High performers are people who go above and beyond to accomplish their tasks or assignments at work. A member of this type takes initiative and strives to improve their behavior and habits at work in order to benefit the company or team. Their superiors and colleagues can count on them as considerate team players.
At times, we think that becoming a top performer in a certain field can take years of experience. Getting promoted at a job in a matter of months is impossible. Outperforming full-time employees as a sales intern? Even more so.
But that’s just what Marcus Chan did at 19 years old. Marcus is the Founder and Sales Coach at Venli Consulting Group, a highly profitable and lucrative online business that has been featured in Forbes, LinkedIn, Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Finance, and more in less than 2 years.
Marcus grew up in a poor household that motivated him to work harder than anyone else. He improved his sales skills and got promoted many times throughout his whole career.
In this episode of The Free Retiree Show, Marcus discusses his childhood growing up in a poor household with the passion to succeed, his journey to becoming the best salesperson in a company as an intern, how to improve your sales skills, and more!
Join us as Marcus shares his success story to inspire everyone. With hosts, wealth manager Lee Michael Murphy and career advisor Sergio Patterson, tune in to this week’s episode of The Free Retiree Show.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to become a top performer in a company
- Setting yourself up for success
- The importance of self-awareness
Lee Michael Murphy: [00:00:00] Welcome into the Free Retiree show on our show. We talk about kicking butt on, your career strategies to grow your wealth. And we learn from folks who are killing it in both. I’m your host wealth manager, Lee Mako Murphy. And I’m joined alongside my pal, my partner, Sergio Patterson,
Sergio Patterson: What is up everyone?
Lee Michael Murphy: attorney Matt McElroy
right. Got called in the court today. So we’ll be missing him today. but yeah, Serge, we going miss Matt today?
I think we can carry on without him.
Lee Michael Murphy: Alright. Okay. Carry on.
Sergio Patterson: do this. We can
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah, we’re a little bit now he just gave us a last minute cancellation, but we’ll
Sergio Patterson: Like minutes ago, Matt, what’s up with that dude.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. Minutes. Gosh. So for today’s topic, we’re talking about becoming great at sales, and we’re also going to talk about how to grow successful online business. But before we get down that rabbit hole, Serge sales man sales woman, I mean, how do you think the word salesman is perceived in society?
Positive, negative? What’s your thoughts on that?
Sergio Patterson: [00:01:00] Yeah. I think the majority of people have a negative, stereotype of salespeople. we all think that used car salesman, right? Nobody wants to be sold anything, but I think what I’ve learned working in Silicon valley forever and working closely with salespeople is like, it’s less about selling and more about getting to know what problems you’re trying to solve for that person.
but like, yeah, I think the majority of people have a negative stereotype of salespeople.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. I mean, I think, you run across people and you’re like, oh, well that person’s in sales. And they say it in such a degrading way. I’m just like, whoa, easy there. but you know, I have to admit, I used to be like that as well. I used to think, man, that’s just a sales person. And I think we think about it as like, this person has slightly parted us from our money.
I think that’s what a lot of us
Sergio Patterson: Well, you’re like a shady financial advisor, right?
Lee Michael Murphy: yes, I’m a shady financial advisor. and every profession has got, things that people think are negative. And, there’s always an aspect of sales to, I think, any profession, for me, every great business owner, every great CEO, [00:02:00] every great politician past or present is great at sales.
And so even you yourself admitted that, whether we know it or not, we’re all in sales in some way, shape or form.
Sergio Patterson: Yeah. I mean, I have to admit it. Like I, early on in my career, I was in sales and I realized like, it really wasn’t for me, but as you grow and I’ve been Silicon valley, everything sales, you got to promote yourself, you got to get buy-in. You got to get people like behind everything you’re doing.
So obviously we got a great guest coming on. So Lee, why don’t you intro him?
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. So, just to dovetail this whole concept of sales, right? I mean, I look at it now as the ability to explain great ideas, logic, having amazing communication skills, as you said, being able to identify, key relationships, stakeholders, being able to be a great negotiator. To summarize.
I think we’re all in sales at some level, whether we know it or not. And so for today’s guests, we got Marcus Chan, he’s the founder and president of Benley consulting group. [00:03:00] Now, Serge, this is a great one. Marcus has been listed in the top 16 sales influencers for Salesforce and a little bit about his backstory.
He was in corporate America for 14 years, where he delivered more than 400 million sales contracts. In that time he worked for two fortune 500 organizations and was promoted 10 times in 10 years. And so there’s what I love about his story is that it wasn’t always easy for him. He started at this organization as the worst sales rep, made his way up to the top sales rep.
He grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money, worked in a restaurant, a family business, and he even sold Speedos on the side to make it. And he’s been featured in Forbes, Yahoo, finance, MarketWatch, but Serg, our boy, Matt McIlroy, since he’s not hearing me speak about him, like, back in the day in college, he was known for wearing dawning, Speedos all around campus.
He, he was on the water polo team. And [00:04:00] so like, if you had known that MCO and college, you might have seen him at a frat party doing a cake stand and justice Speedos, is it the legends? I can’t confirm or deny,
Sergio Patterson: Maybe mark is sold the, a Speedo at some point.
Lee Michael Murphy: that’s what I’d like to find out. And I’m hoping Marcus could actually, maybe they can connect after this and Mack and get some of those yellow Brazilian Speedos that he used to wear so much.
So Marcus, without further ado, thanks for coming on our show, man. We’re so happy to have you.
Marcus Chan: Hey, what’s going on guys. Marcus Chan here. Hey, I’m pumped to be here. We’re gonna have a lot of fun here. Whether we talk about sales Speedos or whatever, I’m game guys. I’m game.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah, man. Well, we got to start off with like, with the speed. how did you start selling Speedos
Marcus Chan: Yeah. So, well, it’s one of the, so first off it’s a, it wasn’t like a random thing where I just started selling speed. You know,I, you know,it’s similar to Matt. I grew up as a competitive swimmer, so very involved with the water polo team, et cetera. But I grew as a competitive runner primarily. So growing up, I just was competitive and growing up.
So Speedos was like a part of [00:05:00] life. That was what we did. Very, very normal. Now, growing up though, you mentioned, I grew up, my parents worked my parents’ restaurant. We were very poor. I grew up working my parents restaurant. And, my plan was when I wasn’t going to school to go to college, was to work there and basically use the money I earned at the restaurant to pay for school addition, scholarships and everything else.
Well, low behold, right before, my graduate senior year, my parents said, Marcus, we’ve sold the restaurant. You have to go get a real job now. And I was like, crap, what am I going to do? And this is like, this is before people really got jobs online or really apply online. People still look at classified ads and you could definitely do that for sure.
But what I decided to do first is actually reach into my network. And because my network works, swimmers, coaches, some coaches in this, the swim teams around the area, I started reaching out to my network and I found out that there was going to be one of the coaches opened a swimsuit store in town, right by campus actually.
And they needed people. So I apply interview. I got the job and my job [00:06:00] was selling Speedos Part-time there. and then retail store to whomever came in. And then on a weekends, if there’s a big swim meet our drive a couple hours out of town, like wake up at like three, four in the morning, drive out of town, a couple of hours get to the substitute.
Uh, swim meat set up stands for 10, 12 hours, sling Speedos for 10, 12 hours, pack up, head back home and do the next day. And so that was part of how I paid for college. So, it was actually a lot of fun actually really enjoyed it because it was very comfortable in that environment. I knew what I was talking about.
I knew the people, I knew the backgrounds, so I knew my ideal customer profile really well. So for me, I really enjoyed it, even though I only got paid like minimum wage, which I think at the time was like 6 57 bucks an hour. And there was no commission. I enjoyed it because it was something that I was passionate about.
Not Speedos but competitive swimming.
Sergio Patterson: Marcus where did that like drive and passion come from? I mean, at that age, just the idea. Like, I couldn’t even imagine thinking, oh, I’m going to go [00:07:00] set up a shop and do this on the side and drive two hours like that had to come from somewhere as a your upbringing, your parents, how you had to fight growing up poor.
That, what was that about?
Marcus Chan: Yeah, for sure. when you grew up poor and it’s the life you really want, I mean, you grew up watching things like I remember, I was like, we grew up, our first house we lived in was in Springfield, Oregon, which is if you’re from Springfield, sorrow, it’s a little bit there. It was pretty ghetto, not great, not a great neighborhood.
And we grew really poor, it was like 1400 square feet. Six of us lived there, tiny and cramps. I remember kids had cool things. I didn’t have anything cool. We ate ramen. I mean, that was the life. So growing up and I also felt the pressure. My parents felt grown up as well. So for example, I remember walking one day and someone had broken into restaurant overnight.
They smashed the door glass where they smashed the little glass door. They broke it. They stole money, stole food is so alcohol. And I’m walking in at like seven, eight years old thinking our life’s over. Like, we’re going to be homeless now. [00:08:00] So we’re growing up with this innate fear of not having stability, not having security.
And it see my parents do whatever it took to be able to create a somewhat sustainable life for us. You grew up with these values and you realize there’s no excuses. You find a way to get things done. So I knew when I decided to go school, my parents, Hey, mark can go any school you want to go to, but you’re going to pay for it.
I’m like I better go in town then, it’s a university of Oregon. I went there. I’m like, I’m gonna do whatever I can to pay nothing for school. Right. Like, because I don’t want to pay all it to which, so I literally, I’m applied to Lee hundreds of scholarships until I finally got a full ride base of tuition on multiple scholarships, but they didn’t cover fees or anything else or books or like your living, et cetera.
So that’s why I went and got that job right. At sounds because, cause I was like, I’m not gonna accumulate debt. I’m going to go through and find a way to have zero debt. my parents basically grew up cash only if you will. Right. Which obviously other about credit later and all those things. But [00:09:00] at the time I’m like I need to grow up having zero debt.
I need to find a way to go to school, paper and pay for nothing. So that way I can have stability and not have the fear of being homeless. So that’s where I really came in except for a very young age, from the environment, from the feelings, from the fear and that power of broke. If you will drove me to do things where most people were not willing to.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. So do you think that probably w if you could do it any differently, would you, like, if you could go back in time, would you give yourself more money or your family more money to make it easier? Or do you think your path that you had was just perfect?
what’s interesting is I think about this a lot. And I think about, as a child growing up in that environment, like when you’re like seven years old working at a festival working like 30 hours over a weekend and you’re like slinging noodles, and they’re trying to get tips off people.
Marcus Chan: Like you hate it. You hate being eight years old handle work while everyone else [00:10:00] is having fun. Everyone was out playing Nintendo at the time. Right. I’m out here to like, sweating bullets in a hundred degree, he cooking chicken over a hot stove, getting burned by oil, right at the age of like eight.
So at the time, I didn’t appreciate it. I really didn’t. And actually I grew up bitter as. Now part of it has to do with just because, I would say number one, I was young and number two, my parents probably struggled to communicate the bigger, why. So it was more of a survival is why I really saw it.
Right. So, but now as an adult, I reflect back and I’m thankful guy. I’m so thankful that I learned those core habits and those beliefs and value systems that have helped me in my career in life. Because I remember just going through and did my first internship getting paid $9 an hour. And I’m working side by side with these full-time employees who are getting paid a lot more than I was and outwork them.
And they’re like, why work so hard? I’m like, I’m just thankful. I used to make $6 an hour. I spent getting paid $0 an hour and [00:11:00] get tips. So to come here to not be in a sweaty kitchen, I can do wear a shirt and tie. I get to like talk to regular people. I’m thankful. I’m thankful to be washing a car in a suit right now because I could not wear a suit before.
So you have this level of gratitude. It’s only because I tasted the struggle. And as the saying goes, if there’s no struggle, there’s no progress. And the struggle also gives you perspective as well, which allows you to do different things and have different reactions to take different actions that are going to actually lead to a better result later on
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, I was going to say perspective. And then now I’m just, I have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old and I’m like, damn, these kids are spoiled. Just hearing your story.
Lee Michael Murphy: Let’s split them to work.
Sergio Patterson: them in the
kitchen and put them to work. start making money for me.
Marcus Chan: Right,
right.
Sergio Patterson: right. I mean, jokes aside it’s it would pay off in the future if they actually had some adversity and had some struggle right now, it’s like, everything’s [00:12:00] easy for them.
And we’re, I mean, we’re, we don’t even do that. Great. But like they pretty much have it easy.
Marcus Chan: Well, it’s interesting. it’s about delayed gratification, right? your ability to delay gratification with the greatest determines for success. Like you think about this. If you want to get a six pack, that’s a lot too late gratification eating properly, working now doing the right things, to get a six pack that could be months or years to get that to that point.
And it’s the same thing for anything from wealth management building, certain buildings are actually truly sustainable. There’s a lot of delayed self gratification. Like I think my kiddo, same way, he’s four and a half years old. And he’s the mindset like, oh, we don’t have it. Let’s Instacart. It let’s hit Amazon let’s say posts. And I’m like, you’re four and a half. You put my phone down. Like, what are you doing? It’s wild.
Sergio Patterson: crazy
stuff.
Lee Michael Murphy: so going back to like, the childhood one thing that was on my mind is, I know you said that there was like a little bit of bitterness, like just asking you because not many people, if you look at the population have been in your shoes, a small [00:13:00] select amount of the population probably has, but what do you feel that bit, that bitterness that you maybe felt like when you were a child, like, is that stemmed at society?
is there something towards your own family? Like, can you elaborate a little bit on that? Like just the feelings of growing up poor as a child.
it was actually never bitterness at the society is more so like at the time he didn’t truly understand it. it was versus bitter at our situation when we’re like, cause they went through stages, right? Like completed like pure survival to like somewhat comfortable, but still a little bit uncomfortable still.
Marcus Chan: Right. because they grew up with nothing there, save, we still scrammed. We still clipped coupons for years, even when they’re stable. but there was some bitterness in just not understanding some of the lessons at the time. So like it got to the point where they’re doing pretty well financially, right?
Like life was pretty good. We could have some vacations, but they will be there. So clip coupons, but you know, I’m around eight, nine years old, like they’re relatively at a better stay at that point, but like they would still have me go do things I didn’t want to do. So my, my dad started [00:14:00] buying rental properties and he bought his low income houses and they were always.
I mean stuff was always break it all the time, the refrigerator and some of the tenants would’ve, punch holes in the wall, destroy it. He’s like, these are like meth addicts. And my dad would bring me to those places, right. With
Sergio Patterson: age? What age was this
Marcus Chan: This is like, eight or nine at this time, when I’m starting helping with these things, you would take me with him.
I’ll go. And we would like, like he’d have me write eviction notices on the typewriter because I could speak English. Right. I, Allie go with them to deliver eviction, notice these meth heads and to kick them out. Or if they’re booted out, we’d go out there. Or like, we evicted them.
We’re cleaning everything out. There’s needles everywhere. I mean, it’s wild. mean, like,
Lee Michael Murphy: At nine years old, that’s a lot.
Sergio Patterson: just.
Marcus Chan: So at nine years old, Damn like, like I want to go, Hey, I’m at like my friends right now. My kids are at my, but my friends are hanging out playing right now. Like I want to go hang out and play. We’ll play basketball or shoot hoops.
I’ll go talk about girls. I’ll do all those things. And you just end up [00:15:00] growing up faster. So there was resentment, the tide of the bitterness because I’m like, I could be doing something fun and this is not fun. It’s not fun. Like tearing it apart. the stairs, I got all rotted with what, with a building stairs.
Now I don’t want to do this. I want to go be clean. How fun? and I remember you’re gonna appreciate this fast forward. Like I was, 19 years old and I was still in college, right. Just on called still. And, it was like, was summertime. We did these festivals and these festivals, we set a food booth up.
We’re on our feet, 15, 18 hours, like on our feet all day outside, multiple days in a row. And it’s exhausting. It’s physically tired. I remember one that was Sunday night, we’ve got dealt with the lane county fair in Eugene, Oregon. We got completely done or in my parents’ garage and we’re scrubbed. This is like one of the morning on Sunday.
We just got to work like a, like an 80 to a hundred hour a week, like on her feet and we’re scrubbing pots and pans. And I remember like, even be bitter at that age and telling my dad, [00:16:00] he’s like, what’s wrong. I’m like, he’s like, oh. And I told him, I’m like, when I’m like one day I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to get myself in a situation where I can use my brain to make money.
That I will no longer have to use physical labor to make money. Like we were doing it now. He’s like, okay. Yeah, sure. That’s why you go to college. I’m like, just wait that just wait. I will find a way to make this. And it was funny as Oxy completely forgot that until like years later, my dad brought it up.
He was like, that’s exactly what you did. When you went to B2B sales, you literally realized it’s a high leverage skill that when you truly master it, you make the money you want. And I, but I totally forgot that until my dad brought it up. Like, a couple of years ago, he’s like, I’m like, that’s why he’s like, do you remember you telling me that you were so pissed?
I’m like, yeah, I was pissed. Like I’m 90, I’ll go party. Right. I don’t want to be scrubbing pots in the garage.
Sergio Patterson: That’s
Lee Michael Murphy: a good dad though, man. I’m glad he kept the receipt. That’s awesome.
Marcus Chan: Yeah. He’s awesome.
Sergio Patterson: that’s great. That’s a great story. So I was looking at your LinkedIn [00:17:00] profile. So you were selling Speedos. You have something in common with Lee and I, you worked at enterprise. Rent-A-Car
Marcus Chan: that’s right. the big
Sergio Patterson: big grain we Lee and I both worked there at a college
Marcus Chan: I love it.
Sergio Patterson: it was a nightmare, but like, I think I learned a lot about customer service, sales, hard work.
You remember the retail hours? Like how did that play a part in this whole journey.
Marcus Chan: Yeah. So it was pretty cool. Right. So, to me that was my first internship. Right. So what happening was,this is like my junior year. I’m like, right before my senior year. And I was like, you know what? I want to find internship. You’re supposed to have an internship that they’re supposed to do.
And I remember,I went and I put a full suit on and went to the career fair at school. And I talked to every single company. I’m like, I’m going to, I’m going to find an internship with every single comes out. Always companies end up finding the enterprise opportunity. That was a great opportunity.
Start as an intern. And to me, I loved it. Like I was like, I got to work. I got to wear a shirt and tie. I was like, I’m so grateful right now. Like, I’m like I had to wear like a, I had to wear like a tank top. I’m going to [00:18:00] probably be sweating bolts in a restaurant. I get to wear nice clothes now. Awesome. So I started.
I got paid $9 an hour at the time. And I was pumped and I remember like, all the managed trainee that started were like, oh, I kind of like hate and I’m going to wash cars and suits. I’m thankful, man. I’m like, I used to have to wash dishes, get peoples mouth on food.
Sergio Patterson: I was that guy who didn’t, who hated washing cars. I was that guy,
Lee Michael Murphy: I was that guy to get into getting the tie set up in the vacuum cleaner market is it’s still, I don’t know. There’s something psychologically that I remember
about that.
Marcus Chan: I personally didn’t care. I was so happy. Right. And I remember like, I was like so thankful, like, cause I remember like when people walk in like. Most MTS, we kind of avoid the counter for the customer. I’d raced to the front. I was the first one there. And I would like triple the amount of context at world.
Right. I’ll do the most amount of contracts. So I’d be like, I’ll do the most answer to learn how to sell insurance. And it was interesting was, so Mo at the time they had uncapped hours. So you know, about [00:19:00] around 60 hours, the boss send me home. I convinced her to let me work more hours. I said, Hey, listen.
So I know the aunties get paid a lot more than me and it’s overtime right now. You should send them home. Let me work. I’ll work. The OT, I’ll happily work, 80 hours a week. They’ll get four hours OT. You send the home. You’ll actually increase your profit for the branch, like commensurate to send people home and let me work instead.
So.
Lee Michael Murphy: a beast.
Marcus Chan: I’ll do it. So I did that. So that was awesome. I love that. So I said two years as an intern, two summers in a row, it is a super senior year that I love to because I’ll work like 70, 80 hours at enterprise. And then after hours we’ll be at a festival. I go work at the festivals or on weekends, or the speed of stroke gets those with some hours because I’ll do a hundred hour weeks and I’ll just knock it out during the summertime.
Right. Just do that. I loved it. And then when I graduated though, so at this point, so I, because I had learned so much about the business, just because of my tenure there, some of these manta trainees were now becoming like assistant managers, et cetera. at that time, or maybe a branch manager, if there were good.
when I graduated, they said, Hey, [00:20:00] Marcus, won’t want to bring you on full-time as a manager, And I’m like, I know more than branch managers here. Like I know the profit now. I know the PNL better than anybody here. I promise you like to have me come in as a manager, trainee is like a disservice to me. I believe I was a little bit egotistical at the age.
Marcus Chan: Right. So I’m like, what am I going to do? So actually started interviewing other companies before I graduated. So I went and like, I want out hard. I’m having five job offers for like graduated and enterprise wanted me to come back. And there’s a bunch of other offers that are anywhere from like, 30 K a year to like 60, 70 K a year.
And so other opportunities and the one that’s most intriguing for me was actually the truck division for enterprise. So they had started as brand new the time and the area manager, who had hired me in the car rental side for, as an intern, had gotten promoted to run the whole new divisions. I believe startup.
So he had reached out to me, said, Hey, Marcus, you crushed your. Come work your ass up for me over here, basically. I’m like, and I used to turn up, turn on the other offers. What for that offer, even [00:21:00] though it was still like lowest level brand new B2B sales, like I’m like, this is a huge opportunity. Cause I love the area manager.
So I knew to be great leader to work for. I saw the opportunity to build something from scratch and that was really exciting for me. Cause I wasn’t gonna sit there and try to rent cars to people who are, who got accidents and try to sell insurance. I’m like I can go and help businesses with the fleet solutions.
That’s a huge opportunity. So that’s actually, that’s why we really went full time into enterprise in that truck rolls B2B a hundred for the B2B at the time. I mean, it was a ton of fun, but that, but then I was at enterprise for like four more years. Right. Got promoted. Multiple times we built multiple operations to like seven figures plus and ton of fun from there.
Sergio Patterson: That’s great. Yeah, we, I did the similar thing. I was like branch manager, assistant manager, branch manager, all the things I think it’s good. It teaches you a lot, like work ethic and all the things. But, I think like the other thing I was curious about, there’s something consistent here.
There’s a pattern you outwork and outperform everyone you’re around.
Like, [00:22:00] can you talk to us a little bit about that? Because I think for our listeners, one of the things we try to do in your career is how do you get promoted? How do you take that next step? Like, let’s take some time off.
Marcus Chan: for sure. So what I’ve found in my career, across the board, most people don’t even do what’s expected. So whatever is expected of them, they don’t even do. And what’s shocking is even if you just do, if you just show up and do that, you already had the game. Like, for example, like, like I call, I called out sick zero days, enterprise, zero days never call off sick.
And like, this is like six years old time, never calls like a one, one single time. And some people think it’s insane, but for me, I’m like, depends. I mean, honestly, if I have a fever, I’m a contagious, I’m not going to show. But I’m like, I’m putting myself in a peak performance state so I can just show, I can just make sure I show up.
So even Bailey is showing up every single day was really vital. And then number two, doing the job as best as possible. So I would [00:23:00] literally look for like patterns. Like I remember like coming I’m like why it starts all insurances intern. I’m like, I don’t know how selling insurance. So I went to people who did the best and I’m mimic exactly what they did verbatim.
And because of that, I was able to get pretty good results and I got better with time or find it. And then I would exercise. Self-awareness to understand what went well, what didn’t go well and how to readjust. And I’ll reverse engineer and he didn’t go well. So it was always constant trying to improve. But on top of that, it wasn’t just doing the job and doing it well, I was constantly thinking about a couple of things.
Number one, how could I do better? Number two, how can you give more value. And does really get more value and make my boss look good. So I will literally go to my boss and like bring up ideas to improve the operations. So let me give you a really good example. So, even as an intern, this is a good example here.
So as an intern, I will sell, I’ll sell them like significantly than everyone else for the insurance. And it was, we had the full, the damage waiver, the [00:24:00] personal accident that someone like you remember all that
Sergio Patterson: Yeah,
Marcus Chan: I sold more full boats and full package than anybody else. And they didn’t understand how I did it. Right. So, I went to my boss as an interest in engineering. I’m still going to college here, like was like, Hey, listen. He took her and him, his tokes funny. I know in Oregon. So tokes I’m like, Hey tokes. I think I could help the team out. Like what do you think if I put together a step-by-step training, exactly what I do to pre-frame a customer to spree summit insurance.
So I do the offer. They close at hybrid. She’s like, that sounds awesome. So I took a site, build those whole PowerPoint deck. Right. We brought pizzas in and the whole team, Kate, like say, I say after hours and I trained them a role played with them as an intern. These are like people way older than me at this point.
Right? They’re like, they’re there. They’ve been out of college for a few years. Like, like here I am like 20, 22, 20 years old, do this. teach them how to sell the insurance and walk into ad role-playing with them. And nobody asked me to do that. And of course our branches number [00:25:00] went up, et cetera.
Nobody asked me to do, but I did it anyway for the greater good. And when you start showing, you can do beyond that, you start doing, you start performing and the roles are beyond existing role. You get noticed. So for instance, Like I remember like later on even, it’s say w even when I went full time and on performing and just before the event, I start performing and,I was like five, six months in, at, in the truck division.
I was performing and I would, new people came in, no one told me this. I would huddle them and teach them how to sell. I would coach them and walk them through. And start showing them what to do their results to improved too. So I remember the first time it was a fake promotion, especially from the enterprise days there K six months said, Hey Marcus, at this point I had already taken what they call that skills tests.
I’ve already did the skills task
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, I remember that
Marcus Chan: that was done because that’s what my background. So they’re like Marcus, great opportunity for you. We’re going to have you go runs [00:26:00] a small branch over here. It’s only a couple people. We’re not gonna give you any more money. We’re not gonna change a title.
Sergio Patterson: sounds like enterprise.
Marcus Chan: Yeah. We want you to, show us that you can do with, if you do a really good job, then we’ll promote.
Okay, I got you. I got ya. So I’m a RA. I go over there. Right? So here I’m talking to my peers, right? And obviously first I struggled leadership, but one thing I knew was at this point was I could put together like a little playbook. So I wrote like a word document playbook. Step-by-step exactly how I prospect cold called knock on doors, conversion scripts, step a to Z.
I wrote it all out and it’s our training them and our results turn around. We started just, and that was really key. So, but no one asks me to do that. They just like go over, just lead them as goal. And most people just show up. Let’s try to rent some vehicles. Let’s write a, lease some vehicles.
Let’s go see what happens. I didn’t. I was proactive about that approach. So I was doing things way beyond my role. Right. I was doing things that [00:27:00] they it’s, why called discretion and effort. I was doing things that provide massive value to the company that I was knocking paid for. Because ultimately when you do more than you’re paid for right now, eventually you could pay a lot more for one than what you actually do.
And now we have a trance ever since then.
Sergio Patterson: yeah. it’s awesome. Something that really stood out was, you said something about making your boss look good and it’s like making them look good, but also making their life easier. So like everything you said applies to like, I think every industry, every role that’s like that’s gold, like gold right there.
Mike drop, man.
Marcus Chan: 100%. And this applies across the board, right? In any role I’ve been in,I’ve done similar things because ultimately if it works for me, why not give and help other people? Like, even if he get zero. Why not just give and help other people out that is like, it’s just like, it’s about to be like, when you watch like a true, good human being and you are focusing on serving other people, good things happen because you do that, [00:28:00] but you can’t just do it one time and he had to give without expectation.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah, and it’s gotta be
genuine.
Marcus Chan: exactly. What I was giving. I was expecting promotion. I will simply do, because I knew it would help everyone else. And he ever helped me to grades, but there was no expectation what happened after I gave
Lee Michael Murphy: Exactly. Exactly. So you’ve had multiple sales roles.
Now common thing in any sales organization is there’s always people that are the top performers and the low performers you were in that spot as a low performer. And I love that you were able to work your way up to the top, but advice to people that maybe they feel like, man, I’m just bad at sales.
Like w I’m just, I asked my label, I’m bad at sales. And you I’ve seen that at multiple organizations. I worked at, 24 I finished, which was a sales organization that tracked numbers. And there was the top salesperson. There was a low salesperson enterprise was very much the same way. and there was another company where for out of college that had credit card processing and it was very much a sales [00:29:00] role, but like, how do you start to turn that ship around?
If yeah. Or if you maybe Ben in the sales game for, five, 10 years or plus maybe more and you think, ah, I’m just, I’m just not a good salesperson. Like how do you fix that?
Marcus Chan: sure. Great question. So, number one, you have to first own the situation. That is the first thing you must do. You must look in the mirror and say, okay, am I really bad at sales, a world, or a really stand next? What am I going to do about this? if you don’t truly own it, if you try to own the labeling, I’m just a bad salesperson, but you’re like, Hey, you know what?
I just don’t have the skills yet. That’s totally two different things. And this is the mistake. Many people make is they might say, Oh, Marcus, I’ve been in sales for 20 years. But if you’re still average or you never really hit peak performance, you probably have really one year’s experience repeated 20 times.
So it was understanding exactly where do you stand and how can you prove the skills? And then finding ways to [00:30:00] improve the skills. I’m a firm. Like I like playbooks. I like proven processes. I have to fall things that can become better. What Tony Robins said are set up perfectly. It’s all about behavior modeling.
If I want to be a really good cook, I’m gonna go follow the best chef around. I want to see exactly how they think or their habits or their routines, how they prepare, or do they do, how do they psychologically process things? And I’m going to mimic exactly what they did. When I first started sales, I was the worst.
I remember. I remember like I was so used to people coming in, like people coming in, I had some insurance. I’m like, oh yeah.
I’m really going to pitching. I’m looking at this. Like, I think I’m pretty good at this. I must be pretty good at sales, I think. well once, once you have to go do cold outbound, like cold calling people, cold emailing, walking the businesses. That’s really hard. It’s really hard to convert people who know nothing about you. I remember literally walking in and having guns pulled on me, dogs biting me different cold calls, right walking. I’m like, oh [00:31:00] my God, this is a worst at what am I doing in my life? And I was remember second guessing myself.
When I saw the stack come a second guest was a wondering why I chose this career. Why did I do go into this? Why didn’t I go to substain empty in the rental side? Why didn’t I take that bank analyst job? Why did they these other roles in which I’ll probably would’ve made more money immediately and hope and probably happier.
Why? While Leadville does yell at me, curse me out and call me terrible things. Didn’t know why. But first off, I pity myself. I paid myself, I questioned myself. I blamed the world too. I said it’s because it’s a 2007, the economy is falling apart. The market’s terrible right now. Stocks, unemployment is going up.
No one’s buying. It’s terrible. My boss has given me training. We have a terrible tech stack. I’m getting zero support. My boss is a jerk. No one’s coaching me. No, one’s giving me direction on just not for sales either. So I had all [00:32:00] these internal and external limiting beliefs and objections to success. And I allow myself to fill my mind and tell myself that story.
But what I realize is your module is powerful. So if you could tell your mind a story, why not tell it what’s going to actually empower you. So I remember going through and reading all these like sales books. I went to the library, every single sale. Zig Ziglar augmenting all these books. I wish I could say those helmets.
They did because they’re all written look long time ago. And those things just simply didn’t work. And I try the numbers game. I try making hundreds of calls that try, do all those things in work. And I remember coming across Tony Robbins book awaken the job with them. And inside there, he said, if you don’t like the answer, ask about a question.
And I realize all the question I just asked were very disempowered and the heavy back from being able to solve my problems. Those are better questions. [00:33:00] Like how can I push through this? How can I solve this? What can I say differently to influence a better reaction? How can I write a better email who know the answer?
How do I qualitative probation? How like mimic behaviors, who else is excelling the same environment that, that is this question or not. And we started thinking this way, you start realizing there’s lot of solutions out there as I get better answers and we get better answers or you trying to get an action.
So if you are out there and you’ve been in sales, well, even a short time or long time, you don’t have access. You want you start number one, be fully aware of what you’re doing. Number two, aspect of questions. Number three, find someone who can take you there. It’s one of the fast way to improve your results.
Like if you believe you are stuck where you are you’re right, but you want to prove you can improve because ultimately the hardest territory to manage is actually the one between your ears. If you can imagine 10 to 20 years, very effectively, you can write your own tickets. You do whatever you want. Let me give you really specific examples of limiting [00:34:00] beliefs.
So for example, I remember after having success at an enterprise, I went to a whole new company in April, 2011, Cintas, corporate. Big company at the time, about $7 billion a year. And I remember, I didn’t realize when I joined the team, I joined the team and I remember, hug. When I started to, when I realized I was on the worst team in the region or region of the company, I’m like, great.
This is like a worst team in the company. Fantastic. I know idea surrounded by people who just did not believe people said people can’t hit president’s club here. People can’t have success in Portland. It’s just not a big market. It’s not the bay area. It’s not Southern California. It’s not Seattle, Washington.
It’s not, Arizona is not new. York is not a big, it’s not big. If you can have success here. And I remember walking in and I remember like, talking to this guy, is this guy, I don’t wanna say his name. Cause he might listen to this later, but he’s like, Hey man, like, like what are your goals here?
I’m like, well, Hey man, like, I’m like, I actually took a two step promotion to come here. so my goal is I want to become a director at under five, just a couple. And he’s like, what? That’s not [00:35:00] as possible as a director of the company. Typically you lead in a big sales org, usually 60, 80 plus employees, And usually it takes most people eight to 10 years in that company gets out level. And so I saw to tell her I’m like, I already had five years of less. He’s like impossible not going to happen, man. Like, that’s just like, you’ll be lucky to make it after the first year. Like I’m like, oh geez. no one wins
Lee Michael Murphy: a dream crusher Serge. That’s a dream
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, that is a
Marcus Chan: I’m like, this is like day two on the job where I’m like, whoa, where do I go? Right. So I’m like, okay, now fortunately I tell myself different stories, right? I tell myself better stories, not what he was telling me. So fast forward, was able to have success nine months. I became the sales manager, took over the team, right.
Replacement, his entire team. I just completely top that coached up people. I can coach up. Coach. I’d be looking to get coached out, replace the team, took up the whole team. We’ve became like one of the top teams of the company with another year after that, we started hitting hidden press club, hitting the wards.
Boom, boom, four and a half years in. I could probably be a director right on the fast frozen in the company’s history. The copy’s been around for like 90 [00:36:00] years. And people are like, how did you. I’m like, well, I believe her saw, but also I found ways to accelerate my success. Like I, I was well to do things.
People were not willing to do. What’s the power of belief right there, but also being able to work towards the belief, it takes zero excuses and you detach from the outcome, a do the right things every single day. And I did that and it happened if it didn’t happen, even though six years, seven years, I’m still beating the odds.
So it’s understanding, where you are today is an entrepreneur where you go, you’re circumcised only determine where you start, not where you go.
Sergio Patterson: And I feel like every sales team needs to hear this right here.
Lee Michael Murphy: Every sales teams, these markets Chan
Sergio Patterson: Do you, are you, I know you’re, you have the six figure sales academy, but do you ever coach or work with. all these, Silicon and Silicon valley and like we have huge sale, like field teams, like, do you ever go and talk to the companies?
Or how does that work or do you just kind of do it on the side or talk to us a little bit about
Marcus Chan: [00:37:00] Yeah. So I do make sure. Right. So I’ll do some, I’ll do like some team stuff. So there’s pros and cons, right? So, like working with companies is definitely cool, but there’s like a little bit of a formula I found when I’m coming in I’m coaching and training with teams. usually what is the, what you see, because a lot of times, like you have to hire the right people who are going to be openly coach, as like you hire like crappy people.
They’re just crappy their mindset. It doesn’t matter what you give them those some crappy. So I found like, like if you do group coaching session with like a group, whatever, like the truth is like 10% are going to probably take actions, freaking destroy their numbers and crush it, which is awesome.
there’ll be applying it 20% are going to be like, oh, that? sounds really awesome. Duck’s super engaged and all of the sessions, well, they don’t take action. And then the other 70% are like, they don’t want to be there. They’re like, this is just a job. And they go to a new job every year and a half, and they always find a way to blame the company, their boss, or the market or whatever for the poor results.
Marcus Chan: And they actually [00:38:00] stay mediocre. The reality is mediocrity is a choice. And so it was greatness. So you had to choose every single day of what you’re going to do with the right knowledge. So that’s why, I definitely do those. I’ll do speaking gates and I’ll do SKO. We’ll do all those things, which is definitely cool, but it’s always interesting because, when I’m working with the individuals, I always like, we have such a high success with that program because they’re paying out of their own pocket and they’re taking action and they w they want to get better.
So the drive they have is not just extrinsic, meaning they’re not just shooting from the top of 1% or the income level, whatever. At Julie intrinsic, they’ve realized they’re sick of being average. They’re sick of waking up, not having money. They’re sick of just not being able to see the wife that they want.
And now if I take an action and sometimes an event has to happen, they got put on a PIP, a performance plan, or they just realize they’re like, crap. Like Mikey wants going to private school. And I can’t. Or, their kid who wants to go play sports, but they can’t afford put their kids [00:39:00] in sports now.
So somehow they have this realization that caused them to want to take action. But then there’s one who’s intrinsic. It’s like, they’re like, like I’ll give you that. Like this year I’ll invest over a hundred thousand dollars into myself or coaches for myself. Right. Because it’s intrinsically driven that I don’t want to be poor or be broke or be homeless.
I wants to build because those, the driver that’s beyond anything external. So those are things that are way beyond. That’s why I do. I do all the above for coaching and teaching and training by, I really love the individuals because the transformation they go through, it’s amazing. Like it’s, I love a voicemail on my phone from Tanya on my phone.
Literally almost crying because she’s in two months, she’s hitting her first five figure commission check. She grew up poor. She’s like, this is the most I ever had. Like, what do I do now? I’m like, great. Let me break down how I actually manage my finances now. So this is like, you become, like, if you started leveling up, it becomes [00:40:00] a whole new thing where you realize at every new level, as a new devil.
Right. So let’s, I digress a little bit.
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, no, a hundred percent in line with you there. what I was thinking about is, again, I don’t think these tips apply just to the sales field. This mindset stuff like can be applied in everything I do can like any of us, right. It’s that? Self-belief that’s my takeaway.
Marcus Chan: A hundred percent. So I believe this about, I called the belief triangle. and you can kind of see him as a triangle, kind of see if you’re watching the video on the left side of the triangle and that there could be low and high and left side of triangle is what I call belief. You have a low belief and I believe on the right side is effort could be low effort, a higher effort.
If you have really high belief, you’ll take, you’ll do a lot of effort. If you have a really low belief, you’ll do a very low effort. So for example,you picture that,you all want to ride a bike. If you never get rid of bike before, if you have high belief, you can keep trying and you keep putting the effort.
I see people do it. I can do it too, and you’ll have success. But if he did, if he had a Lobel, if [00:41:00] you’d try one time to give up, but ultimately if you have high belief in high effort, you eventually have high success. That’s what happens. So when people have a certain level of belief in whatever is going to be there, or won’t take forth the effort.
So for example, this is actually why, even when I do group trainings, the first thing I’m going to ask for them, I ask them is I want you to have high belief. I’m gonna ask for your belief today. So that way, when you have belief, you can take action. If you have high action, then you’ll have high results.
But if you have zero belief, you’re going to zero effort and doesn’t get any results at all. So it all goes together as applies to anything in life. You all learn how to play chess. You all know how to cook. You’ll do any, you must have high belief in that person that I think you’re learning from to be able to take that action, to get the result you want.
Lee Michael Murphy: it’s amazing so one thing that we talked touched on before was, be, success is contagious, right? Also,people being low performers or misery having misery. And what they do is also contagious. Personally, I’ve been in both [00:42:00] situations, at companies where I was at a bad company.
And it really was, I feel like the external factors, I’ve also been a situation where I’ve been at a great company and man, they made me so much better, but
how do we differentiate if it’s us or our environment, all the time you run across people that are like, well, I’m sucking because of my company.
And that’s a very common thing. We hear it all the time, but how do we know if it’s us or the environment,
Marcus Chan: Yeah. So I’ll say first off, it’s really hard to differentiate. when you’re in, when you’re in the forest, it’s really hard to see the trees, if you will, or whatever the saying is. So once you’re inside, it’s really hard because we’re emotionally tied to it. for me, I think it’s really simple.
So you start going through it. If it’s, if you want to be a Bryce system map, mabye start writing all your complaints. Okay. Like what,what are the complains about the company? Bad product market fit, bad pricing, bad market, whatever you start them all down and then write down. How are you justifying that what’s the facts, not your [00:43:00] feelings, what are the facts that prove that point? Okay. Really important. So if you can’t back it up with facts, then it’s invalid and it can’t be, I spoke to one person, they didn’t like my property on have product market fit. That doesn’t make sense. All right. Like if you have thousands of customers that bought the product and they’re having results that you have PMs, all right, like you, you got product it’s bounded.
It you’re just not good at selling it. Okay. Like, so, and then going through and uncovering, what could I do differently? Get better results, crossword for anything. What could I do personally? And have you struggled to do this, then you get someone who’s outside the company to help you, someone that you trust.
I can give you our objective feedback and that’s really powerful because there are certain things for sure. It’s definitely copied you. So for example, let’s talk about, On target earnings on targeting is a perfect example, right? Like it’s a to unrealistic. Okay. You can get some facts from that.
You can [00:44:00] take a look if zero people had OTE on target earnings. Well, it’s probably actually not really a target. It’s probably actually unrealistic potentially. Right? And you might have other systemic issues, lack of support, fulfillment, whatever, bad product, PMF, whatever it’s going to be. So you start syncing that kind of go in through a, you write down all the potential concerns you have complaints, and then you want them to be able to justify Valdez.
Well, but here’s the thing. Your sins follow you everywhere you go. So I’ll give you a real example. So,I remember back at, back on the team that I led, I wish I could say every person that worked for me was a rock star, not the case. We, I had turnover as well. We typically run about 18, 19% turnover on my sales team, which a relatively low for them, for the industry.
So some people just said, make it right. And, I remember like one of the things I’m probably a really great cop. I heard from a lawyer, all my reps, they said to me, Marcus, I love and hate working for you. I love you make me better, but I hate that. Like, like you literally remove any objection on my, how about me not being successful? [00:45:00] Like you gave me the tools, the resources, the coaching direction, or I haven’t looked in the mirror. Like, it’s just me now. Like they, they had the, Hey, I hate that. And I remember, I had this rep, I don’t want to say their name cause Melissa, those too, but. Like I knew they had the potential, but they were just, they would tell me what I want to hear, but they never did a thing that we’re supposed to do as part of the ways.
And I remember like leaving, he was like, oh, he taught, Marcus is the worst. He’s a terrible leader. He’s a bad manager, this and this. And I’m the worst. I’m, I mean, I’m a terrible person. It is what it is. It happens. So of course he gets a different job. Awesome. And in the five-year timeframe after the company, every, he had six different jobs in five years, same complaints or every single job, your sins follow you everywhere you go.
And if you will consistently play by the same thing, either you were making a bad decision about where you work, or if you can’t find the problem, then you’re the problem. It’s a painful truth. But somebody had to look in the [00:46:00] mirror and this is why taking a hundred percent ownership is on the greatest things you can think about.
So for example, I remember two years ago, we’re at a stoplight. I got rear ended. My, my wife’s, my wife shook, my kids shook. We’re okay though. Car’s damage. And,my wife’s, oh man, I can, I’m going to ask them. I Campbell that person that we’re paying attention. I’m like, it’s my fault. And she’s like, what I tell the it coming to, this is what I told myself.
Oh my fault. They still pay for it. But I’m like, it’s my fault. She was like, what do you mean? It’s like, no, they hit us. You are part, we didn’t do anything wrong. I’m like, I get that. But what if I left five minutes earlier? She’s like, oh, if I live five minutes earlier, that wouldn’t happen. So if it wasn’t Paula, I’m like, I understand that.
But it’s just, when you have this type of thinking where it’s like, it’s always your fault, the results or the failures, you do different things. You think different differently. And you just, you do, you only, you demand grids from yourself. You do not accept media. You only, you [00:47:00] live by the, what your actions are and you just do what you say you’re going to do and his shift across the board.
And when you think about when for sale, if you, same thing as well, it changes your results because then even if the company is truly bad, like really bad, you have really bad product, you least know, Hey, you know what I did early possible. My control, not I’m fine. It is what is it? Just didn’t work out. Cool.
And then you move on. So that’s why it’s like, you, can’t always, it’s like sports. Like you can’t always control the scoreboard, but you can control all your efforts lead up to the game and what to do in the game and whatever happens. Happens.
Sergio Patterson: Marcus. All right. So I’m going to throw a curve by you. So the guy, example, you mentioned five jobs in six years or six jobs in five years. At what point as a sales rep,
is there ever a moment where you say maybe sales isn’t for me. Or are saying you can like transform anybody and everybody? I feel like realistically sales is not for everybody, regardless of what Marcus coaches today or tomorrow or whatever.
I don’t know. I’m just going to throw that out there.
Marcus Chan: So [00:48:00] it depends on the person. So for example, when you think about, the core skills of a great sales professional, were they able to develop the skills to do that or not? And for some people, I’m a firm believer, like everyone’s got a certain level of competence and once you got to hit it, you might appeal to go beyond that.
You might kind of bounce around here, right? And some people is higher to those lower set build has never read, even reached that level. So most people kind of stay right here. This guy, fantastic with customers. Great. With asking questions great. With controlling, great with frame, great clothes. Great. With actual the parts of civil, I was actually really great, but inconsistent, and disorganized. So those are things and that’s Okay. That’s not who he is. Those are just behaviors. He had a fake. So if he was able to just commit to just making sure he was consistently prospecting, making sure that after he calls a deal up, he just made sure his button-up was just turned in and in right. This customer to be happy.
So those are [00:49:00] some of the small things where they’re actually not necessarily sales skills. They’re just like life skills. Like, like if you can’t pay your mortgage on time, you’re going to get in trouble.
Sergio Patterson: a good thing.
Yeah,
Marcus Chan: So that’s why it’s like, it’s, I think it’s important differentiating what are like core sales skills to develop, but you probably hit, it’s got a certain kind of cap if you will, and you of bounce around there, but then there’s also other skills enough, the sales skills, but they’re just about being a good professional
Sergio Patterson: yeah. Yeah. It’s important, I think, in your career to have self-awareness. there is that moment where like I had it and I realized like sales wasn’t like I would hit numbers and stuff, but I had that moment where I was like, I want to get into something else. So I think that’s what I was trying to get at is like, I think for the listeners out there, like you have those moments in your career where you have to figure out what’s right for you.
Marcus Chan: Totally. And you also have to see what do you actually enjoy? Like if you don’t enjoy it, like, don’t do it. Like, okay. It’s like, don’t just do it to do it. If you don’t enjoy, even if you are [00:50:00] great at it, if you don’t enjoy, I was talking to a guy yesterday or two days ago, he’s in July program. I disqualified him actually, because he wants to go become a leader in a year.
I’m like, dude, don’t just like focus on that. Then you already crushing it. Just keep crushing it and go into leadership role. Just do that thing. That’s a totally different path. That’s okay. Do what’s gonna make you happy
Lee Michael Murphy: Marcus your online system that you have the training. Can you give us a little bit about that and what people can expect if they get into your training?
Marcus Chan: Yeah. So it’s actually a hot performance coaching program, right? So I broke it down a few different components. So, it’s really the, it’s an a to Z blueprint to transform and really add an extra 5,000 K in commissions into your year without working harder. So it’s not about, Hey, come in here just to work your ass up.
That’s not the point. So I’ll literally refine everything you do from prospecting, social selling discovery demo closed across the board, and it’s broken down a few different ways. Number one is an online [00:51:00] course. That’s the system. You follow it step by step a to Z. It’s my brain download to a blueprint.
If you follow the order. Exactly. As I teach in there, all the exercises, you’ll start getting results very quickly. That’s the first thing kind of the temples. Now that’s generalized. And then on top of that, I also do group coaching and also telegram coaching as well to give the content context of situation.
Cause sometimes people go through like, oh, you know what? That makes sense by my child apply it. They’re not going to tweak it. And, but also coach a specific situations. So ultimately it’s really a high performance coaching program that has happened on the online courses as well. But ultimately those who get results in my program are ones who just show up.
They take action and they’re highly coachable. So they put aside any ego and they bring, specific deals to the table. So for example, Josh is my program. He joined a couple of months ago and he got eight months. I close. One deal in eight months was freaking out isn’t SAS sales, Starbuck them in two weeks cost, over $143,000.
All right. That’s like [00:52:00] 10 K commission pale fast forward to more, except for that closed another like 300, $200,000. So it’s basically about just over a month time, close over $300,000 or any over $20,000. Because he’s coachable. So that’s really the key. So you have
a system coach.
Sergio Patterson: to interrupt you. People can bring deals that they’re trying to work in their tech company or whatever to you, and you will help them close those deals.
Marcus Chan: yeah. Also I don’t run the deal for them, but they gave me the scenario and I tell them
exactly. Yeah, I could I tell them exactly what to do and that’s reallydo they say, do their companies know that like Marcus Chan is in the background doing this?
Some dosome do some do. So some do so like some of them will reach out and want me to advise him and stuff right. Or do bigger things as well. but it’s like,at some companies like the short side companies, like, oh, it’s really cool, but they’re not thinking of putting the rest of their team into it.
Right. Like, why not have a team full of superstars?
Sergio Patterson: That’s what I was thinking.
like that’s a smart way, but my program is definitely not cheap. It’s an investment, but that’s also why people [00:53:00] take action as well. So sometimes they simply can’t get the budget. That’s what happens. So.
Lee Michael Murphy: Awesome listeners, make sure you reach out to Marcus that this is, if something you’re struggling with, obviously he’s the man at this. He’s got a ton of knowledge, Marcus to close. the last topic I want to talk about is your online success. You’ve built an amazing brand. I mean on LinkedIn,you’re in multiple channels and articles.
Like you become, you have this wonderful reputation and your online businesses, been growing as well. What was the secret to that and how did you make those things take off and get noticed?
Marcus Chan: Oh, yes. So, it was interesting was, so I didn’t to start my own business. Like overnight, it wasn’t like a thing like, oh, I’m just gonna start all on business. It was a transgression of multiple steps. So, initially, back in 2015, I didn’t really realize at this point that I had gotten promoted. well at this point is really like, I mean, tones two on 15.
So that was like eight years. I just got on with 10 times in eight years, but 10 out 10 sounds [00:54:00] better. It sounds cooler. So, at this point, though, people are like, Hey, how did you do this? Like, you just became a director and like four and a half years, like, this is impossible. How are you able to change completely different industry to do these things and like, seem to have as like Midas touch.
And I’m like, first of all, there’s no bias touch. Like I work my ass off, but there’s systematic things I do to position myself to, to hopefully have the hospitals will win. Right. And the, okay, so Doug, you should write a book. Yeah, maybe. So I actually wrote a couple eBooks first. I learned how to write eBooks and a lot of writing ebook because before eBooks were thing, I also had to sell online.
And I remember I wrote, I worked a couple and I woke up and made like $9 over and I’m like, oh wow. $9. Some stranger payment, $9. That was amazing to me. I’m like, that’s really neat. I’m like, what else could I do? Right. What else can I do to spread the love and serve more people? And this is before online courses were like a big thing because now everyone, their mother has an online course.
So I’m like, you know what? I should put an online course, but by what do people ask me about a lot of questions on, what am I a coolant expert on if you will. because to me this whole time, I’m [00:55:00] still see myself as a poor kid from Chinese immigrants who grew up with nothing who just worked his ass off.
Right. Sold Speedos, sold noodles. So whatever, like I’m just a regular dude and like a little town, right. I’m like, okay. You know what? I get a lot of questions on B2B sales stuff that I thought was really obvious that people would just know they don’t seem to know. So I’m like, let me build something that I could have given past version of me a to Z.
So I built my first online course, the very first version actually called a sales ninja school at the time. And I
Lee Michael Murphy: nice name.
Marcus Chan: Yeah, I know it took me a couple of years to actually build it because at this time, I mean, I had a Salesforce of 110 plus employees. I was in hotel room a hundred nights a year.
I was traveling nonstop. I was, it was insane. And I remember like two twos to, to build this out or had a baby to this time. I had a baby, as soon as hold on, I had a soft launch in January two other 19, woke up may [00:56:00] $2,000. I’m like, wow. That’s nuts. That’s pretty nuts. So during this whole time I’m doing, I’m also studying internet marketing, like how to build a brand on like Instagram, et cetera.
Now, my company is old school, so I wasn’t really active on LinkedIn. So it’s kind of Instagram. So I kind of just did that at first. And so a lot of my email marketing, et cetera, my email list is all like 300 people at the time. I am not big and just started like, that’s pretty neat. So I started learning about this.
I’m like, okay, you know what? That was pretty neat. So I could use this as a platform now to serve more people across the world and potentially just have a way bigger impact. And this is the first test of like, Hey Ken, what I do help more people than outside of my existing company. That was really important to us. So when I started doing this whole time, is there a plan? My escape, if you will, I’m like, I can’t leave right now. I need to make sure it works really well. But also number two, add my presence club trip coming up in the summertime, which is free [00:57:00] five-star resort. I earned it. So I want my free trip. I went to stock that was gonna vest.
I wanted my stock, we had earnings calls and it doesn’t habit in September. So I knew the stock would go up on a cash after the earnings call. So there’s this one strategic thing that I wanted to do. So I kind of waited nine months this whole time on studying internet marketing. I’m working on building my brand.
I’m working on email copy, and we’re going to copper this whole. And wait for all the things happen as well. The stock, the presence of all the things happening September 9th, 2019, and my official first day into being an online entrepreneur. So I quit everything. Boom went all in and that was scary, super scary.
Like just like really from a guy who cares about stability. If you had to be poor to leave like a incredibly high paying job with great benefits and like great culture, all these things and really kind of strangely lodged, just like, kind of like weird power. Cause I has a big Salesforce like to be like managing me. It was an ego hit. It was oh, this is like really weird. Like I just managed [00:58:00] me. Like I don’t have admins anymore. I have to do everything myself. Like it wasn’t, it was hard. It was really hard. It really was. It really was like, okay, you know what? I’m like, I run the online piece. I need to start taking action. Yeah.
I’m like, well, I’m gonna start doing is I’m going to start. I’m a focused on wars on market at my market, LinkedIn. So I’m going to take everything I’ve learned over the last couple of years. I’m going to go all in on LinkedIn. This is a plot where I have not been able to touch really because of my company.
I’m going to go all in. So everything I learned about how to build a brand, build authority, do all these things I started doing on LinkedIn. So specifically I started, I started writing posts every single day, started writing kind of every single day specific days to prove my authority. In addition to this, I would go and start engaging onto all the people that were there were basically, I knew my target market was checking out their stuff. I started engaging on their posts, dropping value bombs, so they would start to see me. Right. in addition to that, my profile is highly optimized to convert as well. [00:59:00] Right. So I made shows highly often to basically prove everything that I say was, it was like, I would have bold claims a backup. Every bulkhead was backed up and improve it.
And I was sort of showing everyone and people started solely car that, adding me, connecting with me and literally I would go and I’ll start doing outbound messaging. I started like sending connection requests and just building up a following over the right target. I was building a pool of fish or the right audience.
So are doing that. In addition to that, like I just don’t think that I couldn’t scale, but I knew would create a greater impact. So every day I would receive on average between 50 and 20 connection requests, every single person out in a video message to Arizona, personal customized
Sergio Patterson: wow.
Marcus Chan: I’ll be like, Hey, Sergio, drop my message and give them free value.
And I’ll just give guys the value. I’ll give them a free trades. Free pals was proving to everyone I knew exactly because I knew no one came I did before I knew nothing. Then matter, why did before? And I wanted to prove without a shadow [01:00:00] doubt, I could help them. So I started doing that. Boom, boom.
And for sure, like, in my business still do pretty well. And I’ll do like, I’ll actually do live webinars. I’ll do live webinars every couple of couple, a couple of weeks, and basically do an offer to sell my online course that it was a course only at the time. And to start doing that or bringing a bunch of revenue in the hat.
Right. And, and then from there, I started to, started investing other programs awhile to build a more scalable. And also build better processing and also learn, be better email, copy a copyright Facebook ads, YouTube ads, et cetera. So I invest into a program called them programs for that sort of se to those programs.
So I do everything my coaches would teach me and it was just like us are building funnels, everywhere, video sales that are webinar funnels. I started building tons of funnels as our drive traffic. Boom, boom, boom, boom,boom. And I just showed every single day. What was a hard days? Absolutely. There’s still hard days.
Right. and after about like, probably about a year moments are really built after about a year. I mean, this is like me showing up now the thing is like, people think as an entrepreneur, like, oh, you [01:01:00] don’t have to work. like, you make your own hours. First is entrepreneur probably work 80 hours a week, every week.
Right? Like grind. I mean, I’m sending video messages. Like I always said between the Outback, I was at like 30 to 50 videos to strangers every single day. All right. To build up my art and to prove validation. Right. And that will just lead to a sales call to be like the truck, like, holy crap, you’re looking legit.
Like I’m seeing everything you’re doing. I started learning about just retargeting as outbound out, do more album messaging and then about after about, so I’ll get a record. So the more you do it, the more you start getting recognized. So people started reaching out to me, LinkedIn’s are reaching out, Hey, you were to give me a top voice.
Salesforce, Forbes. Yeah. I mean, as people started reaching out and it started, so I was compounded, but also on top of that, every time I would get some sort of recognition, I would leverage the app. To spread. So for example, like I remember first time, when LinkedIn first rejected was, Hey Marcus, like we chose, [01:02:00] you like to be LinkedIn top sales.
Wasn’t like 10 people. So you’re one of them. This is out of like 300 million users. So you’re wondering like, oh, wow. Okay, cool. So it sounds like so most people say that’s great. Cool, awesome. One post, two posts. Cool. I took that asset. I put it on my Facebook page and I create retargeting ads. And I started doing ads towards everyone who visited any of my websites.
So now, if they had seen any of my pages now they’re see my face, Edward and the, and then now I have the I’m leveraging the brand of LinkedIn. Say, this guys has got authority and now they’re like cold. So even if they may be like, I sent him a message, they’re like, I’m not sure if I was going to go check him out, let me Google him.
They click my website. Boom. Now they’re getting my ads nonstop in their Instagram feed in their Facebook feed in the Google ads. Now they’re seeing me everywhere And they’re
like, oh
Sergio Patterson: not you telling them, it’s not you telling them. You’re great. It’s linked. It’s LinkedIn telling them your
Marcus Chan: Correct? Correct. So, and what I’ll do is any time I’ll get featured in a publication or something like that, I’ll do say [01:03:00] out rinse and repeat same thing.
So even now, I mean, I probably have 10 or 15 specific re-targeted that’s still running even now that I’m driving for people hit my page. So that way it builds the president omnipresence. So they see me everywhere. They see me in the direct messages. If we’ve cold, emailed them, they see me like on, on the feeds or see me on all the platforms now they’re like, okay.
And sometimes it’s timing, then it might be like, how does not ready for this guy? I don’t know about it. But now six months said, you know what, I’m ready for next level? Who am I going to talk to? Marcus? That guy’s legit I’ve seen around he’s shown up. So I built this authority in their mind as an ultimately it only helps reinforce the messaging because the thing is what’s important to say, here is my belief in what I could do is so strong that it’s, I can do what I do.
If you don’t believe you can actually help people, they’re not going to sell it. You’re not gonna be able to do these type of things. [01:04:00] But I have such firm conviction. They do it though. It’ll change their life. I’m cool doing this. Some people are scared to do what I’m talking about because like how much sure.
Let’s try to help them. If you don’t believe he could help them, then there’s no, we can do this. You have to have pure conviction belief in you. What you do, that you can change their lives to do what I do and the same way.
Lee Michael Murphy: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Marcus, for joining us today. I mean, I know whoever listens to episode is going to get a ton of value. And man, if you are looking to take your game to that next level, whether it’s sales or online marketing, man reach out to Marcus, one of the best resources I’ve ever heard.
Thank you so much, man, for coming on our podcast today,
Marcus Chan: Gents. Thanks so much for having me on an absolute pleasure.
Lee Michael Murphy: you’ve been listening to the Free Retiree Show so long for now.