The Iterative Path to Sales Excellence

Matthew: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Introverts Edge podcast. I have to admit, I’m ecstatic to welcome my next guest because David Fastuca is, well, he’s an introverted sales guy just like me, and we agree on so many things. So I, I have to tell you, I mean, it’s going to feel a little bit like he talking to me, but he’s going to say it in a different way and he’s going to say it and probably a more authentic Australian accent than me, because I’ve been away from home for very, very long time.

So I will tell you, I’m really looking forward to him helping you understand sales in a different way. But also he’s look, he’s been the CEO of Growth Forum. He’s also the host of an amazing podcast called the How to Sell Podcast. Now he has also successfully had his business acquired. And you know, he was the founder of that or a co-founder of that, I should say, which is called Locomote.

And I have to admit, for a for anybody that has an organization that manages the cost of travel for everybody, it is a business. You should absolutely check it out. But you know, he founded that, got it through the acquisition, which so few small business owners ever get the chance to brag about. So I I’m really glad to have you with us, mate.

Thanks for joining.

David: It’s a long time coming and it’s a pleasure to be here, Matt.

Matthew: Is it. It is, isn’t it, though, and I, I have to admit, I, you know, now, no one’s going to understand what I’m saying or what you’re saying because there’s two Australians on the podcast. But we’ll do our best, right? I’ve got to. I have to practice. Funnily enough, when I have an Australian on the podcast not to go into a full blown Australian accent, what would I do it?

Because all of a sudden my straight my Australian accent comes back. Well, might I want you to kind of really share your original story, though, because the more and more I know about you and the I mean, we’ve, you know, we’ve known each other gosh, years now and the more I know about you, the harder it is to believe that you’re you’re an introvert, right?

And I feel especially if people go to your website, check out some of your videos, they’re gonna go, wow, this guy’s so articulate. He just he just knows how to talk, and they’re going to project extroversion upon you. So what I really want to do is I want to take a step back. And I don’t know if you want to tell us about your your humble upbringing or your introverted self where you discovered, you were introverted, but whatever feels right for you, I’d love for you to share it with our audience.

The Networking Pain Points that Led to A Big Discovery

David: Yeah, and I love to. Look, I didn’t truly understand that I was an introvert. So I think the first time I heard you speak and talk about it in, in that world. Right. So but if I bring it back to when I was younger, I, I’m a, I’m a designer by trade, I love design, I used to love drawing.

Still love it. Now, push it on to my kids. It’s a bit of a pastime and a bit of a stress relief, but back then, I wanted to be a graphic designer. I wanted to be creative director of my own business. And the only way I thought I was going to be able to get work was to, you know, to push myself onto, onto others to say, hey, use me so it initially started with, selling to friends and family, and I just started to I didn’t really think of it as selling.

It was something where I loved what I, what I did at the time, and I wanted to do it to earn a living and share it with others. So it’s sort of the selling part sort of came natural. And I guess the introversion and where understood that to be, I’m an introvert was then when I used to go to events and you have all these small micro conversations with people, and then after the event, I felt like I played a game of soccer.

I was just I was wrecked, I was tired, and I always thought like, why am I so tired? Like, I didn’t drink, I was just talking. I was talking about things I enjoy, but I just felt really drained. And then when, you know, you came down and spoke at an event and that all was that, it’s only then that the light bulb switched on and I start to click.

Okay, maybe I’m an introvert and it does take effort for me to put myself out there.

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s an important story sharing. And by the way, I this is the first time you’ve told me that I’m the first person that helped you realize you’re an you’re an introvert. And, and you could put a word to that. So thank you for sharing that. I’m honored to hear that. And well, actually, one of my, one of my missions in life is to help more people that have succeeded in sales out themselves as introverts publicly because I think what happens is people know that they can’t succeed because they’re introverted in sales.

And then once they succeed, they didn’t stop calling themselves an introvert. Well, they’ll say, oh, I was an introvert, but don’t worry, I’m an extrovert now. Like, you like it like, firstly, you can’t change who you are. But then secondly, there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert. Like you said, we’re just tired afterwards. What I am interested in though, is your big on systems, same as me and you.

And you know, I always tell people I don’t care if it’s my system. Just know that you need a system and not every system works for every person. So it’s so important that everybody finds a system that they they’re comfortable with. What I’m interested in for you, did you automatically discover system like did you pick up a book and just go, oh my gosh, that’s a system.

And I’m going to I’m going to run with it. Well, did you find that later? And what happened to your energy levels as you went from a kind of weird process to kind of a more regimented process that kind of told you failed to follow the bouncing ball if you like?

Why An Iterative Process is Key to Sales Performance

David: Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t think there hasn’t been one thing that I’ve picked up and it’s been gold. I think it’s been a journey either, you know, 20 years and iteration of the iteration to find out what works for me. You know, everyone that is out there, you know, pushing or preaching what works for them and that, you know, to give it a shot, which is great.

I’m heavy on tech and tools, so I tried to I just gravitated towards I’m just going to have everything on my, on my laptop be really systemize automated, all that sort of jazz. But I missed the art of having a pen or pencil in my hand and writing out my day and crossing out to dos. So then I combine the two together, and I’ve got like a note on my iPad with the pencil and I can draw.

And that’s how I run my day. That’s how I plan for the next day. And I created my own sheet on there. So it’s got like the seven, the seven days of the week. It’s got my to dos, my habits on there. But that one document itself has had about 60 iterations to it because I’m like this work last week, I want to fucking change it and make it a little bit better this week.

So it’s all these little 1% optimizations that I’ve done over time that have got me into a situation where I think I found my groove, and it’s going to change as my body changes as my kids grow older. All those sort of life things come into play. I’m trying to adapt rather than force things.

Optimize Your Sales Process One Change At A Time

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, I will say, and actually, no one on this podcast knows it’s today is a day for first timers. I actually I got hit in the head with a glass in Australia, and I got 26 stitches across the side of my face, and I used to sell on looking like a good guy, right?

I mean, yes, I my face was full of acne, but I looked trustworthy and the next thing I knew, I looked like I just got out of a bar fight. And well, of course I didn’t just get out of a bar fight. It’s pretty. You don’t have time to really explain that and therefore I had to. That’s actually how I discovered the power of story to lean into story, because I had to develop trust and rapport in a different way outside, just assuming that they would warm to me.

So it’s funny how your body changes, your environment changes, and it needs to adapt. But what I think was really interesting about what you said, that you kept talking about 1% changes, and a lot of people keep talking about the silver bullets. And, you know, you use this tactic and everything, you know, just automatically becomes better. And I’m forever telling people to stop trying to change multiple things at once throughout the sales cycle.

So the sale will blow up. And I know you talk heavily about creating a culture of learning and continuous improvement inside an organization. Is there too much improvement? Too little improvement? Like what is the mix in your mind of that culture of improvement, whether you’re you’re a single sales person or an organization as you as you try to iterate.

High-Performing Sales Teams Are Always Learning

David: Yeah. Great ones. I like to think about it’s whether you’re selling a service or you’re in a service industry to treat it like a piece of software. Right. And what I mean by that is that and anyone in technology, you understand, is that software is never done. So if you’ve got an engineering team and you’re developing an app you never fully complete, you’re always making changes to it.

New updates are coming in, you know, to Apple and Google, and you need to make updates to it. But to stay ahead of the game, the same is true. You know, in my industry of sales and marketing, new, laws come into place. So, you know, mass emailing, you can’t do no more or can’t do it. Well, changes to email spam, all these different things, occurring.

And they’re happening a lot faster now, especially with the introduction, with AI, the whole content generation game. Now everyone can create content. So I like to think about that. You need to be a forever learner. You need to constantly iterate on yourself and learn what’s working, what’s not working to stay ahead of the game. Because if you don’t and you might not pick up a book, read or get a coaching lesson for a quarter, you know, throughout the year and you find yourself, you slowly start to fall behind.

You’re not making the sales that you thought you were. You should be doing or that you did last quarter. That’s because the market is shifting and moving faster than I’ve ever seen before. So that’s where you always need to just at least be ahead of the game or know where the game is going. So you can be prepared and you’re not always playing catch up.

And what happens when you’re playing catch up is that you’re always stressed and when you’re stressed, you start to look for the silver bullets, right? And then you’re playing that rat race. We try to apply a system where you never looking for the silver bullet sales strategies. If one comes across great, you can leverage that for a certain period of time.

But the system is evergreen, meaning that it will last forever. And you make slight iterations to that. So it makes your life a lot more stress free, gives you more time back, and it just allows you to enjoy what you do more.

Matthew: Yeah, I, you know, there there’s so much I can unpack there. I really want to get into mindset in a minute, but I, I love the concept of iteration. And it’s funny enough, my one of my best salespeople back in my first job, in total sales, selling telecommunications, my best salesperson was a software developer that decided that he was going to come into sales, knew he couldn’t sell super introvert.

He just wanted to give it a shot. And he applied that same iteration mindset. And you just killed him when it came to sales, and it really was not getting stuck on the system. Sorry, not getting stuck on each individual sale, but focusing on the system and the iteration of that system. And that’s, you know, I that was really what I focused on as well.

We saw eye to eye on that 100%. And I do feel, though, that so many people, when they’re thinking about this iteration approach, especially introverts. And actually I want to I want to ask you this because I’m wondering if it’s the same for you. So I find that a lot of introverts tend to experience like they go out networking, something doesn’t go right, or they go out and they sell and something doesn’t go right.

And that night they ruminate about it in a, in a in probably a negative way. They’re constantly ruminating on, oh, I should have said that, or I should have done that thing and oh, I wish I did that differently, but I don’t want in a positive way of, oh, I will do that differently next time. And they focus on the whole thing.

And because of that, it’s almost like they catastrophize the situation where what I do is I tend to look at the entire sale and say, what is that one opportunity for improvement? Or what could I do slightly different next time in this situation to get a better result? But I treat it like a learning opportunity. And because of that, for me, my rumination brain, I actually put in a positive way for continuous improvement.

I’m interested to see whether you do the same, because it sounds it sounds like it’s exactly what you’re doing.

Don’t Make this Common Sales Mistake

David: Yeah. Look, it’s funny, you. So myself and my co-founder Luigi, we do a bit of a weekend retrospective. Again, another sort of technical term, but basically just means looking back on the week and what can what happened? What could you have done better and what went well. So, for example, we found that whenever we don’t follow our system, if we’re selling to a friend’s business, for example, which happened not too long ago, we’ll like, yeah, he or she knows us really well.

This is going to be an easy sale, so we’ll skip a couple of steps and get straight to a proposal and go, here we go. Bang! Lost the deal and we like, never, ever diverge from our process. It doesn’t matter who these if it’s your mum that uncle who doesn’t matter follow the process because it works. So and then we use those conversations that we usually have on a Friday, end of the week and we’re like, oh cool.

What improvements are we going to make? You know, if no shows to calls are starting to increase? Let’s put a step in the, you know, in our automation process to send them an additional reminder or to send out an SMS if they’re not looking at their email, little, little tweaks like that to improve the steps. And then we review the following week.

So yeah, it’s always what didn’t work. Let’s use it as a chance to become better for the next week and make those constant iterations. And then before you know it, you know, a quarter goes past six months, a year and you’ve made a ton of improvements that your business or your personal process and system is on another level.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s great. I mean, I remember this quote, actually, I think I have it as one of those posts that I share on occasion. And it’s like little by little, a little becomes a lot. And I think people are looking to create the lot, but they spend their life getting that, trying to get that big win, and it just never comes because they’re not learning the micro steps.

And I, I think for, for someone like you, if sales all fell apart or if you, your product fell apart and you had to go and sell something else, you’ve now done enough micro steps that it would look like you just did that one quick win. But people don’t understand the little steps and iterative approach that that come to that to make someone evolve into a successful sales leader. What I’m interested in though, is we were talking about this a little bit offline about you tended to gravitate to system and process and so did I.

And we were talking about kind of introverts versus extroverts when it comes to following a structured system. And funnily enough, I, you know, I was on, Jeffrey Gitomer’s podcast. He’s a big extrovert and he’s like, I could just, you know, I until I started learning system, I could, you know, I was good at sales.

I just couldn’t teach others. And I’m, I’m interested in your experience because everyone thinks these extroverts have this massive advantage because they can just wing things. What is your thoughts on how do extroverts have an advantage or disadvantage? How do they struggle or thrive with a sales process or a framework?

Continuous Improvement is Specific to Who You Are

David: I think look, there’s pros and cons to, to either. Right. An extrovert can do more of those get out there face to face sort of stuff. Stand up on stage and it it enjoys them rather than drain them. On the same coin too. They could be too, you know, too eager and could potentially push a deal to too hard and lose a deal versus an introvert.

Now, these are just assumptions, right? But they each have their own superpower to optimize sales and they’re each have their own Kryptonite. I guess it’s best to as quickly as you can, discover what’s yours. What’s your superpower? What’s your Kryptonite? And then work on them just because you got a superpower doesn’t mean you can be lazy on a work on.

If you’re a number one salesperson in the business right now, you know, internally you’re the hunted, so you want to stay at the top of the game. So what are you doing to stay there? You know, you could say that they Kryptonite would be complacency. And on the reverse, you know, it’s a lot of people say to focus on your powers and delegate what you’re not good at.

I like to understand what I’m not good at, you know, become dangerous. I don’t have to master it. But understand where if I need to dive into it and pick it up, that I know enough where I can make an impact. I don’t need to be great at it, but I need to. I need I want to know enough on my weak points that I can still be dangerous and still implement things if I need to.

Sales Excellence and Relationship Building

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. Right? I guess one of the things that I’d be interested in hearing is your thoughts around relationship development when it comes to optimize the sales process. Because I think that if anything, and I know that you you’re very focused on best ways to create relationship and long term, not just short term relationships. And there are a lot of studies that talk about, you know, introversion and that your ability to foster a long term relationship.

But it all starts with that initial piece, that very beginning piece of relationship for those sales representative introverts that are listening, that feel like relationship development and say in networking events, sales activities, it’s just not their thing. What advice would you give them to start to repair that, and how would you suggest they go about it?

David: Yeah, look, one thing that I’ve found that works well for me for effective sales is that, like, I love the whole virtual meetings side of things, right? Like, you know, you’re on the other side of the world. I’m here, we’re having a chat. You know, we’re effectively quote unquote networking. It’s a lot less impact versus me having to hop in my car, drive to an event and have that whole anticipation of, you know, potential anxiety going off on a car park.

Well, because all these things that, you know, you subconsciously you’re not thinking about that can push you to not going said some of the things that I like to do is I like to reach out and connect with people on LinkedIn and not just connect. For connect, I actually try to build a connection on reaching up, hey, you’re a founder, I’m a founder.

We’re going to have the same sort of headaches problems. Let’s connect. And then if I can see that, Sally’s posted that she’s having, you know, an issue or done something great, connect with send congratulations and then build that sort of, relationship over time. Then you know, what happens through, you know, just through nature of them getting to know you.

And if they have a problem that you can solve, great. They’ll reach out to you. It’s a warm meeting that you have, and it’s an easy to deal, potentially an easy deal to close. But I start to build an audience that way by actually caring. And it’s not fight care. Look, I’ve got people that I chat to on LinkedIn who I’ve met, who are local to my area, but I haven’t seen for a year.

But they frequently comment on my post. One of them just sent me a DM and said, Hey Dave, watch this YouTube video. You’ll love it. You know, it’s that’s the connection that that we build. And that to me feels very when I say lightweight, that it doesn’t take, an emotional toll, doesn’t take a, a toll on me so much. It can also be a great way to generally gather feedback on your product or service, or customer journey decision-making, your sales funnel, customer needs, your sales pitch, and so on.

And I can do this en masse, and I can do it asynchronously. Meaning that, you know, if I’m too tired right now, I don’t have to reply. I’ll reply when I’ve, you know, got something notable to say or some don’t provide. And when I’ve got, you know, more, more flow and more energy in, in a better state of mind so that I’m in more control.

Sales Process Optimization through Mindset

Matthew: Okay. I think one of the things I keep hearing with you, it seems like you’ve created a whole bunch of best practices, governing rule sets for sales enablement that you tend to live by and give you competitive edge. And because every time I ask you a question, it’s like, oh, I find this and I tend to do this or I do, I leave that to later so I can do it when I’ve got more control.

It seems like for you mindset control freak. Well that’s okay. A lot of introverts, a lot of introverts can be. And because, I mean, I know for myself I follow systems and process and b and a lot of times I try and bring things into my process because that creates comfortability for me. But there’s also like to create those process and create those governing rules for me and for team members and new sales professionals who work for me.

There is a lot of mindset factors around that because you didn’t say, oh, I just don’t do that or it doesn’t work for me, or I can’t handle that sales cycle length or I can’t make a successful deal. And what I find is a lot of introverts, even with tons in their sales pipeline, we can get in our way when it comes to growth and our own way when it comes to sales and networking. So I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on some of the mindset junk that you’ve had to help people get out of where they are in their own way, and potentially bad habits that are also in their way of getting to the success they deserve.

David: You know, look, the one thing I hate and it’s a pet peeve, whether it’s I say it’s like I found of my wife or my kids, it’s when they say, I can’t do this. Well, what do you mean? You can’t? Like, have you tried it? You know, have you done anything to like, why are you putting this barrier up so quickly before even giving it a go?

If you give it a go and you struggle, right? Okay, fine. What can we do to work towards improving that? So you know, the I can’t can be I can’t or I tried and I need to work on X. So that that that mindset of instantly saying that I cannot do something because of false belief really pisses me off.

And I’ve done it myself as well, believing that I can’t do x, y, Z or I don’t have. Why should I write on LinkedIn? My story is nothing special. It’s like, well, maybe in someone else’s eyes it is, and maybe it’s going to help them and spur them on to take action. So, you know, mindset is such a big thing.

It’s the thing. It’s the number one. It’s the first pillar that we teach you now. Sales always programing go phone. It’s having the right mindset and that you’re not always going to be top of your game every day. That’s impossible, but it’s all about trying to be as consistent as you can by getting yourself and setting up your environment, in the right way.

That can set you up to win. And doing that many times over, versus not, is what we see separates people who smash their goals. They versus people that don’t.

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. And funnily enough, you know, I do the exact same thing I tell people all the time, oh, I can’t do this. And I’m like, when did you decide that? And what evidence do you have to support that? Oh, I’ve got none. Well, I tell you this fictitious story about something that happened ten years ago.

It has nothing to do with this thing. And so I’m always forever saying to people, like, too often we say we can’t do it before we actually dedicate enough time to really find out, like, how could you possibly know? And so it’s it’s funny, I thought we were lions and things before now. I mean, this is just, just proves there’s just another echelon of things we agree on.

But I do agree with you in regards to mindset being the first pillar. I, you know, my my books have both come with video implementation trainings because okay, you learn the strategies but if you don’t take action, what’s the point. And in the first pillars in both of the books video implementation trainings, it’s mindset. Because if you don’t get out of your own way, you don’t move forward.

And if you don’t know the patterns worth again, you don’t move forward. And so it’s so vitally important, especially if you’re a salesperson and you’re trying to crush quota. Which brings me a really, I guess for those people that maybe they get into that. I mean, let’s face it, we all is. A lot of sales people live one quarter at a time and they may be a little bit behind at the moment.

If they’re listening to this podcast, if you had to think of the three things that you would get people to focus their attention on right now, if they’re running a little bit behind to get to crushing their quota, what three things would you recommend they focus on? I think can be skill sets, mindset. Whatever you think is the best things that they should put their attention to.

To Crush Your Sales Metrics, Do This

David: Okay, so I’m a real practical type of guy, so I’ll make this as applicable as possible. First you need to really understand is who are you selling to really understand them. Right. They are this person in this industry. These are the problems they have. This is what keeps them up at night. Then I would build a if I need to do this, you know, right now to make up to fill up my pipeline, I’ll be looking at my top sort of 2030 prospects that I want to go after, researched the hell out of them, understand what insight that I could bring to them that they don’t have or can’t see at the moment.

And a bit of that will be in a little bit of assumptions as well. They’re taking the place. Then all would be emailing, calling, reaching out on social, hitting them in on every angle. So there’s every chance that they can see your message. Right. And that’s step one. Then I would follow up, I would follow up, follow up until they tell me no, go away or yes, sorry I missed your thousand emails.

Let’s jump on a call. And people think that they’re being annoying by doing that. But what people often forget or don’t understand is that most of us get 300 plus emails a day, add on notifications from all the apps you know that that were on now is over a thousand interactions and interruptions that are happening. So you’re one email that probably don’t even know.

They probably didn’t see it. So I remember like I’ll bring up a quick story. Back in my local my days, I was trying to sell to this university and we went on the tenderly. So I was like, how can I get us on that? I stayed at the table. I ended up calling, emailing and messaging, the head of procurement, over 27 times before she responded.

And I’ll, you know, you could have gone the way she’s always going to tell me. David, piss off, you’re annoying me. Or what happened when she was like, David, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so busy. I got your email. Let’s jump on a call. And you know the short, long version of that, we end up winning that tender, with that customer.

Not because of that persistence, but that persistence got me a seat at the table. So then our team can go in and showcase what was so great. But that if I gave up after touch .347 11, 18 that do want to come through and most people give up on the free touches. So understand who you’re buying to lead with insight.

Why should they speak to you and then persist until you get an answer? Either way would be my top three ways to build one pipeline.

Matthew: I think that’s great advice. It’s funny, I I discovered this thought experiment years ago. Well, it’s a physics experiment called Schrodinger’s Cat. And it’s I mean, it’s a terrible story, basically. And by the way, no cats get hurt in this story. They they put this the thought experiment is that they put a cyanide capsule in to a box with a cat, and it’s got a randomizer on it.

So the capsule can open at any point. And when the capsule opens, the cat’s dead. But at any but they don’t know when the capsule is going to open. And therefore the question is when the when the box is closed, you can’t say in is the cat alive or dead? You don’t know. So the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box.

Well, from a sales perspective, I always look at every sale like Schrodinger’s Cat. At the moment I’m sending the messages. I don’t know if the deal is alive or dead. I mean, like, I, I’ve had clients that apologized, just like you were saying, you know, I’m sorry I was in a hole, you know, my my, my my child was in hospital.

This weird thing happened, and I’ve just been distracted. But thank you so much for reaching out. I sometimes we’ll even reach out with empathy. I hope everything’s okay. And you? I’m always blown away the responses you get. I think that going back to the mindset concept, we as introverts often get in our own way by telling ourselves they’re not interested or telling ourselves that we’re getting in their way.

And just like you say, I don’t even think most introverts will get act reach out to people three times. So yeah, the seventh, the eight, the ninth. If the deal matters, as you said, the tender was worthwhile. If it’s a $20 deal, it doesn’t make sense. But if it’s a big deal and it’s worth while, you’re not distracting them.

You need to. You need to keep reaching out. So I think I think that’s great advice, David. You know that my pet peeve is people believing that introverts don’t have the edge when it comes to certain things, and people spend their life talking about how, as an introvert, they can’t do this or they can’t do that, and how everybody thinks that because you don’t have the gift of gab, you really like almost like a second class citizen, which I, you know, is just not true.

So I spent, you know, one of the things that I love to finish with every one of these interviews is helping change that psychology, because I believe that introverts have an edge in so many things. And I’m really interested in understanding what you think you’re introverts edge is.

David’s Introvert’s Edge

David: Yeah, that’s a great question. My one. And I don’t but could be an introvert edge. I believe it’s just my edge is that I’m willing to put in the work no matter what it takes, and putting the time and effort to hit my goals. Whether I need to work longer, if I need to work on the weekend, whatever it takes for me to get towards the goal though, want to achieve, I believe in my will that I won’t be outworked.

So I believe that’s my strong point where when people can become lazy because they’ve achieved X, Y, and Z, that can often slow down. I believe that’s a time to increase and work harder. That doesn’t mean I’m. I’m a crazy workaholic and I don’t spend time with my family. I know when to switch off, and I’m becoming better at that.

But when it’s work mode, it’s worth my that I’m on. So I try and create an environment where I can just nail what, what my targets are for, for today, what I need to get done. And I believe being an introvert has helped me because I’m not chasing a thousand coffee catch ups with a lot of time wasted in between that many extroverts would enjoy doing.

I believe there’s a there’s a time and place for that 100%, but being able to understand when the right time and to do that versus not has been sort of my age to get more done in a day.

Matthew: I think that’s great. I actually have a follow up question on that, because I find that a lot of people inherit their goals from their mother. Their father had a drunk roommate had in college. They just hear these things, they run after it. And even the ones that hit it, it’s tend to it’s demoralizing because the goal that they set themselves, they now have said that they’ve achieved it because they realize it’s not the pain really wasn’t worth again.

And having somebody like yourself who’s created an eight figure business and gone through an exit and, and had kind of worked really hard towards their goals for a long period of time. What I’m interested in is have you is it because for you, you’ve created or understand the importance of picking the right goals and therefore the paint worth the gain, or is it more of a internal?

If I set a goal, I’m going to stop at nothing to achieve it.

David: I don’t think I’ve actually spoken about this before, but one, it’s I want my there’s two sides or one I want my kids to see that, you know, if you work hard to put your mind to it, you can achieve anything. So I talk openly with them and they’re not at all like my, my daughter Chelsea, she’s 12, Leo’s eight, Stella six.

So I’m talking about them, what they do and what I’m trying to achieve. But on the on the flip side, so that’s one part that I want to show work ethic, to them and what it takes to, you know, to build a great life, for the family, both together with my wife. But on the other side is I’ve always grown up being told that I can’t do this.

When I was growing up and I wanted to be a designer, my stepdad wanted to be an accountant, and he’s like, you never. You’re not going to make a career out of design. And in my head, I was like, I’ll show you. So when someone says, you know, you can’t take on this industry when they first told my cousin my about the business travel side, okay, we’ll show you.

And now again, they’re like, you know, what are you and Luigi going to do in the South side? And we’re like, okay, watch, we’ll show you. So I like a bit of, anger. I like having an enemy, there. And the enemy might just be people assuming that we can’t do something, not meaning any sort of ill intent.

But I like to add a bit of fuel to it and to prove people wrong. So that’s part of part of, why I’m so driven.

Matthew: That’s great. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. You know, sometimes what drives people, it’s sometimes hard to articulate, but so important for other people to hear because everyone is motivated by different things and, you know, and drawn towards different things. So I’m really honored that you would share that, on the show with me today. Thank you for those people that have never heard of you before.

And you know, you are all the way on the other side of the world. David. So for those people that have never heard of you, I know that I’ve got a big, American, audience that, you know, I mean, firstly, they’re going to love your accent, but secondly, I’m sure they’ve loved what you’ve shared today. For those people that want to start to enter the world of David, what resource, what website, what social profile would you suggest they go to start their journey?

David: Yeah, I definitely recommend visiting growthforum.io and it’s got the link in the top there to our podcast How to Sell. You hear myself on Luigi give each other bit of crap, have a bit of fun and talk about what’s working in the world of sales. And then, check me out. I’m very active on LinkedIn. Reach out mentioned the podcast.

I’ll accept you straight away and we can have a chat.

Matthew: Terrific. Well, David, I so appreciate you for sharing that. And I would really recommend that people check out David’s work. I think you’ll get I he has a very authentic, and methodical way of selling which, you know, as introverts, I know that we all really resonate to. So I would definitely get you to check out and check out his content.

And, I know for a fact, the first time that I did a TV interview, somebody asked me, how my day, how my week was, and I said it was flat out and I came home and my wife said to me, what does that mean? And I had to translate it for her. So if anybody needs any help translating the Australian lingo, I’m more than apt, especially to this episode.

Feel free to post that in any in the comments of the podcast episode. And I we happy to give you a little Australian transliteration dictionary. But I have to say, the strange. We have the occasional saying there is really one of our own and, you know, one that I’m very, very proud of. I love Australian lingo, but I hope you enjoyed it in today’s show as well.

But for today, thank you so much for joining us and I hope you got value out of this episode. I know I did, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the introverted podcast cheers era.