RWL175 – Steli Efti – CEO, Close – 3 simple steps to close more sales …

so hello everybody welcome to another session of the remote summit and I’ve

got to with you with me today somebody who’s a hero of mine he doesn’t know

that but he’s been a hero of mine for a while now because when you’re a

freelancer when you’re in a start-up scenario whether you like it or not you

part of you has to embrace the aspect of sales so when I was doing my own

research in terms of building my own freelance side of things but not just that when I was doing my my day-to-day

work I happened upon YouTube and i typed in certain things relating to sales and

Stella’s video came up and I tell you now a Stella’s video Stella’s a channel

is one of the go-to channels I would say or the the best channel I found where sales is concerned because he gives so

much he gives everything he doesn’t hold anything back and steli is an expert in

sales no two ways about it to the extent that now steli has developed since 2012

I think it is closed Daioh which is a CRM system it’s an all-in-one

CRM system which is essentially dedicated to helping you to get better

sales but as I said to you before there’s much more to stell even just

clothes that I always just so passionate about what he does and I you know and I

just I just had to have him on here today so steli thank you for being with us wow what an intro thank you so much for

having me no problem no problem steli i want to explore more about well

as the three areas i want to cover today i want to obviously find out more about you i’ve got you on the phone or on

skype i want to find out more when it helps people to to sell better likes

like i said whether you like it or not every aspect of literally every job that

you have is going to involve some aspects of sales especially if you’re in sales and then thirdly i want to find

out as well about selling oneself you know in terms of getting into a

business so study tell us more about you and how you how you got to this point you’ve been in in in the entrepreneur

space since the I you 17 right yes sir

I’m originally from Greece I grew up in Germany and those are two very different

cultures both places are Europe but it could not be more different

and so I grew up in a factory worker family single mom with three boys and

nobody in my family ever received a higher education and I was determined to keep that family tradition alive I hated

school with a passion and I got very lucky honestly where to another and I

kind of stumbled over this thing called entrepreneurship when I was 16 17 I realized that there was that to start a

business you didn’t have to get a PhD or something right you didn’t have to be

academically successful you just needed to work really hard create value in the marketplace and the the ceiling of how

big the business could be or how much you could accomplish was just determined by your creativity and your hard work

versus you know somebody else’s approval or other things so what once I once I

realized that there was this how entrepreneurship worked I was like alright this is it this is gonna be what

I’m gonna do with my life and so I dropped out of school pretty pretty young and started my my entrepreneurial

career and honestly like I’ve never had a real job in my life right I’ve always kind of

started companies yeah to employ myself I would tell people have zero credentials that nobody could ever hire me for anything or would want to and so

in if I had to pick a entrepreneurial quote-unquote superpower it was always

selling although I didn’t know it early on right I I just had certain talents

and I had to use any of them and all of them to move my life forward and to try

to make my businesses succeed and one of those towns was that I was you know somebody that loved other people

somebody that people trusted and so I started become better better communication and what I

call result-driven communication which really is what the definition of sales is it’s communicating with an end goal

in mind trying to accomplish something trying to get consensus to get a decision to get a conversion and and

that’s really what I’ve been doing almost all my professional life is selling in one way or another to have people join my companies to

people invest in my company so if people write about my companies and to have people purchase the products and the

services and the things that are offering the marketplace and so over time I became better and better in it I studied more about it and then

eventually I started teaching and sharing what I what I’d learned with the world and today you know I have

considered an expert and a thought leader in the space but that’s really

how it started was the desire to be my own boss the desire to do something great without having to get approval and

be successfully from an academic point of view and then when I started my first business I needed customers so I started

selling right without even knowing that I was doing that because I don’t know anybody who has grown up dreaming about

becoming a salesperson right like even even me honestly Alex when people started referring to me a sales expert I

resisted that yeah right I resent that was like wait a second CEO I’m an

entrepreneur I’ve so much more to offer than just being some sales dude so I didn’t at first didn’t like that that

the tag but eventually I got over myself and I just you know went back to saying

what is the way that I can create most value and if sales is a topic that I can create a lot of value and people refer

to me as an expert who cares right it doesn’t really my ego is not really built the main goal here the main goal is to create value in the marketplace so

I’ve been selling my whole life of building sales teams and you know I’ve been teaching a lot of people how to do

sales and you’re an so with you I mean it sounds like sales for you is innate

right it’s part of your DNA but for me I’m and probably for a lot of

people out there they probably don’t really want to consider themselves as salespeople this is I don’t know

dirty word attached to being why that is

because there yeah I think you do know I

think that’s why people don’t necessarily want to sort consider themselves sales or sort of admit that

they need to do sales but do you think sales is nature or nurture I think it’s

bull I don’t think and I think that’s true with life in general I don’t think

that anything is only nurture and I don’t think anything is only nature so it’s a combination of the two right and

you can I I do think a little bit there if I only have to choose one of the two in any area of life I would always

choose nurture right I was always choose you know I think hard work determination persistence consistency you draw a long

time I’m gonna crush anybody who’s more talented than me in any area if they don’t work as hard as I do it just might

take me a while to get there so but I but I do think it’s both and honestly

Alex think that one of the things my least favorite thing about speaking

about sales being on stage is that a lot of people will look at my personality

and when I’m on stage I’ve even you know kind of another part of me comes out there and more of an entertainer part

I’m like even louder or more outrageous than I am in a one-on-one conversation but the thing I hate is that a lot of

people look at me and go this is not me like I’m not as loud I’m not as

obnoxious I’m not like this is not my personality hands I cannot do selling or

sales isn’t for me which couldn’t be further from the truth so now a lot of times when I give a presentation I start

with a slide of a person that looks incredibly it’s the most nerdy person I know and I’ve lived in Silicon Valley

for 13 years so that says a lot it’s a friend of mine who could not be more

different from me who could not look more different from me who is a very

kind of a very nerdy nerdy person very smart very an engineering background

nothing the two of us could not be further apart in terms of our personality in our nature

but he you know he was a freelancer he became a developer the

beeper was a founder and he at some point very rationally figured out wait a second if I want to be an entrepreneur

if I want to build products and any people to buy them I need to learn how to do marketing and I need to learn how

to do sales and he studied sales and he went about it very like alright there’s certain mechanics there should tactics

this is not rocket science and I can follow this and follow these strategies and succeed and here’s a very different

style about how he does it but leaders follow certain proven tactics and

strategies and seen incredible success with it so always highlight you don’t have to be like me you don’t have to be loud and you don’t have to be you know

from the get-go of people person and I’m I’m also 5050 part of part of why I’m

good at sales is nature for sure there’s a part of my personality part of it is nurtures well I studied

the topic of communication and selling in psychology for many many years and there’s a part of me that I you know I’m

either super outgoing but I’m also somebody that needs to be alone and and

at times doesn’t like to be social at all which is a side of me that nobody obviously sees because that’s not

publicized right I don’t video now of course so a lot of times a lot of times

I do have to force myself to do certain things that you know is required to succeed although it doesn’t come natural

to me or I don’t feel like it right so I do think you can learn selling and I think there’s two parts

for why people don’t like signals one is that a lot of people in sales traditionally and historically have just

been [ __ ] right they’re douchebags but mostly the man yeah an interface right and why because the old model of

selling was hostile and strong right these people were you know the kind of

the wolf of Wall Street types right out there to crush the competition to take away all the money from the customer to

get rich and wealthy to feed their ego and the promised these people succeeded because they were strong and they

bullied prospects into submission they bullied people into saying yes right and

then the moment they said yes you felt violated as you gave this person your money or your clothes they made you

decide something but these people could get away with it right and they just can’t bullied one customer

at a time and so sales got a bad rap for a very good reason part because the type

of people that were in sales a lot of them were were you know not that ethical

and the way they went about things I think this is changing because the world is changing but I think there’s another part to be honest that I want to just

briefly highlight why people don’t love SIA because selling inevitably pushes

you to do two things that most of us really don’t want to do I don’t think anybody really wants to do one is you

have to embrace rejection right you have to deal with rejection more frequently

and more directly than in almost any other activity you could participate in

and and we we don’t like that none of us wants to go through rejection and it

doesn’t matter how good you are in cell sales you could be the best sales person in the universe you’re gonna get

rejected and if you’re really good you’re gonna get rejected more often than you’re gonna get a yes right

because you’re pushing yourself to make a bigger and create the increase in harder and harder deals so you’re gonna

have to deal with incredible amount of rejection and you’re gonna have to create a lot of moments of truth right

when I ask you for your money that’s a hard moment of truth this you

can’t just be nicely nicely to me and I leave and it’s like this was a good business meeting and I think they really

liked it I can’t stay in that dream world that thing’s really like I had all these meetings and calls and I feel like

something happened today no in selling I have to create moments of truth I have to ask you for your money your credit

card number are you buying yes or no and I have to get rejected I think that we all like to avoid that I don’t like to

get rejected either even after a long career of sales I still don’t like it but I’ve gotten better at it I’ve got

more used to it it’s easier for me to push me to get rejected than it is for the average person because I have so

much practice but I never enjoy it I’ve never ever truly liked like the feeling

and I think that that’s also a really big part that we need to be honest about we don’t like selling and thinking about

sales because it’s very inconvenient it is gonna force us to get rejected to

here no to have to deal with the ugly and truth sometimes and we all like to work

with that human being that’s normal and it’s inevitable isn’t it study that you’re gonna get rejected it’s

inevitable I mean and I think the way I started to deal with the fact that I needed to get into sales and sort of get

it get my sales head on was that was that first thing I was going to get rejected at some point you know but that

was that wasn’t at the forefront of my head the second thing was is that what you said earlier on it’s it’s it’s about

you know it’s bit cliche but building a rapport isn’t it’s about communicating to the point that you can actually I

suppose people buy people as another cliche they’re right but it’s it’s about

what I felt was it was about actually getting those tactics that you had mentioned on your videos and building

them into my own personality so that I could actually then transmit it in a way that was comfortable and natural right

yeah our fantasy is really important right I think that X you know having

self awareness and self acceptance are two of the most valuable things a human being can develop over a lifetime

and it’s so underrated right it’s not something new and cool and flashy but if

you have self awareness if you know who you truly are and if you can accept that it doesn’t mean that you don’t want to better yourself and work hard on

yourself but it means that you you don’t reject who you are trying to be somebody else

most human beings you know are not fully self accepting you’re not fully themselves or not they they’ll watch a

video of me and I’ll be on stage screaming at people say [ __ ] a hundred times and then they are like alright I want to get a successful

Esteli let me buy a leather jacket walk around and scream on Planet people and surely

money will come my way and obviously that’s not how it works right because we can all spot people who are authentic

and themselves and people who aren’t and most of the times we deal with with people that are just trying on a

personality or trying on a certain type of tactic and it’s just when you hear it you can just feel it it’s sometimes hard

to verbalize why you think this person isn’t them right or honest or truthful authentic but you can kind of feel it there’s an

internal compass that goes I don’t know this yeah this person right so two

people can do the exact same thing and one person you’re gonna be cool with it and the other person you’re not gonna like right and it’s big what is it it’s

authenticity is is it truthful or not so and coming back to your comment on like

selling yourself at the end of the day you know to purchase from somebody I’m

gonna grossly oversimplify this but there’s two really important main ingredients one is I need to trust you

right because if I don’t trust what you’re telling me it’s gonna be very

very hard for me to buy from you right if I call no matter how great the information or the things are that

you’re telling me if I don’t believe those things it doesn’t matter right so if somebody calls me now and tells me

hey congratulations you won 20 million dollars I’m a prince somewhere in the world

give me your banking information I’m not gonna be excited the content of that phone call is actually incredible right

but I don’t trust any word I hear so it doesn’t really matter what the thinness

of what I’m hearing so I need to trust you to be able to truly listen to you and then be you know buying into you and

the second thing that I need is I need to need to trust you and I need to

believe that you’re an authority or you that you have some level of expertise so

wanna I want to follow your advice or I want to buy into whatever your premise

or proposition is right and so if you have a level of honesty and authenticity

paired with confidence and clarity right then I think you’re really a beatable

and to me that’s the new model of selling what I call friendly strength right you want to be strong you want to

be confident you want to create clarity because human as human beings we’re all looking for somebody who knows what the

hell they’re doing that can tell us what to do here right yes we’re all looking for somebody to lead us in certain areas

in life right we all need certainty because it such a rare thing in life and so

certainly in strength wins at the end but if you pair that with friendliness friendliness means being authentic being

truthful truly wanting to make create value in the life of your customers truly telling your customers what they

can expect what they can expect tell them someone you know popular truth hey I know you want X but I can’t give you X

X is bad for you right I’m an expert you need why and here are the reasons and

here’s and if you if you want to get healthy you go with what I’m telling you if you want to just get what you want

you need to go somewhere else I cannot participate in giving you something it’s gonna be bad for you right that level of

both being friendly and wanting the best for your customers and clients in the business but not coming at it from a

place of weakness because a lot of times you have these two divisions you either are friendly and weak or you’re strong

and hostile and I think the middle the friendly and strong are where the future of sales is going to be friendly and

strong and I like that because that it’s got like we said fret sales has got the tag that tag of being like you said the

wolf of Wall Street type thing but and I think what you’ve done and what you’re doing and I probably this is probably

why people are calling you a thought leader is that these these elements that you talk about authority trust honesty

building you know that authenticity and friendliness and storytelling as well

that’s another thing that that you you talk about quite a lot that’s something that is becoming more to the fore I I

think because when I was doing my sales training all those years ago it was all

about like what you said you know don’t let them get off the phone you know make sure they you know make sure you book

the appointment and it’s all bad pressure wasn’t it was all about sort of increasing amping up the pressure to get

the sale and to get the appointment and I think even back then actually I want

to I want to talk a bit more about close i/o actually because there’s weather

you’re sort of a freelancer or a business owner or in fact there may be people on this call who are actually

transitioning between roles as well you got to find mechanisms to actually

put all of all of those things that steli mentioned into place because it’s not just about randomly doing something

it’s about systematically doing it and having a system in place to do that stella is a developed system called

close IO and you know I would recommend that you use a system like closed door

because you know you can’t put everything to be into memory you’ve got to sort of automate certain things steli

you mentioned on your on your website that you couldn’t find anything that sort of covered the basis in terms of

the system systematize ation of sales tell us a bit more about closed i/o and

how that helps to actually would help a sales manager to actually you know close their deals or systemize what they’re

doing yeah so you know I think most most CRM CRM customer relationship management

software right and basically it’s the main tool that most salespeople will use to keep track of their deals that

prospects the pipeline and and try to keep what’s going on most of these tools

were built by developers who had very little empathy understanding of what the

end user the salesperson is going through on a day-by-day basis and were sold to high-level management that also

had very little empathy and understanding of what sales people and the the job of selling really was so you

had the people that build it and the people it was sold to there’s nothing to do with sales and then hater was forced

down the throw to the individual sales rep and that’s why most CRM systems they’re really just a database that

forces you to type in a lot of information to then get some kind of a high-level reporting and forecasting of

revenue but it’s not really that useful that powerful helping you sell better and sell more and get your job done so

when we started we just wanted to build on something that was awesome for the salesperson right and it was build with

an empathy and point of view for whoever was selling doesn’t matter if it’s a founder a business owner or a sales rep

or sales manager so we built close out with a few privacy’s in mind we wanted it to be simple you know simple to use

simple to understand it can’t be that you have to go through three weeks of training before you can use as a piece of

software right that that might work if you work at a massive fortune 500 company and they do you know first year

you don’t really do anything right other they’re gonna trade you know programs and courses but if you were you know if

you’re a freelancer if you’re a small business owner you can’t afford told study for three weeks to use a piece of software you can be able to figure it

out in like 20 30 minutes and start using it immediately and getting value out of it so we wanted it to be simple

we wanted it to be communication focused as I said sales to me is nothing else than result driven communication so we

said well you know what is the main thing that’s happening in selling people communicate to try to get to an end result or conversion right so we build

in calling out of the box so you can make and receive calls within the software everything is automatically tracked you can send emails and receive

emails and write automated follow-up email sequences and all that stuff so we

built a bunch of tools that just help you be more productive communicate more and better and ultimately close more deals as an end result I think that you

know if you get a few years about selling you’re doing it not just like

once a year once in a while whenever it has to happen but you really have a systematic approach it you you go okay

but this is the amount of you clients I need every month is the amount of activity amount of prospecting the amount of work I’m gonna probably have

to do a mount of meetings have to book to get to this number of new clients at

that point you know choosing a CRM system is probably gonna become inevitable sooner or later and and in in

that there is thousands of options you just try to build the best option for

small businesses for small business owners a product that really helps you with the closing of deals versus helping

a hundred thousand person company with tracking reporting and forecast like

that’s a different different problem to solve for a different type of company but that’s what we do that’s where we

would be helpful so that’s close dot IO everybody I recommend that you go and have a have a

look at that because you know one thing I found is that and it’s Telly’s alluded

to as well is that you especially if you were small business or your freelancer you

you have to so many things that you have to think about during your working day

so you’ve got to find some way of doing things in a logical way and doing things

in a system that can be replicated and closed IO enabled you to do that one

thing actually study that you mentioned quite a lot on your videos is and one thing I never used to do probably as

much as I do now is the follow up is following up right yeah and I’ve learnt

you know over the past you know two years actually couple years two or three years that it can give you some you know

it can give you so much in terms of your results it can improve your results so much more what I used to do for example

whether I was I don’t know pitching for a freelance gig or even you

know a job before I started to do freelancing I never used to actually follow up I would send out an email with

a CV or send out an email or make a phone call and then I might get that

rejection or that sense of actually no they don’t want it or they’re trying to bat me off and I wouldn’t follow up but

when I started to follow up I found that people would open up lot a lot more they

would see that you’re serious right and for me that’s something again go over to

sell his channel you learn a lot about that the importance of the follow-up and are there any elements of sales as well

steli any other sort of other than the follow-up key things that you see as

being sort of I don’t know really important for success yeah so first of

all let’s just share a little bit of like behind the scenes with the audience this interview wouldn’t have happened if

you didn’t follow up as much as you did it all right simple as that so the follow up and I

have an e-book that anybody that listens to this it was so and more can get for free it’s a follow up formula you just

email me steli eight clothes that I own I’ll send you a free copy but the beauty

about the follow-up is that it’s one of those areas that nobody competes with you so if you do it you’re going

Winn and it’s really nine out of ten times it’s not it’s not even just that some people will realize that you really

you really mean it and you’re honest and you really care but it is that it’s just

timing you know you could do that you can say the right thing at the wrong time and you’re not gonna get my attention right because I’m just I’m

distracted I’m busy with something else so the follow up gives a person you’re

trying to reach the chance to hear your message at the right time and then either reject it or not know is good yes

it’s better obviously but maybe is where everything that goes to diets when you send out an email you never hear back it

you don’t really know what happened right so I like to follow up and follow through until I get to a result I think

there’s just three steps to selling and selling is really not complicated tactically it is difficult emotionally

right it’s a difficult and that’s the beauty of it as well it is a you know

sales is kind of a full-contact sport in the sense that you live to show up you have to show up every single day the

score goes back to zero and you have to perform again and it doesn’t mean doesn’t matter how great your last month

was it doesn’t matter how terrible your morning is doesn’t matter how you feel

you have to show up and perform right think about an athlete you know it

doesn’t matter how successful that athlete is doesn’t matter what’s going on in their life when the game is on it’s the score show zero zero there’s a

whole team of people that want to crush to you right and Dom it and you have to

perform in that moment and it doesn’t matter if you’ve been a champion for five years it doesn’t matter if you had

a huge fight this morning doesn’t matter if you’re sick it doesn’t matter if you have a life crisis and you’re depressed you’re on the game it’s zero zero you

paid a lot of money you perform right now that’s the difficulty is that mental side of it we get to perform every

single time no matter how you feel about it and think that that’s really the emotional difficult part of selling but

the tactical part there’s really three steps and an oversimplified way you have to show up you have to follow up and

follow through and you have to go for the close right that’s really it showing up is the easy part right easy in the

sense that it’s the most crowded part and showing up just means making it to start a human connection to

then turn it into a conversation and a conversion right so showing up could mean sending an email making a phone

call tweeting at somebody going to an event shaking somebody’s hand saying hi like it’s making that first step to start a

connection in a relationship dad you’ll have to do right every single day and that’s what you could call

prospecting right you you create new early relationships that you might turn into business sooner or later the second

part is the follow up and follow through that’s the hard part it’s where nobody competes with you yeah right because everybody just shows up

and has the short-term view where they think I showed up I shaked hands I talked and if the deal doesn’t happen

right now then you know I don’t have any energy more for this that usually right

versus the used to be me as well at some point right versus the people that learned that you have to be persistent

and consistent and follow up and follow through and check in and check in and check in and do anything necessary

champion the relationship until it gets to a result yes or no that’s a second

that that’s the second part right and that’s the sales part for most of it and the third part is going for the close

and that’s creating those moments of truth asking for the money people ask me all the time selling what is your closing your best closing tactics tax

what are some magical things I can say that it will make everybody give me all their money I don’t have anything right

I come on my closing all my wisdom around closing is very simple do it often do it early right don’t think of

it as this once-in-a-lifetime event where people don’t ask for money that’s

the biggest mistake I see is people don’t go for the clothes they don’t ask hey we really need to get it do you have

your money your credit card handy let’s do this right they don’t ask why don’t they ask Alex because they don’t want to

hear yeah the answer exactly because you know seven out of ten times the answer

is no yes so so they don’t want to hear that no and so they don’t ask for the

course they just you know those presentations those meetings they all end in something like super big Lluis

well the she’s really great I’m gonna send you more information and whenever you’re ready you just let us know what the [ __ ]

is this right we spend an hour together I am convinced now that you should be in

business with me I can truly help you from a friendly place once I’m convinced

that can help you once I truly understand you and I know you know that this is gonna be a good fit I’m not asking I’m telling right I’m the expert

now I’m coming from a point of strength I’m gonna tell you you’re bi you’re buying this amount of quantity in this time period and here’s what we’re doing

this I’m not even this is not a debate right and if people say no which they do

most of the time for some I ask for money they’ll say no to me that’s

exciting I learned to go whoo right ha that is

surprising what did I miss oh are you ready to buy No then most people will

deflate and go home at work right instead of doing that I go ooh now we’re

creating a moment of truth right and I’ll and I’ll tell them that’s amazing I obviously missed something it seemed

like we have everything figured out to be ready to be in business you tell me that’s not true so I missed something what am I missing

what do we need to figure out to get in business what’s missing for you to say yes

to me that’s a beautiful moment now we can talk real talk we can talk about the

difficult things the challenging things the problems all the things I need to know about to be able to address and get

you to become a customer I can’t get you to be a customer if all I allow you to talk about other nice things although

you are thinking about some bad things as well as some problematic or challenges or objections I need you to get everything out of your system I need

honesty to understand what’s going on and to understand how to make this happen so asking somebody for money and

then getting no is normal mm-hmm and no is really the beginning of an education and a truthfulness in the conversation

where you can figure out okay what are the obstacles to this deal what are the problems to this and can we address them

or not right and so I think people don’t like to ask for money ask for the deal

because they’re afraid to hear no because I think once they hear no it done and over with so they never go for

it if you ask for the for the money and expect and you know expect the yes but

embrace the know right when somebody tells you no you don’t go oh my god everything is terrible you go oooh an opportunity to learn an opportunity to

create a more truthful relationship an opportunity to uncover what needs work to make this deal happen if you go about

it this attitude you don’t need slick language you do need to notic you know

patterns to you know you don’t eat some kind of all you say this and that ok yes

dream you just get them to say yes a hundred times it may be I’ll surely say yes some magic spell taking your money

yeah you don’t need any of that rhetoric [ __ ] right you just need confidence you know confidence and you need to be

honest and really want the best for them and believe you know what’s best for them and then you’re gonna be fine

and you said up the magic work well the magic word actually there’s lots of

things in there actually because there’s so many things that probably going through people’s minds when they’re on that phone to that sales prospect or I

don’t know in some sort of sales situation there are emotions going on

right and there’s a sense of probably even fear as well you mentioned confidence I think this is why that the

whole aspect of sales and confidence have to go hand in hand right so that’s

why I was saying to you that aspect of nature-nurture at the beginning how do you actually how can you nurture that

that confidence if it doesn’t come naturally to you I mean I don’t know is

the honest response but here’s some things that that I myself I have seen

work for some people I think that I mean you have to you have to sell yourself

first before you sell anybody else hmm right so this means in this case you

have to start selling yourself every day on why you’re great on why you are gonna

be good for your customers especially you know I find that people that lack confidence usually have a little bit too

much self-awareness and a little bit too self-critical if you are very self-aware and if you’re

very self-critical chances are you gonna be good to those customers right you’re gonna be honest to them you’re gonna try

your hardest for them those are the the people that like confidence are never the evil the evil people pleasure enough

of the people that are the scariest right they’re gonna steal money those people who like confidence the people

that have confidence are the nice people right so if you’re nice you need to start and if you like confidence you

need to start selling yourself and this could be as soon as it is maybe you have to you know write down the hundred

reasons or the ten reasons every day why why customers should buy from you why this should be glad to be in business

with you maybe you have to record it and listen to it maybe you have to tell it in front of a mirror I don’t know what

works for you right maybe you have to just find a good friend and have that person tell you this every day whoa Bob but you have to start selling

yourself brainwashing yourself with a different story right the reason why you lack confidence is that you keep telling

yourself then you’re not good you have not accomplished this you don’t know this they’re not gonna like you you’re

telling yourself all these negative things again and again and again and again and then obviously now it’s gotten

you to a point where you believe this [ __ ] right so what is the antidote to that is to start telling yourself a

different story and you might go well I think it’s silly to sit there and tell myself I’m great well you didn’t feel

it’s silly to sit there and tell you something shitty and you’re terrible you’re doing that all day long it’s so

effortlessly you don’t even think about it right but do say nice things about yourself that seems awkward and weird

and and feels kind of like yeah it just feels like just dumb well it feels

different because if you want to feel confident you’re gonna have to do something that feels I’m fully

indifferent and there’s what you’ve done up to this point is has not built a confidence so I would say come up with

all the reasons why you’re great why people will benefit from being your customers and then tell that story to

yourself again and again and again find some customers and help them tell that story to you ask your customers why do

you like being in business with me if you had to give me a reference what would it be and then read those every

morning every night here’s the quotes of my customers why they’re telling that working with me has been incredible for

them and then get yourself to a point where you yeah [ __ ] I am great I am good

to these people these people can be grateful for being in business with me I’ll never lie I never steal and work my

butt off and I’m gonna create a lot of value and help them and you know whatever it is for some people in sports its music whatever do things that make

you feel good remind yourself of why you’re great and start telling yourself this different

story and then you’ll see more more proof of that because with that kind of energy and attitude people will respond

better to you will say yes more often and then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and a new kind of loop that

starts playing automatic in your head that’s great that’s great and I well for

me that’s again that’s something that I got from from your videos on your own on

YouTube is is that you know telling yourself that you’re you’re great not

just well and as well as that listening to people as well I suppose because it you know so what I found is Clive

interviewed quite a number of people myself when when I’ve been hiring for example is that people perhaps I don’t

know they begin to compare themselves to other people in terms of their you know they use other people as their barometer

when they should be their own sort of barometer and I think that advice is

great is just looking within and seeing what’s good about yourself so that’s that’s great study thank you and I know

as well crows dot IO is either a you’ve a remote

business right you you do everything remotely was that a deliberate a

deliberate sort of step for you or something that was was accidental it was

a little bit of both so when we started the company we were what we called semi

remote in the sense that we had we were a small team of six people office but

all of us are heavy travelers right so what would happen at actualities that

maybe once one month out of the quarter everybody was travelling and working remotely one month out of the quarter

would all be some of us would be in the office some of us would be traveling and being somewhere else and then once a quarter

we would all travel together do a retreat you know for a week or two work from a different place together so there was always the sense that the office is

a place we can go to work and and can work together at but it’s not where it’s

not the only place where work happens right and people are gonna be in different time zones and traveling and then once we started and hiring we just

organically look for the best people and people that were that we had known for many years and we’re not living in the

Bay Area so all of a sudden now with a few people in an office and a bunch of people that are remote and it’s kind of

this kind of middle ground and I think at that point we started realizing you know what we need to go all-in on one or

the other we don’t really want to have this to class society where the founding team and all the managers are in this

office and everybody else is remote yeah and since we’re traveling so much and since a lot of us a lot of the six

people that were originally in the Bay Area office wanted to move away from the barrier anyways we decided to go all in

on remote and being a fully distributed team and and that’s really what happening and today we are a little over

30 people in 11 different countries and the original six people that were in the Bay Area there’s not a single person

that this is the bear here anyone out of that the team right and and we wouldn’t have been able to retain some of these

people some of the most important people that were part of the founding team wanted to move back to their families

and build a new family and wanted to move in a different plate and if we said it’s only the Bay Area or nothing we

would have lost some of the most important people in the company so we love being a remote team and what what

kind of roles typically do you do you hire for usually I mean we hired through

throughout the band I would say the biggest part of our team is the product team for sure so we hire developers

designers product managers all that you know engineers basically that’s a very big part of the team but then you know

the the the other part is from marketing to sales to success to support you know

we hire throughout the baingan all on all roles and right now actually cold

left that we’re hiring for tons of positions we have lots of big plans in 2019 so

pure remote if you’re looking for a cool company to work with check us out in case you missed that cuz we had a bit of

a break up there it was closed dot IO four slash jobs so those are forward

slash jobs and my final question to you steli cuz you’ve given you’ve been so

generous with your time again as as ever is if somebody is looking to to come and

work for you at at closed io io what could be the I suppose the the

biggest thing that they could do to impress you it’s a good and a bad

question because I really don’t want people to impress me right I don’t want people to do crazy I don’t want people

to do all kinds of things I really in our case I think the best thing you could do is to take a little bit of time

to truly understand the company the culture what we’re looking for and ask

yourself am I truly the right person for this right am I really the right person for this and can I really create value

in this company because we’re hiring many of the people that we’re hiring our very senior people right our team is not

a team that hires a lot or like super young early in their professional career and then nurtures and trains and we’re

hiring people that are really already quite far in their career and a very very experienced and what they do you

and so if you think that you’re a good fit and you have a track record and you think that you’re cultural fit you just

communicate that right communicate to us why why you’re interested in us and why you think we should be interested in you

and do that in a specific way as possible versus being as generic as possible right oh I love companies that

do innovative things and you are obviously innovative and I am a hard

worker and you surely are looking for a hard worker that’s meaningless to me right that doesn’t mean anything just wasted my time so be specific why asked

and why he right and if you show a level of understanding on these two parts then

we’re interested but I would avoid a lot of people they’ll try to do all kinds of crazy stunts to impress me and

I appreciate the effort that I I get it and I was that person when I was in my

twenties right but but that really convinced me because that is to me

that’s a lot of like smoke and mirrors that’s clearly impressive for the moment but I’m gonna try to get rid of all that and be like who are you yeah and why do

you want to be here and does this really is this a good fit right now and if I can’t answer these questions with yes it

doesn’t matter how awesome your stunt was it’s not gonna really impress me steli you know I’ve got so many more

questions that that I could ask you but like I said I don’t take too much of your time you it’s been great it’s been

absolutely wonderful speaking to you glad to have you on here as I said

everybody anybody listening whether you’re looking at getting your next CRM you need to go to close I owe or if

you’re looking to get your next opportunity in 2019 and beyond it closed the i/o for its last jobs so

steli once again thanks again and all the best would close the i/o thank you

so much Elliot thanks for having me this was fun thanks telly bye-bye see you