EXPERIENCE 180 | A Candid Conversation with a Sales Heretic - Don Cooper on The Myth of Price, Why Should I Choose You?, and more.

Don Cooper was referred to me by a mutual friend, Carolyn Strauss, in my search for a chapter speaker who would bring an innovative approach to sales training.  He brought his most popular workshop, The Myth of Price, and got great reviews from every attendee.  And - thankfully for our listeners, he made time to come by The LoCo Experience studios and share some of his principles for creative thinking about sales, and ultimately to break some of the psychological barriers for sales professionals - and clients - to get to win-win-win and YES!  

Don’s sales career began in middle school, when he started buying candy in bulk and selling to kids - and sometimes teachers or admin staff - but not competing with the brands the band or cheer squad were selling for fundraisers.  He was a socially awkward kid, and endured an abusive and isolating relationship with his mother for much of his childhood.  Eventually finding success and social skills through speech and debate, at one point Don imagined a life in conservative politics.  After growing disenchanted with politics, however, Don built his sales skills and programs, and came to Colorado as part of the Gorilla Group in the early 2000’s.  When he was laid off during the post 9/11 dip, Don launched his independent sales training business in 2001 and hasn’t looked back.  

Don is the Sales Heretic - and a heretic in general he would say.  He’s an eccentric genius - my favorite kind - and he shares very abundantly from his sales and training toolkit in this conversation.  So please enjoy getting to know and learn from the Sales Heretic, Don Cooper.  

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Transcript

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Don Cooper was referred to me by a mutual friend Carolyn Strauss in my search for a chapter speaker who would bring an innovative approach to sales training. He brought his most popular workshop, The Myth of Price, and got great reviews from every attendee. And thankfully for our listeners, he made time to come by the Loco Experience Studios and share some of his principles for creative thinking about sales, and ultimately to break some of the psychological barriers for sales professionals, and clients, to get to win, win, win, and yes. Don's sales career began in middle school, when he started buying candy in bulk and selling to the kids, and sometimes teachers and admin staff, but not competing with the brands, the band, or the cheer squad were selling for fundraisers. He was a socially awkward kid, and endured an abusive and isolating relationship with his mother for much of his childhood. Eventually finding success in social skills through speech and debate, at one point Don imagined a life in conservative politics. After growing disenchanted with politics, however, Don built his sales skills and programs, and came to Colorado as part of the Guerrilla Group in the early 2000s. When he was laid off during the post 9 11 dip, Don launched his independent sales training business in 2001, and hasn't looked back. Don is the sales heretic. Good. And a heretic in general, he would say he's an eccentric genius, my favorite kind, and he shares very abundantly from his sales and training toolkit in this conversation. So please enjoy getting to know and learn from the sales heretic, Don Cooper. are you ready? Yep. Okay. One, two, three. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Don Cooper, the sales heretic. And, uh, Don was up in Fort Collins today, giving a workshop for one of our chapters, which was reportedly amazing and just what everybody wanted. So thank you, Don, for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So you're up from Denver town, is that right? Correct. Yeah. Denver proper. How's, how's Denver doing? Downtown better. I haven't been in a couple of years because I kind of give up on it. There's, there's massive construction on the 16th Street Mall that's been going on for a while. They finished one block of it. So the rest of it is still kind of a disaster. Oh, really? Are you a downtown guy? Is that your neighborhood? Not a whole lot. No, I haven't been downtown much the last couple of years or so. There's so much out there in the suburbs and so much of my time is spent either working or traveling or hanging with friends. Yeah, exactly. Cool. So, I want to start. The questions first with, uh, how did you choose, and have you been the sales heretic your whole entrepreneurial career? Not my whole career. Uh, I started out originally speaking, yeah, as Don Cooper. And then the challenge as a speaker is to find a unique brand and there are thousands upon thousands of speakers. So trying to find them all amazing. If you ask them, exactly. And so it's hard to differentiate. It's hard to come up with a brand. And, uh, I started really focusing on sales. Around, uh, 2000, 2000, 2001. And the problem with trying to come up with a brand for sales is that you take almost any word, stick it in front of selling and it's been done. Ninja selling. Yeah. So almost everything I thought of someone else was already using, it's just so hard to carve out a brand. And what happened was I had met somebody at a networking event and we were talking about sales training and he'd just been through some sales training like a week ago and. He was describing as this old school, manipulative, heavy handed stuff that he, he hated. Yeah, you're like, that doesn't work. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, I don't teach any of that stuff. Everything that I teach kind of flies in the face of that. And the next morning in the shower, I'm mulling this over in my head and it hits me. I'm a heretic. Jump out of the shower, run to my computer, check it out. No one's using it. Mine. Got it. I dig it. And it fits because the heretic is, is really who I have been kind of my whole life. I've always been a person who questions the traditional orthodoxy. Yeah, yeah. Who, who. You listen to punk music back in the day? Not so much punk. I, I, I didn't get, I actually did not get into rock music until I was in high school. Uh, I was raised on, uh, classical music by my father. Oh. And country music by my mother. Okay. Okay. Okay. Never really got into either of those when I discovered rock music in high school. I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. I love it. And, and so I had a, I had a musical awakening. I dig it. Um, so tell me about like, what, other than being a heretic, uh, what is this? You're cause you're a sales trainer and sports coach. Yeah, I do some consulting and coaching as well. Tell me about your practice. Like, who are your clients? Like, what are you doing? It's kind of all over the place. I have worked with, uh, solopreneurs, and I have worked with, uh, Fortune 500 companies. So it's kind of all over the place. Uh, most of what I do is really custom designed around the client. What do they need? What their situation is as an individual is as a sales team. Uh, are they selling B2B, B2C? Uh, are they doing outbound calls? What's going on? So everything I do is really tailored around who they are, what they sell, how they sell, so that it's not just a generic, okay, here's how to sell it. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very specific. I create programs that are so specific. They cannot be delivered. To another company in the same market. Yeah. Yeah. I see. That's why you asked me so many questions about our members and different things. And so probably today in a workshop like this, you're virtually coming up with some custom suggestions on the fly by what you've learned about them so far. Yeah. I meet them in the morning, talk to them as much as I can, and I try to hang on to some of that. And so I use those as examples. So I can refer to selling furniture or doing environmental services or whatever, whatever the people there do. So I can try to create some. Kinds of relevancy for them that they can immediately relate to. And I also get the audience talking. So I get their ideas and their stories. So some of that comes through as customization as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does your, cause I know you do like big talks for conferences and things like that, do you. Like, is that more like lead gen? I'm sure you get paid for it, but it's lead gen for your customized consulting kind of engagements almost from a business development standpoint. Yes, absolutely. Um, so it's worth it to, um, you know, speak at a conference for, you know, travel and I bet you'd probably get five, 10 grand. That I don't do. Um, if somebody is booking me, my, my business model is not to speak any word. In order to sell the back of the room. That is a business model, legitimate business model. It's not one I personally am comfortable with. I want to deliver as much value as I can. So if anytime I'm in front of an audience, it doesn't matter whether it's a tiny audience or a huge audience, local, international, I want to deliver as much value for them as I can. I'm not. there to push something else. And I've been to events like that and I've gotten some value out of events like that, but that's a very different model than what I want to do. So for me, spin off bookings are a bonus. I'm there because I want to help that conference set an attendance record that year. And the following year, I want to be so good in my marketing that they draw people like never before, that I want to be so good on stage that the people who are there say, Oh my God, I have got to be here next year. I dig it. I dig it. That's my approach. If I make my clients successful, everything else falls into place. Well, some of our conversations that we've had around our ThinkerFest event and the suggestions you've given me since we first got acquainted here, I, I'm really grateful for it. My pleasure. I know it'll be a better event for even just some of those things. That's one thing I do for a lot of my clients. I've, I speak at a lot of events and I'm not a great event planner that you need to be a process person. Sure. To be a good event planner. But I'm a very good event consultant because I spent two years as an event planner. Yeah. And I've spoken a lot of events, so I, I've seen the good, the bad, the right, the wrong. Yeah. Well, that's one thing I say about like our, like even my role as a banker as it developed and, and. As I've been through so many dozens of conversations about, should I do this? Should I do that? I just have become kind of a collection of some best practices. You do the same, right? Like you consult with these different companies and, you know, by in the process of trying to teach them, you get smarter and smarter as kind of that hub where that knowledge kind of congregates. I can look at a conference schedule and say, okay, you need to put a break in here and the break needs to be this long. Because the number of people here at the event, and you need to have a break here as well. Your lunch needs to be 15 minutes longer or half an hour longer. Yeah. I've learned that kind of thing because there's so many things you don't realize, and a lot of event planners only plan one event a year, right? Because their main job is something else. They're also an event planner on the side. Well, and mostly they're not event marketers, right? That's a whole nother skill set. They just, they just want to know how many people are going to be there. Right. Which is easy for a wedding, not as easy for a conference. Exactly. So one of the things that I help my clients with, if they're marketing their conference to an audience, is I help the market, I teach them how to market more effectively. And that's always fun for me when they come back to me and they say, Oh my God, our attendance is a record this year. Yes, that was my goal. Right. That's really interesting. That, that's a pretty cool model because you get to feel pretty good about every place you engage in the value. Yeah. My goal is to make everybody's job easier and more successful. I want everyone to make more money, have more fun. I want everyone to get a promotion. I want everybody to get kudos and accolades. And I don't care who gets the credit. I don't care where the money ends up. I just want everybody. To come away from the event after it's all over. That's a lot of work to put together a conference. And for an attendee, it's a huge investment of money, time, and so on. I want everyone to come away from that saying, That was incredible. That was one of the best experiences I have been through. I dig it. Um, so how did you get into the sales game? I started selling when I was seven years old, I was selling door to door, literally stuff out of comic books, like seeds, greeting cards stuff, because my family didn't have a lot of money. And so if I wanted something, I had to go out and earn it. So I figured I could try this and I would literally go door to door. So I'd be selling seeds and a few months later be selling greeting cards. And it wasn't that hard. And I was a kid. So I was too stupid to know that I should be afraid of rejection. Yeah. Just, you know, next house, not, not a big deal. And this is a while ago when parents weren't quite so concerned about their kids. Seven year old wandering off alone and I got a lot of stuff that way. I, I, I earned a bike and I earned an archery set and a number of things that I would never have been able to buy on my own. And my parents couldn't afford to buy for me at the time. So I, I just, I kind of gravitated to selling and I did it all through high school. I did it all through college. I did it after college B to B, B to C. Uh, phone, in person, lots of different things. Were you selling all through high school and college, you know, on the side or whatever? Yeah, I actually sold Were you self employed kind of more? Or were you selling for businesses? I actually sold in school. Okay. So you know how kids in band and choir and sports teams, they're, they sell, they sell stuff. They sell, uh, wrapping paper, they sell popcorn, they sell candy bars. Sure, yeah, yeah. So I sold candy bars for myself. All right. Thanks. Right, you weren't raising money for the band or anything, you were just selling candy bars. No, I was raising money for me. I'd go buy candy bars in bulk, I'd have a dozen different kinds in a box, walk around selling to students. And I was always real careful that I did not sell whatever the band was selling or whatever the cheerleaders were selling. Right, right. You know, go for their sales, but I was looking to make money to earn money and I got known I got popular and people would be lining up at my locker during breaks. Like slinging all the candy bars you can in that 10 minutes. People memorized my class schedule. Teachers bought candy from me. The principal bought candy from me or you got some sour worms and that, and it was a, it was a, it was a part of a learning experience. I learned some valuable sales lessons doing that. One of the things I learned was it doesn't matter what you like, what matters is what your customer likes. My number one seller was KitKat bars. That's not even in my top 10, right? They're okay. I'll take one if you give it to me, but I'm not going to seek it out. And I found interesting that the things that I liked best were not necessarily the things that others liked best. That was a really powerful insight. You know, that it strikes me that as I've crafted loco think tank, I've mostly done what I think is the best. Think I would want a member of my organization. I imagine that's probably a common occurrence for a lot of people. It is. We all tend to believe that whatever it is we like is Objectively good. Right. So we see a movie we like we think that was a good movie Everybody else might have hated it, but we think it's good because we liked it. So we assume that anything we'd like must be good. We don't like it must be bad. The reality is we all have different tastes. So things that you hate, others may love and vice versa. And that's a huge challenge for entrepreneurs, for solopreneurs, for anybody in sales is we have to get out of our own head and into our customer's head. What is it they want? What is it they need? What is it they like? What are their priorities? What are their values? Cause it can be very different from ours. Yeah. Yeah. I was just reflecting on my own career and basically I was a banker. Right. And that is more objective. Like, are you qualified to get the loan or are you not qualified? Is it, you know, and then absolutely. But then my other career before Loco was food, right? And, you know, I can say I really love the taste of something. And I think I've got some well developed taste buds and people like my shit, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily what my customer likes. And it's very subjective. Absolutely. Interesting. So what is it the market wants? What is the market? And that can change, which is another problem for entrepreneurs. We come along with something that is popular now, but Two, three, five years from now tastes have changed or people on to the next new thing and whatever we were doing is now Not, you know very high in their priority list anymore. So do you care if your clients are products companies services companies? Nope, none of that matters. Nope Are there any companies that, uh, you've either engaged with or been opportune by where you're like, I just don't know how to understand your value proposition, right? No, I have not experienced that, but there are companies, there are industries that I would not work for. And I'm very clear about that because that's based on my values. So there are some companies where if I don't like the product you're selling, or I don't believe in the product you're selling, I can't train your people. Do you want to name them? No. So like a tobacco company, I am very anti tobacco. My dad smoked the whole time I was growing up and, um, he ended up getting cancer, my uncle died of lung cancer. So I never liked smoking. So if, if a tobacco company came to me or a vape company or anything like that, I'm like, I would be no there. And it wouldn't matter how much money they would offer me. How about a marijuana company? No. And with marijuana, it's a little bit different. I'm not. As anti marijuana as I was, and still am, anti tobacco, um, I'm not crazy about it, I don't care if anybody else uses it, and some people get value out of it, I totally agree with that, but I don't think I could train in that well, because I can't Put my heart into it. If I'm going to work for a company, I need to give that company my passion. I owe them the best version of me. I can be the, I've got to be the best me I can be on stage. And so I need to be able to at least. Understand, appreciate what they do. I need to feel that it is a social good. Fair. Okay. I dig that. So you're kind of qualifying them and vetting them to some extent as well, like in their sales, in your sales process, your conversation with them. I am. Yeah. And one of the things I learned, uh, I learned early on from a mistake that I made, I got a call from a company, it was an industrial company and they were looking for a speaker and their event was two weeks out. Okay. It was a last minute booking. Right. Well, last minute booking comes along, you say yes. Yeah. That's just, that's what you do. It's, it's 2, 000 or 5, 000 more than I was going to make this year. They're going to pay the full fee, I'm free that day, let's do this. Right. When I got there, something was way off. The attendees were clearly not in a good mood. Hmm. I'm, I was hearing a lot of ambivalence, a lot of negative talk among the attendees. This was a company that was doing something for their, their retailers. Okay. And, Then I met some of the people from the company and none of them seem to know who I was or cared that I was there. All right. And what I found out was there was a lot of animosity between the retailers and this company. So there was a lot of anger. A lot of people were upset. We had to come to this stupid conference. Right. And this, the person who hired me was simply told by, by her boss, Hey, we need a speaker for the slot. Get somebody. That's it. A well planned, uh, event, something. Yeah, so I was after dinner at the end of a long day full of really dry, boring presentations by company people. The audience was tired. They were not in a good mood. They were not in the mood for a high content speaker. I am content. I am not entertainment. I can be funny, but I'm not entertainment. I was the wrong person for that role. And it wasn't a complete bomb, but it was not a home run. It was, it was a double at best and I want to hit him. I want to hit a grand slam every time I'm up. And so I learned from that, that I need to do a better job qualifying my clients. I've got to learn more about their event, what their goals are and so on. And I learned that I only want to work with companies that want to work with me. So if you're just looking for somebody, I'm not your guy. If you're looking for my particular message, my particular style, let's talk. So tell me about some of your, uh, the workshops that you just presented the myth of price. Yes. Uh, would you share some of the foundationals from that with our listeners? A lot of our listeners are mid sized business owners, different things. Is that cheating? Is that typical? You'll give me a couple pointers. No. It is my favorite program as my most popular program from the moment I created it. It's been my hottest program because pricing is an issue for almost every company. And the issue of defending your price and discounting is an issue for most salespeople. So it's one that when they hear about it, they're, Oh God, I didn't, I didn't know that. Well, when I meet people at networking events, me, possibly what I do is I help people sell, uh, at higher prices and discount less, and they go, Oh God, I need that. I mean, it's, it's, it's physical. Yeah. Um, I just had a story today from one of our members. Uh, he, he was in a concrete business, is in a concrete business and they were Regularly bidding and getting 8 a square foot for driveways and stuff like that. And, but there was another company in town consistently getting 14 a square foot and getting more business. And he happened to get to know this guy a little bit. He's like, dude, I will give you 50, 000. If you can teach me how to go from 8 a square foot to 14. And it didn't, he didn't. I mean, he figured it out himself over time, kind of ultimately, but, but that was like, that's how much it's worth to change your margins a little bit. And as long as you're creating happy clients and sometimes that probably comes with making, like, it's not just about selling it better. You get to deliver it better too. Or like, yeah, talk to me about myth of price more. First of all, it's a mindset shift. Okay. There are three basic reasons why people either undercharge. Or they discount one. They shouldn't one is ignorance. They don't understand the value that they are providing to their clients because value is not what we think it is. Value is way more complex than that. When you understand that you can get a better sense of what the value is for the customer and understand how your pricing is a reflection of that value or not. And that's harder in B2B sales than it is in B2C, because in B2C, if you're selling consumer goods, you have an idea of what a washing machine is worth, what a couch could sell for, what a car goes for. Right. There's a range of prices on a t shirt or whatever. Exactly. Usually in B2B, if you're selling computer systems or machinery, you have never used that stuff. You don't, there's no value to you in that. So you have to understand what the value is for the customer. And that's a complex process. The second Big deal for people is fear. People are afraid of losing the sale. Sure. They're afraid of rejection. They're afraid of confrontation. So when somebody asks them for discount, the easy thing to do is to say, yes, they don't want to lose the sale and they under price because they're afraid that if they charge too much, no one's going to buy. It's, it's fear. So in the program, I go through a number of things that help them understand where that fear comes from and how to get rid of it once and for all. Just that simple. Not just that simple. It's a process that I take them through, but it's a simple process. Yeah. We can do it in just a few minutes. It's great. The third one. Is the kicker it comes last in the program because it's the one that people aren't even aware of it's guilt profit guilt. Yeah, I've been speaking against profit guilt through most of my years of banking and until today you understand it. Yeah. So many of us were raised on the idea that money is the root of all evil. Yeah. The, the villain in almost every story we saw growing up, whether on TV, movies, comic books, it was all about money. Always the rich person. Yeah, so we've associated wealth with evil, but it's the love of money And even that and even that I would argue is not the case because you're a heretic. Absolutely But tell me more so I take people through a process to understand that profit is not only not evil. It's a moral imperative You must make profit. Yeah, and to a large degree the more profit you make the better That's not to say there's an unlimited, you know, point where you can raise your price to infinity, right? And and there are situations in which it is unethical to raise your price too much and the pharma Bro comes to mind the guy that bought the pharmaceutical company and raised the price. Oh, right, right life saving drugs Ridiculously, right? That's not selling. Yeah, that's extortion, right? So ethics is a multi way street and ethics to a degree Is based on degree. You might do a little thing and that's not enough. You might do a lot more of it and that's too much. Yeah. So ethics is a tricky subject, but when it comes to profit, if you don't make enough, you're not surviving. Yeah. Ethically, you have a responsibility to. Your employees, your stakeholders, investors, and your customers you have and your customers to be profitable. Exactly. That your customer, customers buy from you and you go a business, you can't support them anymore. I'm true. You have to make a profit. Profit literally makes the world go round. It is the engine that drives progress. Yeah. And it. I help people work through this through, again, another process that we do in person in the class. It sounds like a lot more psychology than it sounds like skills. It really is. Because you can teach skills all you want. If the psychology component is not there, the skills will never take. As long as somebody feels guilty. About their price. They will not do what it takes to sell it at that price. They will always give in. You have to alleviate the guilt first. I was doing this program, uh, last year in Fort Morgan. And a woman came up to me at the end with tears in her eyes. She said she had to raise her prices and she was feeling so guilty about it. And she grasped my hand. With tears streaming down her face saying, thank you. Thank you for taking this guilt away from me. And my heart, I almost cried because here's this woman who was feeling just wracked with guilt, who now felt comfortable. She felt confident. She understood that what she was doing was not a necessary evil. It was important and it was actually in her client's best interest for her to do. That's the mind shift. So it is understanding the value that your client gets from what you're selling Getting rid of the fear of losing the sale, the fear of confrontation, and then alleviating yourself of that guilt of profit being a bad thing. I dig it. Um, Are there other, uh, programs you want to give the, the outline for, since we're giving like a free sales tutorial here? Sure! You can just mention them if you want. Well, one of my, one of my newer ones is called, Why Should I Choose You? Okay. And this is so much fun. This is the, this has been an evolution. Uh, Tom Peters once described, Part of his process for creating presentations. He said, sometimes people will ask me a question and the answer to the question will turn into a slide and the next presentation, that slide will turn into a segment and that segment will then turn into a whole, turn into a book. And that's kind of what happened with this program. This started up as a little tiny five minute bit that I was doing for a local association. And I kept playing with this idea and it kept growing and growing and growing. And it turned into this program called why should I choose you? And the fundamental point is how do you answer that question? Yeah. Because when you ask most professionals and a lot of business owners and a lot of salespeople, why should I choose you? They don't have a good answer. Yeah. And the answer they give you, if they give you any at all, is the same answer the other three people you talked to gave you. I didn't nail it when you asked me that question earlier. Almost no one does! Um, this seems so related to a quote that you shared that was somebody else's. Was it, different is better than better? Sally Hogshead. Okay. Sally Hogshead, who is brilliant. She's a best selling author. Uh, I recommend you check her stuff out, Sally Hogshead, H O G S H E A D. She is brilliant. She is a wonderful human being. Uh, her stuff is fantastic and she helps people figure out what about them is fascinating and she is so powerful and her stuff is so liberating, helps you figure out who you are, what your strengths are. And she says, different is better than better. And I used to say in my programs that In your business, you need to be better in some way. And if you can't be better, at least be different. But I like what Sally says better. So now I'm just quoting her because it's, it's easier. It's a, it's a better, it's a better concept and I will happily throw out my stuff and use somebody else's if it's superior to mine. Still put her line in your program of why should I choose you? I imagine I can quote her and I can tell everybody to look at her stuff. That's how we promote each other. That's right. Uh, cause that, that is important. What is it about you? That is different. What's your uniqueness and it can't be quality. It can't be service because everybody says those things. Companies with lousy quality claim to have great quality, right? Companies with horrible service claim to have great service. When you say things that other companies say, you are exactly like them. You are not different. You're the same. You're a commodity. How do you uncommoditize yourself? And that's what this program is about. It's how do you answer that question in a way that makes people go, Ooh, that sounds interesting. Tell me more. Now, do you spend any time on. Like, especially with their consulting clients on actually making them better, like helping in the operations or delivery of product or bending the service a little bit or anything, or is it really just more about the sales and marketing messaging? It's more about the messaging. Their job to figure out how to deliver that right experience. Yeah. Cause I'm not an operations person and I know to stay in my own lane. I know what I'm great at and I know Suck at So I I You need an operations consultant. Yeah, exactly. which I will do. And I know people, if you need a leadership person, I know some great leadership people, right? If you need team building, you need, you know, I, I odds I know somebody who can get you what you need, but I, I know where I'm great at and I'm staking right there. Fair enough, fair enough. Um. What's the biggest thing that, um, small companies do wrong, uh, in that, in the space where you're at the biggest thing, the most consistent thing, like, sounds like you, you, you connect with a lot of smaller companies at different conferences or engagements, right? What are they doing wrong? Cause that's one of my passions is like helping that one or two or three person business. Achieve a scale that's at least like eight or 10, you know, so that that owner can actually have some freedom again, right? Although until you get to that point, you're kind of a slave to your business Yeah and I would say that that really is a big part of the problem and I I chalked that up to There being two types of entrepreneurs There are the type that Has a vision and they're trying to build a company to achieve that vision. And they're what I call seekers. Kind of solving a problem with the world or whatever. They've, they've got a mission, they've got a goal and they're seeking it out. They're trying to get bigger and better and more. The other kind of. Person that starts a business is what I call an avoider. They don't have a vision. They're trying to avoid working for somebody else. So they don't have a growth mindset. They have, they didn't have a scarcity mindset. They don't want to invest money because they look at that as an expense. When it's not, it's actually an investment and a seeker sees that. So, and avoider things, how can I get by with as little expense as possible? How can, how can I reduce my risk as much as possible? We just need to send all the avoiders to work for the government. Many of them do. Okay. Oh, my God. If you walk into a government, you will see almost nothing but avoiders. In the public sector. Gotcha. Now, in, in the But they could spend money like crazy because it's not their money. No, politicians are seekers. Oh, gotcha. So anybody in the legislature is a seeker. The people who are working for the bureaucracy are avoiders. Oh, interesting. Because avoiders value security. Right. They're not trying to make more money every year. They're not trying to get a retirement home and a boat and a Maserati. They just don't want to be found on the street. Yeah. Avoiders just want to be safe and secure. They want to know they've got some kind of retirement coming. They just don't, they don't want to lose everything. Hmm. And that is at odds with trying to grow a business because you've got to be a risk taker. You've got to be willing to invest and, and avoiders by and large aren't. Do you think, I just started thinking about this a little bit, like it's, it's too early for our political segment, but it feels like, you know, the, the, the left in our nation, in our world is kind of, you know, trying to avoid climate change, trying to avoid racial disparities and, and, and, you know, The conservative party is more, you know, make America great again. Let's seek out this thing. Is that, am I just putting that in my own head there or is that? Yes, because actually both sides do both things. Okay. Both sides understand marketing. So if you really pay close attention to what both sides do, they both try to appeal to seekers avoiders. Oh, sure. The messages are different. Different. Oh, so you speak to a seeker with trying to take your women's rights away. Oh, we've got to avoid that. That's exactly correct. So you speak to a seeker with your visions of the future. What is going to come of this? What are we going to achieve and accomplish? You speak to the avoidance by telling them what to be afraid of. Yeah. Fascinating. Because avoiders focus on risk and fear. Yeah, yeah. Seekers focus on growth and change and achievement. Very different mindsets. Well, and those Neither one is right or wrong, good or bad. They're just how our brains are wired. And you can't really rewire your brain. The key is how do you, uh, how does a seeker and an avoider communicate? Right. When they have very different ways of viewing the world. Right, right. Right, right. Like the seeker wants a smartphone as soon as they can lay their hands on it. It's really interesting. The avoider just doesn't want to get left behind. No, the avoider will hang on to their phone until they stop working. When, you know, when the company stops supporting it, that's when they get a new phone. Maybe, yeah. Five, ten years is, they're good with that. Interesting. So really what I think I'm hearing, to some extent, is Especially in the business to consumer front, or maybe even in the business to business as well, but in general, a lot of people are maybe doing the directing their sales and marketing to only the seekers, uh, which is probably okay for me as like a think tank because they're probably much more likely to actually be successful in business over the long run and grow something. Yeah. But in a B2C, especially like everybody needs. Dog food, right? And if you're only communicating to one of those two marketplaces, then you're not really hitting the whole market. You sell that dog food two different ways. One marketing message is this dog food will help your dog live an active, happy, healthy life. With a beautiful coat. Look at, look at this dog jumping for joy and see the smile on his face, his tail wagging. Another commercial. Says, if you feed your dog, the wrong food, it's going to be tired, lethargic, lethargic, and sick. Don't feed your dog that food. So different message aimed at two different mindsets. Interesting. Same product. Yeah, basically the same basic features, but the benefits are offered differently based upon how people interpret information. Yeah. Yeah. Is there studies around this or things, is this kind of your own armchair theory? There's a lot of stuff around this. Okay. I find psychology fascinating and I find neuroscience fascinating, and there's a lot of evidence that a lot of our thinking stems from our DNA. Our brains are wired a certain way at birth. Hmm. Uh, I can look at my own experience and see how similar I am in my thinking and my mindset to my father. Really? Because he and I share a lot of how we process the world. A lot of similarity there. Yeah. Is that like, Was it taking after your dad that you were slinging comic, or not comic books, but greeting cards and stuff when you were seven years old? Yeah, yeah. He didn't tell me that immediately, but sometime after he told me about him and his brother, my uncle, they were, uh Stationed in Germany after World War II. My grandfather was the American editor of the English language version of the Nuremberg war trials transcripts. So my dad and my uncle were there as kids in, in, in Germany. They lived on a base, uh, an army base and they could not buy toys at the PX, the post exchange. Hmm. They could get candy. They could buy candy there. The German kids, right off the base, had toys, they couldn't get candy, so my father and my uncle had a black market going on, candy toy exchange, that's exactly it, so yeah, I got, I got that from him, awesome, clearly, huh, so, That gives a lot of, we've been studying a, uh, a system here, um, called Halos Relational Intelligence, and it's a lot like DISC or Myers Briggs or something, but one of the notable differences is they, they have things that are archetypal or essential rather than personality driven. It's not like how you're, how you developed to be, it's how you were born. Born right to be, and here's how you use it better. Yes. Uh, and that sounds like it vibes with your views on the world as well. It really, it really does. Cause so much of the way our brains are wired are really hard to unwire. Right. So how does one unwire things quickly? Cause it sounds like, like some of these like profit guilt, for example, uh, in your myth of price is you kind of go through a stepwise process to try to just You started here, now you're here. That can be done quickly because that's not wiring. Oh, right. That's a result. That's exactly. And there were two things Yoda said in The Empire Strikes Back that are frequently quoted. The most quoted is, try not, do or do not. There is no try. There is no try. Yeah. Yoda was wrong. There is a try. You must try before you do. And I can have a whole debate on that. But the other thing that he said was you must unlearn what you have learned. That line I thought was brilliant because so much of what we learn. growing up is garbage. It's wrong. It's mythology. It's somebody's rumor. It it's personal bias. So much of what we learn is not real. It's not accurate. And we don't know because we have nothing to compare it against. There's a, uh, I mentioned I was in the banking industry for 15 years. And for the most part, that industry is very, um, incestuous, I guess, you know, bankers go from one bank to another and bring their customers along with them and stuff in most cases. Um, but first bank, uh, the Colorado bank for you. They pretty much only hire entry level and groom throughout their career. They don't, they don't hire mid level bankers or senior level bankers, period. They grow their own because they don't want to have to unlearn what you have learned at other places. Absolutely. So anyway, just a little sidebar there. Um, let's, uh, let's. Let's jump, uh, is there other, other things in the sales space? I don't want to ask you to give away all your secrets. You can, you can book Don on his website if you want to. Um, but is there other things that you'd really want to be compelled to share that the sales heretic is, uh, maybe notable for or defined by? It's funny, the heretic thing, I came up with that literally in the shower and I adopted as a personal brand immediately, but it's resonating with me because I've always been a heretic from the time that I was a kid, I would get trouble for asking questions. That people didn't want asked. And that's what a heretic does. A heretic asks questions. A heretic probes. A heretic doesn't simply take what's said at face value. Oh, is that right? A heretic challenges orthodoxy. A heretic looks at other ways of explaining things or viewing the world. Uh, a heretic. It's different than a blasphemer. Correct. Then it's more of the. from the curiosity side and the questioning of authority that a heretic really is defined, not the stating against it or standing against it. Precisely. A heretic doesn't necessarily say there is no God, or God is this way or that way in opposition of what the heretic would say, if there's a God, why is there so much suffering in the world? Exactly. Or whatever. A heretic says, please explain this to me, or what's the reason for that, or why do you do that that way? And, and ask questions to challenge what everyone else takes for granted. And I have always done that. And I got in a lot of trouble for it. And fortunately my dad encouraged it. And I had some teachers that encouraged it. I had a history teacher in high school, Mr. Haskell and, and where are you by the way? Uh, like when we go back to seventh grade, you're in California. Is that right? Um, that was in high school and I was in, uh, Washington, D. C. area. How about in seventh grade? Virginia. Seventh grade, I was in California. Okay. In the city, in L. A.? I was in, uh I'm trying to set the stage of what, what your family dynamic was a little bit more. The Santa Clara area, Silicon Valley. Okay. Back in the early days. Gotcha. Near Hewlett Packard headquarters. All right. Then Apple headquarters. Sure. Really cool place to, to grow up. Yep. Um, but after the divorce, I, I went to three different high schools and I didn't go to the same one. Uh, for, for the first two years, two semesters in a row. Oh, wow. So it was bouncing back and forth. My dad tried to work through And this was in D. C. then? Yeah. Like, so your folks split up. Your dad took you to D. C. or whatever? He stayed in California for a while, trying to make things work, and he, and he couldn't. So I, I did a semester in D. C., then a semester in California, kind of back and forth. Oh, wow. Which, which was tough, but I remember Mr. Haskell because so many teachers just want you to memorize and repeat. They do not want you to question anything. They don't want you to argue. They're just looking for obedience. Mr. Haskell wasn't that way, and we would debate. I, I would challenge him on things he, he said. What kind of a teacher was he? History. Okay. He was American History, and I had always found history boring. I was just utterly bored by history because it was just names, dates, places, events, and there was no context, none of it meant anything. Mr. Hassell got into the whys, why things happen. That was interesting. Why did they have the tea party? Yeah, the why is what's fascinating. But I remember one time he made a comment, That America is all basically the same. We're all, we're all basically the same as Americans. And I raised my hand and I said, no, we're not. Cause I just come from California. This is very different than California. And he said, really, do they have McDonald's in California? Uh, yeah. Do they have to drink Coke in California? Yeah. Do they wear jeans? And his point was as Americans, we're pretty homogeneous. And the point I was trying to make was that different regions are, there are differences and we had, you know, And intellectual debate, he respected my opinion and I respected his, and I held him in great esteem because of that. He didn't silence me. He didn't make fun of me. He listened to what I said. He, he debated me on the merits of what I said and helped me see things his way as he also saw things my way. And ever since then, that has always been my goal. In any kind of a disagreement. How can I see things your way? And are you willing to try to see things my way? Because if we can do that, we can solve all kinds of problems. We can accomplish great things. If I'm committed to my point of view at all costs, and you're committed to your point of view at all costs, we're not doing anything. And I think it's part of the problem with American politics today, is both sides look at the other as not just different, not just wrong, but evil. Right. And both sides argue the other side is evil, they hate America, they want to destroy America, and you can't cooperate with somebody who you've labeled as evil. Yeah, yeah. You've eliminated the possibility of compromise. Yeah. You cannot have collaboration. So we need to get back to a place where we can talk and try to see each other's point of view, even if we disagree with it, what's the reason you think the way you do, what experiences colored your viewpoints in what way were your experiences different than mine? What were the lessons you learned? How, why did you learn them? Sure. And then once I learned that, then I can try to explain to you, well, here's where I come from and the reasons why I come from there. You know, what do you think about and so on and so forth. When I was on the speech team in college, I did speech for two and a half years in high school. Oh, okay. And then four years in college. Oh, cool. And one of the rules we have on the team in college was you could hold any opinion you wanted. But you had damn well better be able to back it up. Okay. If you could not back up an opinion, you got mercilessly attacked. Even the person agreed with that opinion. Interesting. And that was intellectually very honest. I like to live by the theme, if you've got a strong opinion, you should be able to I'm not understand and argue the other person. You should be able to Absolutely. Strong man, argument the other person's thoughts too. Which is one of the benefits of doing debate. Totally. I did debate some in high school. I didn't do it in college, but I did some in high school. And that's valuable for being able to see both sides Totally. Of an issue. And, and we've gotten away from that. Yeah, well, I, yeah, with the, with the complex issues especially, like, you know, not to bring abortion back up, but I just mentioned it, you know, it's like, if you can't see that this is a really complex Challenging topic, then I don't really have time to talk to you about it. You know, it's an incredibly challenging topic. I understand where people who disagree with me come from. I understand why they believe what they believe. I have a counter to those things and I can justify why I believe what I believe. And the question is, can we come to an agreement? Well, I'm not sure. It feels like fewer people really have a foundation in studying these hard things. They just, you know, kind of align with one tribe or the other for the most part and say, this is the right thing. Cause the other side is evil. How many of us got our political beliefs from our parents? Um, yeah. And so often they can't explain why they believe what they believe. They got it from their parents. Right. So we're just parroting stuff we've heard parroted before and I got to give my father credit. My father never tried to create or color my political judgment. My political journey in terms of what I believe has evolved over a number of years. Yeah. Uh, and I've gone back and forth on a number of things. I've changed my position on so many issues. Well, good. That's a, that's a mark of a thinking person. I agree. Yeah. So I want to, uh, kick it back to the journey just a little bit before we jump into politics. So you're, you're selling a little bit of this, a little bit of that through high school, through college. What'd you, what'd you go to school for? Well, originally I went to college for government. Okay. It had been my intention to run for office. I wanted to get political science kind of thing. Yeah. I wanted to get into Congress. I actually entertained thoughts of, of running for president someday. Okay. And I like to think that at the time I had the best of intentions. I really wanted to make a difference. As many people who started out in politics do. The more I learned about it, the more disillusioned I got. So, circle me a little bit. I don't really quite know how old you are. 104. Okay, you look great. Thank you. I'm young for my age, but I'm tall for my height, so it all works out. No, we're just trying to think about what was going on in the political realm at this point, and I'm, I'm guessing you were Democratic? No. No, Republican. So you got into Republican politics as a college student? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, as a high school student, actually. Okay, interesting. Sorry, the San Francisco background made me kind of assume. No, no. Um, No, I, I was definitely a Republican, um, and I stopped being a Republican in, uh, 95. Okay. Because in 94, the Republicans won the House. Oh, right. Newt Gingrich. And as soon as they won the House, they raised taxes and increased regulations. Right. And I'm thinking, okay. I could have voted for a Democrat and had this happen. What's the point? What's the difference? And what I learned in my classes, I was reading with political books, government textbooks. On the speech team, uh, one of the events that I did was extemporaneous speaking. Okay. You're given a question on current events. You have 30 minutes to prepare a seven minute speech on that topic. Yep. Which means you've got to be up on current events. Right, right. You gotta know your stuff. Yeah. We would regularly read. Three daily papers, all the major news weeklies, uh, the new Republic, foreign affairs, current history, all kinds of stuff. And the stuff I was reading, all of that was completely different. Then what was in the textbooks. So it occurred to me, okay, the textbook explained how things were supposed to be, but this is how the world really is. And I had talked with Pete Wilson, who was a Senator from California at the time. And he said that if I wanted to get into politics, I should study economics. He said, there's not one person on Capitol Hill who knows the first thing about economics. So I changed my major from political science to economics. Okay. And it made sense. I understood it. Explain why people behave the way they do, how they interact with each other. And once I understood that I could see that he was right to this day, nobody on capital and nobody in almost any legislature anywhere in the country knows anything about economics. You have people, it's the equivalent of people who know nothing about medicine doing surgery. It's, it's, it's that degree of insanity. So people who have no idea about the consequences of what they're doing, and I'm talking both Republicans and Democrats, have no idea what their policies are going to create. What economists call the law of unintended consequences. My favorite. I like to say the more government tries to fix things, the more they fucks it up. Absolutely. That is 100 percent correct. Um, so. You pivot, you get out of college, you're get right back into sales or like, are you still in DC area? Is that where you went? Uh, I was, I was still in the DC area. Yeah. I went to George Mason university. Okay. And I had some great professors there. Um, we had, uh, did a survey course of Asian governments and it was taught by a four, a career foreign services officer. Oh, interesting. Who knew all of the leaders personally. Oh, fun. And could tell stories about them all. It was an incredible class. Only in DC where you get that kind of experience. For sure. Um, I got, I got out of college and, uh, I was actually working for Domino's pizza at the time, but I was working for them during college, you know, part time and during summers, uh, and then, uh, driving. Okay. And then did it after college because it was Great money. It was easy work. It was fun. It was a great atmosphere. And I actually learned a lot about business and marketing from the franchise owner. Yeah. Guy named Frank Meeks. Okay. Uh, Frank was the very first person to ever put a Domino's outlet in some place other than a college campus or military base. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I had no idea that was their foundation. People believed that nobody would order, deliver pizza unless they had to. Right. They thought that people would only order delivered pizza if they didn't have any other options. So, a college campus is a good place to put one, a military base is a good place to put one. Oh, fascinating. Frank thought that he could put it anywhere. Right. And people would order. People called him crazy. So, he got the franchise rights to the Washington, D. C. area. And, uh, at one point, Frank owned 18 of the top 20 Domino's pizza shops in the world. In sales. One of my, uh, friends. Former Rotary Club members. I think he got up to about 35 dominoes with his organization sold most of them a few years back But really cool Organization. He was part of their kind of their franchise, the advisory committee thing that kind of turned, Donald's kind of turned themselves around over the last 10 years or so they were kind of down in the doldrums and now they're kind of cool again. Well, they were bought by a private equity company. Oh, is that right? Which is almost always a bad thing, right? Cause they have no idea what they're doing usually. Yeah. Uh, they don't have their heart in it. Yeah. Well, that's all they care about is money. Yeah. Like that's the, uh, Like it's one thing to make big decisions and not know anything about money. But if all you, all you care about is money, that doesn't work either. So you're working in the domino scene and then, um, it sounded like you kind of went almost straight into speaking and selling coaching, not immediately. I told her with my father, he was running a, a courier service, DC area. Okay. And needed help. And so I, I came on board and that, and so I was basically vice vice president there, um, like running like bicycles and motorcycles, running documents around or mostly cars and trucks, but yeah, that, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. All these important documents for the important people over there. Yeah. So we, we grew the company and we grew up by an average of 38 percent a year. Uh, and that was just, you know, selling and marketing, selling and marketing. Was that your responsibility mostly? Exactly. Okay. Uh, that was a really powerful learning experience. Yeah, sounds like it. There were some things I did right, some things I did wrong, and those are critical. Sure. For, for getting better. Well, it probably was hugely important for helping you quickly understand your future client situations and stuff too, having been there. Exactly. You know, having to execute all those operational things. Exactly. So I did that for several years and then just got to the point where I was kind of burned out on it and needed something different. And so, uh, I left that to my father and I literally took two weeks off. Okay. I took two weeks to just decompress and do nothing because I had been so stressed by it. And I spent one Sunday reading every single help wanted ad in the paper. Okay. And not one job looked remotely appealing to me. And I thought to myself, well, I've always wanted to be a speaker, why not now? Because I learned about people like Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, I learned about them in college, so I knew that it was a thing. Yeah, and it was kind of a new thing, right? Fairly, yeah, it really started kind of in the 70s. Um, so by then, by the nineties, you know, it was getting bigger and bigger. And so I decided, what the heck, why not now? I mean, I got no debt. I got no ties. I can do whatever I want. And so I made that decision on a Thursday night, Friday morning, the phone rings, it's a woman from NASA asking if I can come in and do, um, A business session for them. What? And I'm like, um, I'm assuming you didn't have a website. No, no, I had nothing, nothing. Uh, NASA, yes, that NASA, uh, was trying to reduce their workforce. They didn't want to lay anybody off. So they were offering all kinds of outplacement training and they wanted to do a session on how to start your own business. And I had been speaking about that. Okay. And so this woman. Called someone she knew to ask if she knew anybody who called someone she knew. It went through five people. before it got to a woman who had seen me do a presentation, a free presentation, recommended me. And, and I got the call. And so we, we talked, we worked everything out because she asked me, you know, about the date and I said, huh, let me check my calendar. Right. Um, you're in luck. That day is available. And we got through all that. And then she, the final question she asked was, how Oh, how much do you charge? And I'm like, I have no idea. 500. And she said, Ooh, our budget's only 300. So we talked, we negotiated, we ended up at 450. I like it. And that was my first ever paid professional gig. Nice. Was NASA. Uh, I went there and I did the program. They loved it. They had to come back again. So they were a repeat client. Absolutely. How often does that happen? Unless you're a rocket scientist or something, which I am not. So, uh, so that was just kind of a general business talk. Like, so did it take you a while to find your. Sales focused space within that? It did. It did. I started talking about networking and in part because of Susan Rowan. Okay. Susan Rowan wrote the book, uh, how to work a room. Oh yeah. Yep. I haven't read it, but I've, I've had a lot of people talk about it. So I think I mentioned to you, I was an abused child. My mother was very abusive. Oh, no. One of the things she did was she refused to allow me to play with other kids. No. So I never developed social skills. Oh, wow. So even through college, I did not know how to interact with other people socially. Interesting. Was the candy sales not like, that was just a transaction, it wasn't a social thing? Yeah. You were just a tool for their needs? I was a businessman. Yeah. Absolutely. Fascinating. Um, so I picked up How to Work a Room. Okay. And I had the original Czapolski edition. Polsky publishers. Okay. That's very rare. Copy. All right. I picked up that book and for me it was, that book was life changing'cause it was all about networking, how to, how to talk to people. Yeah. How to behave in a, a networking environment, which was applicable to really any social environment. Sure. Uh, and, and that book literally changed my life and I got better at networking and I got, so I started reading other books on networking and I got so good on it. I started to speak about it and come up with my own ideas and strategies. And so the first talks I was giving was about networking and then general business and some sales and this is like late nineties by now or yeah. Yeah. Very late nineties and a little bit of everything. It took me a while to narrow it down to, to sales eventually. Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing though, is I got to meet Susan Rohan, uh, in, 98 at the National Speakers Association Convention. The first one I attended, I had told some people from, uh, my, my chapter that I was looking for certain people that I want, really wanted to meet one of whom was Susan Roanne. And so a woman in our chapter came up to me on like day two of the conference and said, Hey, did you say you're looking for Susan Roanne? Yeah, I found her. She's in the bathroom. I told her you're looking for her. Wait right here. So I'm standing there, and she comes out of the bathroom, looks at me like, like I'm a stalker, which I kinda am, to be fair. And she comes up to me and says, Are you Don Cooper? I said, Yes. Are you looking for me? She said, Yes. And I told her the whole story. The abuse, and, and, and the social awkwardness, the no social skills, her book. I've changed my life, everything else, and part of the reason why I'm there at that conference is because of her, and her book. Wow. And, you know, she just lit up because authors don't normally hear that kind of thing. Yeah. You write a book and you hope someone reads it. Right. But Change My Life is, uh, like the ultimate compliment. That's a big deal. I want to back up. Like, what was, like, your mom's situation? Like, was she mentally ill? Like, what were her motivations to not let you interact with her? It took me a long time to come to realize this. My mother had narcissistic personality disorder. So she was a toxic narcissist. Uh, when I learned about what that is, it fit everything she did, explained everything. Narcissists need to manipulate people. They need a victim to manipulate and I was the one. So it was really mostly you that she, that suffered, at least while you were around, that suffered her consequences. Correct. And nothing needed to make sense. Nothing needed to be justified. Everything was my fault, and everything was because she knew better. So, you know, there's physical abuse, mental abuse, verbal abuse. Uh, for a narcissist, nothing is ever good enough. Yeah. They have to keep you always Trying harder and you will never ever achieve it. To this day, I struggle with perfectionism because nothing I ever did was good enough. Yeah, yeah. Um. Sorry to dig you back in there. No, that's okay. It was just fascinating to think about why, what somebody's motivation would be to do that to their kid, you know? It's about making yourself feel better by making somebody else feel worse. Yeah, yeah. Which is awesome. A weird pathology to understand and can be very difficult for people who haven't experienced it. Yeah, I don't know. And it's just, it's horrible because you think everything is your fault. You think you're wrong and everything. And you think if you just try better, try harder, do better, you'll, you'll finally get the validation that you see. Yeah. And it never, it never comes. Not from her. It never happens. Sounds like your dad was a much stronger figure in here. Far, far better. Yeah, exactly. Um, so. I guess kind of forwarding through the career, how long before you found the, the sales heretic, where you just, Don Cooper knows about a lot, about a lot of stuff and he talks about it for quite a while. Yeah, I've actually made that mistake early on, which a lot of speakers do, which is I speak about this and that and the other and this thing too. And you cannot be a support on everything. So I had to, I had to pare it down and I ended up paring it down to sales because the stuff I say. Regarding sales is more unique than about what I do about marketing. I can talk about those things. I'm happy to do that, but the sales stuff is the most unique that I've got. Well, and there's more leverage on it too, right? Like if you can actually activate a sales team to be more effective or even one sales person that can make a difference, tens, hundreds, thousands of dollars in revenues. Whereas networking's less significant, at least to begin with. Exactly. It's a slower, slower turn. I help my clients make eight figure sales increases. I don't doubt it. And at that point, whatever I charge is irrelevant. I know. Yeah. Yeah. As long as they have enough margin. Exactly. Exactly. As long as they're charging enough. I dig it. So I came up with the, it took me, it took me several years. I went through several consultants, branding consultants to come up with a brand. It's just a really tough thing to do. I mean, I've talked with several of the smartest people in the branding world. And we couldn't come up with anything. Uh, and the heritage thing was just an accident. It was a lucky situation where I met someone who said the right thing that treated something in my brain. That, that's how some of the greatest ideas ever occur. Well, barely any ideas are fresh, right? There's some amalgamation or hybridization of other things. Were you in the D. C. region this whole time, or? I was in Colorado by that point. I moved out to Colorado in 2000. How did you find your way here? Uh, I, I met up with Orville Ray Wilson. Okay. Uh, who worked with Jay Conrad Levinson who? The author. Author of Gorilla Marketing. Oh yeah. And Orville was the first. I've read that book. Uh, coauthor. There is no, it's not there. I don't see it. Yeah, there it is. GR Gorilla Financing. That's one. It's probably a related title. That's one in the series. Yeah. So Orville was the first ever co-author with Jay Levinson on a book. It was Gorilla Selling. Okay. And I had met Orville Ray at that same NSA conference in, in 98. And, and we were talking and he ended up inviting me to come out to. I'm going to be going to Boulder to join the company. Oh, and I did that because I recognized his genius and I recognized the incredible opportunity that it was. So I came out to Colorado, knowing nobody out here, but it was a risk I was happy to take. That was in 2000? That was in 2000, March of 2000. I just beat you July of 99. Okay. That's when I moved here. Just barely ahead of me. Right. Um, and so you became part of his crew for, you're not, Any longer that you went independent and eventually or whatever. Yeah. Um, what is, you weren't the sales heretic yet then either? No, no, that took a while. I spent several years trying to come up with some kind of a brand that would work and until the heretic thing finally. Oh, and was that part of like building your own brand then? Like, I imagine that if you don't have that, that's a good reason to be part of an organization in that way, because you don't really have as much brand value, but if you get that. Well, some people are just them, right? And they're known across the world. Like Zig Ziglar is just Zig Ziglar. He doesn't need to be anybody else. Exactly. Well, Orville Ray had carved out a niche for himself with Guerrilla Selling. Great book. I loved his stuff. He's a brilliant human being. One of the smartest people I have ever met. One of the most creative people I've ever met. And I came out to Boulder. Really for the experience to learn under him almost as a mentorship. Yeah. He cut five years off my learning curve easily. He's the guy that taught me how to customize a program. He taught me how to ask the right questions. Uh, he helped me with my writing. He helped me with a lot of things. So I am forever grateful to him for, for how he, you know, took me under his wing and, and helped me develop as a speaker. I would not be the person I am today if it hadn't been for him. For, for his coaching. Talk to me about that launch into your own brand again, back out of the, the comfort of a organization. It was, it was kind of forcible because, uh, of September 11th. Oh, I was actually on my way to the airport to fly to Philadelphia to speak for a client that morning. And I got a call from the office saying, turn around and come back. I'm like, huh? What are you listening to the radio? No, turn the radio on turn the car around, right? So I get back to the office and our world changed, right? Like all of your bookings have been gone everything, right? There were companies that canceled their next two years worth of meetings and events So everything got wiped off, off of the books. And so we made some drastic cost adjustments. The company had to change and I understand it. And, and, you know, he and I are still friends. Um, there just wasn't sustainable at the time because of that. Sure. That crisis didn't happen. You know, in fact, it all, all speak at all of us at that time. And then you, did you like go get a job or did you just. Put up your brand sign. I just looked for, for opportunities where I could find them. Probably scat by for a while. Uh, didn't need as much steak anymore for a while. Yeah. So did a number, number of things. Um, did some work with a training company that worked with Yamaha. Okay. Uh, didn't have to resort to eating vegetables. No, no. Thank goodness. Yeah. Wouldn't want that. So, um, you know, I'm feeling like we got a pretty good, uh, uh, overview of your career, like any big moment since you've become independent as the sales heretic, if you've got one, any awards or prizes, or, uh, I was introduced to you as like the best sales speaker, at least in Colorado, but probably west of the Mississippi. I'll tell you the thing I am most proud of. Okay. I was president of the. National Speakers Association called out a chapter of 06 to 07. All right. And in that year, the national organization was holding its winter conference here in Denver, and the chair of that conference had challenged our chapter to do some kind of a charity event. We could do whatever we wanted with whoever we wanted. And we ended up choosing a local organization in Denver that. Treats and educates abused children. Okay. And I was the impetus behind that. It was my suggestion that we take on that as a cause. And somebody else suggested that particular organization, the Tennison Center for Children. Okay. Which is in, in Denver. Yeah, I've heard of it before. Uh, as, as the potential beneficiary, we ran it by the national and they said, great, go for it. And we. Put together a speech competition for the kids. Oh, cool. That's something that aligned with us. And, you know, I was, it was something that helped me deal with my, heal from my own abuse. So we did this thing and, uh, The first year, just before it happened, everybody was afraid it wasn't going to work. Because speaking is one of the most stressful things a human being can do. And stupid us thinks, you know, these 8 year old kids can just do it. And, and the Tencent Center were all freaking out. Because they were just so afraid of what might happen with the kids. They've been coaching them and working with them. You know, and none of us knew what was going to happen. So we get in there, several of us as judges, uh, and, and a bunch of other people just coming to watch. That day, eight kids got up, blew us away. Nailed it. That's cool. They spoke on all kinds of different subjects. Only one of them addressed the issue of abuse. And it wasn't her own. She talked about other kids. And what they had been through and how she wanted to help them. There was not a dry eye in the house. She was our winner. And just a couple of weeks later was the conference in Denver and. We made arrangements for her to be there. I got up on stage and I talked just for a few seconds about what we did and why we bring the girl out, uh, with the president of the, the center, the president's center numbing her. And so we introduced her as, as the first ever champion. And she walks out to get a special plaque handed to her. She's on the stage with all these lights on her. 400 adults give her a standing ovation. And her smile outshone the lights. And since then, it's become an annual competition. It is the event the kids there look forward to the most. It has changed a lot of their lives. Yeah. Well, the boost of confidence for that young lady. The girl who won that first year. They told us later that she had been through a dozen foster homes. And shortly after that event, she got her forever home. She got adopted. They said she was a changed person after that. So, yeah, I mean, like it's that it allowed her to have hope again, right? Like, and she found her voice. If you're a foster family thinking about adopting, it's really hard. If you're, if this child hasn't refound their hope, I imagine. Yeah. So we give these kids a chance to, to do something they've never done before. Every kid gets a trophy, which normally I'm opposed to Yeah. But in this case, these guys get in this case thing deserve. I told the kids every time I'm, I'm able to judge and I judge every time I can. Before we get the trophy though, I told the kids, here's my first trophy. I got this for taking second place at a tournament out of two people, So this is a participation trophy, But it got me started. Yeah. And I got this because I was willing. To raise my hand and volunteer for something I'd never done before. Just that much courage, a little tiny bit of courage, changed my life. Yeah. And the fact that you all got up here today and did what you did shows courage. And this trophy, Let this be a reminder to the rest of your life that you have that courage inside of you nurture that courage, hold on to that courage, that courage will serve you. It is the highlight of my year. You're still involved. Yes. That's awesome. Whenever I can be there for it, I'm there judging. And it is the absolute highlight of my year. And it is the thing of my life. In my entire life, I am the most proud of. I dig it. I dig it. Um, well thank you, uh, that was a great overview. I want to jump into our mandatory sections. Do you want to take a bathroom break or anything? You're good? Bathroom break might not be bad. Okay, let's do it. yeah. Faith, family politics, uh, where we've touched on all three, just a little bit, except for faith, I guess. I'm a heretic on, on all those subjects. Okay. I don't follow the crowd. Take me to politics. Uh, you, you started as a young Republican. I did. At a time when that wasn't really. Not particularly. No. Um, but I got disillusioned with them and Yeah. And so I, I leaned more and more libertarian because of what we talked about earlier. The government seems like it's the problem more often than not. Yeah, yeah. And I see the limitations of Libertarianism as well. It's not perfect either. And what I've come to Mostly because you gotta be dirty to raise enough money to actually win. And if you're having a small government, how are you gonna be dirty enough? Well, here's the problem with Libertarianism. It's the same problem as with Communism. And with capitalism, all those suffer the exact same problem. Humans suck. Right. There are so many bad people in the world that no matter what system you've got in place, someone's going to do bad things. Right. The challenge is how do we create a world, a society in which good people can do good things, can build, can create, can innovate while preventing the bad people from them. Doing bad things and there's no good answer to that. I think capitalism offers the best compromise because the more power you give to anybody, the worse they can act. So capitalism and democracy keeps a little bit of a lid on that. We're, we may be testing that in the next few months, we'll see, but I get frustrated because on the one hand, People do amazing things. Yeah, yeah. They do brave, generous, heartfelt, creative things. Yeah, yeah. On the other hand, they do terrible, awful, horrific, inhumane things. The uh, you ever listen to the Dark Horse podcast? No. Uh, Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying. They're Okay. evolutionized psychologists. And they were at the heart of that evergreen college meltdown thing. Okay. I remember when that kind of happened 2016 or something, it was kind of the first super wokeness, like physical violence attack thing. Anyway, uh, Heather wrote a article the other day about, uh, Portland pride parade and just the level of like disturbing imagery with like men with dog outfits and ball gags on and stuff. And. You know, hundreds and hundreds of small Children in the crowd with their parents at this pride parade and that mix of and and kind of one of the points was tolerance is is is a really good thing. But tolerance of How much, you know, how much yuck do you tolerate, you know, and then who puts the foot down on what's tolerable? Exactly. Yeah, because humans suck. Who decides? Right. You know what I think is tolerable is not what somebody else thinks is tolerable. Yeah, yeah. You know, for some reason the things that I like tend to be a lot more tolerable than the things I don't like. Right. So, funny how that works. So you're, Both a disenchanted Republican and a disenchanted Libertarian at this point or like where do you where do you paint your stripes now? I'm still more Libertarian. I Recognize the drawbacks and the flaws Because I've seen so much of what human nature can do left with own devices Yeah, so I think there needs to be more government involvement than most Libertarians like to consider, but not as much as Republicans or Democrats. Fair. How do you, so the, the line I heard on a, on a video on Twitter the other day was, uh, uh, so the, under pressure, the vegetable makes way for the plant in order to save democracy. How do you feel about that line? What I find amusing is you've got both parties accusing each other of undermining democracy. Right. And, and both parties have a case to make in, in that regard. I suppose. And the reality is if the roles were reversed, they'd both be doing the same things. Right. What people fail to realize is both parties do the exact same things. Each side just lambasts the other one. They do it and they ignore it when they do it. It's just, it's awful. And if you're aligned to a party, you've just kind of failed knows when your party does it. Right. He knows when the other party does it, but you don't know when your own party does it. And that's that tribalism we were talking about. Exactly. That's one thing about being a libertarian is you can kind of mock both of the major parties. Precisely. Uh, I can point out, well, he did the same thing. Then they both, uh, who'd you vote for in 2020? Uh, I voted Libertarian in 2020. For Joe Jorgensen. Um, and I voted Libertarian for the last several elections. Yeah, I voted Gary Johnson in the two previous, but I went Kanye in 2020. I thought it was more of a protest than Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Fair enough. I had a woman be horrifically angry at me for, uh, voting Libertarian when Trump Was she a Democrat or a Republican? She was a Democrat. Okay. When Trump won, she accused me of being the reason Trump won. You're like, well I'm like, no, Hillary is the reason Trump won. Let's be clear here. Right. Well, in Hillary, did Trump win Colorado? I doubt it. I don't recall. It might have. I don't think so though. It was close. Colorado was purple when I got here and it's turned pretty blue since then. Yeah, it's gotten more blue. Um, anything else you want to say? Should we do the controversial topic speed round? Go for it. No, I don't want to. Um, There's just not enough controversial topics and uh, you know. Um, is there a stand you take that's uh, Separate from the typical libertarian platform gun rights. I, I tend to be more anti drug than the typical libertarian. Um, but with the new research coming out on psychedelics and how the, how that can help people with mental illnesses, like anxiety, depression, PTSD, um, I've been reevaluating my position on that as well. I've got a, I've got, I got gifted some mushrooms a couple weekends ago. I should start offering those to my guests. There you go. I've always had this joint here, but I knew that you didn't want that from our conversation. And so, uh, I've never been into drugs. I've been probably wouldn't have taken mushrooms if I offered those to you at the beginning. Probably not. No, not quite the same. Not sure I can be at my best, but I reevaluated a lot of things over the years and I'm constantly doing that. Night. I, I, I, I want to be intellectually honest and I want to be intellectually transparent. I want to have a reason for what I believe in. And if something comes along that gives me a reason to challenge my beliefs, I want to challenge my beliefs. Yeah. Am I, is my belief based on the most current evidence or are there points of view that I'm not aware of? Yeah. I only became aware of male privilege and white privilege fairly recently. Hmm. And, and what I've come to learn is that Privilege is not an extra that you get. Privilege is something bad you don't have to deal with. Hmm. That's fair. You don't notice what you don't deal with. Right. Right. It's just not a thing for you. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, my female friends will not walk home alone from downtown. I totally did it all the time. Never thought twice about it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, when I get pulled over by a police officer, my biggest fear is getting a ticket. Right. Yeah. For pretty much every African American friend I have, their biggest fear is being shot. Yeah. But is that actually real? Yes. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, there is very few actual police, white policemen shoots black guy. That is correct. But, but there's enough of them to make it scary. Precisely. And the fear itself is probably what Part of what magnifies the situation, right? It's both people are up higher stress level because of that, because there's also probably a lot more black people that shoot white cops than White people that shoot white cops, I suspect because, just because of the nature of inner cities and where people are shooting cops. And rap music. There's a lot, there's a lot of things and race is a complicated issue, sexism is a complicated issue. I work very hard to, to not be misogynist, to not be racist. You know, I've learned more and more about institutional racism and how that is truly a thing. Because I didn't believe it for a long time. I didn't see it. Well, that's part of the problem, I think, is that the, the, the more you try to fix it, the more you fucks it up. That can absolutely happen. Like some of the DEI things now and stuff are going a little far, potentially, arguably. Well, it depends on who you ask. Well, it depends on what you're doing. Like if you're building airplanes, maybe it's a bigger deal. I don't know. I want to move on because otherwise we won't get us out of here. Okay. Uh, and not because I don't agree with this conversation. Um, faith. Faith. Uh, but you haven't heard anything about it yet. I'm a heretic. Uh, did you have a faith background in school? Nope. Your folks didn't go to church, nothing like that? Nope. I was raised by, uh, a father who was more or less agnostic. Okay. And a mother who was Muslim, but was Muslim in kind of the same way a lot of Catholics are Catholics. She picked and chose what she wanted to believe. Yeah, yeah. Um, so Muslim from where, by the way? Um, long story, way more time than we have. Well, I don't recognize, like, Arabic in your face, so were you adopted? No. No, okay. No, no. Anyway, we'll move on. We don't want to talk about mom. That's a teaser for another episode. But yes, but she drank and smoked and gambled, but didn't eat pork, which meant if I was with her, I couldn't eat pork. Right. So the thing she believed in was the thing that affected me personally. Right. If you can smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, I should be able to have bacon. Exactly. Um, so no, I, so I am an agnostic. I will happily discuss religion with anybody who wants to. Have you studied it at all? Oh yeah. Yeah, I've looked, I've done comparative religion study and I find religion interesting. I don't believe in any one particular faith. There may or may not be a God. I don't know. I haven't seen any evidence. Yeah. Uh, I can't prove a negative, so I don't say that there absolutely isn't one. Maybe there is. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there's two. Maybe there's a hundred. Who knows something I've mentioned on this podcast before is when I was in like high school and stuff It was kind of like there's either God or the Big Bang right kind of remember that yeah those days and now With this Hubble thing or not the Hubble thing with the next the other web the web telescope They're like gosh by looking at this thing. It sure looks like it Might be like intelligently designed like it couldn't have pulled off the way that it was without having some kind of a design before That boom it's possible, but but anyway Maybe both things are true. Maybe neither thing is true, right? Because there are those that argued the Big Bang wasn't actually the Big Bang, right? So who knows? Well, what's the unmoved mover is the big question? Yeah, like that's the goal of question moving on family We haven't talked about a wife or kids or any of that stuff. No wife, no kids, no pets. Never ever? I have one plant hanging on for dear life. Have you ever been engaged or? Uh, no, I got close a couple of times. Okay. But it turned out it was not the right person. Okay. So still in the market? I am in the market. Okay. Um, so I, I, I, I'm looking for the right person, the right woman. Who is that? I'm not sure. Okay. Um, she is intelligent. She has confidence. Uh, she's open minded. She doesn't need to believe all the things I believe. She doesn't need to be into all the things I'm into. But there should be some, you know, a little bit of compatibility. Yeah. Uh, can we have fun together? Can we stimulate each other? Can we educate each other? Can we support each other? That's I'm looking for I'm looking for a partner. I'm look I'm looking for healthy a lot people out there talking toxic relationship. Yeah Yeah, that's one of those things I find Sexiest if you will about a woman is that she doesn't really need me, you know, not totally anyway, like I don't want The problem for men though is that we need to be needed. Mm. If a woman doesn't need us, there's not really a place for us in her life. We, I guess we need, I don't know. We need to have a sense of purpose. I find women that are self-actualized already to be Yes. More intriguing. Yes. I want'em to self, self action. I want them to be confident. I want them to be whole. I don't want them to be Right. Need someone to complete them. But I, I, I told a woman I dated one time that we ended up breaking up. I said to her, your strengths make you admirable, your flaws make you lovable, your weaknesses give me a reason to be in your life, they give me a way to support you. And she couldn't grasp that concept. So that's what I'm looking for. Otherwise you'd be way too good for me if you didn't have all these flaws. That's exactly correct! You know? Our, uh, our closing segment is the Loco Experience, the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners. Oh my god, uh, which to choose from? I, I think the craziest one was the time I got a teacher fired. Okay. Uh Tell me, was he buying black market candy off you? No, 10th grade geometry, I'd changed schools, middle of the year, I'd gone from one school with a great geometry teacher who was fantastic, Okay. Students were very engaged, everybody was doing well, came to school in Virginia, and same class, same textbook, completely different class. Nobody there was achieving very well. Uh, the teacher was the soccer coach, they made him teach some things, we taught geometry. He knew less about geometry than I did. He would routinely make more mistakes on the test than I did. And I would try to bring them up during the test, and he would tell me to shut up and sit down. So he would not communicate. And then when the test came back, he said there was a issue with number four. So I gave you credit for whatever you put down, whether you, you're right. And he would give every single person in the class credit except for me, what the one person who was actually correct. And eventually, I, I went to my counselor with a bunch of tests and said, here are the mistakes he made. Here are the mistakes I made. This is the problem. Um, and she took me to the principal, same thing. And, and. And he got fired, and he came to me, uh, he pulled me out of class one day, into the hallway, and, and he was upset at me for not Out of his class, or somebody else's class? Out of his class. Okay. Out of his class. Um, and he Was upset at me for not talking to him, but I tried to talk to you. And every time you said, shut up and sit down. And that is a reflection of my heresy. It is the result of having a lot of negative experiences with people in authority positions who were not worthy of that authority. And to this day, I am happy to work underneath somebody who is competent and a good leader. I will not. Work under somebody who was a bad leader. Yeah, it's part of why I like working for myself Yeah, my strengths my weaknesses. I know that I can treat people Well, well, it's one of the commonalities that like I think our membership have is they want to be better leaders Yeah, you know and and engaging people like you to help their sales teams learn how to properly sell is part of it because Usually they're the main rainmaker and so to help activate other people is which is one of the coolest things about doing this for living So I get to work with some amazing people I get to work with really great leaders who love their sales teams and love their company and they want to support their people I love that and other speakers are are some of the most amazing human beings on the planet They're they're amazing Brilliant and, and creative and generous and kindhearted. So I am, I am very fortunate to be able to do what I do and serve who I serve. I dig it. Um, people want to find you? Don cooper. com is my website. Cool. And reach me. If they Google the sales heretic, will they find you too? They will also find me. If you've been doing your SEO properly, probably. Yeah, exactly. Somebody's not squatting on your space. We're working on that actually right now. Well, Don, I've enjoyed the conversation. Um, Safe travels back to Denver town, and I hope to welcome you back up here to Northern Colorado soon. It has been my pleasure, and I look forward to coming back. All right. Godspeed, sir. Thank you.