Sales and Cigars | Why Great Leaders Speak Last with Jason Abell | Episode 218

[00:00:00] Hey, it's Walter Crosby and this is Sales and Cigars, the sales podcast where the only smoke we blow is from cigars. Before I get started with today's episode, I wanted to share some of the changes that I'm making. We're going to work both sides of this equation that I've been dancing around with the last couple of years. I want to help CEOs and entrepreneurs solve their sales problems. So they're going to be a guest. And then the next episode, we're going to have a sales professional, sales development person.

[00:00:28] We're going to talk about those problems that CEOs have and what can be done to solve those problems. We're going to increase the value of what we're delivering to you, the audience. And I think that's the most important thing that we're delivering is we're entertaining a little bit, we're having some fun, but it's about giving you some nuggets to think about that's going to help you solve those problems. The other big thing that we're doing is I'm up in the quality of our podcast.

[00:00:55] I've hired a producer that Courtney's going to try to help me suck less. She's not going to make me perfect, but we're going to get better at this. The production quality is going to be better, right? And what I've decided to do is dial it back to one episode every other week. So that's probably the big thing you're going to notice. But we're going to deliver more value. The quality is going to be there. So strap in for this new change. I'm really excited about it. So let's get today's episode.

[00:01:28] Hey, everybody. Walter Crosby with Helix Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars. Today, I'm smoking a Hoya de Monterey Excalibur Robusto. Nice mild cigar recorded this early in the morning with my buddy Jason Abel. Jason is our guest today. He's with Rewires, the president Rewire.

[00:01:47] What they focus on is leaders, coaching leaders on their mindset, on their behaviors, and helping them become leaders that actually can help their team grow as individuals, as managers. It's probably the most important asset that most companies have is the talent that they bring in.

[00:02:07] And one of the things that Jason and I talk about are the little mistakes that leaders make when they don't realize what they've just done to a room. So we get into some details around that. We talk a little bit about core values and why that's helped companies like Rewire get through COVID and how that has really given them the structure to operate. So some real practical advice here.

[00:02:33] So go grab a cigar, grab a cocktail, strap in for another impactful, fun episode of Sales and Cigars. Thanks. Jason, welcome to Sales and Cigars. We've got a little friendship going here. A couple weeks ago, I was on your podcast, which we'll get to. Really been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for having me on the show, my friend. Walter, I'm excited.

[00:02:59] We met a few weeks ago and doing your podcast was, I mean, you just made it really easy, relaxing. We just had a conversation. So I'm looking forward to another one of those. But you got me in the hot seat this time though. We reversed roles. We'll see how good I am at this. I wanted to tell you a little story about something I experienced recently. Because you were a leadership guy. You're a leadership coach.

[00:03:26] You help leaders, CEOs, business owners get their act together and become better. Leading their organization. Leading their people. I see a lot of problems in the space I work in. That $10 million to $30 million of revenue where they're growing. They've maybe grown really fast in a certain point. And then there's some challenges. So the scenario is we're in a virtual meeting with about seven people.

[00:03:57] Five are managers, which are leaders in the organization. Two, one is the business owner and the other is the general manager. And there's no agenda. Nothing that's been sent out in advance. We're just going to talk about whatever they decide to talk about that day, which is annoying to Walter. But the general manager starts to explain, we're going to talk about this topic and we want to get your thoughts and opinions.

[00:04:26] And he doesn't even finish the sentence. And the gentleman who owns the business jumps in and gives this soliloquy for about five minutes about what he thinks on the topic and what he thinks is important and how this should proceed. And then sits back and is really surprised when nobody else in the room wants to share their thoughts. And he's like, you know, I don't understand. You guys understand this topic. Why aren't you sharing?

[00:04:54] And I was the only one who spoke up and it's like, you just told us what you want. So like, do you really want our opinion or are you just telling us what's going to happen? Because that's what everybody else is sitting here just waiting, you know. And he's like, well, that's not what I meant to do. Like, I understand, but that's what you did. Yeah. So now what do we do? Right. So if you had witnessed that, you probably wouldn't have been dumb like me and speak up and call them out in a meeting.

[00:05:20] But how would you coach somebody like that who takes the air out of the room? Yeah, Walter, that scenario makes me think of a couple of different things. One of the first things that makes me think of is, you know, a lot of leaders, founders, CEOs will come to us for coaching and we'll hear a lot of, gosh, my executive team, like

[00:05:46] they just need a lot of coaching or my national sales manager, man, he or she, like she needs a lot of coaching and they need coaching. You know, it's they need coaching. And when we hear that right away, I'm thinking, how about you? Right. There's a lot of like they need coaching. And so when we hear those words, we, you know, we listen. We're always going to listen first as coaches.

[00:06:16] And then as coaches, we're just going to ask questions. We're not going to make any assumptions, although you start to see patterns, you know, at Rewire, we've been doing this 11 years. And so you start to see some patterns. And when there's a lot of rhetoric on what others need to do, we just ask a lot of questions about that. And what we're really aiming towards there is, is there an entry point where you, the

[00:06:40] founder, you, the CEO, in your example, you know, the owner of the company, is there an opening under which you're open to training and development and coaching? Because oftentimes, look, as leaders, I'm a leader of our organization. You're a leader of your organization. Everything stems from us. And it just, and it goes from there.

[00:07:03] And so if a leader is not open to closing their own gaps and they're looking outside to others or to other situations or to other people, yeah, we just see that that can be a challenge. And I don't know in your particular example of this, I don't know if the leader had a bad day or if this is always the way that the owner, you know, interacts. But as a coach, I would just be really curious about that.

[00:07:32] You would ask questions because this is a one-on-one interview probably, right? With that business owner. Often. Oftentimes. Yeah, that's right. You're going to ask questions around how they run meetings, what they're experiencing. How do you get that person to sort of self-discover? Because that's what we do as coaches. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, it's a lot of questions.

[00:07:57] And yes, some one-on-one questions, but also I want to know if they're open to us talking to their executive leadership team or whoever their colleagues are, sometimes in group settings, sometimes not. You can just see a lot of dynamics there. And if we have the permission to be in a group setting asking questions, and let's say I witnessed something like what you were talking about, I'm not going to be accusatory or anything

[00:08:26] like that, but I am going to ask some questions like, hey, what you just said, did you feel any dynamics in the room changing as a result of that? Is there anything that you have to say or that you have to say? It would just be drawing out some of their own things. And oftentimes when the white coat is in the room, and when I say white coat, sometimes coaching

[00:08:53] has the white coat effect, meaning we're an unbiased, separate third party. We're not an employee, right? We're outside of the organization. And it's like a doctor, right? I'll give you an example, Walter. My wife is a health coach, and for years and years, she may have advice for me on certain eating habits that I might have. And I may or may not listen to those.

[00:09:19] But when the doctor says the exact same thing that my wife has been saying, and I have my ears tuned a little bit differently, and then I bring that news home to my wife, she's like, I've been telling you that for years. And so it's the same thing in a business setting, right? Maybe the CMO or the COO or whoever has been saying certain things. But if I'm the white coat in the room and I can ask questions and maybe say the exact

[00:09:45] same things, maybe in a little bit different way, but I'm an unbiased, I'm not in the matrix myself. So I'm the white coat. If I'm asking questions or making suggestions, their ears might be tuned a little bit differently. And so as coaches, we just give opportunity. We rise opportunity up to answer questions, to say things that might be said in a little bit different way. So I would be really curious in that situation.

[00:10:13] I would be asking a lot of questions and giving rise to at least the opportunity for other people in the room to go, that kind of derailed us. Like we were going to go in this direction, but we're not going to do that because of what you said. So in answering your question, I said, it makes me think of two things. So that's one thing. The other thing that it makes me think about is this dynamic of leader speaking last and not first.

[00:10:42] And I can remember my early days, my exposure to people like Zig Ziglar, John Maxwell, like leader speaking last. I just remember that. And I've also, I listened to interviews of really great leaders today of big companies, leader speak last. And I think that that is an important thing where leadership in general, I see the best leaders

[00:11:10] speaking the least and speaking the last. They're absorbing information of the people that they hired. And if there is a tendency to not listen to the people that they hired, I might question their hiring practices or their compensation practices or whatever, because I see the best of the best leaders going, my job isn't to have all the answers for the company.

[00:11:35] My job is to assemble the absolute best talent that I can and then let them, you know, go do their thing. So those are the two things I think about in your scenario. The last part about, you know, going last and having people around you that are experts maybe in a field or smarter than in a field. There's an old football coach.

[00:12:01] I went to the University of Michigan and Bo Schembechler was this coach in the sixties and seventies. And he had this philosophy of hiring people that were smarter than him, better than him. That's right. In all of these positions in his coaching of his coaches and his job as he saw it was to say, here's the strategy guys. Here's where we want to go. We want a big 10 championship, right? And here's the parameters, the guardrails.

[00:12:31] And then he would step back and allow them to do their job that he hired them to do. He had a philosophy that he wanted to see executed, but he shared that on the upfront. And if you weren't down with the off tackle, right off tackle, left off tackle, right, you probably weren't going to be on his coaching staff. But it's that principle. And I have, you know, when you were talking about the leader who speaks last, I mean, the

[00:13:00] picture popped into my head of a meeting I had attended where the leader was sitting at the head of the table and it was a traditional rectangular conference room table and everybody else was around it. And he's like, okay, so agenda item number one, who would like to share? And everybody went around the table. Yeah. And they had their criteria of how they spoke about it. They had, you know, sort of a rules, right?

[00:13:30] Nobody went on this long, drawn out storytelling. Everybody was able to be heard. Yeah. Everybody was able to get their thoughts out. And sometimes he would be like, great. That's what I was looking for. And I think we're going to go this direction based on what I heard in the room. Yeah. And sometimes he would be like, you know, I really appreciate what you shared.

[00:13:55] I'm still torn and I need to put some more thought into this before we make a final decision. But he heard everybody each time. If he had the ability to push off a decision, like he would do that, but he would give the reasons and such. That's a really good piece of advice to just go last. Set the room up for success. That last point you made about setting the room up for success.

[00:14:23] You know, we do a lot of workshops and a lot of speaking at Rewire. So we'll get called into a sales rally or an annual meeting or, you know, those types of environments. And I can always tell when I get into the room where the leader sits tells me a ton about the organization. So what I mean by that is I'll have leaders that will sit in the front row and they've

[00:14:51] got their notebook out or their device and they're taking notes on what I'm saying. They're taking notes. They might ask a question or two, but not a ton. And they're engaged in the workshop and the exercises, those types of things versus the leader that assembles everybody else and is in the back on their phone answering questions or they're going in and out of the room because, you know, they got other things that they got to take care of.

[00:15:17] And I can just tell a lot about the organization based on the leader and his or her engagement in the material. There's lifelong learners. They're engaged. And then I know, well, again, because everything runs down from leadership, what the elk is, what the culture is of the rest of the organization versus the leader that's in and out or, okay, I got them assembled now, I can, you know, go do other stuff, so to speak.

[00:15:47] Very, very different. And so, yeah, I think what we're coming to here, Walter, is leadership matters and it matters. It matters a lot. It matters for the whole organization. And then you have that same leadership for each department. There might not be a C-suite for every department, right? CFO, CMO, CSO, right? That might not be there, but there might be a manager level that reports up to a president.

[00:16:15] But those folks have to be, they have to be told and encouraged and supported that they're leaders within the organization. Oh, for sure. That they get to, they need to support their people, coach their people, and we need to figure out as the CEO or the business owner, how can I support these folks to make sure that they're where they feel uncomfortable?

[00:16:40] What can we do to support them, to give them that, that extra information or training or coaching? Because I see a lot of folks that are asked to do something, they don't have the skills to do it. And they're afraid to say, I don't know how to do that. I need help. Yeah. Go hire yourself an assistant to support your work. You're overloaded. Go hire somebody. Do they know how to create a job description? Do they know how to delegate things?

[00:17:09] Have they ever done that before? That's the conversation that somebody needs to have, not just HR, but the leader needs to be there to make sure that that culture is being created and supported because the culture will take root. It's just whether it's the one that we intended for or the one that just occurs out of happenstance. And it's sad to watch great people kind of just fall apart because of various reasons.

[00:17:35] Well, going back to just tying a bow on your original scenario, Walter, there's actual data around this where people have measured in a meeting timed how often the different participants in the meeting speak. And typically, when there is an overburden of time where the leader in the room has done the majority of the

[00:18:02] speaking, typically that has been deemed because they'll vote afterwards a good meeting or a bad meeting. Typically, that's not a good meeting. And the meeting where the leader speaks the least in literal like work timing, we're measuring this. Those meetings typically are more productive as measured by KPIs and the people feel better about the meeting.

[00:18:27] And so it's one of those things where if you just go data, like literally spreadsheet data, if you're a leader, just talk less and you'll have more productive meetings. Ask more questions. Right on. Yeah. Because in a certain sense, I relate everything to sales because that's what I do. But in a certain sense, no matter what kind of meeting you're running, there's a sales aspect to that meeting from the leader's role, the leader's position.

[00:18:54] They might be trying to sell an idea. When you sell to a buyer, you're asking questions. You're speaking 30% of the time, asking questions, trying to get information, to understand what's going on. If they're a good fit, right? Is this a good idea for that particular buyer? Because if it's not, it's that seller's responsibility to say, I don't think this is a good fit. Yeah.

[00:19:22] And not in some gimmicky way, but to be honest and transparent about it. I don't think we solved that problem. You should probably look someplace else. Now you're starting to touch on sales, which is always near and dear to my heart. And that type of response, I'm a big proponent of that response. You know, I've been in sales my whole life from the, you know, I was the kid that had the lemonade stand, you know, in front of the house all the way up until now.

[00:19:50] You know, we sell coaching to people. And if it's not a good fit, the very best thing that you can say as a salesperson is it's not a good fit. And then suggest alternatives, you know, real live, good alternatives, because at the end of the day, you want to be a resource. Yeah. Thank you. That's exactly right. If you truly care about people, if you're truly trying to help people and you're a resource, kind of like what you just said, you'll make all the sales that you want.

[00:20:19] And therefore, the company will make all the money that needs to be made, et cetera. If your focus is on the money first, maybe you make sales, maybe you don't. I don't know. It depends on the product, the market fit, all those other things. But what I do know is that if you genuinely care about people, you genuinely try to serve them and be a resource to them, whether your particular service or product can help them today or not, you'll just win.

[00:20:46] I've seen it over and over and over again because it's authentic. It's transparent. It creates credibility when you tell somebody that it's not a fit. I've shared this story in the past with the audience, but I had a great conversation with a buyer that I could solve his problem. He had a $50,000 a month problem. We could fix it. Right. And I'm like, is that a, is $50,000 a month? Is that a big problem for you? And he's like, yeah, it's 50 grand a month.

[00:21:15] It's, you know, that adds up. I said, but I got a bigger problem. Okay. He had a half a million dollar a quarter problem that if he didn't fix, they'd go out of business. And I'm like, okay, that's way more important right now. Right. That if you don't fix that problem, you're done. Yeah. I can't help you. So the $50,000 problem, like let's put that over here in the parking lot. I know a guy that might be able to help you with this bigger problem.

[00:21:44] I'm going to hang up and email you, make an introduction and you guys decide if it's a good fit or not. Yeah. And I'll stay in touch. If they solve that problem, we can work on the next one. But you should have seen the guy's face when he's like, really? I'm like, you just told me that was a bigger problem. Yeah. Right. And I'm not the guy. I can't fix that. You know, they're working on the problem and he's excited and appreciated the referral.

[00:22:13] So doing the right thing is always the right thing. You know, it's the cliche. Yeah. I think. Well, and I just always see a way where that comes back around. And even if it doesn't with him in particular, which it probably will, right? He'll come back to you for your service. He'll refer other people to you because of the suggestion that you gave him or the connection that you made. And even if it's not directly from him, typically I don't, I don't lean in this direction, Walter,

[00:22:43] but there's something about the way that the universe works where it just comes back to you. I've just seen it too many times over and over again where I got to go. That's how that works. To me, it's doing the right things for the right reasons. And nobody's looking. Right? Treating people the way you'd want to be treated. And even if it doesn't come back to me and I can't put a finger on it, I know I did the right thing. Right on. Right?

[00:23:11] And that just, whether you karma or universe or whatever, you become open to these ideas. And I can tell you, in fact, the gentleman I referred him to has focused on trying to help me with another client get me involved. There you go. It always works. It always works. Yeah, for sure. So speaking about doing the right things, there's another thing I see often. I kind of wanted your take on this. Yeah.

[00:23:37] A lot of my clients are running EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System Model. Gino Wickman did really well, created a wonderful system for a company to structure their business, to be able to measure things and move forward. I have one issue with that in terms of sales piece, but that's for a different conversation. But they have core values, these companies. They really believe in them.

[00:24:02] And they went through a way to create these where it wasn't just, if they did it right, it wasn't just the owner saying, hey, we're doing these five things. This is what it's all about. Yeah. When they do it well, there's some ideas that are there. They're discussed. They're percolated. And they're developed into some really core values that the company should operate on. So I'm sure you've experienced, like they show you their core values. They're proud of them. They've made up nice little posters or they have it in their HR manual.

[00:24:31] Sure, sure. But not a soul is living them in the leadership room. Yeah, we see that often. First of all, give a shout out to the EOS. We just this year, we started running some of our marketing meetings based on some of the EOS systems and tactics. And man, it is really lifted our game there just about being on point, on target, intentional. So if you're hearing Walter and I talk about EOS, you know, what the heck is this EOS thing?

[00:25:00] Google it and try it out. So anyways, there's that part. You know, I do see often mission vision values up on a wall somewhere or I see, you know, an executive team work through it and then it gets emailed out to everybody and then it goes in a file somewhere. Maybe it comes up during annual review time or, you know, something like that, but otherwise it gets locked away.

[00:25:23] And when this topic comes up, you know, one of the things at Rewire, one of our core values is to practice what we preach, right? So we help people with communication, emotional intelligence, mindset, doing things like running better meetings like you and I talked about at the top of your show here. And we just decided early on, we better actually be really good at practicing those things inside of our organization, inside of Rewire.

[00:25:52] Because how authentic can we be if we're helping other people with those types of things, but we suck at it, you know, ourselves? And we're certainly not perfect, but that's one of our core values to practice what we preach. Well, that core value got stressed in March of 2020 when COVID hit. We have two main pillars of our business, which is one-on-one coaching, which is done oftentimes virtually like you and I are recording the show right now.

[00:26:21] But then we do live events where we're in front of a group, like I talked about before. And everybody knows in 2020, anything live or in person went to zero overnight. And so we had 2020 booked out with all kinds of events all the way until the end of the year. And that was, let's call it half of our business went to zero right away.

[00:26:44] Well, any organization knows if half of your revenue goes away in the blink of an eye, like inside of one week, you got a major problem on your hands. And we huddled our group together. And what I love about this is it wasn't even my idea and it wasn't my co-founder's idea. One of the crew was like, hey, we need to huddle. We need to get out our core values and our purpose statement and figure something out.

[00:27:13] So that was really cool. And so, okay, great. But that's not the crux to the story. The crux of the story is we looked at our purpose and our purpose is to help our clients with authentic and sustainable change. Doesn't say anything about revenue, profitability, any of that, but it's to help our clients with authentic and sustainable change. Real change, sustainable over a long period of time, whether they're engaged with us or not.

[00:27:40] And change, like, look, people hire coaches because they want something different than what they currently have today. And we said, well, okay, what does that look like? We're not going to be live in front of people, gone. All that was gone. What can we do? So out of that meeting came a couple of really good pros. One was, first of all, we got together in community with one another.

[00:28:04] All of us were dazed and confused, and we got together, and just rubbing shoulders with one another was super, super helpful. Secondly, out of that, we decided very quickly, like by the end of March 2020, very quickly, we need to become experts at Zoom because we weren't then. We were okay at it, but not experts. So we did. We studied. We learned. We got all the certifications.

[00:28:31] We figured out how to do breakout rooms and all these kind of things that now is commonplace, but then it wasn't. And then we started doing free seminars for the rest of the year. We were just giving value out. We ran meditation classes. We ran free communication classes. We helped other companies with their Zoom game and all those things. And at the end of the day, Walter, it all worked out.

[00:28:59] By the middle of the year, we were charging for those events because we were adding value where people were like, we'll pay. You know, and we had so many requests that we had to start charging. So my point of all of that is, first of all, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, yeah, core values. What are our core values? You know, and you're trying to figure that out. Go break them out.

[00:29:24] And if you don't have that, I just really suggest that you do have that because any organization, whether it's the pandemic or your industry, you know, we have clients that are in advertising like they did commercials for networks. Well, that's not really much of a thing anymore because it's just not between AI and social media and other things. And so their business went down to zero. But again, they had core values.

[00:29:51] They had mission, vision, purpose, and they've been able to make some adjustments to who they serve. And they're actually okay where many in their industry has gone down the tubes in the last few years. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, man, I need to work on that or I need to get that out. Just let this be your sign that your industry, your business will go through some tough times.

[00:30:16] And without some bedrock principles, call them core values, call them mission, vision, call it purpose, having that will help you get through those tough times either for your organization, in the industry, you know, what have you. So I don't know, man, you introduced a topic and I kind of just flew there. But that's what I was looking for because it's the North Star, right? There's all the metaphors we can use.

[00:30:42] But if you don't have it, you really need to figure out what it is because if it is creating revenue, then I don't know. You got to have something, to me, you got to have something bigger. But if you do have them, go dust them off and make sure that they're still real, they're still represent. Yeah. And then start to live them. And I just think it's a cool part of that story is that is one of your team that said, hey, this, we got these.

[00:31:12] Could we do these? Yes. Right? Because that tells me that that was in their head. It was already there. They were aware of it. They knew it. And they were going to, it gave you guys the jumping off point to work together. Yeah. And pivoting is part of business, right? It's just, you know, whether you call it the economy or anything can happen and we have to be able to be agile and adapt. I did some training this past weekend.

[00:31:42] And one of the things that they discussed is that humans have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. And it's the species that have been the most adaptable are the ones who survive. Yeah. And I think there's another component to that, right? We have to be able to adapt to our surrounding, whether that be COVID or just an industry goes away. Or we have to be able to want it more, right?

[00:32:10] It's who's willing to do whatever it takes within the guides of ethics and integrity. If you're willing to do whatever it takes and you have that adaptability, you're much more likely to survive. Yeah, right. As a species or as in a company. Yeah. So you've dropped a bunch of gold nuggets here. I said fully expected. So tell people, you know, we're going to have all of your deets in the show notes. Yeah. But like, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

[00:32:39] Like, I want more, Jason. I want more understanding to this. How do they follow you? What do they learn more? Yeah, I'm really active on LinkedIn. That's my main social media outlet. And people can find me at rewirejason on LinkedIn. And they can always go to our website, rewireinc.com. And, you know, even on our website, we've got a bunch of free tools. We'd love to engage you.

[00:33:03] But if you find value with all of our free, we have business planning tools, EQ tools on there, all kinds of free stuff and articles and stuff. So, yeah, rewireinc.com and at rewirejason on LinkedIn. All that will be in the show notes. Go look that up. You're legit. You care about people. You care about folks getting better and getting them started in the right direction. And you can set them up for success. So I really appreciate that. Last question, man.

[00:33:31] Any relationship past or present with cigars? You know, I knew that question was coming because of our relationship. And I have listened to a few of your shows. And, you know, yes, actually. Because when you initially said that, I was like, I'm not really sure. And then I've come up with three things. And I'll roll through these pretty quickly. I've got family in Miami, Florida. So once or twice a year or so, we get down to Miami.

[00:33:59] And the cigar industry is alive and thriving down there. I just recognize that. And I see that as an observer where there's hand-rolled situations, whether it's Cuban techniques with Cuban coffee and that type of thing. And I just appreciate the traditional nature of that and the observance of that. And then the other one is really an observance as well. When I was young, you know, still as a child living with my parents,

[00:34:27] one of my grandfathers would come to visit us often. And he had a pipe that had this sweet cherry tobacco in it. And I remember going in the backyard, like way in the backyard. And we would sit back there. And I'm really fond of this man, this grandfather. He's long been deceased. But my memories are of me as a kid in the backyard with him. And he would just be asking questions.

[00:34:54] And he would delight in my answers, as silly as they were, as nonsensical or whatever as a child. And I just remember him laughing and smiling at some of my answers with that smell. It's not a cigar. It's a pipe, but wafting, you know, in the air. And so those are two fond memories. And then the last one is my own experience. I don't have many cigars, Walter, but maybe once or twice a year, I'll have a cigar.

[00:35:20] And oftentimes, it's on my boat dock overlooking sunset. Usually there's a beverage in hand as well. And man, that's just a peaceful, very good type of experience. So yeah, it took me a minute to think of those things. But yes, I do have a relationship with cigars and tobacco. I mean, those are great memories, great stories. The cigar on the boat dock with the sun setting, maybe with a cocktail.

[00:35:49] I call those contemplative cigars. For sure. Because you have a minute. You can contemplate, right? Maybe somebody's with you and you're talking. Maybe you're by yourself. You're able to think through things. You're in nature. Your hands are occupied with the cigar. So your mind is able to operate. I do that on a regular, not necessarily on a boat dock. Like if I need to clear my head or I need to think about something, that's sort of a go-to idea.

[00:36:19] A notebook and a pen and a little table outside. And it somehow connects me. Because you mentioned the Cuban traditions of the coffee and all that. Yeah. If people really understood what went into making a cigar. Oh, it's a lot. It's a craft and an art. It's a craft. It's an art. It's three to five years in the making. Yeah. The technology that's involved. The good that the cigar industry does for the communities in which they operate.

[00:36:47] I mean, some of the guys, they're family businesses, typically, you know, that are out there in the fields. So growing the tobacco and deciding if it's shaded and managing the dirt and the water and then fermenting the tobacco and aging it in the rolling process. The more you learn about it, the more impressed you are with the – and there's not a lot of technology. There's not a lot of AI involved with making a cigar. And that's okay.

[00:37:14] I think that's actually a very good piece of it. Yeah, I love what you're doing with the sales and cigars. It sounds like you've mixed a couple of your favorite things there. I'm happy to be a part of it. This has been a lot of fun, Walter. Truly appreciate it. So if you reach out the website, LinkedIn, just go follow Jason and pay attention to what he's putting out there.

[00:37:37] Because it's really, really important for a business to scale and to grow its people and hold on to its people these days, especially the generation that's out there. If we're not speaking to them and making sure that they're being heard, we're going to lose good people. Right on. So stay focused, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Walter. Thanks so much for listening to Sales and Cigars.

[00:38:05] If you like what you heard or you want to share your two cents about the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love to hear from you. Now, if listening made you realize you need a little extra sales help, you can check out helixsalesdevelopment.com where you can find free sales tools, blog posts, and opportunity to reach out and optimize your sales team. If you really want to get inside my head, you're in luck because I wrote a book.

[00:38:34] Check out the link in the show notes to snag a copy of Scale Your Sales, Avoid the Seven Critical Mistakes CEOs Make. It's compact. It gets to the point. And you can read it over a cigar and two or three cups of coffee. I'm no one biased, but I highly recommend it. Sales and Cigars is executive produced by me, Walter Crosby, and it's produced by Courtney Blomquist. Editing and further production support is done by my team at Resonate Recordings. Thanks for listening.