How to win business in 2024 - Personalization is EVERYTHING | Ep 21 - Doug Heulitt

[0:00]  all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm excited to bring my guest Doug huet on to the show today because he and I recently connected on LinkedIn um and we have a shared affinity for personalization now in 2023 the world of Automation and AI is taking over right but there is still one key differentiator when it comes to being able to engage people from a business perspective and from the way that we see it it is hyper personalization so a little bit about Doug's background is Doug is Cornell graduate he's also worked as a regional manager for some of the best medical sales and device companies out there but also recently made a pivot into a new space called the virtual sales RX realm of business and I can't wait for him to kind of take a

[0:46]  deep dive and show us a little bit more about what that is all about but Doug why don't you give everybody a little bit of background about yourself before we get started here yeah so uh I'm a recovering medical device rep and uh what I mean by that is I spent two decades selling Hardware I spent my first seven years in the industry 247 on call for seven years uh I had no life all I did was work I didn't know what to do with myself on the weekends I would just like show up at the hospital because I figured I was going to wind up there anyway and um eventually I got married and I realized that all of my co-workers were divorced about to be divorced or you know considering divorce and having just gotten married I didn't want a part of that so I I changed div visions and you know kind of moving moving onward wound up in in Texas

[1:34]  working for a medical device company in marketing and kind of taking all that experience of what I learned as a you know Frontline contributing rep and then in marketing and then in Sales Management I I realized that I had learned a ton and that at no point in time had there ever been any semblance of sales training in all of that it was all always features and benefits that's all they ever told us which it makes sense right you if you're going to sell something you better know how it works you better know how to get somebody out of the crap if you're in you know standing in an operating room but that's all we were ever taught and what I learned was that sales reps especially like you said in 2023 where we're so focused on AI this and AI that I think

[2:24]  in 2024 the focus is going to be AI but it's really going to have to stand for authentic interaction and not artificial intelligence because you know we the the doctors whoever you're calling on they see through Ai and I'm sure at some point it will be so good that it's really hard to tell but you know I think you and I were talking about a video that you had received where you could tell that the Whiteboard they were holding up like it it wasn't legit so I working now with with a group called virtual sales RX and we train sales people customer service people nonprofits how to wait for it engage with other humans in a way that puts

[3:16]  them at the Forefront and the center of of the conversation and not us and that's always where where salespeople falter we're so used to talking about ourselves and not talking about the person that we're trying to sell to so well it's a pleasure to have you on the show man and I'm really excited to kind of iterate a little bit on that I would say how do I call it uh the acronym of AI because when you said that the first time I really tried to write it down but it slipped my mind so AI as authentic interactions we know one of the things that I see in the world of all this automation today is everybody seems to lean a little bit too heavily into it and naturally I think humans have a natural ability to pick up on BS when things are disingenuous when they're not authentic we can naturally see right through that stuff and one of the

[4:02]  biggest gripes that I have today in the world of sales is everybody's got this mentality that they want to load up the messaging shotgun and just blast it at everybody with a small personalization field which is the first name but then the message in itself feels so inauthentic and so I love what you guys are doing at virtual sales RX because we're really talking about using hyper-personalized videos to be able to interact with people so why don't you create a picture I guess you would say of the advantages of personalized video from a sales engagement perspective compared to where everybody's coming from look I think that salespeople do we have so often so much ground to cover right if you've however big your territory is the idea that you can be in all places at all times and touch all of

[4:51]  the people you need to it's it's impossible and especially if a part of your job is face-to-face engagement H how you can't scale face to face and I think one of the the first the first big hurdles to to get over is the fact that like you know sales managers are generally focused on profits right if you're managing a sales team you want to know did you guys hit quota did you miss and by how much but the sales rep needs help on the process not the profit and you know when your manager just simply tells you go out and do more like that's that's not a strategy making more phone calls making more you know cold calls and drop-ins is not a it's not a Sal

[5:40]  strategy that you can scale because you're going to run out of time and through the use of personalized video you're able to act as a pattern disrupt right because if look if you know using using a sports ball analogy right like if if if everyone thinks the ball is going to the left but the ball actually goes to the right you stand out and that that's how you win if everyone is doing the same crap you know sending like Direct Mail there's another one right if everyone's sending direct mail and everyone's dropping off literature because they think that's useful and you're the one person that is not doing that even if you're crap at it like you're going to stand out and be better off than everyone else who isn't isn't standing out and is doing the same thing yeah man I could I could not agree more

[6:28]  you know one of the things that I love about the personalized video approach is like you said the pattern disrupt I think is incredibly powerful but it is coming down to me you know when I get sales messages or people reach out to me and talk about their services and they haven't built a relationship I think that's where so many people miss and so one thing that I love that you have in your headline of your LinkedIn account is I train people how to earn attention and build no like and Trust to increase engagement so why are no like and Trust important from your perspective in this world of digital transactions sure I think it's incredibly important because we buy things from people that we trust a purchase is made empathetically like that's how we make that decision and

[7:16]  then we rationalize it you know intellectually so we've all gone car shopping you know and you're you're looking at the car that you think is going to change your life if you drive off the lot with it and that guy makes eye contact with you that poor Sales RI that comes up and he starts talking like sometimes they're genuine and other times they're not and I think that's what everyone thinks of when they think of you know a salesperson who is disingenuous and building trust here here's here's my like number one takeaway when when recording videos and using them for outreach ask yourself the question before you hit send am I bringing value to the person that I'm sending this to if if you're not you're a you're another sales rep making a sales pitch but if

[8:04]  you stop and focus on what it is that they're dealing with and understanding their buying Journey sort of the Arc of making a decision and then rationalizing it and then actually making that purchase if we convey the right information and we build a connection to them it's a lot easier you're you're not dragging them along to make the purchase you're rather along for the ride with them as they make that decision themselves you know one of the biggest things that I think about when I hear that topic of no lik and trust is me and you recently talked about Alex Heros as an example right he just released a course at the time of recording it was a couple weeks ago and one of the things that he has been able to Leverage is the Goodwill and trust that his audience has with him which leads into the later funnel of his business which I think is

[8:52]  incredible but when you talk about putting out content or we talk about personalized videos in this element being able to engage people in a valuable piece of content delivering value to them only greases the skids for purchases later to come because the one thing that I think about is like people will often pay with their time before they pay with their dollars and so when you're engaging somebody in a time element that is valuable to them and then you deliver that value throughout their buyer's Journey or that narrative Arc like you're talking about that leads them to making a decision I don't really see a better way to do it but a lot of people kind of resist against I would say personalized video because maybe they say it takes too much time what is your perspective on that com compared to what good question you know like sure it does take time to to sit down and film a

[9:44]  video but I'll tell you what like when I coach people and this isn't a sales pitch by the way but this is you know when when I coach people on how to use video uh re-record it don't don't make you know version one version two version three and then compare them as we're sitting here talking I'm saying something right I don't have a script I'm just living I'm saying the things that are popping into this you know trap of mine and out my mouth and if I say something wrong well heck I just you know correct myself I go back and say it again or say it a different way and and that's Humanity right that's how we communicate naturally so a lot of people have this impression that a video needs to be super produced you know there's

[10:32]  background music there's you know AI you know to fix your face and put on makeup like dude nothing this is I got a plain blue wall behind me you know if I don't like the video I re-record it but here's here's the beauty in terms of how long it takes how long does it take to write an email you know probably longer than it is to make a video damn right right I mean you can record a video five times faster than you can type or right and the thing that I love about it is when you have the A's and the um and the the you you sneeze or you knock something off your desk and you keep that in the video AI will not do that like there's no AI system that's going to you know add in a dub in a sneeze and it's it's another way that we get to communicate our humanity and

[11:21]  build a connection with somebody and and you know help them understand that we're a human just like they are we want to work with people that understand us and get us right like if I was selling you a computer and you ask me a question and I don't know a damn thing about computers you're probably not going to listen to me but if if we understand that you know the experiences that I have and I know because we've had a conversation and a dialogue you know looking someone in the eyes like look as a child you learn to read a face before you learn to read you learn to read a face before you learn to speak it's like we are ingrained naturally to do those things and video enables you to do it I what I love about video is you can record it at the speed

[12:09]  of thought out my mouth onto the camera record done that's it it doesn't take any longer than whatever crap they're doing I mean I completely agree with you I think we're just at the point in time where because the last couple let's just call it 68 months has been so hyper autom automation use AI use it for all these things for Speed and efficiency that we're at a point in time where maybe the pendulum is swinging back the other direction and when I think about that naturally you know one of my favorite quotes somebody asked a question are you guys a B2B or a B Toc business and someone responded and said we're a PTP business this is People to People Y and naturally in today's world I think we just need to really lean into the elements that people want to connect with people they want to know like and trust you but leveraging all of those

[12:57]  different elements in the Journey of someone from a sales and buying perspective is just so fundamental and it's the unscalable activities that give you true opportunities to win customers not the automation the email blast the direct messages all that kind of stuff it's just crazy to kind of see where we're at in history it's funny I hear so many people talk about like fundraising is a big one where they talk about well you know efficiency it look how efficient it is but they can't answer the question okay if you do a direct mail campaign the cost you $155,000 and you send you know 15,000 letters to people well how many people are engaging with that like no idea it's efficient sure but is it effective and you know it's awesome to be able to look

[13:45]  at another person like the brain struggles to tell the difference between you and me talking right now or if we were in person or if you were watching a video of me talking directly to you like it's hard to tell because it is one to one I love that PTP I I heard that for the first time the other day and I was like oh man I gotta figure out how to work that in yeah exactly so my question for you is in standing up kind of your own version of virtual sales RX what type of businesses are you seeing the most traction with and where are we seeing a little bit of hesitancy if you will because me being in the health care space right this organization or this I would say Department of business has been so Legacy thought driven for so long that now when we talk about doing things differently there's a lot of

[14:32]  resistance when I started my telea health business back in 2014 I came across so much resistance because nobody wanted to do things differently by hopping on video like this sure but a time and a catalyst came into the marketplace called the pandemic which made this kind of stuff necessary and now I think it's so interesting that we deal with sales leaders who want better results but aren't willing to look at the process of what they're doing any differently so back to the original question what type of organizations are you seeing adopting this as kind of thought leaders and change agents and which ones are kind of lagging behind so let let me answer it this way and it's a great question what I thought when I when I when the light bulb went off about using personalized video I thought Sales Management right because that's what I was doing at the time holy

[15:20]  crap Sales Management these people are going to get it they're going to top down they're going to drive it to their people and it's going to bring everybody up nope so Sales Management not interested at all what ends up happening is there's someone with stones the size of bowling balls that says I'm going to invest in myself they take the course they learn how to do it and then you know within a very short window of time have transformational success and then the you know area vice president comes in and says what was that how did that happen so naturally because I have so much experience in Medtech um that's where a lot of a lot of people come to me because you know my background shows all of that experience I can speak that

[16:08]  language and I know it so I do get a lot of Medtech um two industries where I thought so well another industry that has been really big in adopting it has been Financial Services because okay like dude these people are trying to separate you from your money right like they're just we're give me your money and I promise I'm going to do good things with it right like you need to have a crapload of faith and trust and those those organizations have seen and recognized that um that's been great I thought real estate agents you know I mean look tomorrow you can become a real estate agent right if you if your mom has a house that she wants to sell you know everyone becomes a real estate agent and then within 2 years they've left their license laps so there's all

[16:55]  of this noise in the market and I really thought that a agents would jump at a way to differentiate themselves build a relationship quickly because that's what video can do and then they would be able to snatch up people who are interested in buying or selling a home and be a trusted guide on that journey of like the biggest purchase you'll ever make not interested no wow no so that's been odd and then my my personal where I really want to see this take off is in fundraising you know I think in charity work you've got people who could be making $50 an hour making 15 an hour because they believe in a mission and you know a lot is asked of people working in the nonprofit space and I I want them to have tools other than the

[17:43]  tools that they had in 1983 which is generally the tools that they're still using you know cold calling and Direct Mail campaigns and it's just like we're not going to be able to get different results if we do things the exact same right that's literally the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results right and so you know to think about um one of the best terminologies that I've heard about um just using personalized videos in general is the terminology of time shifted and virtual virtual and time shifted right being able to show up on camera and deliver a message you know some of the things that I think is so powerful and which I've seen from my own use of personalized video is the ability for somebody to share a message with other people naturally we don't share direct messages

[18:30]  we don't share emails too often but I've seen some of my best videos get traction where they get shared with like 20 different people inside of an organization a great example is back in 2021 I had somebody reach out to me from Uber Health who was talking about using their platform to be able to help do ride share connections I reached back out to the person after they inquired with me talked about how I'm using personalized videos just delivered and talked about what we did as a business this guy came back to me as a sales manager was like what are you doing here and do you mind if I shared this video with other people and that thing got like 47 views inside the organization and so obviously there's extreme value there but positioning it accordingly I think is also really important so what other examples other than from a sales perspective and we talked a little bit

[19:19]  about real estate do you kind of see as lwh hanging fruit opportunities for people to start implementing this personalized video approach well to to the point that you just made and that's that's awesome right like no one no one takes an email like I I could here here's an example of an email that I received right like no one's GNA forward this and be like dude you got to read line three it's amazing like do you know what I call that I call that TLD drr too long did not read amen right and so we had this idea and we went to a doctor right a doctor's office and you know doctors want to to believe that their you know the plaques that they have on the wall mean something to their patients right like for the most part patients look at you know the fact that

[20:06]  they're a doctor and they're like oh wow he must be good he's a doctor and but from a marketing perspective doctors could be the smartest dude in the room as it pertains to clinical things but when it comes to marketing they're often you know not always like that's not their thing that's not what they do thinking you know thinking about it all the time so we had this idea where what if a doctor filmed a video the day before surgery and sent it to the patient and said something to the effect of hey Tammy I know that you're having surgery tomorrow maybe you're a little nervous rest assured I've got my my you know a team is going to be there with you you're going to be in great hands you're going to be great I look forward to seeing you tomorrow have a great day instantly nerves gone nerves gone they'll feel

[20:55]  like they're heard by the doctor which which is often you know a big complaint right maybe they've only ever even seen the the physician's assistant or the nurse practitioner they've decided up for surgery and maybe they've only met the doctor once for three minutes you know but to get a message like that and and here's where here's where I think the real value to the point that you made really comes into play I could see Tammy right she's GNA get back into her pickle ball league and you know she gets back in there and her friend's Tammy how how's your I'm doing oh amazing check this out my doctor sent me this video the night before surgery and I know your elbow has been bothering you you've got to talk to them look at this and I'm going to send it to you right there's this I think we think of

[21:42]  things as being viral when they they show up on YouTube and everybody you know everyone sees it but I think the the true viral opportunity for a personalized videos is when me to you you share something of value that that was valuable to you with you know me right and and that's how things truly become you know viral and and um and bring value to people so that was an example where that that's really that's really taken off but again not all doctors you know they everybody just wants to keep doing what they're doing which just blows my mind I mean it's just a it's a part of that Legacy mindset that I've come to expect from a lot of these people which is really upsetting but more importantly one of the things that I can consistently think

[22:28]  about is the best way to get virality is to build trust and to create opportunities for people to share your information and when it comes to a space specifically like healthcare your brand and the trust that your patients have in you truly is your book of business you know one of the things that I've been thinking about um in our business of Francis is making our product so good that other people want to tell their friends about it now a part of that is the product itself but the the other things are the expectations and experiences that people have along that Journey which enable them to actually think about the experience to provide value to themselves and to provide value to the people that they surround themselves with and so sharing that little expectations video is an absolute home run and we're talking about a 30

[23:15]  second introduction or a 30 second spend of time to be able to let somebody know that they're going to be safe to build their confidence and let them feel at ease about the big process that's happening tomorrow if they're having surgery I think that's incredible you know one of the other areas that we have implemented personalized videos is filling some of the gaps in all of our sales process so after somebody agrees to move forward and we deliver a proposal what we do is we actually do a virtual walkthrough of the proposal to be able to address any types of questions that they have after they sign off on the proposal we have our implementation team that has their own personalized video strategy where they send a personalized video out via email directly to that individual who's going to be the point person to implement go through the expectations in that video as well so they've already met ahead of their meeting time so when someone shows

[24:02]  up on camera I already have that built relationship with you I've seen you on camera before now we're just sitting across the table from each other in a virtual setting to be able to implement that stuff I just think that there are so many gaps that you can fill with that one-time spend of a video expectation that let people feel so much calmer about what's going to happen and it's just a huge missed opportunity that people aren't thinking about you know where else do you want to use video with Francis where else do you think there's opportunity so one of the suggestions that we've actually implemented because of your suggestion was actually with a company called video ask so sending out when people come onto the system when we have large deployments at the 30-day Mark we've actually built in a call to action for a subscriber to give a video testimonial about how their experience

[24:50]  has been and so it looks a little something like this I come on screen and say hey this is Keenan the co-founder of Francis I just want to say thank you so much for being a subscriber would you do me a huge favor and respond with a video based on your experience with Francis so we can let other people know what you lik what you didn't like about it and then we can use that for marketing materials and getting that feedback is something that is so powerful but once again it's delivered through the vehicle of personalized video once again and like you cannot replace that genuine nature of someone hopping on camera and talking to you and then responding in the same nature it's just a home run in our opinion that's great I um yeah video ask is a is a pretty slick system you know look I I know we talk a lot about personalized videos and how important that is but there's also time-saving

[25:38]  videos that can be made right where I'm sure you have frequently asked questions that people ask you know your support team well what if you created um a a frequently asked questions video but you make a personalized intro and smoosh it together and send like hey you know Bob I love the question you know what we get that a lot we made this video and then it right into the video so there's still a personalization and you don't have to recreate the wheel every time so it's it's funny when people say oh well takes so much time but but really does it you know to be able to build a connection with somebody I mean one of my favorite analogies is would you rather have to spend your time every time or would you

[26:26]  rather spend a little bit of time one time to build something that costs zero time and effort to duplicate I'm on the ladder boat because leveraging video and I would love to refer to it not as just personalized video but as video in itself to fill some of those gaps and ask those and answer those frequently asked questions is just so incredibly valuable and honestly as long as I've been following along with the virtual sales RX I'm so surprised that there is still resistance to people who don't want to do things differently to get better results and maybe it's just a matter of them not experiencing it firsthand and not understanding the value that it delivers like where do you think that roadblock comes from other than that kind of uh like Legacy mindset I look I think a lot of times when when you're in sales like I'm a career sales guy you know you don't you don't want to be certainly like the fear

[27:16]  is if you're the head of the group like oh crap they're going to ruin my quota next year and if you're at the tail end of the group the idea is like oh no they're going to get rid of me right so you naturally just kind of want to be in the middle or know that well once they reassess my quota for next year like I'm going to have to go find someplace else cuz they're going to set it so high I can't achieve it so you know uh but I think in general I think there's just a in general a whole lot of complacency like hey man I know how to do this and this is what I've been doing and the other thing I think is that in sales generally the guys that are doing the training are the you know the guys or gals who've been at it for a long time yeah right right so they're like you know what we want you to work with Steve Steve's been doing this 35 years he knows where all the skeletons are buried

[28:04]  follow Steve he's going to teach you everything if you do what Steve does you're going to be awesome yeah but you know again in in the med tech space Steve trained a lot of those now attending surgeons when they were residents so he's got a relationship with them so yeah he can walk into their office he knows the the secretary so he can just walk in and do things that you know me as a junior can never do like you'll be thrown out of the hospital if you tried to do those things but everybody told you that Steve was the bee's knees and you better do what he does so you you kind of get wrapped around the axle of like well I got to do what I'm being told to do and nobody wants to try a new thing because everyone's afraid of failure and it's a lot easier to point to you told me to do

[28:52]  ab and c I did ab and c and it didn't work that's not on me you told me to do it rather than people having the Nuggets to stand up and be like yeah I watched everybody else try that it didn't work I'm going to go try something else so like look with with you and what you're doing with Francis like that is so incredibly novel how how did you how did you come up with the idea and then more importantly how did you like develop the courage to go I'm going to go do this thing and launch this thing I mean this is a great question so when uh and one of the things that I think we have very similar is because I spent so much time in this space I started to naturally identify gaps in the mental and Behavioral Health space right coming from that Legacy I would

[29:40]  say demographic of business people have always been in the game of trading time for money right 45 minute slot equals $115 of reimbursement I'm going to pack my schedule as much as I can and trade as many time slots for those reimbursement do so when the pandemic occurred I started reaching out to my partners and asking what are some of the big problems that you guys are facing and they said Keenan we're book solid day-to-day and we do not have the ability to support our patients or clients in between their scheduled appointments and so me coming from a background of technology I started thinking about what are some of the ways in which we can fill some of the gaps like we've talked about today in this space well one thing that I recognize is that everybody walks around all day with their phone buried in their knows and or

[30:28]  vice versa which is interesting and if that I would say attention area of our screen is something that we can take advantage of how do we do that well the one thing that we're not going to do is try and compete with other people by developing an app as an example say download a Francis app and now remember to come back to it every single day the only way that we would do that is to make our product so enticing that it draws people back to the platform every single day okay that's probably not going to be an option because we're going to be out out gunned and outspent and out out talented very transparently so how do we fight for the attention of people who need this mental health support well the one thing I recognized in my personal life experience is when I'm on Instagram or Tik Tok or Facebook or LinkedIn the only things that interrupt that feed are a text message that pops to the front of my screen so

[31:16]  let's start doing some research about this well in 2018 the University of Washington pioneered a really cool program called caring contacts which was designed to help people deal with feelings of suicide ideation when they were outside of therapy so they're using text messages I said that's great let me look more into that now the story for everybody who hasn't heard this before on my social media is there was a World War II soldier named Jerome M who was deployed overseas during World War II like thousands of other Americans he had an anonymous pen pal who wrote him letters during his entire deployment when he came back from war he went into the field of psychiatry in an inpatient Hospital helping people deal with the feelings of suicide ideation now to help support the patients that left the hospital or were discharged he had his nurses write handwritten letters to

[32:02]  those people as well years later they found that not a single person died by Suicide who is receiving those handwritten letters phenomenal but what that really speaks to is how people need to feel supported encouraged or felt heard in real world scenarios outside of a hospital so I started thinking about can we use the technology of tella Health which is not just video but is also communication and education to engage people on a daily basis and that led me going to my individual partners and saying Hey I want to develop this solution for you but I need your help so I got buyin from all of our partners I need you to create a database of messages that you would send to a client who's struggling or feels overwhelmed or stressed or depressed what would you say so they curated an entire database of messages that now we send on a daily

[32:49]  basis at a random time to all of our subscribers excellent but overcoming the fear element of that was something something that has taken years of time to this date because I'm still somewhat frustrated by the Legacy mindset of people and organizations who say no we have access to mental health therapists we have access to counselors our employees have access to an EAP program we already sent the Calm app or the affirmations app to their cell phone they're taking care of but when I dig a little bit deeper I started asking tough questions how many people are accessing those apps well I can't remember anybody who's actually utilizing that tool so what we've done is we've enabled people with a tool a legacy tool that people have gotten used to in the past but nobody's actually using it so in order

[33:37]  for us to get different results we have to do things differently so we developed a solution that takes all of the effort all of the sacrifice all of the time delay out of feeling supported by delivering that random text message and so this process of I would say looking around corners is something that I've become used to in my business career of the last Almost decade now of being a little bit ahead of the times and having to drag people forward to show them that there's a better way but the only way to do that is to document success and to prove people wrong and guess what when people come who skipped the first ride but now want to hop on the bus a little bit later guess what ticket prices have gone up I'm sorry but that's just kind of how it goes and so that's been a huge I would say mental health exercise and having confidence in myself to keep pushing and realizing that people will

[34:24]  catch up someday and so I feel you when you talk about people not adopting I would say the realization that personalized video is the best way to move forward you know so first about Francis I I received a message the other day and you know in in my mind right it's it's curated but sent to me right there's you're not sitting there typing this thing out right right for whatever reason I couldn't help but reply and I replied and said like man I I needed that like I I didn't realize that the message that got sent to me however that message came to be sent to me I needed to read it and and I replied and then I got this quick reply

[35:11]  back right that was like Hey you started journaling and it was such a such a huge value ad to be able to see that man on this day I was feeling blue I received this message and now I can I can track I can track that not not for analytic purposes but just to say like man you know what it it's okay that some days you feel like junk and some days you know you're frustrated or scared and to be able to look back over time and see where you've been and where you've gotten to it gotten it's gotten word yeah sounds weird but you know what I mean like to to see that Journey over a period of time is is incredibly valuable so you know man just me to you I

[36:00]  personally thank you for for what you're doing with Francis it's I've never thought of myself as somebody who you know gets down like I'm always you know glasses you know 34 full like it doesn't matter I'm just I've got a positive attitude but I guess right sometimes I'm not I guess sometimes I do need somebody to Pat me on the back and be like it's going to be okay and you know it's a it's an awesome service thank you man I I really appreciate that there's two things I want to touch on there one is an interesting concept called interpretation flexibility so when um simple thing like a text message is presented to us we naturally look for how does that message apply to me in my current situation and so naturally our brains are always looking like how does that relate to me and so that message that you receive that day could be

[36:48]  completely interpreted by somebody else in a completely different fashion but it's natural for us to kind of fit that codeon of fitment and see how this applies to us which is amazing but the other thing that you talked about is like you don't identify as being somebody who has struggled with their mental health or needs that support my question for you is how many other people in the United States in the world feel the exact same way and the question I'll ask for you is you know as you've been going through the process of building your business and of building your book of customers and the proof that this stuff works how many people have reached out to you and said hey man Doug just a reminder you're doing a great job keep going you know it the funny thing is when when I get those those messages from people that it

[37:37]  is how they know I don't know but it's always on days when I feel about you know a quarter of an inch tall and I feel like you know am I doing the right thing like I'm uh it it's so funny that when I receive those messages it's always on a on a bad day and it's it's that that little bit of encouragement that somebody says you know that they they resonated with a message that I you know a post that I made on LinkedIn or you know they were able to have a huge win based on some of the coaching that I gave them um you know and that's and that's me a person who feels like oh man I'm great everything's fine all the time you know how many I can't even imagine for people that that aren't like that that that do struggle with with me mental health

[38:25]  issues and and feel down or depressed even if it's for a season you know being able to have a tool and a resource like this and I love the fact that there's like it's not an app like I'm good with apps man like I don't need any more apps yeah so the fact that it just it just shows up and it's got that you know sweet little gorilla man I love it yeah well you know there's a lot of thought that goes into that but I want to kind of take this into a little bit of a deeper dive you know you mentioned that you were a college athlete so what sports did you play in college so I ran track I was a high hurdler in college okay and you did track in high school and throughout your Youth and everything did you ever play any other sports so I uh I played other sports um I played soccer starting in like kindergarten I

[39:14]  started running track in third grade I was a new kid in school and uh nobody liked me so I got picked on turns out that the teacher Mrs Tickle Mrs Tickle was my teacher and um she used to make everybody like Sprint in the playground and it just happened to be that day that I transferred into the school was the race and I beat the fastest kid in the school and that summer she was like you've got to do track and then that just became my my sole Focus you know up until uh uh yeah I I ran professionally after college even wow well you obviously are A Gifted athlete but the reason I asked that question is if you're like me you grew up around coaches right who had our best intent for us but often never talked about the vulnerable conversations of

[40:03]  feeling stressed or feeling down or feeling like we're not going to make it right often the answer was more more more go harder go harder and you're tough dust off your dirt stand back up don't be soft and I think that so many of men in our society today have come through that experience and so when we come across hardship in life and these other things we often kind of revert back to those emot experiences where we were told be tough stand up keep pushing and I find that a lot of other athletes like we were didn't ever have the emotional support or that person who's going to Pat them on the back and say hey you're doing a great job let's keep going do you know what I mean like that sense of emotional I would say vulnerability was not something that we often were taught or exposed to coming up yeah excuse

[40:52]  me you know I think Co coaches certainly did a uh a good job of of being there to kind of push you forward and you know I was I was really blessed I you know my parents were really supportive excuse me choking here um yeah my parents are really supportive in terms of you know providing an outlet and I I found that I was always way harder on myself than than my coach ever was or my parents ever were but you know that all like that support network ended after after college mhm right where where I had a coach who was invested in me for four years like the better I get the better the team does the better the team does the more the more funding we get and all those things and then suddenly you're you know you're you're kicked out the

[41:40]  door you graduated good job buddy now go get a job and suddenly you know maybe you have teammates that are there to to help support you but we're all going through the same crap together because nobody knows what the hell we're doing so you know I you know I think for a lot of people there is a a weakness in admitting you need help that's how it's perceived right I don't need that my mom's like that like my mom needs some like some medicine like some very heavy doses of medicine but she refuses to accept that that's the case and all my siblings and I like Mom like you you could bet benit from this and

[42:27]  she just won't do it and I think you know there's there's a whole group of people that that look at mental health issues and refuse to accept it especially and and I'm a you know I'm guilty of this given that I feel like I've never personally had some of those issues that's just me saying I'm not acknowledging them right like I've had them I just didn't acknowledge them and sometimes you look at people and you're like well you just figured out man like quit complaining quit bitching about this and go go get after it and man you know watching some people that I've known over the years as adults not be able to get out of their own way and realizing like man somebody with more initials after their name somebody with

[43:14]  more experience in this needs to help them and and I can't and you know unfortunately it it's not been until I was you know an older adult that I realized like how impact ful you know mental health support really really is for people in the positive absolutely man well you know one of the areas that I know a lot of people struggle with um who listen to the podcast and watch the podcast are often thinking how do I make the jump from what I'm doing now and being unhappy and making a jump into something that I know is going to be scary but at the end of the day I know is going to be better for me so I'd like for you to kind of take a little bit of a dive into your personal experience in being in medical sales recognizing that this wasn't the right path for you and

[44:01]  then kind of what the process was like of fortifying your mindset to take this big leap into something different you know so I've got this idea about a pivot right and when we you know I don't know how many people are familiar with Harrison Ford right I mean like we all know who Harrison Ford is Right Han Solo actor but like as an example here's a guy who famous actor we all know that he was a famous actor he started as a carpenter right and it may seem like holy crap the guy went from being a carpenter to to a famous actor like what a what a 180 that guy took the fact of the matter is that wasn't the reality right it was all of these little things that he was doing to get closer to his goal and I think you know it's it's always fun to

[44:50]  tell a story where you know in our own little ego drama where we're the center of the world and we're the main actor you know we like to tell these stories about these massive hurdles and and barriers that we overcame and how we got to where we are and how it's like total chance and like we weren't always working towards a thing you know so for me I'm fascinated by people who have been on a journey and then they make this like tiny little Three Degree pivot to find you know success and happiness for me um you know I had been in Med Medtech before I got into Medtech I was doing Healthcare Consulting and um I lived in my car in order to get a job uh it was after September 11th nobody was putting you on

[45:38]  an airplane to go interview you so all the jobs were in Boston so I sold all my stuff and moved to Boston lived in my car and networked got a job and started doing that and uh I kept being told that I should get into sales and I hated the idea like you know I don't want to do sales that's that's not for me I kept picturing you know the prototypical sales guy mhm and uh eventually kind of stopped ignoring everyone and got a job in sales and you know I wound up in the Medtech space and you know the first seven years I was helping people I was in the operating room on their worst day you know a lot of times you know it was some sort of you know motor vehicle accident they had no intention of being in the hospital but there I was standing in the o with them

[46:26]  and um I felt like I was doing good but as my career progressed and the roles changed suddenly I was just some schmuck selling widgets and found very little happiness and enjoyment in it because unfortunately not only has the the way that sales is done not changed at all in the last 20 years the one thing that has changed changed is how doctors are paid right how they make their money and because they're being squeezed they're constantly looking for alternative means of income right can I consult with this company can I can I you know develop a product for this company they're looking

[47:12]  for like hey get me more money get me more money and it became less a question about how can I help my patients and more about like hey I got a lifestyle that I need to maintain so when the company comes and starts saying like you you got to do this and you got to do that and sell these products you're like for for what like the doctors don't care the patients you know are awn and the the saddest part was you know I was working for a spine company and you know like all spine companies there's like 225 spine companies and they're all for the most part selling the exact same thing yeah and you know one product is approved by the hospital or excuse me approved by the insurance company but this is the gold standard right but it's you know the insurance companies don't

[48:01]  want to pay for it and unfortunately more often than not I would have the surgeon go with the other product because well if they do surgery they're going to get paid right but if they wait and hold out for the gold standard you know maybe they're not going to get paid maybe they're not going to get paid as much or maybe they just don't do the surgery at all and this this is not a blanket statement for all surgeons but it it happened enough that I felt like I was part of the problem and I I didn't I didn't want to be a part of the problem anymore and I stumbled on this dude Matthew Ray Scott and I took a course from him and uh you know it suddenly clicked that it wasn't sales that I hated I just hated the

[48:50]  industry and you know I I started investigating like man maybe maybe maybe there's something here like this seems like this could be fun teaching people how to bring value to somebody else not making it about me but making it about the person that I'm talking to and helping them you know I was a sales manager so I worked with sales people and you know you do ride alongs and you'd see them make like stupid mistakes that weren't helping them and you know I I'll I'll come out and say it you know directly and transparently like I got let go by my company and you know I did all the metrics that they asked me to do they put me on a pip and they said you know well uh yeah but we're going to get ready

[49:37]  anyway and I think you know a lot of times we have a path that we think we're supposed to be on we think that there's a lot of Safety and Security in a W2 job and even though I hated what I was doing I was still holding on to that vine right I was trying to swing away from it like Tarzan through the through the jungle I was holding on to that vine and I was trying to now grab a hold of this new Vine teaching people how to how to use video to sell and honestly if I hadn't been let go I'd still be holding on to two damn vines with no forward momentum just sliding down right instead I got you know I got let go I was forced to let go of that Old Vine and now found myself

[50:25]  maintaining that momentum holding on to the new Vine moving in a completely different direction and and that's the thing it's not a completely new Direction it's like a slight pivot taking all the experience that I have applying it to different Industries and helping other people and I'm literally the most happy I have ever been stressed but happy well you know I think your experience is something that so many people can connect with because there's an interesting Paradox I heard about the other day it was called the beta paradox and the analogy that was given was if you think about walking a mile often people will walk that distance but if we think about having to go 2 miles often we will hop in the car and we will drive the two mile element which is very interesting to think about but that often brings up the idea that sometimes

[51:13]  sticking with this thing and walking that mile is often something that will not put us farther than taking the leap to the new Vine and being able to kind of Swing towards a new I would say grassy field that has more opportunity for us and that's just something that I continue to think about it's like when we come across hardship how often do we think people are spending time their honest ability to kind of show up as their best self every day doing things that they don't like in the fear of not kind of pivoting or making that small pivot towards something that is going to bring them joy and that's something that I'm just incredibly fascinated with these days because so many people are making those types of decisions that end up eating away years of their life and more important their energy and their happiness to be able to do things that they are truly passionate about now is

[52:00]  the financial reward going to come when you make that first three Three Degree pivot often not but if you stick on that path long enough there's so many opportunities that kind of unveil themselves in front of you you know what is it that uh adversity is The Crucible for Success something to that effect like you know you can't be really successful at a thing if it's like super easy right like you know brushing my teeth I I am I am no you know champion at toothbrushing and neither are you right it's like just something that everybody does but you starting a business in tea health in 2014 when everyone was like yeah that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard now imagine had you stopped imagine if you would listen to what everyone else was telling you but you in your heart you

[52:48]  know you knew that that this was a path that you needed to stay on and I'm sure that that has you know repaid you many dividends over because you you knew that it was the right course and I think some people are just unwilling to listen to their gut yeah I mean but that that element of having to trust in yourself versus what everybody else is telling you is incredibly scary right it scares it scares the [ __ ] out of me to this day which is something that I have to deal with but the one thing that I recognize is I would rather die on the fruition of me trying to make something true that I know has the possibility rather rather than going along with everybody else's idea for what is going to make me successful but often never ends up playing that way which is something that I consistantly battle because that element of fear

[53:35]  really is a catalyst to get us to the next side I had a really good friend um have a really good friend her name is Alexa and she actually said something to me one time when we were talking she said I want you to start repositioning fear as something that you should stay away from and start using it as an indicator of things that we should go towards and that was something that Echoes In My Mind mind every once in a while like on this podcast that really has paid dividends for me the scary things in life are the ones that are often most worth pursuing there's a there was a meme that was going around to that effect and it was like when a storm comes like I forget if it's like a a bison or something like y they turn toward it and walk into it rather than turn and walk away and the idea is you know if you walk into it you're going to get through

[54:23]  to the other side way faster than if you just wait for it to pass cuz it may just keep dumping on you and you know it's it's the same idea right like turning into and leaning into those challenging times you know makes you makes you better right like you look like you're a fit you know a fit guy like you don't get to be fit by just you know sitting on the couch and not working out and not eating healthy and not you know finding some some physical activity to do but like the benefit is like yeah it may stink while you're doing it maybe you're tired at the end of the day and you don't want to do it but the benefit is you're in good shape and you're healthy and you look healthy and your skin is good and you know you're you're taking good care of yourself and man you're the only person that can do that no one's going to make you do that and that's a huge sense of accountability

[55:12]  that I've tried to really lean into over the last couple years of my life so this upcoming month in September I'll turn 33 and when I was 23 years old I was like 20 like 80 pounds so I was heavy but I was I was bigger so I'm 6'6 so I can carry a lot of weight you're 66 yeah so when we meet in person as an example many people are like wow you're a lot taller than I thought you were right um and that in itself is a unique experience but you know one of the things about going to the gym which kind of translates into everything else that I do it's in order for me to be the person who I want to be I have to start changing my identity to be someone who's going to do the work right going to the gym is not something I enjoy but is a habit that I've built over the last decade of when I don't go to the gym I feel completely like I'm not living up

[55:59]  to who I should be as a person and so even going to the gym and putting in the work for 20 minutes or an hour is something that compounds into the future but you're right nobody can do that work for you which is incredibly you know I would say revealing you know what I mean um it's something that continues to really a Inspire myself because it's I recognize the work that I put in today is going to pay off down the road you know and so as part of building your business right now how are you fortifying your mindset to keep going in the early stages when things might not always be going great so I get up uh between like it's happened a few times where I've gotten up at like 3:00 in the morning like just I'm awake may as well go work um but I generally get up at like 5 or 4 4:50

[56:47]  I'll get up in the morning and I I spend like the first hour of my morning just praying like looking for guidance SP cuz I don't have I don't have any answers like I've got zero answers I I just hope that you know God puts them in my head or steers me in the right direction and and you know I think I'm I'm trying to make my family my priority and not my business and when I do that it makes me spend time you know more appropriately in the right in the right area so I get up in the morning I pray I drink a like a half a pot of coffee I save the half for my wife um at some point in the day it feels like my head is vibrating with like thoughts and I don't know how to put them all on paper because it's it's

[57:35]  just me right so I got to how do I manage all of the things that need to get done and building this and building that course and coaching these people I have to just take a break and I go into my barn that's like 200 degrees Fahrenheit and I work out in there for an hour and then come back and you know keep working but you know back to a point that we made earlier I've met so many great people here in in different you know I don't have social media I have LinkedIn that's it um but the people that I've met on LinkedIn have been you know the antithesis of the people on say Instagram or Facebook that are like just looking to take you down these people have been really helpful and and people that I did not know four months ago have now become people that like I'll reach out to and ask a question and be like

[58:22]  hey man like how did you deal with this and they're very willing to help so it's it's been the community of of people that have been willing to for no reason like no money is exchanged they're not getting anything from me for free and like they're going to offer their help like they're just helping because that's the kind of people they are you know Matthew Ray Scott has been a tremendous Mentor another guy named Joseph Miller who's been a a great friend you know to help kind of just be a sounding board and uh you know people like like yourself just willing to take a call and chat and you know we find some common ground and can have a have a good conversation and um those are the things that are that are keeping me going and knowing that I'm not doing what I was doing selling widgets to spine surgeons

[59:10]  you know and dealing with hospitals that hate you and the doctors that hate you and nobody wants you around like that that doesn't make you feel good no I totally understand that I mean it's just a what i' I really start focusing a lot these days on alignment and making sure that we are in alignment with who we know we should be and taking actions that align with that identity and you know I think one of the things that I've been focusing on recently is like confidence does not come from shouting affirmations at the top of your lungs or writing in a journal as much as impactful as that can be but it really comes from having proof of the actions that you have taken behind you that prove that you are who you say you are and that's something that I continue to lean on so it's like when I want to show up as the best version of myself I know the activities that I need to do to to get there and eventually those things will prove true because I say who I say

[1:00:00]  I am but I'm backing them up with the identity and the actions that I take every single day and so I just want to commend you Doug for all the things that you continue to do on a daily basis I know you're fighting the good fight and you're doing the good work of what people need to do to change the way in which they're approaching sales but also this new mentality of hyper personalization in the world as well and so you know as we kind of wrap up here I want to give you the last couple seconds to let people know how they can find you if it's on LinkedIn or if it's through a website or something like that why don't you spend the last couple seconds kind of letting everybody know how they can get in contact with you yeah thank you um so I I have a LinkedIn page it's Doug I think it's Douglas hulet D ug l in my last name hu l i t t I've got this face uh that's that's that's basically the

[1:00:47]  best way I stopped being a Content consumer on LinkedIn and sort of being a content creator and basically all that that is is me making lots of videos about how to use video and given that I grew up in Philadelphia and I'm a guy from the Northeast I essentially just poke people in the face uh I was also a little a little brother so I just keep telling people what they're doing wrong what they're doing wrong because that they just need to be you know told that there's a better way of doing it and sometimes you know despite poor results people are unwilling to accept the fact that they need to change something so if you're looking to get a hold of me uh you can find me through Linkedin Douglas ulet awesome man well thank you so much for coming on the show today I know you provided a ton of value and thank you

[1:01:34]  for sharing your experience with Francis that was absolutely amazing I wasn't expecting that um but you know I think when you consistently show up and do the good work every single day and you are consistent in your message the results at some point in time will start showing up as well and so you'll be able to continue to build on your success so guys that's been another episode of the heart and hustle podcast once again thanks to Doug huet for coming on today and sharing some of his expertise and insights about how you can start doing things differently to get different results really appreciate it thanks guys thank you so much thanks for having me