
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So today, I have some kind of recognition in a very small part of the universe.
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So a lot of people see my talks, my videos, read my books and things like that.
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And then out of that pool of people, we get talent that wants to come and join us.
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But a lot of times,
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I m in the business also of convincing somebody to change their life plans, right?
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So, you know, we used to reach out to people.
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that absolutely had no sales experience and absolutely didn t want to be in sales and then would convince them to join us as salespeople.
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So when we would hire salespeople, we would ask them on their first day, the question would be, who s the smartest, most ambitious, most successful, most amazing person you know?
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that who would never ever consider joining us here and getting a job with us, who is like a few names that come to mind of people you think are amazing, but they would never want to come and work here.
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And then what I would do is I would write down their names and phone numbers, and I would call them.
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And the conversation there would be very simple.
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I would call and go, Hey, Jordan, my name is Steli.
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I m working with this in this company.
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And
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I m sitting here with Kevin and Kevin mentioned that you are one of the most amazing people he knows.
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I always ask this question.
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We just hired Kevin and every time I hire somebody new, I ask them who is the most amazing person they know and this time, Kevin
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mentioned you.
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I love to get to know incredible people.
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So I, you know, I want to do just quickly pick your brain, chat with you, get to know you, tell you a little bit about us, get your feedback, you re open for that.
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And sometimes I would send people emails and schedule calls, sometimes I would just call them.
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But I would have like very casual conversations with these people that was just like, hey, somebody thinks you re amazing, and I want to get to know you.
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And then these small conversations, if they were good on both ends, if I felt like there was a connection, there was potential there.
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At the end of the call, I would go, you know what,
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Why don t we continue this conversation?
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I d love to, you know, have another call that has a bit more time or if they were local, why don t you just stop by in the office and we just grab lunch or dinner together or something.
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So we would do that.
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And then at the end of that conversation, I would start telling them, you know what, you know, I d love to hire you.
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I would totally want to hire somebody like you, but I know there would be no way you would ever consider this job.
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Kevin already told me, don t ever try to hire Jordan.
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Totally different life plan.
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So I m not going to try.
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But here s what we re trying to build.
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Here s the type of people we re looking for.
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I would sell these people on the vision, on the team, on myself.
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I would take the time to get to know them, quote-unquote date them a little bit before I ask them to marry me and change their life like they were already like
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They were already having certain life plans and thinking about a certain person in their life, and then I can t just send them an email and go, marry me.
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I need to start dating, getting to know them, have them fall in love with us, our vision, our company, myself, and vice versa, me fall in love with them, to at some point go, maybe you should reconsider your life plans.
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were accepted by Harvard and they didn t go to school, something they worked their entire life for, and they came and joined us.
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We had people that were working at NASA as engineers, helped with the Mars rover landing, literally rocket scientists that had totally different plans for their life and then they ended up being salespeople in our company.
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We had all kinds of amazing people.
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that totally didn t want to be in sales that ended up working in our company and loving it.
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Because I took small baby steps, I dated them first, and eventually they would fall in love with the vision, the mission, the company, and they would realize, hey, sales isn t a dirty word and it s actually something I would enjoy and something that would be useful to me for my entire life.
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So, you know, whatever, let me put my plans at pause and let me take this opportunity that s right in front of me.
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Sure, yeah.
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No, I wanna grab one sort of practical thing as well.
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I mean, we sort of talked about the emotional alchemy of creating virtuous cycles and rewiring your brain to push through times when you don t feel like doing something, and you can do it, then being, of course, able to do it in more high-stakes situations, but what about the hustle formula?
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Is there a way that we can apply the hustle formula in a practical way so we can drill it?
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If you re listening in your car right now, you can drill this right when you get to work.
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Because there is always that little voice in your head, what do we do about that?
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Yes, so I think that at the end of the day, the first thing you need to do is just pick something, pick whatever seems the easiest thing to do next and just commit to doing that and doing it every single day for the next 30 or 60 days.
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and try to build momentum.
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I m a big believer in momentum.
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So instead of saying everything that Steli said was incredible, let me just put every, I m gonna change my life and tomorrow I m gonna put all the things that Jordan and Steli talked about into practice immediately.
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That s cool and I commend you for that excitement and motivation, but it s very unlikely that that s gonna happen, right?
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So instead of doing that, just pick one little thing.
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It could be that you say, you know what, for the next 60 days I ll commit myself
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to use a tool like let s say followup.cc that allows me to easily keep tabs on who I need to follow up with.
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And then what I m going to do is I m going to double my followup.
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So I m going to say no person that I talk to just gets one or two emails.
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I ll commit to do at least six followups with anyone and everyone that I interact with in the next 30 or 60 days.
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And that s a small commitment if you use a tool like that I mentioned, you need literally no programming, no work, you don t need to remember anything, no memory, no nothing.
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All you have to do is when you send somebody an email, you BCC one week at followup.cc or one day at followup.cc and then the thread gets popped up again in your inbox and you re reminded and you can send another email.
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And all you do is you commit to doubling your followup for the next 60 days, which might mean six followups versus three.
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Maybe it s that.
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Maybe another thing that you do is that you say, you know, all I m going to try to do is every day I m going to try to do one little thing that I don t quite feel like, you know, but it needs to be a small thing.
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Like if I don t feel like.
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walking to some store to lunch and driving there because it s like whatever, five blocks, I ll do that little thing.
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Something that s so small that you think you can kind of get it done and get it accomplished even if it s annoying or even if it s slightly inconvenient.
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Whatever, those are just two examples.
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Whatever it is, what I would do as a listener is pick one thing.
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I would advise you pick the follow-up unless you re already a killer and a master in follow-up which I doubt most people are.
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Pick one thing, make a small commitment, but make it something that you commit to for the next 30 days and make a commitment that you re going to keep every single day.
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Magic is going to happen.
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Just take some small thing that seems like you could accomplish it and do it every day.
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Excellent.
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Thanks so much, man.
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Is there anything you want to leave us with that I haven t asked you?
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Obviously, we ll link to Close.io and the show notes and things like that as well.
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Yeah, no, I d love to hear from people.
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I d love to hear your feedback.
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If you re listening to this and you agree to disagree or you had some ideas or you feel something, I d love to hear from you.
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You can either ping me on Twitter at Steli, S-T-E-L-I, or send me an email directly, steli at close.io.
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And then what we just did is a very good friend of mine who s a CEO of a very successful multimillion dollar startup here in the Valley as well, and myself, he s more of a marketing guy, more of a sales guy.
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We just started a podcast.
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And if you go to thestartupchat.com, you ll be able to listen to it.
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And if you like it, you ll be able to subscribe to it.
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We knew we said that, but your audience is already a podcast audience.
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These guys know what, you know, one of the best podcasts out there is doing, which I think you guys have, and you re doing an amazing job.
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So if some of the listeners want to hear more from me, they can check out thestartupchat.com, check out our podcast, and then I d love to hear feedback on what we can do to do it better.
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Excellent.
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Thanks so much, Steli.
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Much appreciated.
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Thank you so much, Jordan.
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Hope you enjoyed that one with Steli.
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He s a true hustler.
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I mean, I don t even have to tell you the level of energy coming out of that guy is one of the reasons for his success, but it s focused.
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It s like a laser beam.
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It s not all over the place hyperactivity.
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And I guarantee you, and I should have asked him this on the show, I guarantee you that his success was proportionally correlated with his focus because he s got the energy.
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That, I assume, is partially natural.
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but the focus, the ability to channel that in one direction is definitely one of the reasons why he s successful.
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Show feedback and guest suggestions.
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The show s a fanarchy.
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It s run by you.
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We rely on you to keep our finger on the pulse.
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So if you know someone who s a good fit, let me know.
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Jordan at theartofcharm.com.
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If you like the show, don t forget to thank Steli on Twitter.
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We ll link that in the show notes as well as his resources that he d mentioned on the show.
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And I m on Twitter, I m at The Art of Charm, so follow me there and engage with me, chitchat, I love it.
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Bootcamp details at theartofcharm.com slash bootcamp.
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Remember, we re sold out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it a little bit, get in touch now, get info, plan ahead.
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And we ve got the blog on the website, bonus episodes on the website.
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Subscribe on iTunes, download the apps, write us a review somehow.
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we will get you one day.
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And of course, I love hearing from you guys, especially on iTunes.
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Helps us stand out from the riffraff as well.
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Special thanks to the Jasons for their help in production of the Art of Charm podcast.
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Now tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week, and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and everything for the extraordinary man at theartofcharmpodcast.com.