Drewbie Wilson is the founder of "Call the Damn Leads". Drewbie shares his journey of overcoming personal challenges, including significant weight loss and battling addiction, to emerge as a resilient leader. His story is not just about personal transformation but also about the power of disciplined leadership in driving business success.

Drewbie emphasizes the importance of valuing time, the most precious asset, and provides insightful strategies for enhancing productivity and focus. His approach to leadership is rooted in accountability and the necessity of rigorous self-assessment to achieve sustained success. Through engaging storytelling, Drewbie illustrates how adversities can be turned into opportunities for growth and leadership development.

The conversation dives deep into the practical aspects of leadership, including setting clear expectations, motivating teams, and the critical role of communication in achieving organizational goals. Drewbie’s experiences offer invaluable lessons on resilience, determination, and the power of a proactive mindset in leadership.

Want to learn more about Drewbie Wilson's work? Check out their website at https://WWW.CALLTHEDAMNLEADS.COM.

Connect with Drewbie Wilson on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewbiewilson/.

Key Points with Time Stamps:

• 00:00:30 - Craig shares his personal story of survival and resilience during a coma.
• 00:01:17 - Introduction to Drewbie Wilson and his leadership focus.
• 00:02:57 - Drewbie discusses his personal challenges with weight and addiction.
• 00:06:00 - Insights into personal transformation and its impact on leadership.
• 00:09:15 - Discussion on sustainable health habits versus quick fixes.
• 00:11:35 - Drewbie elaborates on his professional approach and philosophy.
• 00:18:17 - Key strategies for effective leadership and team management.
• 00:24:10 - Drewbie’s decision to focus fully on his business "Call the Damn Leads".
• 00:35:39 - Closing remarks and how to connect with Drewbie and the podcast.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;20 - 00;01;17;13
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Drewbie Wilson. He's with. Call the damn leads. Now, that's not language I normally use, but I love the spirit of it, and I, I've been talking to Drewbie a little bit off camera here, and I can tell you I'm. I'm absolutely excited about where we're going to be going. this is a story of, I don't know, I don't even know how to color it.

00;01;17;15 - 00;01;41;11
Craig Andrews
But what I can say is, if you're running an organization, there's a lesson here for you leading your people. There's a lesson here for what you should be looking for. And, your people. I think, most importantly, there's a lesson here for yourself. and so with that, I just want drew be welcome. I'm glad to have you here.

00;01;41;13 - 00;01;56;27
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate the opportunity. And, you know, for the listeners, I'm going to say this right up front. If you're spending a little bit of time with us here today. Time is your most valuable asset. So I am very, very grateful to know that you're going to invest a little bit with us here today.

00;01;57;00 - 00;02;04;17
Drewbie Wilson
And, I really plan on bringing you a lot of good energy and value to this show. So thank you for being with us. And again, thank you for the opportunity to be here.

00;02;04;19 - 00;02;25;01
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So, Jeremy, you threw out so many things. I didn't go very deeply and you know in the pre call. But because I wanted that to come out I want everybody to hear it for the first time, myself included. And I just I have trouble knowing where to start. Let's start with your weight now. You look like a pretty trim guy.

00;02;25;01 - 00;02;34;09
Craig Andrews
For those that are listening, and not seeing dribs as a trim looking fella. But that's not always been the case.

00;02;34;12 - 00;02;57;05
Drewbie Wilson
No, Craig, I certainly wasn't at one point in my journey in my early 20s. So I'm 37 now. in my early 20s, I actually topped the scale at about 315 pounds now. Growing up, I was always the husky kid. In middle school. I was buying, you know, pants from the adult section and having to hem like four inches of them because I had short legs, but a real wide body.

00;02;57;08 - 00;03;30;25
Drewbie Wilson
And so I always dealt with weight and being, you know, overweight my whole life, up to the point where at 20, 21 years old, I hit 315 pounds and I was miserable. I wasn't happy, I wasn't confident, I wasn't getting the attention from the people that I wanted the attention from, if you know what I'm saying. And ultimately, I made the decision to stop drinking all the sugary sodas, which when you're drinking 10 to 12 Cokes a day, I'll let you do the math on what that looks like, diabetes and fricking the future.

00;03;30;28 - 00;03;40;22
Drewbie Wilson
thankfully, I'm healthy now, but at the point again, 10 to 12 Cokes in a day, a large pizza was no problem. And so I got got a little more focused on not eating so much.

00;03;40;24 - 00;03;47;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And let me just take a pause. So a soda is somewhere around 300 calories, right? Somewhere in that ballpark?

00;03;47;27 - 00;03;49;13
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah, it's about 280.

00;03;49;15 - 00;04;07;26
Craig Andrews
280. So was the I think the average recommended, diet's like around 2000 calories a day. And so you're going 50% over the recommended caloric intake on soda alone.

00;04;07;28 - 00;04;33;22
Drewbie Wilson
And that doesn't include waking up in the middle of the night and grabbing a thing of cranberry juice and chugging cranberry juice before I went back to bed. Or, you know, the fruit snacks that I would eat boxes of at a time because I have, you know, a terrible sweet tooth. like, I was just making very, very poor nutritional decisions like I and I didn't have the willpower or the mental training yet to have that discipline.

00;04;33;24 - 00;04;56;18
Drewbie Wilson
And so as I started developing that, I got rid of the sugary drinks. I stopped eating all the candies and the sweets and went through a season where I got down to, I don't know, 250 maybe, and then I started doing drugs. And you know what happens when you do drugs and you smoke and you're on the streets all day and you don't eat right, and you just basically subside on whatever your body has.

00;04;56;18 - 00;05;24;28
Drewbie Wilson
And you I got down to like 210 pounds, which I was like, this is awesome, skinny, I feel good. But you ever met a drug addicted person that had lost a lot of weight? You can see it on them. It's not like a pretty you can tell typically. and thankfully at the time, the the girl I'm married to now saw me and was like, this is a guy that I'm into, and we have a whole story that we could go into the depths of as well from addiction and all the different things that I went through and put her through and we went through together.

00;05;24;28 - 00;05;44;21
Drewbie Wilson
But I got comfortable, started eating more. She got pregnant, we had a son, and I went from 210 pounds back up to 280 pounds, and to the point where she came to me and she's like, hey man, I love you. But like all of this, that ain't it. It's not the man I married. And it's not the example that I want for our son.

00;05;44;21 - 00;06;00;09
Drewbie Wilson
And so, like, she wasn't saying she was perfect either, but she was making that decision for herself and wanted me to be on board with it. And, I mean, I don't know if anyone's ever told you, hey, man, I love you, but I'm not attracted to you to like, that's a heavy, heavy pit in the stomach there.

00;06;00;10 - 00;06;01;04
Drewbie Wilson
Correct.

00;06;01;06 - 00;06;04;02
Craig Andrews
That would be crushing that. That would crush me.

00;06;04;04 - 00;06;32;03
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah. Well, and then, you know, on the other side of that, I had a friend who I was working more, and I had got to a point where I was making a little bit of money, and I had actually retired my wife to where she didn't have to work anymore. And he was like, hey, man, you know, I see you're putting in the work, you're building your business up and you're making a little bit of money, but really, how would it feel if you would boom, all of a sudden you're up in heaven watching down, and there's some other jerk in your bed with your wife in your home, your kids in the other room

00;06;32;03 - 00;06;47;03
Drewbie Wilson
crying because you're not around, because you didn't make the time to take care of yourself first, and to be there and be the person that you said you were and that you committed to being when you had that baby and you married that girl. So what's it going to be.

00;06;47;06 - 00;06;48;23
Craig Andrews
Oh my goodness.

00;06;48;25 - 00;06;51;01
Drewbie Wilson
Doesn't sound like heaven does it Craig.

00;06;51;03 - 00;06;54;28
Craig Andrews
No but I mean what a good friend that would ask you that question.

00;06;55;00 - 00;07;21;23
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah. Shout out to Jeff man. He's he's a real friend. And I know over the years he and I have had those ups and downs, those peaks and valleys. And it's one of those things where it's really nice to have someone that good or bad, they're going to shoot you straight and I'm very, very grateful that I've surrounded myself with more of those kinds of individuals as I've gotten older, as I've learned some of those hard lessons in life, and you know, my wife, she's one of those she was able to tell me, hey, man, you're getting fat.

00;07;21;25 - 00;07;38;15
Drewbie Wilson
I don't want to go to bed with you because you're not who you were when we started this process. And there's probably someone listening who either is in a season where they're not doing the things that they used to do to get the result that they were getting, and they're starting to see that effect, or they're realizing that there's a gap.

00;07;38;15 - 00;08;01;23
Drewbie Wilson
Something has happened in their situation because the work that needed to be done to get there is no longer being done. And so it's starting to fall apart. Those little cracks are forming. And in my relationship, personally, I can tell you that Christmas Eve in 2019, when I thought I had built all of these things up and my wife handed me her wedding ring back and was like, now you're married to the business, not your family anymore.

00;08;01;26 - 00;08;08;10
Drewbie Wilson
Again, it was that realization of who are you surrounding yourself with? Willing to have those hard conversations with you?

00;08;08;13 - 00;08;22;22
Craig Andrews
Wow. Now there's so many things to break down here and, you know, I, you know, three years ago, I lost 40 pounds by going into a six week coma. What was your method for losing weight?

00;08;22;24 - 00;08;51;28
Drewbie Wilson
Math. Calories in, calories out. Like you said. Hey, man, ten sodas at 280 calories a piece is 2800 calories. If you're only allowed to have 2000 calories a day, guess what? You can't have ten sodas. Probably shouldn't have any sodas because it's a lot of empty calories. But it was for me. It always came back to basic calories in, calories out because fad diets, weight loss drugs, they didn't have ozempic back when I started my journey.

00;08;52;01 - 00;09;15;06
Drewbie Wilson
and ultimately even things like 75 hard, which I don't know if you're familiar with it at all. it's a mental training program that was created by Andy for. So I've done the whole thing. That's great. But it's still a season. It's a phase. It's only for that period of time. And to me, it's big picture. As I've learned and grown, you have to create a sustainable bowl system because sustainable in a coma, is not it, Craig?

00;09;15;06 - 00;09;25;26
Drewbie Wilson
You don't want to stay in that. You want to get out of that situation and get back to it. Right? But losing weight is cool. It's a benefit, maybe, but what was the long term of that situation?

00;09;25;29 - 00;09;29;24
Craig Andrews
Well, when I woke up I couldn't walk. So that's a downside. Yeah.

00;09;29;27 - 00;09;36;12
Drewbie Wilson
So that's that's not sustainable. You don't want to stay on that path.

00;09;36;14 - 00;09;57;18
Craig Andrews
well, and you know, and I'm going to be careful here and what I say, but there are a variety of weight loss drugs out there. Some of them are really, popular and one of the most popular ones. I'm not going to say it's name. One third of the weight loss comes from muscle mass, lean matter, and bone density.

00;09;57;20 - 00;10;12;29
Craig Andrews
And I've got family member who's, postmenopausal and whose doctor never told her that she was giving up bone density in order to lose weight.

00;10;13;01 - 00;10;34;14
Drewbie Wilson
Well, and again, we don't have to go into it, and that's probably not what the point of the show is. But is it sustainable? And with something like that, have the long term effects been studied? You know what the long term effects study of calories in, calories out is? It works. And until you get to the nitty gritty to where you're actually supposed to be, it doesn't matter.

00;10;34;17 - 00;10;57;17
Drewbie Wilson
You burn more than you take in. The weight is going to go down. You can literally just eat Twinkies all day, and it's going to work scientifically, but it's not a long term thing if you want to create the long term. Again, some of these drugs that exist, you can do them for six months. But what happens is you train yourself to have bad habits because you're relying on this crutch, this thing that's working for you in the background.

00;10;57;19 - 00;11;16;15
Drewbie Wilson
You're not doing the work. The thing is doing the work. So what happens when the thing is gone? People put that weight back on. They go right back to the old habits that they had that were putting them in that position to begin with. Which is why I hone in so heavily on people that it's like, whatever you're doing, is it sustainable for the long term?

00;11;16;18 - 00;11;23;17
Drewbie Wilson
Because anybody can go through a season or a phase and get a result. But how long is that going to last?

00;11;23;20 - 00;11;35;21
Craig Andrews
So what did you do to go from 300 pounds, on drugs and married to your work, to where you are now?

00;11;35;23 - 00;11;54;23
Drewbie Wilson
Had a real hard conversation about what my time is worth and where I was spending it. And it's it's really a two part process, and it's a lot that I like to really work with my clients on. And if anyone, honestly, that will listen to me as I share it because I know whether you pay me for it or not, if you listen and you actually implement this, it will make a difference in your life.

00;11;54;23 - 00;12;17;03
Drewbie Wilson
And so, Greg, if you don't mind, the simple formula is let's take whatever amount of money you made last year as a total right. Your main job maybe your side hustle, maybe you have one of those websites where you share pictures of your feet or something. I'm not judging. I'm just saying like, put all that together in a big pot and then take that number and divide it by 2000.

00;12;17;06 - 00;12;33;12
Drewbie Wilson
Because if you were an average person from which you're not, you're on a show like this listening to learn and grow so you're not average. But if you were, you would work 2000 hours in a year, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks. You take a two week vacation, right? We can kind of agree. That's like the typical Craig.

00;12;34;15 - 00;12;52;05
Drewbie Wilson
So if you worked last year and you made 100 grand, you work 2000 hours, your time's worth 50 bucks an hour. That's just math right. And it's very simple. Here's what I know though, Craig. If I were to put on a black cape and a hood and I knocked on your door and I said, hey, Craig, here's 50 bucks, I need you for an hour.

00;12;52;08 - 00;12;57;18
Drewbie Wilson
What kind of response are you going to give me? very good one.

00;12;57;25 - 00;12;59;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No.

00;12;59;24 - 00;13;24;08
Drewbie Wilson
Right. We could pick some expletives. We. But we're not going to because this is a clean show. And that's not what this is about. But the point is, we start to recognize that we wouldn't exchange an hour of time for that amount. But there is a number somewhere where you start to think, okay, well, for an hour, that amount of money, I pretty much do whatever because that money is a tool or a resource that I can use for the people, the things in my life that matter.

00;13;24;13 - 00;13;52;28
Drewbie Wilson
Can we agree on that? Yep. Awesome. And so the second part of that is as you start to realize, okay, my time is actually worth significantly more than what I'm actually putting it into. And you stop wasting the time and you stop saying, hey, I'll get to that when or I'll go on that trip if or then when and you start thinking about, hey, if I know I've only got 24 hours in a day, because we can all pretty much agree that 24 hours is a typical day to me.

00;13;52;28 - 00;14;13;07
Drewbie Wilson
There's only a couple areas of life that matter. Sleep is number one because again, I was addicted. And so if you've ever been on a bender for any time after 48 hours, it doesn't look good. You can't operate good. You're really just not a good human at that point. And so I think sleep is very important. And then most people want to spend time on their legacy.

00;14;13;07 - 00;14;30;06
Drewbie Wilson
Right. That's what this show is all about. Leaders and legacies. Right. We put that at the top of the list because that's really important. And I love that. That's fantastic. Families, relationships very, very important. And we have our business because the majority of us don't have Joe Rogan money to where we can just make podcasts all day and do whatever we want.

00;14;30;06 - 00;14;59;03
Drewbie Wilson
So like we still have to work and show up to get paid. And then interestingly enough, we put ourselves last. That's why you get burnout. That's why you lose. are you get, you know, out of shape and overweight and you don't have that same energy that you used to have. But what's really crazy is, Craig, the last time you get on a plane, and every time you get on a plane, they tell you in an emergency, you have to put your own oxygen mask on first, or you're going to be a burden to everyone around you.

00;14;59;06 - 00;15;13;24
Drewbie Wilson
So how interesting that people live this life where they put themselves last all the time, and yet they go out talking about how they're doing all of these things for all of these other things, and how they're this best version of themselves and how they're all this things, but they put themselves last.

00;15;13;27 - 00;15;50;07
Craig Andrews
So how does that work? Yeah, yeah. And I gotta say, I've, I've struggled with that multiple times in my life. I've allowed my, I mean before I got sick and went in the coma, you know, my weight had crept back up, not 300 pounds. I was, you know, I was at 220, I think, two 2225 and, and what happens is I get I get kind of in this, hamster wheel of I gotta work, I work, I work, and I don't take time to go exercise and doesn't take long to exercise.

00;15;50;09 - 00;16;04;14
Craig Andrews
And what's worse is I know if I, I know while I'm doing that, if I exercise, I will be more productive at my work. But I keep falling. I keep making the wrong choice. I've done that several times in life, you know?

00;16;04;14 - 00;16;05;17
Drewbie Wilson
Right. Just cycle.

00;16;05;20 - 00;16;32;01
Craig Andrews
Yeah, it is. So what do I mean? What would you recommend to people who are, you know, struggling with that? Because, anybody's a business owner, you know, there are some people that are exceptionally well disciplined and they have their their day mapped out. But I think most business owners struggle with that of they've got ten priorities and time for five of those.

00;16;32;03 - 00;16;49;25
Drewbie Wilson
I would challenge how many of those are actually priorities. And the way that I would challenge the listener is to think about it like this. If you did a time study or an audit of your time and you put an alarm in your phone that went off every hour for the next 14 days, except for when you're sleeping, like, put it on, do not disturb.

00;16;49;25 - 00;17;06;05
Drewbie Wilson
When you're sleep and get your sleep. but like, let's say at the top of every hour, you just stopped and you made a note of all the things that you did for that hour, starting from the moment you wake up. And so for me, it would look like this. Hey, I woke up, I focused ten minutes on gratitude, and I took some time to write down the five things that I was grateful for.

00;17;06;11 - 00;17;21;07
Drewbie Wilson
And then I drank a big glass of water. And then I went to the bathroom, and I scrolled Instagram for like, ten minutes while I was getting myself together. and then I'm at a pre-workout, and then I went and walked for 60 minutes. And while I was walking, I did X, Y, and Z, and then when I got home, I took a shower.

00;17;21;07 - 00;17;35;26
Drewbie Wilson
And then I took 30 minutes and drove to the office. And then when I got to the office, I scrolled YouTube for ten minutes. And then I did this and did this by the third day, you're going to realize how much time you're wasting on things that aren't getting you, the result that you're saying you want.

00;17;35;29 - 00;17;36;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;17;36;19 - 00;17;58;28
Drewbie Wilson
And the hardest thing is being very, very honest with yourself about the time that you're spending and where you're spending it. And if you can truly track an ROI to it because like, everything comes back to what gets measured, gets improved. If you want to improve your relationship, you have to create metrics that you can measure as a way to say, is this actually improving my relationship?

00;17;58;28 - 00;18;17;16
Drewbie Wilson
If you want to see your bank account grow, you want to see those numbers going up. Guess what? There's a metric to say. How many leads did I call today? How many conversations that I have? How many offers did I make to potentially put more money in that account? There's a way to break all of this down scientifically, and it all just comes back to you.

00;18;17;16 - 00;18;21;28
Drewbie Wilson
Whatever the result you want. Are you investing the time to get it?

00;18;22;00 - 00;18;24;27
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and.

00;18;25;00 - 00;18;25;23
Drewbie Wilson
It's.

00;18;25;25 - 00;18;42;13
Craig Andrews
You know, so the name of your business is called the Damn Leads. And again, that's not language that I generally is, but I love the spirit of it and tell me what's the origin of that. what we're I'm assuming some point you track that back to some activity.

00;18;42;16 - 00;18;59;20
Drewbie Wilson
100%. So, you know, I've been in sales my whole life, grew up in the streets running and selling anything and everything. That's how I got into the addiction and all the things that I got into. Right? Because as a user, it was like, how am I going to cover my cost and expenses? Well, if I go and I sell X amount per bag, I can have X amount for me as a bonus.

00;18;59;20 - 00;19;16;08
Drewbie Wilson
Oh cool. I don't have to pay for my own usage anymore. And I got all this other and then stacked up to where you start making a profit. And so as I got into more legitimate sales and not wanting to be dead or in prison, I started selling insurance and I was one of the top producers in my market.

00;19;16;08 - 00;19;29;12
Drewbie Wilson
I got really good about picking up the phone, calling people and having conversations. And the one thing I always did more than everybody else was call the dang leads, forsake olive oil. You know, it's called a damn lead. But you know.

00;19;29;15 - 00;19;33;13
Craig Andrews
It's, you know, what's the name of your business? That's fine. I invite join.

00;19;33;15 - 00;19;53;14
Drewbie Wilson
You. All right. I'm I'm going to run with that one then. I appreciate that, Craig. Thank you. And it's I would call the damn leads. And so it led me to selling more than most of the other agents in my area. And it got me an opportunity to really go in and make money. As a kid who grew up in the streets thinking that I was, you know, always going to be in the streets to be able to make money as a sales professional.

00;19;53;14 - 00;19;57;09
Drewbie Wilson
Selling insurance was awesome. But then I hit a peak.

00;19;57;11 - 00;20;28;00
Craig Andrews
So go ahead. Yeah. And and I just want to make sure, we capture this because and maybe this is where you're going when you change this behavior. We're not talking about driving a little bit of revenue. You've driven seven figures. But by doing that multiple seven figures. And I just want to make sure people know that because there's some business, there's somebody listening that's like, okay, you know, this can move the needle a little bit, but we're talking about seven figure movements in the needle.

00;20;28;03 - 00;20;47;15
Drewbie Wilson
Well, and if they want to get really into the details of the math, in the last business I was a part of, I did over $13 million in sales at an average transaction of $5,000 per transaction. So you can do the math on how many conversations and how many times I've had to go through to understand what it truly means to build these systems, to build these processes.

00;20;47;15 - 00;21;01;18
Drewbie Wilson
And for me, that's what I did as I, as a sales professional, realized I want to sell more stuff because I want to make more money. I went to the boss and I'm like, I'm the top guy in the market. How do I go from making 40 grand a year to a hundred? And the guy was like, hey, man, you just got to be patient.

00;21;01;21 - 00;21;16;16
Drewbie Wilson
Someday your name is going to be on the door. You're going to get to take over, and it's going to be awesome. And I was like, that sounds terrible because I'm the most impatient person in the world. There's no way I want to wait ten years for that. So I went back to my desk and I'm like, well, fuck, what am I going to do?

00;21;16;19 - 00;21;38;29
Drewbie Wilson
And I was like, well, if I want to sell more stuff, I need more people to talk to. The only way to get more leads is to go and learn marketing. So I went online and I bought a marketing course, and I started building these websites and running paid advertising, and I had some success. I spent 500 bucks, I got 250 leads, doubled my insurance production in one month, and was like, oh my God, this is amazing, right?

00;21;38;29 - 00;21;54;15
Drewbie Wilson
You ever have like that thing that you do and you get a result and you're like, how do I do this a million times? Go over and over and over. Had some success, got a couple calls from some other agents that went, hey, man, you're the top guy in the market and you just doubled your production. What did you do?

00;21;54;15 - 00;22;11;01
Drewbie Wilson
And, was it legal? because, you know, of course, when you start doing something, people always question the legitimacy. And I was like, well, I started doing this marketing. I learned how to build these websites and these funnels and all this stuff, and they're like, man, I'm not I'm a business owner. I don't want to learn any of that.

00;22;11;01 - 00;22;31;09
Drewbie Wilson
I don't care how much to set it up for me. 2500 bucks like done deal. Where do I send the money? I made $10,000 on a Saturday, Craig. I'd never made $10,000 in a month. And I was like, I'm in the wrong business. Like I'm going to start a marketing company. This is going to be awesome. I'm going to be rich in no time.

00;22;31;11 - 00;22;51;25
Drewbie Wilson
Hahaha. All of you leaders and everybody laugh because you know that that's the stupidest thing anybody's ever said. But everybody said it. so I started a marketing company, got a bunch of clients, and then I realized that it doesn't matter how great I am at my job, they still have to do the work. And one client in particular, who I charged $1,500, called me after I sent him 100 leads.

00;22;51;25 - 00;23;08;18
Drewbie Wilson
And he said, these leads suck. I want my money back. And I went, I don't I don't think so. So I started calling them not a real estate agent. I don't have a license. I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once, but that doesn't give me the right to sell or buy a home for you. But I started calling these leads.

00;23;08;21 - 00;23;27;29
Drewbie Wilson
I set six appointments and got a signed contract for this condo that I had never been to, nor do I know anything about real estate. Craig. I called the guy back. I was like, I don't know what you're doing over there. Here's all these people that want to buy the thing and a refund. Please don't ever call me, but you should probably call the damn leads.

00;23;28;01 - 00;23;40;06
Drewbie Wilson
And that was it. I hung up and I chuckled, and I went to some marketing buddies of mine and I was like, it would be funny to put call the damn leads on a t shirt. I bet I could sell 100 of them to these marketers and they'd all laugh and it would be funny. And it was a big joke.

00;23;40;08 - 00;23;52;21
Drewbie Wilson
But I went to the trademark attorney that I knew at the time, and I was like, I don't know. God's telling me that I should trademark this phrase because I think it's hilarious and other people are starting to say it, and someday I'm going to put it on a t shirt. That was three and a half years ago.

00;23;52;21 - 00;24;10;07
Drewbie Wilson
Craig. And then in September last year, I got that download that was like, hey man, it's time to make a shift. It's time to really lean in on your legacy and what you're trying to do as a leader. And I want you to really go all in on this call the damn leads brand. And so that's what we did.

00;24;10;09 - 00;24;27;08
Drewbie Wilson
We walked away from a half $1 million a year salary. Big corporation that I was a big part of. And I went all in on call the damn leads because I truly believe that it is the one thing that if you'll just do that, it will answer all of your money problems that you're dealing with right now in your business.

00;24;27;10 - 00;25;10;13
Craig Andrews
You know, I'm I'm a marketer and, you know, I usually do high ticket B2B stuff and it's it's inevitable that, you know, the conversation's coming where at one point they're like, these leads are no good. And I'm like, by what metric? And it's bizarre. And I'm looking at leads. so I mean, as, as an example, I think of one we had, had a client that did, water management, they were able to, you know, reduce your water consumption for corporate campuses and, you know, large, large areas.

00;25;10;15 - 00;25;19;28
Craig Andrews
One of their leads was the head of operations for Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle. And they never called them.

00;25;20;00 - 00;25;23;16
Drewbie Wilson
Stop, stop. That's not true. Tell me that's not a true story.

00;25;23;19 - 00;25;49;18
Craig Andrews
That is 100% true. Oh, I was like, this guy has a $30 million budget and he's got the title, he's got the budget. He he is your ideal customer. Why has a name buy call them. Well, we emailed them and you know, we never heard back.

00;25;49;20 - 00;26;20;27
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah. that's an unfortunate commonality. And you know I've written a book called called The Damn Lives. I have a podcast called The Damn Leads. We share funny sales stories. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't actually believe this because you're in the business. But those of you listening, it is scary how often this happens that as a business owner, you're spending thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars to advertise, to market, to try to grow your business.

00;26;21;00 - 00;26;45;27
Drewbie Wilson
And people are not calling the leads that you have spent your time, energy and resources to generate. And so let this, if anything, be your big blow up moment to go, oh my gosh, when was the last time I went and made sure that my sales team was going through our database and actually calling all of these people who have said, excuse me, ma'am, sir, you have a product or service that I might potentially be interested in utilizing.

00;26;46;01 - 00;26;48;16
Drewbie Wilson
Could someone please contact me?

00;26;48;18 - 00;27;12;02
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So as as easy as it is to ridicule these people for knock on the. Yeah. The head of operations for SeaTac airport. there's something there, you know, so if we if we go down the path of empathy there, from your perspective, what leads to this? Why is it that you have these sales reps that aren't calling these leads?

00;27;12;05 - 00;27;33;00
Drewbie Wilson
I think there's really there's two parts of it that I see. One is people are lazy and I and I hate to say that, but from an empathetic standpoint, I think a lot of people, especially in we're in 2024 now, they have instant gratification and they truly feel as though everyone should want the thing that they do or offer, and they don't have to work for it.

00;27;33;00 - 00;27;54;25
Drewbie Wilson
And that's that's something that you can work through with core values and training and different parts of it. But ultimately, I think a lot of people on the other side of it, they have imposter syndrome. And that's where I don't always think it's laziness. I think they're afraid, and what they're afraid is to get on the phone with someone where they're not going to have the answers, they're not going to be able to deliver the product or service that the person wants.

00;27;54;27 - 00;28;16;11
Drewbie Wilson
And so their own hesitancy, their own roadblocks start to show up. And unconsciously, they're avoiding the thing because they're projecting out some situation that they think is going to happen based on their perception of the entire process. Right? They the sales person that got that SeaTac lead, they probably looked at it and went, well, there's no way in heck.

00;28;16;18 - 00;28;44;04
Drewbie Wilson
The head of operations for the Seattle airport went on our website and filled out this form. This definitely is a is a bunk lead. It's just they're like they have this preconceived notion of like, there's no way that's possible. And that's a limiting belief. And I think a lot of professionals, whether they're leaders, sales professionals, new, old, whatever they have, limiting beliefs and those limiting beliefs become barriers that they put up to prevent them from getting the result that they want.

00;28;44;04 - 00;29;01;24
Drewbie Wilson
And so I think the best thing to remember is that if you've ever felt that way of like, oh, well, I don't know, I don't know, it is your calling an actual like, that's the thing that you should be saying. Yes, this is why I need to do it, because I don't know. You don't know what you don't know until you take action to know.

00;29;01;26 - 00;29;19;07
Drewbie Wilson
And the only way to know is call the damn fleets and ask them those questions and say, are you John Smith from the Sea-Tac airport? Because it turns out I can help you save $10 million a year. Would you be interested in that? And he goes, well, I am John of the SeaTac airport, and I would love to save $10 million a year because my bonus would be awesome.

00;29;19;07 - 00;29;24;29
Drewbie Wilson
How does that work? Yeah, maybe it wouldn't go like that, but it might. You don't know until you know.

00;29;25;01 - 00;29;49;10
Craig Andrews
You know, I've got a buddy who's Mormon and we were having lunch, a month ago or something like that. And he said, he said, you know why Mormons are so good at business? He said, when they're young, before they start their career, they spend two years getting rejected and they go door to door and say, hey, do you want to talk about religion?

00;29;49;12 - 00;30;12;20
Craig Andrews
And for two years they get told no, and they show up the next day and they do it again, and they do it again, and they do it again. And I would imagine, you know, there's an element, of that, you know, going back even to your weight loss, you know, I'm, I'm sure the Coke machines didn't disappear when you decided to quit drinking Coke.

00;30;12;22 - 00;30;28;15
Drewbie Wilson
Oh, no, they were more prevalent than ever. And, you know, I had a father in law. That that's all he drank. So every time he came over to have dinner, he'd leave one in the fridge to look at me. and it was to me, it was like that little discipline where, you know, he was ribbon me and just joking about it and trying to make fun.

00;30;28;17 - 00;30;52;28
Drewbie Wilson
But at the same time, it was my reminder of like, hey, you're doing something that most people aren't willing to commit to because it's not difficult to stop drinking soda. It's not difficult to do many of the things that we know. We need to do to get the result. It's the willingness and the commitment to do it time after time after time, when it's right in your face, when it's right there, readily available for instant, immediate gratification.

00;30;53;01 - 00;31;11;18
Drewbie Wilson
That's where true discipline and commitment comes in is that ability to look at it and go, I can have it now, but I'm not gonna because I know if I wait until a certain point, I will feel differently about it or not. Doing it is actually giving me more motivation and more excitement for what's possible in my life.

00;31;11;20 - 00;31;33;18
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So let's take, last couple of minutes here. And for these couple of minutes, you are advising the head of a of an organization, CEO, owner who has a sales team that's not hitting their goals. What's your advice to them?

00;31;33;20 - 00;31;48;21
Drewbie Wilson
First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to come in. I'm going to look at the metrics from the top down because it all starts with leadership. So first and foremost, what are the expectations that you've put in place for these guys? Because if you're telling me they're not hitting their metrics, I need to know what are the metrics?

00;31;48;23 - 00;32;13;09
Drewbie Wilson
Because that's where we can start is like, all right, well, you're saying they're not doing the thing they're supposed to be doing. What are they supposed to be doing? And what I know, unfortunately, is that a lot of leaders operate on assumed knowledge. They assume, you know, you should be doing all of these things. Unfortunately, as leaders, we operate on a lot of assume knowledge, and we just do things without thinking about the fact that we're doing them.

00;32;13;12 - 00;32;39;14
Drewbie Wilson
And so expectations and communication of those expectations is where it all starts. Because once we know what those expectations were, then we can say, fantastic. And how did we deliver those expectations to the individual? Are they very sure and clear of what those expectations are? Because then if they're actively not doing the thing that they know they should be doing, now, we can transition to a different conversation.

00;32;39;17 - 00;32;46;17
Drewbie Wilson
But if they didn't know they were supposed to be doing that, I can't fault them for not doing the thing they didn't know they needed to do. Does that make sense?

00;32;46;20 - 00;33;06;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah, it does. And I mean, that resonates strongly with me. I, you know, I'm high on intuition and so I assume the rest, you know, everybody else sees what I say. And once they see it, they'll know what to do. And I get upset when they don't see what I see and don't know what to do in that situation.

00;33;06;06 - 00;33;29;23
Craig Andrews
And it's it's been a lifelong lesson of, now you got to overcommunicate, you got to you got to set clear expectations. You've got to overcommunicate, even to the point, I've found that the best leaders, when I look at the best leaders I've seen, I could I could repeat their script word for word because they said so darn much.

00;33;29;25 - 00;34;06;19
Drewbie Wilson
And what's interesting is if you ask them to write it down word for word, they probably can't because they just do it so naturally. And in every situation they nuance it very like very slightly, depending on the person, depending on the cognitive bias, depending on where that person is right now, in the moment, the energy that they're giving off, the level of thinking that they're operating at a real professional and a real leader knows how to adjust for those variables so they're able to be able to say it, I'm going to give you the message and deliver it, but I'm going to do it in a way that resonates with you, because it's not about

00;34;06;19 - 00;34;15;22
Drewbie Wilson
me telling you what to do. It's about you understanding what needs to be done so that you will take action to get that result.

00;34;15;24 - 00;34;42;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Wow. Well, this is this is good. We could we could go another hour. I know we could, but we don't we don't have the time, but I, I mean, I really love the I love your passion and love your mindset and the. You know, if I think about a few things that you've said during our discussion.

00;34;42;24 - 00;35;16;22
Craig Andrews
It's about math, whether it's losing weight or about driving revenue. It's math. Sit down, do the math, and be able to then have some metrics tied to that that you and your team clearly understand and a lot of it is a lot of at least what I'm hearing you say, a lot of the success is doing the things that are simple but undesirable or simple but hard.

00;35;16;25 - 00;35;32;22
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah. I mean, and it's it's always not the fun, sexy part of the, the end of these conversations to be like, well, we got you all hyped up and motivated and guess what? Now you're going to go do all the sucky stuff. Because to get success, you got to do the stuff that sucks.

00;35;32;25 - 00;35;39;21
Craig Andrews
I like that, I love that. Well, hey, drew me, how do people reach you?

00;35;39;23 - 00;36;00;11
Drewbie Wilson
Yeah, well, first and foremost, if they enjoyed the show, the thing that I would ask before anything else, share this episode on social media and tag Craig and I. You can tag me at Call the Damn Leads. I'm on every social media platform at called The Damn Leads. You can literally find me anywhere you prefer to hang out because it's not about me, it's about you.

00;36;00;13 - 00;36;21;29
Drewbie Wilson
And ultimately, I want you to feel comfortable knowing that if there's something I can help you with, you're able to come ask questions, reach out and get the help. Because whether or not I'm the right person for you, there's something I can teach you along the way to put you on the path to creating a life by design that you want, so that you can be the leader you desire and leave the legacy that you were destined to leave.

00;36;21;29 - 00;36;42;07
Drewbie Wilson
So go find me on social media and call the damn leads and then share this show. Specifically this episode, because this is the one that you listen to and you got value out of first. And nothing would do me or Craig any bigger favor than letting other people know that you spent some time here, and it was worth the time that you invested.

00;36;42;20 - 00;36;45;14
Craig Andrews
awesome. Drewbie thanks for being on Leaders and Legacies.

00;36;45;16 - 00;36;48;18
Drewbie Wilson
You're welcome. Thank you.

00;36;48;18 - 00;37;17;16
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;37;17;18 - 00;37;40;28
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest, tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;37;41;00 - 00;39;51;14
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.