EP.04 - If The Dream Is Big Enough, The Facts Don't Count

In this episode, I interview Eric Shulman, a serial entrepreneur with a 50-year career in sales and building businesses. Eric started, grew, and ran five different businesses, including a Sandler Franchise where he was a Sandler Trainer for over 20 years before selling it in 2019. He's consulted with well over 7,000 owners in 400 different industries from NY and Boston to Florida and California.

His latest brainchild is "An INSIDE Man," where he helps business owners set up their business for an eventual sale by improving their sales, operations, and other functions that can cost a Zero when they do eventually sell their business.

Lots of great sales tips, advice, and life experiences shared by an award-winning Sandler Trainer:

• Guinea Pigs and a Bale of Hay
• Everything You're Currently Doing in Sales is WRONG!
• Helping Business Owners See Their Business More Clearly
• It's Good to Know What You Don't Know!
• Getting from Good to Great Requires Change
• Learn to Win by First Learning to Fail
• Get Yourself a Forensic Sales Audit
• Eric's Dream Board

Schedule a Free Business Clarity Conversation with Eric Shulman; you could profit from his ideas and contacts and avoid business mistakes you haven't even made yet!

Eric Shulman, An INSIDE Man

Email: Eric.InsideMan@gmail.com 

Website: www.AnInsideMan.com

Phone: (321) 301-5700

Transcript

Roy Richardson (Host) (00:02):

Good day, everyone. And welcome to another edition of the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Roy Richardson, coming to you here from Orlando. I'm also Vice President of Aurora InfoTech, a Cybersecurity firm based in Orlando, catering to the information security needs of small to medium-sized businesses throughout the region, and elsewhere. And I'm extremely excited today because I have with me somebody who was a mentor to me or coach he's a serial entrepreneur with a 50-year career in sales and building businesses started, grew and ran successfully ran five businesses and two publications so far from everything from record stores to direct marketing agency, to custom cakes, and was also a Sandler trainer for over 20 years, with 40 years experience in the system. And I'm speaking to none other than Eric Schulman, who is today from Inside Man. And he's going to tell us more about his journey. He's going to share with us, you know some tips and tricks with regards to sales and things we should be looking for as business leaders, but also, you know, share a little bit with us in terms of what he's doing now that he's moved on from Sandler. Eric,

Eric Shulman (Guest) (01:16):

Roy, thank you so much for inviting me. I, it's funny when I hear the intro, I feel like I'm 108 years old. I did start when I was very young. I started working with my, actually my grandfather's drug store when I was 10 or 12 years old. And then I worked in my dad's record store from 12 to 20, and then the rest is history after that. So I just, I just got of start working early and you know, I, I always like to have money in my pocket. I think it was part of the reason money was a motivator, but interesting as a kid, one of the things that I always was different from everybody else. And I grew up in the sixties as I was one that always had money in my pocket. Because I was always working from a very, very young age. I didn't even tell you about my first business.

Roy Richardson (Host) (02:02):

No, no. Share with us, please.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (02:04):

And my first business, this is actually funny. I was probably 10 or 11 years old and I got a Guinea pig. Right. You know, you had hamsters, Guinea pigs, a little knife, you know how we had filmed the Guinea pig. So I got a couple of other Guinea pigs found out about two months later, that one was male and three were female. Oh, two months into this Ray. I had 27 Guinea pigs. Oh, my dad built a big cage thing. And we went out, I bought a bale of hay for a dollar and a quarter. We put it in the trunk of my mom's station wagon, took it home. I went to the food store and I bought a bag of rabbit food. And I fed them, you know, and I had bedding and I had this stuff, Oh, about a month and a half, two months later, I've got 27 decent sized Guinea pigs.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (02:52):

Yeah. So I can't keep them all. So what do I do? Well, you're going to love this. I gave them away to all the kids for free and I sold hay and food. So you became the demand. I didn't even know what I was doing. And so I was selling hay for 25 cents. Remember the Brown shopping bags as much hay as you could foot in a Brown paper, shopping bag was a quarter worth of stuff. It is full as you want. Do you have any idea how many shopping bags full of hay you can get out of bale avail cost a dollar and a quarter? I was getting 25 cents a shopping bag and getting a hundred shopping bags or more out of the bale of hay. So I wouldn't put the hay in the food business that literally, and I had very few people and that was my first business venture. So at an early age, I became a capitalist, I guess,

Roy Richardson (Host) (03:51):

But that's amazing. As you said, you created the system where, you know, you created the demand and then became the supplier for the demand.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (04:05):

I played in rock bands and I sold aspirin. Right? So

Roy Richardson (Host) (04:13):

Tell me a little bit in terms of transitioning from the neighborhood hay man to where you ended up with Sandler and building a sales culture, really to tons and tons of people, not only here in central Florida, but the world over, you know, share with us.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (04:30):

Well, as you can guess, I was selling stuff at a very, very early age. I went to work on the record business because my dad opened a record store six months before the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. So I'm the 13-year-old kid in junior high whose dad owns the record store. So I was selling records and guitars and amps all through high school. And I was very good at it. And I learned to talk to people, you know, mom taught me, don't talk to strangers. Two weeks into opening the store we got busy and my mom said, go talk to that man. So my mother told me to go talk to a stranger. So I overcame the fear of talking to strangers at a very early age. And talk about leveling the playing field. I am five foot six fully grown.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (05:10):

Well, most people I've met with were your size to me. So a low sir, can I help you? So you learn not to be intimidated by people bigger than you, whether it's bigger in size or, or bigger and business. So you sort of learn that kind of stuff just by being retail is not a bad place to start. I realized it, we sold the stores in Jersey. We moved to Florida Orlando in 73. And by the end of the seventies, I realized Roy that I was never going to get rich from my dad's business because my brothers were involved. Mom and dad, myself, everybody's married. I did the math and dad had always said, you're never going to get rich in a retail business. You'll always make a good living. I don't know what rich was, but I wanted to be rich. So I left the family business. I've been doing marketing. I sort of floundered around for a couple of months, several of direct mail marketing, what a data general with 64 K of Ram and a 25 megabyte Winchester hard drives,

Roy Richardson (Host) (06:04):

Which was probably top of the line back then

Eric Shulman (Guest) (06:06):

Top of the line with custom software to just do nothing but type letters and labels and envelopes. And that within NEC spin writer, for those of you under 50, that's like a typewriter attached to it was $28,500 back in 1980. For basically what would be a word processor. Okay. so just take a mailing list and merge it with letters. And I started typing letters. I made a living for three years and in 1983, one of my clients, and I've been able to have Jerry. I still remember him. 40 years later handed me a manual by David Sam. I read the manual. The manual said everything you're currently doing in sales is wrong. Not some of the stuff for like all of them. For instance, what's the one word that you want to hear at the end of a sales call with any good prospect?

Roy Richardson (Host) (07:01):

The one word you want to hear at the end of the day. Yeah.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (07:04):

What do you want to hear? It begins with why it's three letters long? What do you hear them say? Yes. Okay. What does everybody else trying to get them to also say yes, David Chandler says, if everybody else is doing it, do the opposite. So I don't have a manual wrong way to learn how to do anything out of a manual. I started going for not. And, but you don't want to fix this today. And people started saying, well, yeah, no, I do want to fix it today. And when I realized he made it easier on me, I got into sales because I'm ambitiously lazy. I've been saying this for 25 years. I wanted to make a lot of money. I didn't want to work hard. And this was just an easier way to sell. So I began using pieces of this and my business took me three years to get it to one employee sharing an office.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (07:49):

And I was handed the manual three years later, after a couple of moves, I moved into 17,000 feet. I had 54 full-time people. I was doing most of the sales. And the only thing that changed was using pieces on this manual. So done badly. It worked well. So that business met Sharon. She had sprinkles, custom cakes was a wedding cake store. She was making a living doing okay, but only doing four or five cakes a month and thought she was competing with the grocery store, but she was priced the same because they were half a mile away. She asked me to get involved in her business. We've been married 26 years now. So I did. That was, that was the best

Roy Richardson (Host) (08:29):

The best, the best clothes. You got to keep it close to keep the client happy.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (08:36):

But she asked me to get involved in her business. So I looked at the business. The first thing I said is you're too cheap. She says, well, my competition is a dollar and a quarter. I got to be the same. I said that's not your competition. Remember this is 1992. When I said to her then was Cadillac does not compete with Yugo. Did they? It would be Lexus not compete with Kia. Yeah. She was baking a Cadillac product but competing with a grocery store cake. And she got afraid. She says, if, if we do that, we're going to lose half the business. I said, do the math. If you do two cakes a month at $2 a slice, you net more dollars than doing four cakes a month at a bucket of water. And she's a high seat. So she did the math and she said, you're right.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (09:19):

And she decided at that point I was going to be sales and marketing and she was going to be production and creative. So I had never sold wedding cakes before, but I applied what I got out of the manual. And in six months we went from four or five a month to 15 to 20 a week. We went from an average of a buck and a quarter to an average of a buck, 75 to $2. We had seven people working for us. So the process itself worked in the cake business. We sold that business in 95 and I was unemployed, went to work for a consulting company, the only job I've ever held and they use professional Sandler trainers. So I got fit for two full weeks and trained and then sent to live in Rochester, New York. They said the close-ratio is 5% good is 10%.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (10:03):

We'll give you a 15 a week. If you close one in the first month, you're the golden child. I had 12 appointments that held my first week. I closed three at a 12, which was 25%. And, and understand that for it. Wasn't because I was that good. I got very good at using this process. And in the prior two weeks of practice in the process, I sold nine in the first month, my close ratio. And I actually still have all the paperwork stay between 17 and 31% historically over an eight-year period in an industry that has a 5% average, 10% good, 15% excellent close rates. That's pretty impressive. And I don't understand this. I'm good at what I do, but I'm really good at using the process, the system, having a selling system, or selling process something, a lot of salespeople don't have.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (10:49):

And whether you use my process, spin selling, or whatever the process is, you use, you have to have a process. You have a process for accounting and doing it security work, or you've got a process to do an audit and to make sure everything is secure. And most people are sell based on their personality. You're good with people. You're going to be in sales. And then 20 years later, you wake up looking like you and I have very little or no hair, and we're still in sales. You don't have 20 years of experience. We have one year of experience repeated 20 times. I like to ask mature salespeople. When was the last time you actually learned something new that you use on a sales call and when they start going like this, then you know that they're not learning?

Eric Shulman (Guest) (11:35):

So the first thing I did, I was in a Sandler office in 2003 April fool's day, about three. When they told me they were going to start limiting my income and I was a hundred percent permission. And I did that for the last 20 years. I merged my office with another Sandler gentleman last year. I'm still working for him, but I got bored being home with COVID. And I said, what am I good at? I'm good at sales, I'm good at business. What have I helped other business owners see their business a little more clearly, not your typical business consultant who tells you, you know, you pay them a thousand dollars to tell you, you know, what time it is. And he borrows your watch to tell you what time it is. How about somebody who is willing to come in and literally fix things on the first day. Sometimes it's as simple as moving somebody or moving somebody in a position or changing one or two questions that are being asked when someone calls in. But there's a lot of things that could be fixed very, very simply. And sometimes it just takes that outside.

Roy Richardson (Host) (12:36):

That's true. That's true. And so this is where you transition now into inside man which is, which is your new form now since, since you retired and if I may say that and, and, and 

Eric Shulman (Guest) (12:49):

I'm not, I'm not retired. I just, I just sold one business and now I'm starting another. My plan is I'm going to work for five, six, seven years. And what's interesting is this, I might, my mantra is about exit engineering, engineering, your business. So that eventually a week, a month, a year, five years, 10 years down the road, the business is set up that it's a saleable entity, that it doesn't need you because most business owners run their business like owning their own job. They stay busy, they make good money, but the moment they fall down, the business can survive. Instead of a pyramid, looking like this, it's a pyramid looking like this head, and they're doing this all day long, trying to keep balance, got to make payroll, got to make this sale, got a problem with so and so when really a business should be able to run by itself with systems and processes, not based on a personality, because if the business is in your head, you don't have anything that sale. But when you get the business out of your head and into other people's heads and you create systems and processes and a management structure where you can step back for a week and not call it, and it runs you're on the first phase, you can go away for a month and not call in. Now you've got a business that pretty much will run itself.

Roy Richardson (Host) (14:10):

And, and I'm sh I'm sure that, that you, you probably just, you know, just with what you said there, Eric, you know, there are probably a lot of our listeners here who may be scratching their heads saying, well, this is kind of what I was looking for, but, you know, and, and a lot of business owners were, will recognize the fact that they need to have a process. They need to have, you know, repeatable patterns and, and, and a culture by which they run their business. But what's your advice for, you know, that loss of a business person, who's looking to go down a path of, of, you know having an established process so that they can become successful.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (14:49):

The first step is, is you have to admit you don't know everything, and you don't know what you don't know, and it's good to know what you don't know. So the first thing, and most business owners, and I'm guilty of this. And so are you, we're not humble people. We believe in ourselves for that D or a type personality, depending upon which methodology you use wow. Forward and make things happen. And they always want to be right. Well, the problem with our personality type is the ID. If I say it, it must be true is the, is the attitude of ID. So the first thing is it's very, very tough for some business owners to get vulnerable. What I have always been good at w w what may be good in the management consulting field? What made me a success in Sandra? What made me successful in the direct marketing world, even in the cake world is I was able to get in and the people at the top of organizations, and here's the keyword as an equal, equal business stature.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (15:48):

And they make $400 million a year or 40,000 a year. You talk to them like an equal, and you'll look them in the eye. And you become disarmingly, honest with people, which means that you and I have to be vulnerable when we're talking to these people. We're not perfect either. Right. You know, it's interesting people go in to try and sell people stuff. And when I meet people, I would sit down, boy, and I would chat a little bit. We learned a little bit about it. I'd say a lighter. We're loose for your wife. Yeah. And finally, it's ROI. We've got 30 minutes. Why am I here? What are you hoping I might be able to help you with today, as opposed to Roy, let me tell you about my training. My IT work, my product, my service, which is for most people start, why am I here is a great question.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (16:33):

Sort of doctor does when you go to the doctor, Hey, while you're looking good, looks like you dropped a couple of pounds. How are the wife and kids doing a prank? So why are you here today? What seems to be the problem? That's what the doctor says. Right? Right, right, right. So, so if you put a little sign that says the doctor is in, on your forehead, before you walk in, or before you pick up the phone or go on a zoom call and you become that doctor, just trying to do a diagnosis. I love doctors and surgeons who don't want to cut, who will look for every way not to do the operation. I hadn't talked to an attorney the other day about a potential lawsuit. I don't like to Sue people at all. And rather than trying to talk me into doing the suit, what the attorney said, he said, look, based on everything I've said, I think you should sit tight and do X, Y, and Z.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (17:20):

And let this sit until the beginning of next year. And if you're still having problems that he wasn't anxious to, you know, if we can get this the day, he was more about, you know, giving me the advice that I needed at the moment. If we could keep the operation, look, this is, this is bone on bone. That's why you can't walk. If we don't fix that, you're going to be crippled for life. We do have to operate. That's one situation. My wife's got a situation where they're back right now, got a problem that L four L five, she's got stenosis and she's got the nerve being pressed on. Well, she's getting a massage therapist to come to the house every week who does stretching, massage, which is starting to help. She's had four or five series of shots in the lower back and in the neck to relieve the tension in the muscles.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (18:07):

And she's trying every alternative. We're actually meeting with the surgeon this week to let him know that we're not going to go through surgery because we're looking for alternatives. So the doctor who's anxious to cut. Hey, we have a special on shoulders, one job up on the table. Well, that's not the doctor you want, right. It's going to do the x-rays the MRIs, get a second opinion, try physical therapy, try everything nonsurgical before they ever pick up a scalpel. And as a sales or business professional, you have to have the same level of ethics where you're not there to sell them. You're there to find out what they need and make a friend. And if they happen to need what we have, they're going to ask us for it before we leave. And if they don't and you can lead them to the right solution, then lead them to the right solution. You got to think long-term, it's not about making a sale. It's about starting the beginning of a relationship that might lead to a sale. And it might just lead to being friends.

Roy Richardson (Host) (19:08):

And, you know, w w which brings me into some of the coaching and training that, and as I mentioned to everyone that, you know, Eric has been a mentor and a coach, and still as a mentor and a coach to me you know, and, and this, this goes back to Sandra's, you know, bonding and rapport and, and, and, you know, establishing a relationship, building a relationship of trust with people. Oftentimes, you know, I'm sure it's the same with you. Particularly now in COVID my phone rings off the hook and it's, and it's either the phone ringing off the hook or as a LinkedIn connection that's coming in and people from the time you connect with them, you know, the next, you know, the next message that comes across a sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell what? I don't even know you w we don't know each other. We don't, you don't you'll have no idea what my requirements are.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (19:53):

Roy. I hate it. When I get more emails from you being the person, trying to reach me than I'd ever get from my mother or my wife, if you're emailing me more than my mother's, you're emailing me too much. Like today's reminder, he didn't forget. Today's reminder. He last had it before you go to sleep. And then the next morning or more, and you know it, you know, I'm saying, where are the Ginsu knives? As opposed to three or four days later, you get an on, Hey, Roy, I really enjoyed speaking with you about X, Y, and Z. I had a suggestion for you on this, and Oh, by the way, you bring up something personal that may have come up. I know your wife likes food Mykonos at four 34 has one really good Spanish Copa to give it a try, you know, talk to you soon. And now you're actually having a conversation with people. Don't try to sell people. Stuff, have conversations with people if need what you have after they feel comfortable with you. People buy from people they know like, and trust. So before they ever want to consider buying anything, they're trying to figure out is, do I trust this guy? Do I like him? Am I comfortable with him?

Roy Richardson (Host) (21:06):

That is true. That is true. So, since we're talking about these hurdles, that a lot of salespeople tend to go through, you know, and a lot of businesses might be going through, you know, why would a business or a person need someone like, like you, Eric, and, and you know, a lot of, unfortunately, and we've seen this in the security world from the opposite side, right? A lot of businesses really don't think that they may need someone like you. So, so because they think everything is buttoned up and working fine. So

Eric Shulman (Guest) (21:36):

Sure. What else? Let me ask you a question. If you had cancer, would you want to know? Yes. Well, how would you know if you had cancer? If no doctor ever took a look? So here's the thing. Here's the problem. The book by Jim Collins. Good to great. Says the good is the enemy of great and most businesses and most business owners are doing good. They're making a living, they're surviving through COVID and they've laid off a couple of employees. They've changed how they do business. They're still hanging on. We're going to make it through this. We're doing good. Cause we're still alive. Other people have been out of business and good is the enemy of a great cause to get from good to great. You have to change something. And whenever you change something, you, it's not a straight line from here to here. There's a little dip, like changing your golf swing.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (22:35):

Your trucker says you're doing well. You're, shooting 90. Okay. You're you know, you're shooting bogey, golf, you know, but let's, let's take your hand and let's move this thumb over a little bit this way and bring this elbow down. Now, the first time you do that, that feels weird. Just like this grip, which is an interlocking grip feels really weird. The first time you do it in golf today, I could not pick up a golf club and do like a baseball bat because, for the last 30 years, this has been the grip. So this is now what I'm used to. When I move this a little bit, this way to strengthen that right hand, and that's going to feel weird. But what that allows me to do now, you explained to us, the clubhead face will turn over and you'll get a little bit more right to left and you won't slice the ball.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (23:18):

You'll get more distance, but unless I'm willing to practice this new grip, what happens is, is this instead of going from good to great, they go from good to hear and they say, I've gone back. And they say, I'll say bogey. Golf is good enough for me because I started shooting 95 here. Now I would have turned the corner and made it up to here where I'm breaking 85, but you have to go be willing to go through the dip in performance to get to the next level. And that's what I tell people. Is this everything you're currently good at? You were bad the first time you did it. The first time you got behind the wheel of a car, right? For the real tendency to seatbelt on, do they have seat belts when you were a kid just right. Everything in place, radio off, double-check over the shoulder, all this stuff.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (24:09):

And, and you know, you drive down the highway with a death grip on the wheel, right? Checking every three seconds. The rearview mirror, 42 miles an hour, not 45. Right? I saw you on the way to work this morning. You had coffee in this hand, your cell phone. In this hand, you were steering with your knee while adjusting the radio. So what happens is when the first day that's grip, okay, for a while, it becomes, well, this is I just, I drive, you know, drive, I'd have to think about driving. You do things unconsciously after a while, it becomes second nature. You become an unconscious competent in the beginning. You're an unconscious incompetent. You're allowed you to know, to know your Laos. And then you receive that. You should be doing it better. So you become conscious of incompetence. Now I know, I suck. Eventually, you practice enough and you move over to being consciously competent.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (24:59):

I can do it. Right. But I have to concentrate on it. Now, wait a second. Where does the thumb go? And where does my shoulder go? That's conscious competence. You don't carry Carter, right? Yeah. Definitely. There is a plus-four handicap, which means when he shoots 72, he about how bad he played. Okay. Carrie Carter is not thinking about his thumb or elbow or anything else. When he stands over the ball, he's thinking the Brown spot right below the pimp and a roll to the left. And he's focused on the Brown spot on the pin. I'm thinking about my thumb and my elbow. And so he doesn't have to think about the mechanics. He's an unconscious competent of the swing is focused on where he wants it to get to whatever you do in life. Whether it's sales, running a game of business golf, you have to work hard enough to become unconsciously competent.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (25:52):

I would've not been Gladwell says in the book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. How long have you been in the IT business for over 25 plus years, you have forgotten more than I possibly could know about it and security. And then in the sales world for 50 years, I've forgotten more than you know about sales. I'm not an expert at what you do because I haven't spent my 10,000 hours. You're not an expert at what I do. So you're going to find somebody that's an expert at what you do. Find somebody who's as good as you want to be. And when you talk to somebody the, the Houston, my challenge, you're not the product that most people aren't their product. If I sell computer keyboards or software or it service, I am not the software. I'm the guy who installs a lot of what I do with Sammer.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (26:39):

And my sandwich side of my world is sales training. So am the products. So the problem with me is if I'm not five or 10 times better than you, or the best guy you have on your sales team, you don't want to give me the time of day. So I have got to be that much better in the first 15 to 60 seconds and ask them one key question where it goes right between the eyes like, Whoa, this guy understands my world, ladies, and gents, who are listening to this. If you have a question that you can ask people, when you walk in, where they go, wait a minute, she knows what I'm talking about. Oh my God. Maybe he can help. They discover in that first, second, and now you've got credibility. Yeah. So you're going to have a couple of killer questions and you've got to tailor the question to the person, the personality, and the situation that you're in.

Roy Richardson (Host) (27:30):

So, Eric, you mentioned just now about, you know, making that commitment and, and, and you're taking you to know, basically you take a dip before you start going back up, right. A lot of businesses. I, you know, and I've, I've encountered this not only, and I'm sure you, you have on your side of the world as well, but insecurity. And you know, when you, when you come about and there's a, you need to bring about change, right. And there's, there's a change in mindset. There's a change of approach, et cetera. And you, you know, we typically hear the, Oh yeah. Well, we tried that once and that didn't go well. And so we, and, and, and you, you mentioned just now about, you know, coming back to the comfort zone and then just, you know, staying there, how do you know, how do you, how do you work on getting businesses and with the sales process, how do you get them past that and, and, and get, and get the business owners past it

Eric Shulman (Guest) (28:21):

In order to learn how to win. You have to first learn how to fail. You fell off the bike a lot more times than you stayed on in the beginning. But once you found your center of balance, it may have been years since you've written a bike. But if I put one in the parking lot behind you in about two seconds, you'd be driving down the street. Yeah. My first kiss was not my best kiss. I didn't give up. If the dream is big enough, the facts don't count. You try again. What happens is most of the things that we learn, we learn when we're younger, when we're younger, it's okay to fail. You get into your thirties, your forties, your fifties, your sixties, when somebody fails at something, the first thing, if you have a bike right now, and you try to ride it and fell down, your first concern was, Oh God, I hope nobody saw.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (29:09):

Cause we don't want people to see us fail. So you have to be willing to fail. Years ago, I was teaching a cold call Bootcamp and I was making cold calls in front of 30 people on speakerphone by numbers. I pulled out of a hat and the people in the room put the numbers in the hat. These were cold, cold calls. And I got on the phone with the first one. And the first guy about a minute into the call said, wait a minute, this cold. He starts yelling at me and he hangs up the phone. One of the calls, everybody dreads. Right? So I look up Roy and I've got 30 people in the room like this Yoda fell down. I said that was awful. Wasn't it? Oh yeah. That was horrible. I said that was horrible. Yeah. Okay. Let's do another one. And I just dialed the phone and did another call.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (29:58):

The next call. I ended up getting an appointment with, and after I said, what if I quit after the first call? Here's the thing that guy right now is forgotten that I exist. I am probably never going to see him in my life. It doesn't matter. He said no to me. He wasn't even nice about it, but I didn't take it personal. One of the things that you have to do in sales and in business is to learn how to get into a role like an actor. So you don't take things personally when Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson were doing the scene from A Few Good Men, Nicholson discriminated. You want the truth to hit. Afterward, Tom said to Jack, that's Academy award stuff, you're going to win an award for this and then went out and they had a beer because in character they hated each other, but off stage, they were themselves. So understand that you don't want to be duplicitous. You have to be true to who you are. But if you don't take anything that happens in a sales call personally, they can't touch you.

Roy Richardson (Host) (30:54):

That's true. And I, and I think that's where a lot of salespeople probably go South, right? It, it becomes personal. And that's maybe why a lot of people hate cold calling and, and, and don't really, you know, and I know in your, particularly in, in, in, in, in Sandler you, you must have seen this time and time again, getting people to over that trench of overcoming that fear of cold calling.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (31:20):

Well, the reason you don't like the cold call is it's your mother's fault. Your mother taught you. Don't talk to strangers and no, your boss or your wife and your cases go talk to strangers and your six-year-old, cause we all have a six-year-old on the inside that we'd rather be out playing golf today than working same stranger danger. But your boss says, call the strangers. And so we have call reluctance because we don't understand where the fear comes from. Part of it is you have to learn how your own mind works, become a student of the mind understand communication styles, understand self-talk understand where the voices in your head come from. Some of you were saying, you know, I don't talk to myself. Yes, you do the voice that said, that is the voice I'm talking about. You talk to yourself, I don't know.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (32:07):

Do I do that? And that's the voice. We all have it in there. And there are four or five different voices in your head. They come from different places, different ego States. You have to understand the difference between identity, who you are, and the role that you play as a business owner or salesperson. One of the problems that I have on the exit engineering side, Roy is that business owners, especially men identify themselves with their business. Their business is their identity. I'm a business owner on the head of XYZ industries. And they fear that if they sell that or lose that they don't know how to define themselves as a person because their identity is based on their role. So if you take away the role, a lot of men die within a couple of years of retiring because they don't know how to adjust and play a different role in life.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (32:56):

That's interesting. It's sad, but it's true. So men get outside interests learned about yourself. Have other things that you can do. Don't define yourself in terms of what you do. I sold my Sandler business. I now have an inside man. I do exit engineering. I still do some sales for Sandler. I grow orchids. I love to cook. My wife and I have taken up art. I've done some beautiful pendant drawings and sistering started on pen and ink, which is easier than I thought it would be. I thought it would be tougher than a pencil. It's actually easier. So if I were to be independently wealthy today, I've got a ton of things that I can do, you know, cause I've got interests outside of doing business. So please make sure that you do that. Women tend to split their time. They work their mothers, their wives, their spouses. They're a part of a bridge club. My wife plays Masha and they develop all these outside interests and they have all these different roles. Men, we have to get smart and do the same thing.

Roy Richardson (Host) (33:56):

So talking about outside roles and different things, let's, let's, let's digress a little bit here. You, you, you love music and, and you, you, you play instruments and, and, and, and so tell us a little bit about that. I know you play guitar and you play most string instruments, instruments, and instruments and, and share with us.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (34:18):

I took drum lessons when I was a kid and my dad had enough sense. Never let me get a drum set. Even when he had the music store, I'd have to go to the music store on a Sunday and set the drum set up and play it. He would never let me bring one home. I'm. So out of frustration, when I was about 13 years old, I picked up a guitar and started to learn the guitar. Now, my brother Mitch had been taking guitar lessons for two years. At this point, within about two months, I was playing better than Mitch and Mitch gave up a guitar. And it was pretty much self-taught by the time I was 13 or 14, I was playing in rock bands. I, this was like 64 65, the 14-year-old guy in a rock band and played in rock bands all through the sixties.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (35:04):

And to the early seventies did a little bit of studio work. I could play guitar, I can play bass. I can bang on a piano. You can see there's a baritone. You can have a tenor. You can, the other side of the room, I started playing them. I can pick a little banjo. I can play a little mandolin. I never got into wind instruments and such. And in the early seventies, I sold all my electric equipment and went strictly acoustic. I still have two or three acoustic guitars. I have one electric and, a couple of UK's. And I still, I still play not nearly as much as I used to, but I can still, I can hold my own. If you play a song, I can sit there and fill in stuff behind it. That'll make it sound really good.

Roy Richardson (Host) (35:47):

Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. And then, and then besides that you, you, you also master it because you're very good at the fingers and the interest in the string instruments. So now you've, you've you found stuff for the thumps to do as well. Right? You've got some green thumbs there.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (36:04):

Well, yeah, I, I love working. I grow succulents. I grow some of the most amazing speculates that put flowers out that are this big, that look almost alien, nature a night, blooming orchid, cactus called a Cinderella cactus. And I've got a succulent that puts out a flower, literally, it's about this big it's six-point comes out of this big pod. That's bigger than your hand. And it leaks out and it smells bad and it attracts flies. It's pollinated by flies. These flowers last for 24 to 48 hours, and then they shrivel up and they're gone, but they're the most striking thing out of this plain-looking plant. I enjoy playing the succulents. You'd give me a, you give me a piece of something I can probably grow it.

Roy Richardson (Host) (36:47):

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So let's, let's go back here a little bit on, on sales and, and one of the things that, you know, we encounter a lot in speaking to people is, you know, as the hiring process when it comes to salespeople you know, a lot of business owners complain that you know, I can't find a right salesperson or, you know, I've hired somebody and I thought they were good, but you know, if come to find out that, you know, they're not the right person for that seat, et cetera. So what is your advice, Eric, you know, with all your experience, you know, how do you, how do you really go about hiring, hiring a really good salesperson

Eric Shulman (Guest) (37:23):

Salespeople, the toughest thing to hire. And here's why they just have to be good enough to sell you in the interview. And if they're good enough to sell you in the interview, you start to get a warm, fuzzy feeling about the guy or the gal, and you bring them on board. And of course, the first month or two of their training, getting to know you getting nowhere, where they fit in. Well, you know, you go to lunch with them a couple of times, you know, you meet their kids one day when they come by the third month or a family member, and they've got some stuff in the pipeline, maybe something's closed or close to closing and you're feeling good. So you keep them. And about six, seven, eight months in, you realize that they've got a lot of stuff in the pipeline, but stuff isn't coming out, but now, you know, heck you had them over for the holiday party.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (38:10):

You went to their house for Easter. The Easter egg hunt was wonderful, and now you don't want to fire them. And normally it's nine to 12 months and you realized, you know, you should've fired them in the third month. And you've now wasted, not only the 50 or the 75,000 in salary, but how much didn't they produce that should have been produced if you had somebody good and bad sales hire will cost between 150 and $350,000 in lost cash and lost revenue. You add the two of them together. And most people hire salespeople when they need one. They're not prospecting. Why do salespeople avoid prospecting and cold calling? Because they face what? You said it a little earlier and they face rejection. Yeah. So why do business owners and sales managers recruit more often exact same fear? I'm going to screw it up. They're going to say no.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (39:09):

And so they procrastinate on recruiting and hiring. First thing is, is you should be recruiting and hiring all the time, especially when you don't need somebody needing to hire to a set of requirements, not to the personality of the person in front of you, not to their resume or resumes look great. Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about conversion and growing accounts. It's all there. Right. You know, and then they become a moving house. And now they, you know, it's common boss, it's common and they make excuses. It's the economy. It's, COVID, you know, I'm doing my best. I got one it's, it's fun for me, my, the end of the month. And it never seems to come. You have to be hiring. Salespeople are tough. I'm one of the things that I do for people is I do final interviews. I will actually recruit and hire salespeople because if they can get by if they impress me, they're going to be good. And if I'm training them, when I hire them for you, I'll guarantee they'll produce or I'll replace before you, cause I'm not going to hire somebody. And I don't think I can train if I can train them. I know, I know I can make them proof.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (40:19):

You know,

Roy Richardson (Host) (40:20):

This is service you're doing with, with Rhea inside, man. So you're, you'll, you'll actually help a business find the right salesperson and to view them and if needed, train them afterward to make sure that they're variable to, to meet your criteria.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (40:35):

You know, some of the people that do virtual CFO work when you get a part-time CFO. Yeah. What if you needed a part-time sales manager to help manage your team one morning, a week, do daily, call-ins do the hiring when you need it. That's something else I've been called on to do for people. You can't afford me full time, but to do them, to do a meeting with your sales team once a week, to do a training meeting once a month, to help hire, recruit new people, to help design a comp plan salespeople are creatures of their comp plan, or they do what the comp plan tells them to do. Not what the boss tells them to do. Give you an example. If the comp plan says, you get $5 for selling this and you get $10 for selling this. And I come to you and say, Roy, we got a bunch of these in the warehouse. Please move them today. And you make $5 on these at the end of the day, going to come back and say, boss, I showed everybody these, but they all wanted this because I get in dollars on this. They will listen to the comp plan, not to the boss. You have to understand the psychology of a salesperson, having been one for 50 years and manage them for 50 years. I've played both sides of the coin. So it's really tough for me.

Roy Richardson (Host) (41:57):

Awesome. Awesome. Well, that's I'm sure that, you know, there, there are many out there who may want to take you up on your, you know, on having you come in and, and at least, you know, give them an, and actually, maybe I should ask you this Eric do you, do you work with businesses in terms of giving them, you know, sit with them and, and do some type of assessments in terms of what their sales processes and where they could, you know, optimize and, and, you know, not only from the hiring perspective but from, from their, from their day to day,

Eric Shulman (Guest) (42:29):

I'm starting to order offer something called a forensic sales audit, where I will go through and look at them, look at their people, look at the comp plan, look at the product, look at the pricing, look at everything in terms of their, their, their sales funnel. It brings things in what the process looks like, how it comes out the back end, and basically says, here's what you're doing, right? Here's what you're doing wrong. These are the things that need to change, and this is what you need to change some Joe. So that's one thing that we're doing. We'll come in and we'll actually hire people who will come in and test the people. You've got to figure out where the weak spots are and then tailor a training program to them. But the one thing that I think business owners don't think enough about is that exit they're going to exit at some point.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (43:16):

One of the things that I do for people is I do a one-hour consult and it only runs an hour and an hour and a half. We normally charge $500 for it. What I'm doing between now and the end of the year is fairly simple. Like I'm offering to do an hour with anybody and an hour plus with anybody it's $97 with a money-back guarantee. That's fairly simple at the end of the hour, if you don't feel like you've got a thousand dollars worth of value from me just in that hour, I won't run the credit card. I will tell you this I've made that offer for 17 years. I've only had one person ever asked for a refund. I sold my wife that she was going to ask for a refund before I sat down to talk to them. The other thing they can do is this.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (43:56):

I do a program called why salespeople fail once a month. It's a freebie, it's 90 minutes long. And it's an introduction to the or program. I do a program once a month called for owners of yours only making your grand exit. That is for business owners only. I think the next one is in middle of November. And once a month I run a free CEO group. It's a CEO peer group. So on the last Wednesday of the month, I believe this month it's on the 28th. It's 9:00 AM Eastern time. But if anybody ever does want to come to one of those programs my website is an inside man dot com. You know, give me a call, get in touch with me. I'd be more than happy to invite them to come to a class.

Roy Richardson (Host) (44:39):

Yeah. W and we'll, we'll w what w what we'll do is we'll, we'll put in the links to Eric's website and all his contact details, et cetera, right below the video here. So please do reach out to Eric on that of I've actually sat through several of his training and also the CEO peer group that he mentioned both my wife and me, and, and, you know, we walk away, walk out of that with a lot of value, because, you know, there are other CEOs in there or other business owners who are actually bringing, you know, advice, problems, et cetera. And then you sit there and of course, you start realizing, Hey, I'm not the only one who's you know, I don't feel alone on this little Island herder. There are many other people living the same euphoria that that's that we're living as, as business owners,

Eric Shulman (Guest) (45:27):

When that, when they say misery loves company, that's true. And also it's lonely at the top business owners. Don't have anybody that can say, Hey, I think I'm screwing up too. Well, if you get in a room full of other business owners, or half a million, or 5 million of 15 or 3 million, or $2 million business, and you say, Hey, guys, I'm struggling with, and then the two ladies near the side of the table say me too. All of a sudden you realize it's not just you. And what's happened when you get 10 or 15 minds together, I've been doing this for 20 years. I can sort of coax out of them. The solutions that I know are going to help this person. So if you're looking for solutions, if you're looking, if you've ever been a member of a CEO peer group, it's, it's an amazing experience.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (46:11):

And if nothing else, in fact, the next month we're doing a program, and we're going to talk about upstream and downstream partners. How do you partner with people who get business before you that would lead to you? And how do you partner with people downstream from you, who services they will need after you, and how that develops an ongoing stream of incoming business? And you become a stream of incoming business for the people on the other side of the equation. It's a fun process. We're going to do about half an hour on that this month.

Roy Richardson (Host) (46:41):

Eric, let me, let me ask you here. You know, we're, we're in very difficult times you know, with this pandemic scenario, it was a situation I should say, and everything else that's going on. Some businesses are surviving others or theater-going and, and, you know, what, what, what do you, what, what do you recommend you know, to business owners who are having difficult times and, and this new era here where, you know, some may actually still be working from home, et cetera, what is, what are some nuggets that you can, you can, you know, can park with that may help them?

Eric Shulman (Guest) (47:18):

Well, I'm working from home for the last six, seven months, and it's actually working out well. I'm actually, I'm actually finding that I'm more productive at home all the time. I'm getting six weeks of a tankful. And that's, by the way, that's not a joke. I think I filled up three times or four times in the last seven months. I'm not eating out, I've dropped 15 pounds because I'm not eating the cheesecake paper on the table at the luncheons. Cause you can't leave the cheesecake. I mean, it was there when you got there, it'd be rude. So I'm actually getting it, I'm not enjoying it. I don't, I'm, I'm sorry that we're in this situation, but there's an old Winston Churchill quote. He said, when you're going through hell, just keep going. So what's interesting is this, I lived through in business, the recession, the great recession, Oh eight Oh nine, 2010.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (48:10):

And in 2009, when things really got bad, I made a decision. I said I've decided I'm not going to participate in the recession. And I leaned in rather than pulling back. And the companies that leaned in and got aggressive about what they were doing in the last recession are not only the ones that made it through but 2010, 2011 were record years for me because I leaned forward. And I said I'm going to do more marketing. I'm going to be a little more aggressive. I'm going to reach out a little bit more. We have a unique situation with COVID. Number one, people will take your calls because they're by the phone and they're not stuck in meetings all day long in rooms, full of people. So what you have to be really good is you gotta get good at phone communication. You got to be good at zoom, not just the technology of zoom, but actually talking to the person and connecting with somebody online, watching their body language listening, communicating you can reach out.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (49:09):

I mean, I was in a meeting earlier today and there were people from Australia, Norway, and New Zealand and, and Fort Wayne, Indiana on the, on the call. So are you get to expand the area that you're doing business at? So you've got to look at this as a what's the, what do they say? The Chinese symbol for crisis and opportunity are very similar. I think one contains parts of the others. So you can look at this as a crisis because it's an awful thing that's happened. But what it has done is this, it has moved us 13 years ahead in terms of our required use of technology. That's true. I would not be listening to this podcast normally, but you've got time now. So you're going to see this podcast. I wouldn't normally be sitting here doing a podcast. I've got time for it now.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (49:58):

So what we're doing is reallocating our time and you've got to get much more effective at communicating with people in electronic media, because you can get all, you get more done in six hours a day that you can in 10, because I don't have half an hour to go drive to Roy's to do this. And then a half an hour to ride home. I didn't run up $8 in tolls and $4 in gas and it didn't stop and get a Slurpee on the way home. So there's an awful lot of time that we're saving because of the situation. So you can look at it as a negative, okay, I'm stuck at home. I'm not meeting people and you can look at it as a positive. They're stuck at home. So they'll take my calls, do the behaviors and do the calls. You've got to do the stuff that you know will lead to you, having conversations.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (50:44):

And don't try to sell people, have conversations with them today. How are you doing? How's your business doing? How is this affecting you? You know, has anybody been hit? One of my clients, I asked the question and one of the students said, yeah, my grandmother died this past week, Alex, that was awful. The next week I came back, the two people that were living with his grandmother also died. So he's lost three family members in a week. And you realize that this is getting people like that. And you're sensitive enough to ask about that long before you ever talk about business. Now you can have conversations with people. So stop trying to sell people right now, just have conversations and begin building relationships. And in a day, a week, or a month, they're going to figure out that they need what you've got. And at that point, they're comfortable with you. So it's not, you don't have to sell them anything. What's the old rule. People love to buy. They hate to be sold. So stop trying to sell people stuff right now, build relationships. And if you find out what they need, the sales will follow. Does that help?

Roy Richardson (Host) (51:50):

That's amazing. And that's, you know, that that kind of led you, you, you kind of took my, my, my, my next question, which would have been, you know, if, if you could teach a new business owner, you know, one or two things to remember when they start the business, what would it be? And, and I, and I think the advice you just gave there just sort of summarizing that whole,

Eric Shulman (Guest) (52:09):

I'm going to give him six words, which is my corporate vision statement, which answers that question. New business owners, old business owners. Here's my corporate vision statement. Number one, have fun. Number two, help people. And number three was a taste steak stated, save the business, make money. So have fun, help people make money, or what I do is have fun, help people make money, move one comment.

Roy Richardson (Host) (52:39):

Interesting. Interesting. So let me ask you here. And we're rounding the top hair of our podcasts. And so, so I have a question that I typically throw out here which is, you know, Eric, over your course of, of, of your career. You know you've, you've fallen, you've gotten up, you've hit your head. You, you, you've learned you've moved on. If you could go back in time today and pick three people that are alive to be your, you know, Eric's board, who would they be and why

Eric Shulman (Guest) (53:14):

Three people from any place or time to be on my board of directors and why? Yes. Well, the first one, believe it or not, is my wife's share, I don't know, wait a second. He is, it's interesting. She's a, she thinks like a business person and that's one of the things that impressed me with her. I met her 28 years ago. This lady is sharp. So, and I respect her opinion and I know she's always looking out for what's best for us and for me. So I know that he has my best interest at heart. Who else would I pick to be on my board? Wow. That's a tough question, man. Who else would be on my board of directors?

Eric Shulman (Guest) (54:00):

There's a gentleman named Marcus Cassius cash. I was in England, who is someone I've gotten to know over the last 10 years, one of the smartest people I've ever met, he wrote the Sandler book on channel selling. In fact, he and I have a get-together tomorrow. We're doing a zoom meeting tomorrow. When we went to England, he actually met us at the hotel. We went to, he took us to a comedy club and went out for Thai food in London. And he brought, he drove over an hour and a half just to get there, just to go do that. Really super guy, very, very, very smart. Who else? Now you got me. So I go with a religious figure to go with a famous business paper.

Roy Richardson (Host) (54:49):

It's whoever you feel that would, you know, bring that, fill that third spot on that, on that, on that super board.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (54:57):

I need somebody who, one of the things that have been one of my weaknesses is organization. So I imagine somebody like bill Gates, who knows how to build an organization from an idea. Cause that was the one thing. That's the one area that I've always had to hire people for. So bill Gates, my wife, and Marcus, and Marcus will be very happy to hear if he ever sees this podcast that he's in that group. Cause he's met my wife. So he knows the competition he's up against.

Roy Richardson (Host) (55:27):

Wow. That's great. That sounds like that's, that's an amazing board. You know, I, I don't know, Marcus, I definitely will look him up because now you have me intrigued.  I do know your wife. And I think she's probably going to give bill Gates a good run for his money as well with regards to organization and keeping things in tech, Eric. I can't thank you enough the knowledge that you have shared here today with our listeners and viewers and you know, I'm sure that as we put out our podcasts here I know over the term of your career that you have touched so many here in Central Florida and many other places of the world that I'm sure everybody will jump on this. But thank you very, very much.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (56:16):

It's been a pleasure. And if you want to, if you want to come back sometime and talk about a completely different subject I'm more than open to that. 

Roy Richardson (Host) (56:24):

And we will take you up on that because we'll, we'll circle back here. And we do plan on having you back in, in you know, a few weeks or months to catch up and, and lend some more nuggets. So to say, to to to business people and folks, thank you very much for joining us this week. That's a wrap here on the dynamic business leaders podcast, our actual men. Thank you very, very much. Check down below for all of Eric's contact details. Make sure you reach out to him and try and get into one of them, you know, his, CEO, a form that he has, or some of the other training, et cetera, or if anything, just reach out. I mean, you, you, I, and I'm speaking as one of his students, and I will tell you that, you know, spend half an hour with him and you'll walkaway a different person. Thanks, stay safe. And we'll catch up on the next one.

Eric Shulman (Guest) (57:11):

Thank you, Roy.