Introduction
Some folks have very strong sales training and experience. They have had decades of experience in the field, selling everything from screws to software. Now they have moved into the “Silverback Gorilla” stage of their career, giving back to the community that had helped them so much.
Initially when we talked to them, hitting the street enrolling the hiring/working side of the Hefe platform didn’t motivate them as much as teaching a new generation “the art of selling.” This how and why we created the “Master Agent” level commission system. You might have seen it before in other parts of the materials we have covered. Now you’ll learn come of the tricks of these Master Agents we had worked with.
As a reminder in case you missed it.
Master Agents earn a small commission from Agents that enroll folks to hire and/or work the system. Master Agent themselves don’t sell directly.
The Side Hustle
Today we are going to learn more about two master agents, Joe of Nevada County, California and Steve of Copperopolis, California. Both of these guys have had a long career in sales, starting from the very bottom selling things like garage doors, screws, bailing wire before moving up into selling technology and expensive tech consultants. Both made six and seven figure salaries. Both trained and mentored many other sales people, but never made a dime off of the earnings of those folks they trained. It was in conversations with them that we fully formed the master agent model. Though the credit for lightbulb event goes to David who sold fleet vehicles. Hopefully soon, you’ll start to see more of David’s upcoming videos.
Joe’s Angle
What Joe had really learned how to do very well from his corporate job is sales training. Not just running the event and teaching people, but everything behind the scenes. From creating killer Power Point Slides, which he says he learned from me but honestly, he has taken it to a new level. To managing logistics, marketing, and so forth. He is a high demand individual in his Fortune 100 Tech Company’s sales arm. Despite the pay check, benefits and stock options…the job never set well with him. It was corporate, which means lame. Long periods of boredom, too many rules, too much management indecision and the list goes on and on. You probably know it yourself, or heard stories.
Joe’s goal is to buy a big ranch, but the price tag is awfully steep in California. Leasing land isn’t much better as he is learning from his current hobby operation for hundred heads of American Waguyi he is running. Plus he has a love for three gun, gun smithing and forging. None of these activities he has enough time for, as he is raising a family and working corporate. Only if he didn’t have to spend 10 hours a day in a job he hated, but they paid so well.
Obviously, Joe does not have the time to go door to door, business to business to sell Hefe services in his area. He can’t give up his day job because of the mortgage and family expenses. So, instead Joe has been training the younger generation in his area through his church and community. These young folks don’t have much opportunity in the area, they needed something. So one-by-one, he has been setting up young folks to learn, sell and work on Hefe. Sure many times they have a problem sticking to it, but for Joe, these are foundations for a bigger problem which we will showcase in the near future. Joe’s goal is to use the Master Agent system to build another revenue stream to replace the corporate job to allow him more time for the cattle business, his kids and his hobbies. Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing Joe featured on our platform in the near future. He does make an occasional appearance on our insiders Zoom call.
Steve’s Angle
The one thing you will notice about Steve is he looks like and has the smile of Tom Cruise. Good or bad, this has been his golden meal ticket to have built up a massive contact list of folks he has sold to, or taught to sell. While having his dream home on the lake, boats and all the toys he has ever wanted, he still made the long commute to Silicon Valley to work his VP job. After all, retirement is expensive when you have expensive tastes and expensive kids. Plus as he said, when you retire, you die. He was looking for something that keeps him in the mix.
Steve’s initial angle has been soft selling his contacts to use services off of Hefe to get stuff done at their own houses. More of a favor to us, than something for himself. Though he didn’t mind the “ammo money” it was generating for him. Like Joe, Steve also had similar sales training experience and has kicked off a mentoring program for the children of the folks he knows. Creating future sales folks by getting them experience in selling of value, NOT selling steak knives and time-shares like he did.
Steve’s biggest contribution to the platform has been the agent dashboard which he uses in everyone of his mentoring calls. He does weekly calls with the kids he mentors. The “Come to Jesus Call” as he calls it, where each person has certain goals they have to reach, they have a minute to say what they promised to deliver by this call, what they have actually delivered since that last call and what they are going to deliver by the next call. This could be number of sign-ups, revenue numbers, etc. Then the call focuses on learning one new skill and having the kids learn how to apply it.
His total investment of effort is about 30 min to onboard the kid to his program. And then one hour on Monday morning with all the kids in the program. The first 30 minutes is spent going through the “Come to Jesus Part” and the last 30 minutes is lessons. When I say “kids” I don’t literally mean kids, but young adults. He occasionally calls bullshit on the call using the dashboard, but not often as he says, because he just needs to instill just enough fear that he is watching, without actually watching. He does it from his Zoom account which he just switched over to the $14.99 a month version for more features.
Steve doesn’t need the money, but it is a nice bonus income stream. His reward is providing a future for these kids either through the Hefe platform and eventually a professional Fortune 500 job if they choose. Steve is awesome to talk to. Maybe we can get him to do a Podcast on the lake this summer.
David’s Angle
Now I said two, but I mentioned David earlier. We are work with David on his new, upcoming podcasts and videos. Exciting stuff as we learn the art of podcasting. David’s weapon is all the other automotive sales guys he has met over the decades of selling cars (David has sold me 2 cars thus far, with 2 more on the way). As you learn more about David, you’ll love his story as well. Coming to the states alone as an underaged youth, getting a job to survive, his first boss forcing him to go to school as a condition of employment. True rags to riches story.
Bigbox David
One more person we need to highlight as well, the other David which we refer as Bigbox David or BBD. Or as he describes himself as “The Guinea Pig” as he has been around the platform since the early days. BBD is an injured general contractor that can’t work anymore in his trade. So he has taken up a retail job at a Bigbox company to apply some of his knowledge and for the benefits, which aren’t great but better than nothing. Just like the pay.
Unlike Steve and Joe, BBD has no formal training or experience in sales or sales operations. He is a very smart guy and just wings it. He is slowly building up a network by helping folks he naturally befriends through his day job. BBD has not only onboard a ton of folks he gets commissions from, but many of them have become agents themselves, making BBD a Master Agent by default. Which at first he, due tot he design of our commissions dashboard, he was a bit confused where the extra money was coming from. Money from people he didn’t know. He thought it was mistake, a nice mistake. So now, in the dashboard, we now show your network.
Helpful Tips from the Guys
This is the part where I try to call out what I learned from them, things you can apply for your own community.
Think Scalable. Always think about how you can scale your time, which in non-tech speak is “work smarter, not harder”. Which means to make things more systematic and repeatable. For each of these folks, it means different things. For Joe, it meant certain presentation slide decks and other documents filled with links to videos and such. For Steve, it was following a more classic verbal approach that he started with earlier in his career, before the internet. With David, we are working with him and his son to develop to come up with a modern social media approach. Each of them is highly effective and unique. But they all have a common pattern. Repeatability. Same script, same content, with minor delivery differences to spice things up a little
Be authentic. Folks see straight through you if aren’t legit. Sure there is “Fake it until you make it” but there is a nuance to it. There is folks that want to be successful that carry folks together on a journey of becoming successful. They might not know what they are doing exactly, but are trying to wing it. Versus on the other extreme those folks that rent out supercars, mansions, and parked corporate jets shooting videos pretending to be something they are not. You can smell those con jobs a mile away, and if you can’t, you will learn quickly as they steal money from you with zero results. It is okay to be a Master Agent that is not making HUGE money off the Hefe. Besides, we are not about making “huge money overnight” as a brand or company. Sure we talk about it as potential benefit of hard work. Joe and Steve both sold their experience as seasoned sales folks…and Hefe is a great way to learn and apply those lessons on something that goes back to #1 point…scalable. Not just scalable in selling it, but scalable as a revenue stream.
Teach Beyond. Part of the value of the master agent is to teach new tricks, even ones you just learned yourself (be authentic). The tricks don’t have to be selling either, they could be as simple as setting up an LLC to help manage your expenses and minimize your tax burden. Or how to get the business to pay for that dream car without getting into trouble with the IRS. These soft value things are of huge value to your network. You’ll set up your network for success and make life long friends if you treat them as family, not tools for your own gain.
Be a Leader. This is what the world sorely lacks. Being a leader doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of special person like Jocko or Goggins. What it means is that you care for the downstream folks in your network. That you look out for their interests, not just yours. This is so much different than say an MLM which is 100% about exploiting and pressuring everyone downstream to buy, buy, buy. Which as I have said a thousand times before, we are not an MLM, not even close. Every Master Agent we know that succeeds does so by caring about the people they enroll in the program. About the bigger picture of not just their income, but the bigger mission of making their communities stronger. About stopping the theft of big tech that robs them blind. Leaders that believe in themselves, their mission, and care for their people go a long way.
Apply your skills. Everyone has skills. Even the ones that say they don’t. Maybe you don’t believe in yourself enough to know what those skills are. But you have them, you just haven't listened to your true self. We have a guy in Atlanta that just drove and didn’t think he had anything, but he did. He knew other drivers, he knew how the system worked. He knew how to talk to folks in his ecosystem. Discover your skills and apply them
Make a Plan. Stick to it. Now Joe we knew for years, he has gone through the Retro 168 years before we came up with Hefe. It was one of the tools he uses in his fight with adult ADHD. Otherwise, he’d fall back to his natural state of being a “professional procrastinator”. He makes sure he has his to-dos and goals for the next 6 weeks written down.
Have Fun. This has got to be awfully hard for those that are desperate. These folks above are all doing well before they took on being a Master Agent. Having personally lived in a trailer and have once owed more money than I could make in a decade…not a penny left after bills. I questioned them how a person in this situation could be successful. While their first answer it to “just work harder”, I pushed back on them harder to figure out from those that they mentor, what was the breakthrough mind shift to make folks successful. They said that the moment folks went from “having to do it” to “liking to do it” the close rates went up 1000%.
Your Reputation. It means absolutely everything. It is the only asset you have that you can control. It will either make or break you.
Build Good Relationships and they will pay off. Joe would add “damn good relationships” by keeping you word. Making sure folks know you by reputation.
Don’t burn bridges. Or in other words, don’t let your ego take control and ruin everything. If something is fustrating or makes you angry. Walk away. Cool off. Reapproach it after you have a had chance to reflect.
Hopefully, this gave you some ideas on how you could potentially use the Master Agent capbilites of the Hefe Platform leveraging your experience and know how. Please let us know if you have questions, comments, want to share your experience or be in one of our upcoming podcasts.