The Alter Ego Advantage of Top Performers

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
What does a go from home moment? Well,
it's any time where you suddenly find yourself
with this opportunity, and it's this opportunity to
approach, make and ask, to put yourself out
there. It's also that moment where we most
often
talk ourselves out of it.
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast.
Hi. I'm Jeb Blunt, best selling author of

(00:25):
fanatical prospecting, objections, sales EQ, and inked, and
I'm here to help you open more doors,
close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.
Welcome to the sales review podcast.
Today's guests are folks who've changed the way
millions of people think about failure. Richard Fenton
and Andrea Waltz are the coauthors of the
best selling book Go for No, a book

(00:47):
that has become a cornerstone for sales professionals,
entrepreneurs, and anyone who's ever wrestled with the
fear of rejection. You can see it right
here. With its bold premise that yes is
the destination,
but no is how you get there, Andrea
and Richard helped launch a movement that flipped
the script on success.
And now they're back with a powerful new

(01:07):
follow-up, Go for No, the sequel.
This book picks up where the original left
off only now the story dives deeper. It's
not just about hearing no anymore. It's about
legacy, mentorship, and redefining
what success really means over time. Andrea and
Richard, welcome to the Sales Groovy Podcast.
Hey, Jeb. Great to be with you. Yeah.
Thanks. Well, I'm really excited about this. I

(01:28):
love this book, and I love it for
a lot of reasons. I think it's, what
it what I didn't realize when I read
it when I was 20 years old was
that it was a road map for success
at an early
part of in an early stage of my
career.
I, you know, I read
Jeb's books. I've got Anthony's books. I've got
all these different sales books, and they sort
of speak to somebody in their mid thirties

(01:50):
who've who who's really gotten into a sales
career, and they're they're trying to level up
what they're doing. But your book really helped
me,
uncover
fanatical prospecting in a different way than I
think, I would have if I hadn't had
your book. And now you've got a sequel.
And I wanna start with kind of the
obvious question, which is why a sequel and
why now? Because the original Go for No,

(02:12):
became a cult classic in the sales world.
It's really an impressive
I mean, it's it's it's thin. It's only
a few, you know, few 100 pages. It's
really, really cool that you did such an
amazing job with the book that you have.
And what made you wanna revisit this and
tell a new story that builds on top
of it? Okay, Jeb. This is gonna sound
weird, and I'm not trying to equate us

(02:33):
with the Star Wars franchise.
However, if you have Star Wars,
it does kinda make sense that you have
Empire Strikes Back. Right?
So so and then I guess this means
we have to have Return of the Jedi.
But,
so this is our Empire Strikes Back, which
some say some say is even better than
the than the movie.
We

(02:54):
really wanted to,
dig into
the concepts further. You know, all these years
talking to people about go for no and
then getting all of the feedback, it's kinda
like, wow. That was a that's a cool
angle. And and how would we what what
things do we really wanna expand on? And
it's kinda funny that you would bring up

(03:14):
you reading Go for No at 20 because
in the sequel,
what we deal with is our main character
comes back twenty five years later.
He has a daughter who's just graduated college.
She thinks sales is sleazy, but she's lost.
She doesn't know what to do. And so
he throws her into sales because,
hey, it's the best thing that you can
get into anyway. It's a life skill that

(03:36):
you must have. And so it just allowed
us to to
to go into some corners and angles of
go for no that we wouldn't have previously.
And the other I'll just add this. The
other frustrating thing is I'm still thinking of
things I wish that I would have put
in this book. I'm like, I had an
epiphany this morning. I'm like, darn it all.

(03:56):
Why did I should've put in that in
the book? So
I it's it it never ends when you're
teaching this
concept, and I think sales is a ongoing
education.
And so, yeah, that's one of the reasons.
What do you have? What do you have
to add? Well, you know, we wrote we
wrote the original Go for No, in 1999.
We published it in February.

(04:16):
We had a, quote, publishing deal with a
major
New York publisher
that fell apart at the last minute,
because they said that Go for No would
never sell more than 5,000 copies.
And we had a decision to make, and
the answer was, do we just say, okay.
The book the book's no good. We were
wrong, or do we take on the responsibility

(04:38):
of learning the publishing game as well as
the writing game? And we decided that we
were going to learn to publish books. Now
keep in mind, this was before Amazon.
This was before print on demand. This was
before you could easily hire a graphic artist.
I mean, everything was expensive. So it was
a it was a much it was like
literally like learning a industry.

(05:00):
And, you know, we made the decision to
do it. We made the decision that we
were gonna that we were going to, publish
a book ourselves, and we made the decision
that,
we were going to prove the very large
New York publisher whose name I won't mention.
And I won't I won't mention it. I
wanna get sued.
Does it rhyme with anything? I It's,
let's see.

(05:22):
Diamond and Rooster. Maybe
yeah. And, so so we we we set
about trying to, you know, to make that
book,
a success.
And just a couple of years ago, we
passed the 1,000,000
sales mark.
And so they were off only by, I
don't know, thousand thousand, 9,000, but they're way

(05:43):
more of that,
10000%
off. We came to the conclusion that there's
a lot of decent sales training companies out
there. There are some exceptional ones like like
yours, like SalesGravy,
but we hadn't seen anybody
do as deeper dive
on the concept of rejection
as we wanted to go. You know, it's

(06:04):
it it gets mentioned by a lot of
sales training companies where they say, and you're
going to have to face failure rejection. You're
gonna have to keep going. They go like,
okay. Next topic. Now you guys do a
better job than almost anybody that we've seen
out there. It's one of the reasons why
we have such a great relationship.
But we just said, let's just take the
one topic that is the thing that if
you can't conquer this,

(06:24):
if you can't get over your fear of
failure and rejection,
then
all of the techniques in the world are
not going to help you if you don't
pick up the phone.
Right? If you don't pick up the phone,
if you don't dial, if you don't get
people in the pipeline, then, you know, it
it it doesn't matter. So that was really
kind of our our intent from the very
beginning.
I I think it's, it's really

(06:45):
important that we note that the go for
no philosophy that you've been teaching for a
guy since 2000 not since February, but you
published the book in 2000 twenty five years.
I can't two thousand and ten years ago.
It doesn't feel like that. But you've been
teaching it for so long. There's so many
stories that you must hear. And, And, Andrew,
you alluded to this that you've been teaching
it and you hear all these things, and
you're probably just, you know, having dinner and

(07:07):
you go, oh my god. That was a
great story. Why didn't I have that? Because
rejection is so human. It's not a sales
specific emotion. We all know what rejection feels
like even if you haven't been in sales,
and you tackle it in a in a
really,
interesting way. So, like, the book gave us
Eric Bratton,
who
is sort of an accidental student with this

(07:28):
new mindset.
But in the sequel, you talked about, you
know, twenty five years later, he brings his
daughter, Cassidy, back into the mix. What was
that what does that shift represent to you,
and how does that expand on the core
message of go for no? And and and
give people a quick core message of go
for no, in your words, and then, I'll
I'll, reask the questions if we need to.

(07:49):
Gotcha. No. No. No. I'm good. I'm good.
But thank you. I that was good context.
So, yeah, we do need to frame up
go for no. What does go for no
even mean? Because on the surface, it sounds
like a horrible
strategy,
right, for any anyone in sales, just on
the surface. What we really mean is to
intentionally
increase your failure rate. And by that, we

(08:10):
mean to intentionally
put yourself in positions where you're willing to
hear no more often,
understanding that when you do that, that's where
the yeses are. That, and this is why
our subtitle is yes is the destination, but
no is how you get there. And it
all stems from a sales situation that that
Richard had when he was selling suits for
a living and learned that,

(08:32):
by not being willing to hear no and
show the customer more products, more services,
He was actually limiting his potential and limited
his sale. And his
his mentor, his district manager kinda called him
out and said, what did that customer say
no to? And Richard had to say nothing.
Everything I laid in front of that guy,
he purchased.

(08:53):
And then the question was, then how did
you know he was done?
Because he had never Richard had never heard
the word no in in in that sales
interaction.
And if you're not hearing the word no,
then truly, you probably aren't maximizing
that interaction, that sale, even if it's later
on to something else, referrals, reviews, whatever.

(09:14):
So is that that is kind of the
context.
What we did with Cassidy was it gave
us a chance to dig into
what people's perceived self imposed limitations are. So
we have Cassidy. She says to her dad,
I I don't wanna sell it sleazy. He's
like, it's not sleazy. We we talk about
that in the book. So finally, she begrudgingly

(09:36):
is,
okay. I'm gonna try it and realizes how
difficult it is and realizes
not only is it just
objectively difficult to get a hold of people,
she's experiencing all of these challenges, but then
she realizes
she herself has all of these self imposed
limitations. So she decides to go through and
make a list of all of them, and

(09:57):
and we we kinda flush out six of
them, probably the most most common of them.
One of hers is that she feels like
she's too young and doesn't really have a
right to talk to people. Some people feel
that. Some people feel they're too old. Right?
What whatever your,
like, kind of baggage is, whatever the the
thing that you feel like you're carrying around,

(10:18):
that's going to, of course, be your limitation.
She feels like it she's going to be
pushy,
aggressive.
So it gave us a chance to dig
into the limitations more than we did on
the book, and I think that was
a a a real benefit of this Yeah.
So that we could kinda dismantle those and

(10:38):
then also show people
a different way of looking at them,
really, it's it's not so much, Jeb, that
you can get rid of those. Like, how
do
you get rid of these beliefs and these
thoughts that you have had for so long?
So we're not gonna try to dump them
out necessarily.
We just wanna start adding good stuff in,

(10:59):
and that's a big theme of the book.
Really interesting. Richard, I'd love to hear your
take on this and and the the shift
that you feel like Cassidy represents,
from the book in in into this new
generation of sellers? Well, that that's a great
question, and I will tell you it's gonna
be a little embarrassing for Andrea and I
because we we like to think we're on
top of everything. But in this particular case,

(11:21):
we were very slow learners. We we started,
you know, we started out with a very
simple premise, and that is if you hear
no more often, good things happen. Right? And
that rejection isn't something to be avoided. It's
something that you should seek. Right? That no
isn't bad. No is good.
Well, you know, we we wrote the book.
We started doing training. We traveled the world,
delivering this message, and it became very obvious

(11:43):
that there were two groups of people in
every audience that we spoke to.
The group were the people who would come
up and say, wow. That was really great.
I never really thought of rejection that way.
I'm gonna go out and increase my nose,
and they would just go out, and they
would do it. Mhmm. Then there was the
group who would say, wow. That was amazing.
I never really thought of no that way.
I'm gonna go out and increase my nose,

(12:06):
But they didn't.
They couldn't. They had something that was standing
between them and putting the really basic concept,
right, in action. And so, you know, for
a long time, shame on us, we kinda
said, hey. 20% of every audience we speak
to, they go out and they get great
results. And the companies we would work for,
they'd say, wow. You're not gonna believe it.

(12:27):
We got, you know, we got a 50%
improvement from 20% of our people. Thank you.
But it started to wear on us
that there was this huge body of people,
80% of every audience who loved our message
but couldn't apply it.
And that was probably a disservice on our
part. So your question was, you know, what
what was the motivation for writing this book?

(12:49):
Well, it was really to acknowledge the idea
that, you know, in the in the book,
Eric is that
he's that category. He doesn't realize that no
is good. He learns the lesson,
and then he goes out and applies it
and becomes an immediate success.
Now you're twenty years later, he's got his
daughter, Cassidy,
and she doesn't have the same capabilities that

(13:11):
he had. She's got hang ups. It's, you
know, understanding it logically,
understanding that, hey. If I increase my failure
rate, I'll increase my success. That's one thing.
Being able to do it
emotionally
to be able to not take it personally.
Right? That's a whole different thing. So we
said, listen. With this book, let's acknowledge the

(13:32):
elephant in the room, and the elephant in
the room here is that we have not
addressed
the other part of the problem, and that
is that people
think sales is sleazy.
They think they're too young. They think they're
too old. They don't think they have the
right to do it. They think it's manipulative.
They've got all of these hang ups, and
we said, listen. We we need to we
need to address that. And at the at

(13:54):
the very final, you know, core of that
whole thing
is that
the the majority of people in sales have
a mental
hang up where they keep saying to themselves,
I can't do this.
I'm never gonna be great at this. I'll
never get it. No matter how hard I
try, it looks like the the the top
people always win the awards, and I'm always
sitting in the back of the room clapping

(14:15):
for them. And they keep telling themselves that
they can't do it. And we thought, well,
what if you just actually started telling yourself
that you can't?
What if you can get away from this
idea that I can never be successful in
sales and really just start
saying, I can do this. I can make
this happen. And at the last thing I'll
say is that at the core of this
whole thing is a

(14:37):
is a little chapter we heard in a
book. I read this in a book thirty
years ago by a guy named Steve Chandler,
and he he's a coach. And one of
his one of his, clients comes to him,
and he says, you know, and the client
says, you know, I don't think I could
ever do that. And then he says he
utters the words. He says, then don't be
you.
And when I heard that,

(14:58):
I thought, a, that's the dumbest thing I've
ever heard. And, b, I thought that is
the most profound thing I've ever heard.
If you aren't good at something,
and people will tell you all the time,
like, I can't speak I can't speak in
front of a thousand people. Right? And then
the the advice I get is, well, just
be natural.
Just be yourself.
Be yourself.

(15:18):
The person just said, I can't do it.
So you're telling them to go ahead and
be the person who can't do it? No.
The correct message is, well, then don't be
you.
Be someone who can stand in front of
a room of thousand people. Be somebody who
can pick up the phone, right, and make
the call. Be somebody who can ask a
closing question.
Start being someone who can instead of thinking

(15:39):
of yourself as someone who can't. That is
the main thrust of the book.
It it really resonated with me, and I
straddle these two lines. I mean, I grew
up in sales. I I I had the
respect for sales my entire life, and then
I had the disrespect for sales when I
was in my early twenties because I didn't
wanna be like my father. And then I
came back to sales, so I I figured
it all out. Right? But, you know, for

(15:59):
for me, it spoke to me in the
I have always been a person that understood
and intellectually
understood
no risk, no reward. Go for no. If
you don't have no's, you don't have yeses.
That whole concept never
never missed me. It always made sense. And
when you when I read your book when
I was in my early twenties, you know,
the the entire time reading this book, of
course, of course, of course. I mean, these
are blinding truths. These are flashes of the

(16:22):
obvious that you were writing about. And this
the book was the same way. These are
flashes of the obvious, but I love the
book because I,
more often than not, find myself in that
camp
where,
yes, you can always go out and just
try things and and and it makes sense
to just go do it. But if you
have hang ups and I'm gonna get you
alluded to this in the more things you
cover, Andrea, in this book. And and

(16:44):
it it made sense for people. If you're
listening to this, you wanna read this book.
There are hang ups that you have that
are not necessarily
a fault of yours or a comp you
know, a breakdown of your of your personhood.
They are they're human emotions and human feelings
and human consequences to
to environments and things that you are in.
And and when you are understanding go for

(17:05):
no, but you're having a hard time implementing
it, one thing that I've always found that
top performers do is they they have an
alter ego. When I go up on stage,
and I'm a 27 year old kid and
I have an international keynote to go do,
I am not Jeb Jeb Junior is not
ready for that. But I just channel somebody
else. I tell people all the time, they
go, you were great on stage. I black

(17:25):
out. I have no idea what happened on
stage. I just went out there, and then
I guess something happened and I came back
in, but that's that's that person that I'm
not. And cold calling's a lot like that.
Sometimes I have to psych myself up and
go,
you're cold calling or prospecting anything. You go,
you know, I gotta put myself out there,
and I feel really uncomfortable doing this. Well,
don't be you. Be I'm, you know, JBJ.
Be JBJ. Don't be Jeblen Junior. Don't be

(17:46):
yourself. Be somebody else. And I love that
message. And I I I think that I
noticed that when you you alluded to this
earlier that this book was not just about
sales anymore. It's it's more personal, and it
has more tactile feel to it. There are
themes around self worth, expectations,
navigating setbacks,
and this is all at different stages of
life. I it sounds like that was intentional,

(18:08):
but kinda
expand on that intention of helping people implement
the the other 80%, helping them
take your message and actually start
using it and not just leaving the 20%
to go do their do their work and
80%
hoping that one day they can get there.
So
Cassidy,

(18:28):
gets thrown into a situation
where,
she sees an opportunity.
And this is another,
I I think, beyond the,
don't be you theme. And it's so funny
that you'd also bring up, the alter ego
because we're we created a bonus program to
go with this book. And,
that is exactly what we we did I

(18:48):
know that, Andrew. Deep. Yeah. Deep into it.
I did my research. Oh, you're so good.
You're so good. Thank you. Yes. And it's
called Don't Be You. That's right. That's the
program.
And and so,
so that's part of it. But Cassidy sees
this opportunity.
And this was another
thing that I think we

(19:09):
touched on in the book,
but
it's going after something big.
And it's looking for those
big opportunities
where we normally shut ourselves down and just
say, well,
no. I I don't deserve to do that.
I shouldn't do that. It's too big. It's
too scary, whatever.

(19:29):
And because of what she's gone through, this
kind of transformation, which, by the way, we
have to make happen really fast in this
little we've got this little story. We've got
a just a little bit of real estate.
So
even as you read it, I'm I'm wondering,
like, did we take enough time? But It's
Fast and Furious, but it it I think
what it delivers is it is that the

(19:50):
the point lands. So you land the plane
beautifully. So I will say that after reading
the book, it was fast and furious for
transformation, but the plane lands and the message
made sense. It's I mean, this you did
an incredible job with this. So, just some
if if people go in to read this,
like, it it is fast, but it is
impactful. It it it really was a a
a a shift in my mind and how

(20:11):
I thought about things. So I really did
appreciate how you brought her story to the
forefront.
That's awesome. Thank you. And the plane literally
lands, by the way, without giving away any
part of the plot.
It literally lands.
So
and and that was a a big message.
One of the things that when we speak,
and this is kind of a,
I guess, a look into the secret sauce

(20:33):
of
of our process,
We both tell two stories when we speak.
Richard tells a story about,
oh, it's funny. I blanked on it. Oh,
about
his dad and when he started to learn
to sell. And his dad basically called him
in and is like, hey. You're a sales
you're a salesperson now. Like, go down. We've

(20:55):
got we've got a phone for you. We've
got a we've got the yellow pages, which
was a big book with names and telephone
numbers Yeah. Which we actually put in this
book was which was so ridiculous.
And
and
we've got we've got multi generations.
And so this is a story where he
tells his his dad, you know, you need
to start selling now. And so we kind

(21:17):
of use that and integrate it into the
book. And then one of the stories that
I always tell when we speak is,
or a lot of the time, is when
we launched our business
and we went to this networking event, this,
mixer, and I saw this
woman across the room who
was an executive. I read her badge. I

(21:38):
literally knew she was a very high powered
executive from a company that was, like, our
ideal prospect.
And I had this moment of
do or die. Should you approach this woman
or not? I wanted to approach her, yes,
but at the same time, I'm trying to,
like,
I'm just saying to myself, you're not ready.
You're gonna make a fool out of yourself.
And

(21:58):
so we were able to integrate in a
couple of our stories
into the book, and that was a Cassidy
moment. That was and we actually used the
term because I was like, we've gotta get
this term into the book also, go for
no moment, which was something that was not
in the book. And so over the years
of teaching this, we've
we've come up

(22:20):
with phrases, and we've come up with strategies.
And one of them is this idea
of executing
on your go for no moment. So what
is a go for no moment? Well, it's
anytime where you are
you suddenly find yourself
with this opportunity. Right? And it's this opportunity
to approach,
make an ask, to,

(22:42):
put yourself out there.
And it's also that moment where we most
often
talk ourselves out of it, immediately come up
with an excuse, right, knee jerk reaction. Don't
do it. Everybody around you is gonna hear
you're gonna look like an idiot or whatever.
And
so
that is one of the things that I
loved that we were able to do in

(23:02):
this book is showcase
some of these things that we've been teaching
all of these years that,
you know, weren't in the book. Right. And
I wanna compliment Andrea here,
because she does not get enough
accolades. Right?
Oh, are you joking, aren't you? No. No.
No. She Joking. She really she she really
Well, we used to joke because what happened,

(23:24):
Jeb, is that we joked that I hijacked
the go for no brand because Richard really
I mean, he he is my mentor. He
taught me
this philosophy,
and I was like, this is the coolest,
most,
like, life changing, impactful philosophy there is. And
you know what? I'm
stealing it. I'm taking it as like, I

(23:47):
am gonna run with this and and run
this company. And so, yeah, that that so
he is kinda joking when he says,
I don't get enough out of it. But
I do want I do wanna give her
credit for the story she's telling
as, the the the complete context around this
is that we had been in business for
about six months.
We were low on money.

(24:07):
We had not made a sale yet.
You know, and we sold a I think
I think we sold a couple books. Maybe
we sold a book or two. I'm not
sure. Yeah. You're getting to 5,000 books. You're
you're trying to get there. Yeah. Right. Exactly.
But, we we we haven't landed a major
client. And so here she is at this
conference looking at this high powered executive
and with the competing thoughts. Right? I should

(24:28):
approach her, and I shouldn't approach her. Mhmm.
Mhmm. And she had this goal for no
moment. She had the opportunity
to very easily do what we all do
many times, which is just like, it isn't
gonna work anyway. They're not gonna say yes
to me, so why bother? But instead,
she approached this person, showed the book. The
woman flips through the book and says, oh,
this looks really interesting. Call me on Monday.

(24:49):
Right? And so she comes up to me
and says, you're not gonna believe this. I
met the vice president of, you know, of
ABC,
and, you know, they're interested in the book.
And we called them on Monday, and we
ended up we ended up working with them
over 20 times
Wow. Over the course of the next five
or six years.
And I have to tell you, had she
not taken advantage of the go for no
moment,

(25:10):
I'm not sure we're doing this interview with
you right
now because we might have run out of
money. We might have gotten discouraged.
Who knows? Might we might have just gone
back to work. You know? We we we
met at LensCrafters.
I'd I'd still be selling eyeglasses.
You know, I mean,
that's the magic of of taking advantage of
of that moment

(25:31):
and understanding that the worst thing that can
happen is somebody says no to you and
you walk away no poorer,
than you were before, but you might just
walk away richer.
And that's a that's a big part of
our message in in everything we write.
I I wanna tell y'all a go for
no moment that I had. And and and
and I thought of you both specifically before

(25:53):
I even lurched into the the getting the
no, I I went,
man, go for no would be disappointed if
I didn't do this.
And I, we have we live in Augusta,
and we have the, of course, the masters
tournament that comes into town. But we we
also have the Augusta National Women's Amateur, which,
many people are becoming aware of, but aren't
act or aren't it isn't the it isn't

(26:14):
the main spotlight. So it's a week ahead,
and, it's the amateur women the best amateur
women playing golf, and they are so good.
Oh my goodness. They play an amazing game
of golf, and it's so much fun to
go watch because it's it's a little bit
less attended,
but it's headed by several really important people.
And one of those people,
is miss Condoleezza Rice,
who, of course, is a former secretary of

(26:35):
state,
woman. I we might have to fact check
fact check this, but woman with the invitation
to be a a a member at the
Augusta National,
a very important person and an idol of
mine. I had a political science degree. I
thought I was gonna go be a lawyer.
Like, she was just so cool.
And she goes to this tournament. And, of
course, you there's famous people at the tournament.
But I was I was sitting on a

(26:56):
hole, and she was at the rope with
one of her aids, and she was just
watching the tournament.
And, I was with my wife and and
my daughter,
and, and we were both we were all
looking at her. I was almost, like, bleary
eyed. Like, I couldn't almost see this person.
She was so cool. Mhmm. And and we're,
you know, we're at we're in this tournament.
There's no cameras. There's no phones.

(27:17):
There's no reason to not walk up to
her and say, hello.
And I I went the go for no
people would say, go talk to her.
Go go talk to her. And I said,
Ashley, you should go talk to her. You
know, I was trying to push it off
on my wife. I said, you should go
talk to her. She goes, no. No. No.
I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna
do that. I went, I should go talk
to her. But then I did I had
that moment when I'm just me. I'm just
little old me. She doesn't know who I

(27:37):
am. She's a former secretary of state. There's
probably, you know, secret service, and people come
up to her all the time and say,
oh my god. The Condoleezza Rice. I can't
believe I get to meet you. She probably
gets that all the time. She just wants
to have a good day. And my approach
was, well, I'm just gonna go up and
and act like she's a normal person. And
I stood right next to her, and I
talked to her. It was a normal conversation
about golf. Hadn't I didn't even I didn't

(27:57):
even go, oh my goodness. You're Condoleezza Rice,
my hero. I just started talking to this
person. And now because I went and did
that, I've been to the tournament a few
more times, and she says hello to me
every single time she sees me. I we're
not friends. I will not claim to be
friends with Condoleezza Rice. She might just be
being nice to me, but I swear she
recognizes me every single time. And that was
because I read this book. And when I

(28:19):
read the sequel, it encouraged me that that
was the right decision. You may not walk
away
richer, but you're certainly not gonna walk away
any poorer. And I love the way that
you put this. And
rejection today
might be different than it was in in
2000
because of technology that we have, but, ultimately,
it doesn't change very much. But the world
has changed since the book came out. In

(28:41):
your eyes,
how is the fear of no showing up
differently
in this generation of sellers,
entrepreneurs,
and leaders
versus when you started out in this business?
Okay. I love this question
because you're so right. Technology has changed
everything, and yet and I know that,

(29:03):
that Jeb would agree with this,
because he he talks about the,
our evolution
and, not wanting to get thrown out of
the tribe and and all of that. So
our brains
haven't changed at all,
in the last twenty five years. I mean,
evolution wise. Right? It's like

(29:23):
twenty five years ago, fifty years ago, a
hundred years ago, rejection was still painful. I've
I've read,
interesting little tidbits from
little papers and pamphlets
that were published in, like, nineteen o six.
Mhmm. And it was, you know, the language
was all flowery, and it was like,
men men would surely rather go to war

(29:45):
than to approach a prospect
and have to, you know,
whatever.
All that kind of flowery formal language.
And they were so they were dealing with
the exact same thing then. We're dealing with
it now. I expect that we'll be dealing
with it another twenty five years from now.
The only difference is now people can hide

(30:05):
behind
their phones
and their computers and all of that. Mhmm.
But the emotions are still the same. And
I remember
having this epiphany even, several years ago.
We were I I was at a, women's
event speaking,
and these two young women came up to
me. I guess you would call them millennials,

(30:25):
back then even, and they were like, oh,
this was really helpful.
So glad you
they said because we will even write emails.
We'll write emails to someone, and then it'll
be so hard
to hit the send button. Like, we just
were terrified to hit the send button. And
I was thinking, you're terrified to hit the

(30:46):
send button. Like, the send button is the
easiest. This is the no brainer
thing to me as, you know, a Gen
Xer
because
to me, the phone is, like, the scary
thing. Mhmm. They're not even, like, they're not
even on the phone. Like, the phone is
that's not even happening. So they're doing the
email, they're doing texting, and that and hitting

(31:07):
the send. Mhmm. And you could think about
it even from a marketing standpoint, hitting hitting
publish,
turning on your record button,
all of these things where we have to
be judged by
people Mhmm. Is terrifying. And so
I think that,
the technology
is out there and it's

(31:28):
impacting people's behavior.
And so they're able to work around and
continue to protect themselves.
And that is going to be a challenge,
and it's going to continue to be a
challenge because the brain has still not caught
up.
And so it's one thing to say, well,
I'll just go out and I'll market, and

(31:49):
I'll I'll post, and I'll share things.
But what about that moment where you finally
do have that actually human conversation?
Or and what's gonna happen, Jeb, and and
I think you probably agree with this is
and we're starting to see is
live events
are becoming
really important again now that we all feel

(32:11):
pretty comfortable to go back out.
And networking
is becoming hot. It's a the hot new
thing is networking meetings
and gatherings and getting people together.
And so it's one thing
if you
can do the marketing and not have to
interact with somebody,
but
eventually you're gonna have to have a conversation,

(32:33):
and you better have the courage
to have to communicate
and to when that go for no moment
hits and that person says,
you know, I don't know. I don't know
if we should work together. I don't know
if now is the right time.
That's your go for no moment. Will you
be able
to help nudge them off the fence of
indecision and say, hey. I understand. Here's why

(32:56):
I would do it. Here's why I recommend,
you know, taking a chance and doing it
now.
Well, that requires courage. That requires you to
go for no, and it's a big it's
a big issue.
We have job security. That's all I'm saying.
And so social skills were bad enough twenty
years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago

(33:16):
as it was.
Now,
right, with social media being the proxy for
having true social skills,
you know, and and what? Ten years from
now, we we won't even have to do
social media. We'll just have our our robot,
our, our agent, you know, handle handle all
of this.
It is gonna swing back another direction. The

(33:37):
the people who are going to get the
business are going to be the ones who
have social skills, who will reach out in
person.
This whole idea that Talk about differentiation. Yeah.
All things being equal, people like to do
business with, people they know, like, and trust.
Well, I don't know anybody who gets known,
liked, or trusted, you know, through an email.
Yeah, I just you know, it's A spam.

(33:58):
Spam does not make the connection. And so
the selling skills, Andrew just said, we've got,
you know, we've got some job security here
as do you.
This ability to reach out and talk to
people human to human is gonna become very,
very valuable.
And so, you know, go for no is
gonna be very important there. As a young
person, what I've genuinely found is that it
is easier to hide.

(34:19):
It is harder to press send. It's it's
difficult. I only in the sense that
I think twenty five years ago, there were
less ways to receive rejection
as consistently as we do
in today's world. We have emails,
Slack messages, you know, Teams. We've got Google
message. We've got Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And if

(34:40):
you're posting something and not that many people
like it, it feels like it feels like
rejection. If you, have the LinkedIn post, you
know, LinkedIn comes along, you send LinkedIn messages
and no one replies to you, that feels
like rejection. These are subtle things that people
go through every single day. And so picking
up the phone
or having that real conversation becomes hindered by
the
overexposure
to rejection, so we're we're less we're we're

(35:02):
more resistant to experiencing
it because it's surrounding us a bit more.
But you're right. Our brains just haven't caught
up to the technology. I mean, it takes
millions of years for evolution,
not twenty five years. We're not changing as
quickly as and our technology is outpacing our
evolution.
But I think that one of the ways
that you have really shown in this in
this new book,
how to overcome this, how to really start

(35:24):
leveraging your life in a way that gives
you the results that you want
or helps you find out that you're going
in the wrong direction because you are receiving
enough no's to say, I need to change
course,
is that when Cassidy is dealing with all
of this, she felt very much
like someone that I could relate to.
And and that was a a really, really,

(35:45):
intriguing part of this book that I I
and no no no offense to the book,
but I I didn't get this in the
book. But I felt that Cassidy
was someone that I could,
relate to because she was someone who should
have had it all figured out at a
certain age. So how did you approach
writing her character,
and what did you hope readers would take

(36:06):
away from her experience?
Her
I I know you're maybe speaking to a
different audience. So what is it that you
were hoping that they would read,
from her character?
Yeah. So a couple things. One, we did
really wanna speak to a younger generation,
who's out there, and and I feel like
we kinda covered it because if we've got

(36:26):
the
the people who are in their fifties and
sixties who have their own Cassidy in their
life, Right? They can kinda see it from
her perspective. And and we've all been there.
Right? We all haven't necessarily been older, but
we've all been
we've all been younger.
And so
that relatability,
I'm glad you said that, is really important
to us. It was important in the book.

(36:48):
We really wanted people to see themselves
in,
the characters so that they could relate.
And, you know, Go for No,
both of these books, because they're fables,
the messages are all embedded in the story.
Mhmm. We try to embed
and and in the dialogue. I mean, that's
where
the message comes through. So it's sometimes not

(37:09):
as,
I think, hit you over the head,
explicit
in terms of, like, oh, yeah. The book
said you must do these nine things. This
is what leads to success.
We embed those lessons and
let the reader kind of fair it out
for themselves, like, what they took away. So

(37:30):
you saying, wow, she was relatable,
is is great. We also wanted
the Eric character, her father,
to also be relatable in that
what happened with him was he had a
lot of success.
He he and and I hear from these
people a lot, Jeb, a lot.
He had a lot of success.

(37:51):
He was kinda sitting on his laurels, like,
you know, twenty five years, I I became
an award winning salesperson.
I wrote books. I did this. And now
he's got this dream, and he's gotten kinda
complacent.
And he's gotten kind of like, wow, I
have to actually go out and start asking
for things again. This is
he he doesn't really,

(38:12):
he's he's afraid of failure now. Whereas
twenty five years ago when he was younger
and hungrier, it was like, yeah. I can
fail my way to success. And now it's
like, wow. It's kinda scary.
So,
that's how we painted both of them. We
we painted him with
the kind of that complacency,
what happens when you do get comfortable.

(38:32):
Mhmm. And failure isn't as exciting when you
are in your fifties and sixties. It's, like,
it actually gets a lot scarier. When you
have something to lose?
Yeah. When you exactly. You have something to
lose. Not as much fun. And so we
wanted to revisit that for Eric. And then
for Cassidy,
it was really fun,
especially for me because I I did a
lot of her dialogue and just I just

(38:54):
said, okay,
what were my thoughts back then? How was
I,
how did I see things? And and we
wanted her to be very relatable and that
she's the voice of, I can't do this.
This is
this is ridiculous. We have a scene where
Eric's trying to teach her how to disqualify
quickly.
And I have to tell you, even that

(39:15):
scene
is pretty old school. Yeah. You literally have
him open up the yellow pages, and he's
like, let's just call and just ask these
three questions and disqualify.
And there are certain,
salespeople.
There are certain processes
that lend themselves that way,
and there are certain processes
that that don't, that require a lot more
finesse, appointment setting, discovery,

(39:38):
lots of meetings, right, complex sales
where you can't operate that way. So hopefully,
and I know I'm kind of going off
on the left field here. I'm coming back,
I promise.
Hopefully, people also are able to take the
lessons and apply them to how they go
for no. So if you're not selling, you
know, if you're not more of a transactional

(40:00):
salesperson, hopefully, the lesson you walk away with
is, well, how can I apply
go for no to what I do? Yeah.
And one of the challenges with
with writing a book like this, and you
mentioned, you know, a couple 100 pages. Well,
couple 100 are both books combined. I mean,
you know, it was a I got a
couple 100 out because I was trying to
feel it. I didn't wanna be Yeah. I
didn't wanna insult you. Let's say No. No.

(40:21):
No. Only 15 pages, but it's a it's
a thin I mean, you can see it
on camera. It's a thin book, but it
packs so much into it. So, yeah, a
couple 100 pages for both books. Yeah. It's
funny because, you know, the 80 pages, 80
pages, and then we wrote a book called
when they say no.
Combined those three books are equal to about
the size of the book your dad puts
out every year. Okay. So

(40:41):
so Yes. But but we but we have
a we have a different you know, we
just have a different goal when we when
we write a book. We're we're trying to
we're trying to create more of
an emotional,
right, than it is the training. We we
could have written 80 pages. You could write
200 pages on just handling the price objection.
So it's it's not like we And I
know a book. It's called Objections. And by

(41:03):
the way, by the way Yeah. You know
the opening quote in Objections No. Is mine.
Oh.
It is. It is. And I go to
every I go to the bookstore sometimes, and
I open it up, and I'm like, I'm
I'm
I made it.
Me. Yeah.
So the challenge with writing this book, I
you I know you were you packed, I
mean, 80 pages. So you're what is what

(41:24):
is when you're,
thinking about these characters and and shaping their
narrative and teaching the lesson, Richard, for you,
I I I don't wanna say that, you
know, Eric was your voice and Cassidy was
your voice, but that might be the case.
When you're speaking with these people's voices who
are maybe you ten years ago, twenty years
ago, thirty years ago,
in getting into their minds and trying to

(41:44):
speak from that place,
how do you how do you put that
into a succinct and
understandable narrative that makes sense for your readers?
Yeah. Well, you're gonna find this interesting.
Eric in the book is actually my dad's
voice. Mhmm. That is my dad from, you
know, from,
forty five years ago.

(42:05):
Cassidy is me.
I mean, I'm fundamentally Are you Cassidy? Yeah.
I'm Cassidy too.
Cassidy too. Wait. Who's Cassidy? Who's Cassidy? Yes.
I'm the Yeah. I'm I'm the older, not
quite as attractive Cassidy. Okay?
But but, you know, that was
my dad fundamentally said to me when I
went back to my dad and said I
can't sell,

(42:26):
my dad said said, what do you mean?
It's easy. Come on. Let's make some calls
together. And I watched my dad make a
couple phone calls, and, you know, he got
a couple orders, and he said that's selling.
And sent me back down to my office.
Like, I was supposed to be motivated
by watching him be a sales natural and
do something that I was unable, you know,
of of doing.
And so

(42:47):
Cassidy really is the you know, Eric is
just he's like, come on, Cass. It's not
that hard. You can do this. And she's
like, you don't understand. I don't have the
wiring that you have. I don't have the
experiences you have. I'm just not wired the
same way. You're a sales natural that I
am not a sales natural. So quit making
it sound easy because every time you say
it's easy,

(43:07):
all that does is demotivate me. Mhmm. It
just makes me feel defective.
And so that was kind of, you know,
a big part of a big part of
the goal of the book was to make
people feel normal
when
they experience, you know, some some,
you know, fear of failure and rejection. Instead
of trying to make people feel dumb and
defective,

(43:28):
we wanted people to read the book and
go like, oh, that's me. I wow. I
feel I feel just like that. And then
maybe we can bring them along on a
ride to where we're able to, you know,
we're able to to,
to to change their overall feeling. But I
will also tell you this, and this is,
a little embarrassing too. Two two things that
are embarrassing. Oh, you got two of them.

(43:48):
Okay. Yeah. You ready? Well, one, the the
the book was 80 pages. And you know
why it was 80 pages?
Because that's all we could afford to print.
We were we were publishing the book ourselves.
You know, the the publisher charges to buy
the page, the printer. And so we said,
we just can't make this book too big.
So we consciously kept it small in part
because of that.

(44:10):
But then we learned the other really amazing
thing, which was because we had an 80
page book, people would get books all the
time. They'd get books as gifts or promotional
materials or they buy them at a bookstore,
and it'd be 250
pages, 350
pages. There was kind of a a feeling
by publishers that what you could charge somebody
was based on the amount based on the
page count. You couldn't get $25

(44:32):
for a hardcover book if you did an
80 page book, so they forced you into
a 250
or 300 page book. When we gave people
the 80 page book, we cut in line.
Somebody would have a stack of 10 books,
and they go like, what am I gonna
read next? And they go like, I'll read
the short one. Right? And so they would
grab our book out of the stack, and
that let us kind of get and so
we learned something very important

(44:52):
that, you know, sales are great. The number
of books you've sold, that's wonderful.
The money the money is made from the
sales. But consumption,
how many people consume
your material
is where attitudes are changed and people are
changed and they're made better. So from that
day on, when we when we discovered that

(45:12):
every book we've done has been short. We've
never done a book over a 100 pages.
I will say this, though. The draft he
gave me was, like, a 130
pages,
and I went back to him with so
many pages or just xed out, just red
x's
because he went into so much detail
about golf
and

(45:33):
the and how bad the like, Strawberry Creek,
the course that Eric wants to own and
fix up,
So much detail. I'm like I'm like, Richard,
you went on for a page about how
bad the course looks. We get it. We
gotta get rid of this stuff. Oh my
gosh. It was ridiculous.
Richard, I wanna read the golf book. If
you have a copy of that, just send

(45:54):
it over my way. Okay?
It's a really,
cool narrative in that I you know, as
Cassidy, I see myself as Cassidy. I grew
up in this world, and I have the
father who is a natural
salesperson. I mean, he's the sales guy with
all the sales books. You know, it's a
it's a position that you know, Richard, when
you, walked through your keynote a few years

(46:14):
ago and I watched you talk about your
dad with the binder and how he just
knew everything about everybody. And I am just
not that guy. Like, I am not that
person.
I have a hard time with it,
and, you know, I don't I'm I'm not
as natural as the person that I that
I wanna emulate. And, you know, he goes
he's the same way. He goes, we just
do it. Just just if we just get
on we just get on the phones and
we just start talking to people, we're gonna

(46:35):
make sales, and you just do this, and
you just do that, and you just do
you know, just do. You know, free like,
he's like a Nike commercial. He walked around
and just do it. And, you know, I
I have that struggle of
I feel more demoralized when he shows me
to how to do it because he's so
good at it. And, like, why am I
just not that good at it? And I
read this book, the sequel, and I and

(46:56):
it clicked. I thought, oh, that's me. You
know, I felt less alone in the world.
I think there's a lot of sellers who
may they don't have the father or the,
you know, that figure in their life, but
they do walk into the office, and they
see the top sales rep. And they're making
all the money, and they're struggling to get
by with their rent. They're struggling to get
by with their, you know, their their paycheck
because they're only making a few sales a
month, and they're thinking they might get fired.

(47:17):
You know, that's a very different end of
the spectrum, and we typically leave them alone
because they're just gonna leave. Like, we don't
want them in our organization.
And I think what you both illustrated in
this in this interview and and with your
book is that don't leave those people behind.
They're not defective. They just need to be
taught differently,
and they can have the same results if
they just have the right coaching.

(47:37):
And so
if we're talking to leaders in the sales
space, people who are,
you know, looking at,
having this philosophy as a cornerstone of their
sales team,
they've they've maybe they've got the book, but
maybe they only hear this interview and they
wanna get the book. Can they read the
sequel without the
And how do those two books play together?

(47:58):
They're 80 pages each, so I'm gonna, upfront,
just buy them both. But if you had
to choose, you know, one of them, how
could how should people go about,
consuming this content?
Rich is pointing to me, and this is
a profound question which I have no answer
to.
But,
and I should since we're gonna be doing
more of these interviews.

(48:19):
Yeah. I mean, I guess the reality is
if I had to choose,
I would want someone to read Go For
No the original because
I feel like
understanding
that that that is the
cornerstone of the philosophy that's in that book.
Mhmm. That said, if you haven't read the
book and you just started with the sequel,

(48:39):
you could completely get through the sequel and
never have to worry about hearing no because
we did
sprinkle enough in there that people would kind
of understand what go for no means and
what's what it's about. Yeah. Imagine two friends
that are on their way to go, go
see, John Wick too.
Right? And, like, one friend says, I didn't

(49:00):
see John Wick one. And the other friend
says, they killed his dog. Okay? Now you're
up to date.
Oh, yeah. He's really mad. He's really mad.
And and and and John Wick too, he's
still angry. He's still angry. So so you
can kinda you can kinda pick up the
story pretty easily. We we do a a
brief recap,
right, in the in the beginning. So they

(49:21):
can do the sequel, but I think it
is better to read the book and the
book because there is a little bit of
an evolution there that happens.
Perfect. Get both. Go for no.
Yes is the destination. No is how you
get there. And then go for no, the
sequel. The nos are still angry.
And
Yes. And those are those are,

(49:43):
incredible.
So I guess the last question is,
when you read the sequel,
if you're gonna have someone walk away with
one big idea that they're gonna take action
on for for either of you, what would
that be? Well, mine is,
execute on your go for no moments. When
that that moment arises and and you know

(50:03):
it's a go for no moment because it's
the moment you start talking yourself out of
it. That that is the clear sign it's
a moment,
then you just gotta go for it like
you did with, Condoleezza Rice. I love that
story.
Yeah. My mine would be the thing that
you brought up earlier,
when you mentioned, you know, don't be you.
We recognize that both of our books,

(50:26):
only scratch the surface of a topic. Right?
And, you know, we aren't doing that to
try to lure people into buying our other
products. It's just there's only so much you
can accomplish in 80 pages. So we, you
know, we tell a story that gives you
a feeling and gives you some understanding. The
main message behind this book is that is
is the don't be you message.
It's just quit telling yourself that you're not

(50:47):
good at this.
Quit telling yourself that you're never going to
be good at this. Understand that you can't,
you know, you you you cannot master
a complex
skill like selling
in a very short period of time with
a with a half assed effort. You just
you're not gonna you're not gonna do that.
I'll just tell you this in the there's
a book called the five great rules of

(51:08):
selling. And in the book,
this this,
kid gets a job working for a company
selling. And two weeks later,
this man goes to him and says, how's
the job going? And he says, oh, I
quit. He goes, I don't like selling. I'm
sorry I I'm sorry I ever learned it.
Okay.
Like like, somehow,
in two weeks, you could learn selling. And

(51:29):
we we wanted there to be a certain
amount of tenacity involved in the book that
you can overcome this hump if you stick
with it and if you have the right
attitude.
Incredible, incredible
pieces of work. Go For No. Get the
book, the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. And
Andrea and Richard, where can people, find this
book? Where can they learn more about you?
And, and and where can they learn more

(51:51):
about Go For No? Thanks, Deb. This is
of all, I just have to say it's
so much fun. Love talking to you. Yes.
They can come to,
gopherno.com
and learn about Go for No. Take the
no quotient quiz, which is where I recommend
everybody starts because before you do anything,
figure out where

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