The Part of Sales Nobody Talks About
Every new client has a story. A business they built, a risk they took, a hustle that became their life. I connect with that — and it turns out, that connection might be worth more than the deal.
I had my first meeting of the day this morning with a new prospect — a gentleman from Chicago and Orlando who runs a real estate mortgage business. Good guy. Easy conversation. And within the first few minutes, I remembered something I don't think about enough: I genuinely love this part of what I do.
Not the pitch. Not the close. The meeting itself.
Every new client is someone who built something. A business, a practice, a hustle that somehow became their life's work. They're mortgage guys and restaurant owners and contractors and local retailers. Some are older, some younger, all different backgrounds — but there's this thread that runs through almost every conversation: they took a risk, they figured it out as they went, and they're still here.
I connect with that. I always have.
I didn't come up through a corporate track. I've always lived a little sideways — a little risk, a little creativity, nothing guaranteed but never really pessimistic about it either. That's exactly what these people are. So even when they're calling me because they have a marketing problem, what we're really doing for the first 20 minutes is swapping notes on what it's like to run something.
I've been building out new projects lately — expanding how I work, thinking more like an operator than just an agency owner. And in the middle of all that, mornings like this are a reminder to not optimize myself out of the room. The stuff I'm good at, the stuff that actually energizes me, happens in those early conversations — before the contract, before the deliverables, before any of the business.
There are a lot of ways to make money. Not many of them come with the bonus of sitting across from people who've built interesting lives and actually hearing about it.
I'm grateful I stumbled into one that does.
