Episode 427: Endurance and Entrepreneurship: Lessons from the Ride with Chris Colt

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Enjoy the show.

0:00:22 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing and business. Join Bryn Tillman and me, Bob woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. Chris Colt is here. How you doing, Chris?

0:00:50 – (Chris Colt): Doing awesome. It’s great to see you, Bob.

0:00:53 – (Bob Woods): It’s great to see you and great to have you here. Definitely appreciate it. So do you know how so many entrepreneurs struggle with consistency and attract new clients without burning out from constant posting? It’s gonna be chasing leads or endless one-on-one sales calls. Well, our guest today is Chris Culp. He’s known as the challenge champion. That sounds very sports-like; I like that a lot. His clients install a simple, scalable client acquisition system using transformative virtual events so that you know exactly where your next client is coming from consistently and in bulk.

0:01:35 – (Bob Woods): And speaking of sports, who doesn’t like bulk? Now Chris is great with all that stuff, but today we’re going to talk with Chris about a slightly different topic, but leads very well into what he’s doing for clients today, which I think is absolutely fantastic. So with that, Chris, welcome to the Social Sales Link, virtual studios and the Making Sales Social podcast.

0:01:58 – (Chris Colt): I’m excited for this, Bob, and I know this will be a great conversation, so wherever you want to go, I’ll go with this.

0:02:05 – (Bob Woods): It’s going to be a roller coaster ride, but in the most positive way possible. And no one will get sick, I promise. So the webinar. So it’s, this is different because just last week you opened up about your own journey going from corporate America to eight years later. Congrats and mazel tov on that. To being on your own as a successful businessperson in your own right. So the webinar you hosted on this was way different from a lot of the typical webinars I’ve been on. And we’ve all been on, quite frankly.

0:02:40 – (Bob Woods): And yet it was. And, and, and I say this with absolute sincerity. One of the best I’ve ever been on.

0:02:46 – (Chris Colt): Thank you.

0:02:47 – (Bob Woods): Why did you decide to do this, especially with such vulnerability? I mean, because you got vulnerable. Vulnerable quite a bit during the podcast or I mean during, during the webinar podcast. Same thing, I guess. Anymore.

0:02:59 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of BS out there, Bob, and I just doing this eight years leaving corporate America. I spent 25-plus years in sales and high-level sales and say about 80 of those times I was a president’s club producer. I was typically on the top performance. But you know, I. Things in corporate I didn’t like. Also like, you know, when you’re in sales, when you’re hitting quota, you’re the best person in the world.

0:03:24 – (Chris Colt): But you know what? When you’re not hitting quota, even though you always hit it, guess what? You’re on probation for 30 days, 45 days. Right. That stuff gets old. And on this side, the best until you’re not exactly. So, I mean, that’s actually the reason I left corporate America. I was put into a tight position that I had to make a decision, and I just decided to go out on my own. But you know what I’ve seen on this side of the world? When you go to build your own, whatever it is, coaching, business, consulting, or business. Right. Anything online, there’s a lot of fluff. There’s a lot of things that people put up there that aren’t real and don’t work, and there are a lot of things that do work, and you really need to be able to filter through that. So what I did is last week you attended; you know, eight years doing this. I invited clients, I invited people that were along the journey with me and I said, ‘Guys, I’m just going to share what it’s really like to break through this stuff.’ Because surviving eight years on your own is a whole different beast than most people actually realise.

0:04:16 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. So take us back to eight years ago last week. Take us back to that moment where you’re just like, what pushed you over the edge specifically?.

0:04:28 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, you know, I was so it was kind of ironic. I was doing. And you can see behind me here, if you see this, this is the Leadville 100. I’m an endurance cyclist. I was signed up to. Lifelong dream was going out to Colorado for three weeks with my family. And you know, that was lifelong dream. I’ve trained for it. I was at the fitness level of professional cycl, put it that way. I mean I weighed literally 30 pounds less than I do right now. That’s the level of fitness I was in. I’m still in good shape right now, but that’s a whole different level of fitness.

0:04:55 – (Chris Colt): I trained for it; my family watched me train for it. And I was working in a company that I had a $5 million deal on the table and it was a very large, well known cellular company. I had the CFO personally on my cell phone. I could text them anytime. And we closed the deal. We actually closed the deal, but it was stalled. It was stalled. You ever have one of those big enterprise deals you’ve gone through everything from the CFO everywhere, all the signatures, and it just came to a point that they said, ‘Hey, we are still going to implement this. But here was the good thing.

0:05:24 – (Chris Colt): They purchased another very large cellular company, right? So they were merging. So like, we need 90 days to filter these things together. But here’s the good news for you guys. You’re going to get it all. So like the deal was getting bigger, and we have new sheriff come in town and if you know what I mean by that. A new boss. Yeah. About two weeks before this moment hit, he didn’t invite me to a sales call that was down in our company. I didn’t even know about it. And it was because my boss that got promoted said hey, Chris doesn’t need to be here.” He’s working on some big deals.

0:05:50 – (Chris Colt): He’s got a vac coming up; let’s not pull them out of the field. So I stayed in the field, and in about two weeks later, I get this call on a Friday afternoon at 4 ‘o’clock Eastern time. First time I ever spoke to the guy. Hey Chris, you know, first off you missed our sales meeting, blah blah blah blah. Went through all that and I was like, ‘Well, I was never invited.’ He goes well I should have invited you, but your Greg, your boss said not to invite you.’ But the other thing is since I haven’t really talked to you, I want to know everything you’ve been working on while why is this deal stalled, blah blah blah, like all the things that just come at you on a Friday. And listen, I want this all on my desk written in this kind of format by 9am Monday, or else we have a serious problem.

0:06:24 – (Chris Colt): Right? Anybody ever be there? Every like that thing. Right. And I nicely. Well, you know all this is in Salesforce; we use Salesforce. Everything you’re asking, go pull the report. It’ll. He goes, ‘No, no, I want you to write on this so I can read from your thoughts.’ I was like, ‘Well, we’ll pull the report. I’ll meet with you Monday, and I’ll take you through the report.’ And I’ll just verbally show you it all. Long story short, he wasn’t a fan. Line goes, Listen, this is how this day ends.

0:06:49 – (Chris Colt): You either get that done, or Monday morning we have a problem. So fast forward Monday morning. After a few bike rides, I’m literally two weeks out before going out to a trip to Colorado, my family, that was planned for the whole year, approved by the CEO. I’ll never forget; he also told me on that Friday, ‘If you’re going to go still do this race in Colorado, you have to now just get a plane and go back and forth and do it in a week instead of the three weeks you have, which was approved by my CEO.’ Like literally, that was one of the things right when I closed that large cellular company, which was T-Mobile, by the way. Moser6 is going to slip out of my mouth anyway.

0:07:21 – (Chris Colt): So when I signed that, that was one of my things. Hey, I want to take three weeks off to do this bike rig, and my CEOs like, absolutely no problem signed off on it. Right. So I had to make a tough decision. Do I walk away from doing a dream that my kids witnessed me to go do and, you know, kind of fall into this pattern of, hey, let me give the new sheriff what he wants, the way he wants it, even though we have this all, or do I finally stand up for myself? And you know, after 25 years being in situations like this in sales all the time, I just knew it was the time to stand out for myself.

0:07:49 – (Chris Colt): And lo and behold, did the Leadville 100 came in the top 20%, which I was really psyched about because that’s a professional bike race. So I did very well in that. I mean, I still have friends that go out there and do it, and they can’t touch the time I got. I’m not bragging on that. It’s just did it so well and then been doing this now for 8 years on my own. And I’ll tell you, it’s a much different journey on the other side when you’re on your own.

0:08:12 – (Bob Woods):Yeah, I mean for, for someone who is, who is in corporate-type things of things, not, not necessarily in sales so much, but, other things. I mean, just that, just the whole thing from going from, you know, highly regimented things, doing things that, you know, are bs but you got to do them because otherwise, you know, you have the, the situation that, that you’re in. I mean, just talk about, just really quick, the feeling that you had once; all of that kind of went bye-bye, essentially, you know, I was going.

0:08:51 – (Chris Colt): Out to do that bike race. So my feeling went to, ‘All right, I’m trained, I’m ready for this.’ We drove out to Colorado. It was a really cool trip that our family did stop and visited friends in Chicago because I live in New York, so, you know, we spent some time there, and we drove down and came back. So for me, it was all about focusing on that experience at the time. That’s really where my head was at. And, you know, it was kind of a relief knowing that I wasn’t going to have a new sheriff texting me nonstop because, you know, the craziest thing, out of all the companies I ever worked for in my life, that was the one company; like, when I was out of that off, I was done, and I worked from home. But they had me off the books and everything by like 12:30 in the afternoon on that Monday.

0:09:26 – (Chris Colt): I’ve never had a company do that to me, so. And I mean, you know what’s even crazier, Bob, when you look back, fast forward, that new sheriff, he got fired three months later because he did the same thing every other sales rep and they all kept on leaving. Like, I was really good friends with them all, and they were shocked that I left because I had the biggest deal. Month goes by, another guy texts me, ‘Hey, I just quit.’ I just. So he got fired because he lost his whole sales team because he was doing that kind of pressure on him.

0:09:50 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, that was going to be one of my, one of my questions, do you know, whatever ever ended up happening to that guy? And it’s, you know, if you’re gone in 90 days, I’m sure he got the same treatment you did, at least. So. So you probably feel good about that. So. And, and you don’t wish bad stuff on people, but sometimes it’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, okay, that’s. That was actually kind of good.

0:10:12 – (Chris Colt): So, you know, made me feel better at least knowing that I wasn’t crazy, you know?

0:10:16 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Strength and numbers definitely there. So what were your biggest fears in that first 90 days?

0:10:27 – (Chris Colt): The first 90 days is just, you know, you’re on your own. What do you put together? What do you do? You know, I had a side income stream coming in, so that was kind of covering things. And then it was just, ‘What am I going to build?’ So I actually went out, and because of my sales background, I use LinkedIn for everything that I did. So I was like, you know what? I’m just going to start helping people use LinkedIn effectively and show them really how to convert off of LinkedIn.

0:10:50 – (Chris Colt): So I started working with clients on that basis and was bringing in cash; it was getting things going. So that’s really where I started. Didn’t have this big vision. I mean I had an idea in my head where I wanted to go. It has pivoted. We’ll talk about that as we talk about this today. But really was helping people with LinkedIn for almost three years of the first of this eight-year journey. Yeah, I think that’s where I met you guys along the way, right? I think I met you guys. Yeah, I think so, yeah.

0:11:14 – (Bob Woods): You are now my LinkedIn brother, by the way.

0:11:16 – (Chris Colt): I just. There you go.

0:11:18 – (Bob Woods): So during the call you, you said that this whole thing was like a massive step of, of faith. How does that work into your decision and where that’s taken you from there? Was it faith, faith, or was it mindset or vision planning? I mean what, what, what was, what did all.

0:11:41 – (Chris Colt): It was a lot of faith, man. I mean, you know, I, a lot of my career, I did very well in my career very early, so had a lot of longevity. And then I started going to a lot of startups, and you know, startups give you, ‘Hey, here’s what everything’s going to be.’ And then you get in 30 days later you’re like, ‘Whoa, what’s this? This is just not the same thing.’ Yeah, I kept getting in those cycles, right? So not only that, but when you start to get to those cycles that, you know, you’re working for companies that aren’t actually telling you what it’s really like to work for them, you know, like what’s really in place and not in place and you can’.

0:12:12 – (Chris Colt): Stuff out until you’re in. Right, right. I kept on getting that cycle and it was, it was just burning me out like you wouldn’t believe. Also, I was like, ‘This is nonstop.’ So when I took the step of faith, it was like, do I get another job, fall into another one of these kind of things or I really see what I’m capable of and I decided to see what I’m capable of. And I mean, I will say like this here, like this, this race, not too many people in the world get to do that race. It’s a very small percentage and finish so well. It was a massive confidence booster. I was like, man, I just did the hardest mountain bike race in North America.’ Did darn well. If I can complete that, anything that comes at me, I can complete. So that’s, that’s really where my faith came from and you know, I’m a believer, so I know God was speaking to me at this moment also.

0:12:51 – (Bob Woods): Sure, yeah. No, absolutely, yeah. Listen, you talk about endurance cycling, and I’m like, ‘I just picked up pickleball,’ and I kind of feel like this compare that although pickleball is challenging, it’s very challenging in its own way. But yeah, no, so that’s, that’s, that’s really fascinating to hear. So, you know, with that, let’s, let’s turn it to some of the lessons from the ride. And I had to say that just because.

0:13:15 – (Chris Colt): That’s all right, man, you talk to me in cycling terms, you’re going to get good answers.

0:13:20 – (Bob Woods): Yes. So you’ve compared, and you’ve done that already. You compared the entrepreneurial journey to endurance cycling. So what does that whole concept of broken bike, unbroken spirit mean to you?

0:13:34 – (Chris Colt): Oh, yeah. So, all right, I wish I could show you all the photo right now, but back in two years, before I guess this was 2015, might have been 24, 2014, because I did the Leadville in 2017, and I started training, knewing I was training for that started around 2014. I went out and did a, a bike race and it’s a single speed bike mountain bike. So that means you have one gear. Okay. So that’s a lot harder. And there’s a place up where I live that they do a 44 mile mountain bike race and I was really fit this year. Right. And when I was kind of working my fitness. So it gets stronger and stronger over a couple year period before I went to qualify for Leadville and I did that race and within the start, you know, like seven, I think it was 72 riders total, I broke away and got into the woods before everybody else by almost three minutes because it was a good long mile-and-a-half start on a fire road, and I just went for it. And I’ll never forget the reason we can kind of use this as the topic of this, you know, broken bike, unbroken spirit, is because as I was pedaling, all of a sudden I went to sit on my seat and, and there’s no seat. I heard a crack and off it goes.

0:14:38 – (Chris Colt): And you know, I have this really cool photo. It was, but long story short, about a mile and a half in the race that far away, I look down and I hear people yelling at me, ‘Ah, you’re done; go get some beers.’ Right? And that was the easy thing to do because I did look down like, ‘Oh man, I got no seat. I got 40 some odd more miles to do. This is going to be an interesting day. But my mindset did two things at that moment. Well, you can do the easy thing and cave right now.

0:15:00 – (Chris Colt): And yeah, it’s warranted; you know, it’s all good. Or the other part is, how crazy are you? What can you actually accomplish today? So I went with that, that version. I ended up doing the bike race, ended up finishing 12th out of that whole group. You know, little by little, people would pass me. It was my challenge to stay with them, standing up and all that. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun. But like, that whole entire two hours and change, I’m actually developing into a TEDx right now. Okay.

0:15:23 – (Chris Colt): Because there were so many lessons in that, like, moments that, I mean, literally had people handing me beer along the way. Other times, burgers right here. Like every little thing that could come at you. A couple friends catching you during the race. I’m like, you’re a lunatic, man. Call it a day here. What are you crazy? Like, I had every reason to quit, but I also didn’t have a reason to quit because in two months, I was doing one of my top mountain bike 100 mile erasers that I do. There’s one in Pennsylvania. I always do. And I had a goal to take an hour off that time from the year I did it before because I lost weight; I was getting really fit.

0:15:55 – (Chris Colt): And it’s like, I don’t finish this today, that’s one day in training that’s going to cut out of what I’m doing. And you know, racing is different training because you get a different level of it. So I decided to just really pedal it out, see what I was capable of. And to this day, sometimes I’ll see people and they’re like, ‘Man, there’s the lunatic Chris Colt who just stood an entire bike race. Because that’s really what I did. I stood the entire time because I had no seat. Yeah, right.

0:16:17 – (Chris Colt): A lot of analogies with life about, you know, let’s be real. There are moments in life you have to grind through some stuff you don’t want to grind through. But anything I ever done, especially in bike racing, first place, is great, and I’ve won plenty of bike races. Second place, I’ve learned the most. Third place, learned a lot. That race, I learned a ton. And one race that I finished dead last, that was one of my biggest learnings. So I was really appreciated for the lesson because when things hit me on this journey, I actually go back to that race often.

0:16:45 – (Chris Colt): Hey, remember, you pedal through something like this before; it’s just in a different way.

0:16:50 – (Bob Woods): It seems to me like you. You learn more from the losses than. Than you do from. From big wins. And sometimes I think big wins can even inflate you so much that you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m invincible.’ And. And you stop learning, and you start doing things in a certain way that probably won’t work for, you know, most things, because every situation is different.

0:17:13 – (Chris Colt): Yeah. I mean, right now I coach a youth cycling team, and two of my sons are on it, and one of my sons, his first year, he would come in, like, anywhere from 6th to 10th place every year, every race. Right. And I’m grateful that happened because he learned. He was much younger. He was in seventh grade. He learned what it really takes to get to the next level. Then the next year he came back, starts winning races, and then he ends up being number one in his series. Like, now he’s out of. He’s been racing five, four years. Four or five years, but he’s won two overall series as the winner that he just finished JV number one in all of New York State.

0:17:45 – (Chris Colt): So, like, it’s actually. You learn more on how to really adapt. So when you do win those races, yeah, they’re special, but, you know, you put in all the work to win that race.

0:17:55 – (Bob Woods): That’s a very, very good lesson. And actually that kind of gets me thinking about something that I saw, and I’m not sure if it was from. If it was from your webinar or someplace else, but, you know, a lot of people who start off in this journey end up going back to corporate life after. After one year, I guess. Why do you think that is? Are they? Are they not giving it enough time? I mean, sometimes it’s money and things like that, and I can imagine that. But, you know, other times there may be different things involved. What do you think that those different things are? And. And how could people potentially overcome them with. With the mindset that you have?

0:18:35 – (Chris Colt): A lot of it is mindset. I mean, let’s be real. When you’re on your own, it’s quiet. You wake up on a Monday, and it’s like. Like, you know, it’s a whole different world than you’re used to, and people don’t like that. See, I. I’ve worked from home. I. I was like, way back in the day, one of my. When video conferencing first started, when I’m talking in the mid-90s, I was in one of the companies that launched video conferencing. So I worked for a very long time, so I was used to the dynamic to get interaction, I’d hop on video calls with people or get involved in communities.

0:19:08 – (Chris Colt): And I think a lot of people very early on, if you could take any. If you’re about to start your journey, get in a community of other like minded people because you’re going to need them. I call it the peloton, you know, right here.

0:19:19 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:19:21 – (Chris Colt): But you need to be around like-minded people that can lift you up when things aren’t going like you plan because I’m going to tell you that’s going to happen a lot. But also you could be the person lifting people up because you might be in a winning season when somebody else is in a developing season. So my biggest piece of advice, if you want to make it past that first-year thing, is make sure you’re in a community of like-minded people that you really, really help each get to a whole different level.

0:19:45 – (Bob Woods): So how would you find that community? I mean, is it a question of finding something that’s already established? Maybe doing something on your own and, and building your own community, or what does that entail? I mean, because community is, is, is awesome. And I’ve worked From home since 1994, if you can believe it. And we, we were doing things on CompuServe.

0:20:07 – (Chris Colt): Wow, that’s back in the day.

0:20:09 – (Bob Woods): I learned back then. Yeah, I mean, being at home by yourself just sucks. You know, you have entire conversations with your dog, and you know, what the hell are you talking about? So community, what do you do to get that?

0:20:24 – (Chris Colt): You know, I mean, there are tons and tons of communities out there. Why? Because I help people launch so many. That’s why I know this. So you can really just go online and start looking for what kind of communities are out there. But I would have a lot of qualifying for them. You know, I don’t recommend. You know, you’ll see a lot of people who have free complimentary communities. I prefer using the words ‘complimentary’ and ‘marketing’.

0:20:45 – (Chris Colt): I don’t think there’s enough. I mean, I get it, why they do it, but there’s not a lot of value in something you don’t pay for. I believe people pay attention to something they pay for. So I would look for something that’s a paid community that’s actually giving you. Maybe it’s mindset training, accountability. I mean, accountability is huge. You know, I have a community and my people in there have accountability. Not to be that guy, to say, ‘Hey, push you, push you.’ It’s to make you realize, wow, if I want to move forward, this is what I should be doing. I got to be held accountable to it.

0:21:13 – (Chris Colt): But I would look for ones that have accountability, maybe teaching you, frame frameworks on things that you can do. Because, let’s be real, you need to land clients when you’re out there. So, like, find communities that help you land clients, because that’s big. And then ones that give you a lot of networking. You want to network and get your name out there. But there’s so much you can do with community; it’s ridiculous. And quite frankly, if one. If one thing I shared last week that Bob knows is doing things all over. I wish I started a community about three years earlier than I did, because I know what happens from a business standpoint. You know, communities generate revenue.

0:21:49 – (Chris Colt): I’m grateful now I have a community. But, like, what happens is others come into this community, and they’re like referring people left and right because there’s a lot of value. But they see something that’s just. I don’t want to call it. I won’t use the word “magical.” I’ll call it. I call it actionable. Right. Or activating. Because there’s so many people that activate each other in these communities. And you want that.

0:22:11 – (Chris Colt): And you also want it. I mentioned accountability, but you want to be able to say to others in the community, “Hey, this is what I intended on doing this week.” And this is what really happened because, aha, to be expected. That’s how it works when you’re running your own business. You know, when you’re on your own. I know what I like. I’m freaking doing my marketing, my sales, my this, like, everything. My tech. Although now I have people do the tech, at least. But a lot of the other stuff, the marketing, the sales, the onboarding of clients, I still do all that stuff. Personally, I don’t mind doing it.

0:22:39 – (Chris Colt): If you’re from a corporate mindset, those are things you never do do, you will start to appreciate it. Believe it or not, if you’re in corporate now and you’re thinking of leaving, there will be a point you’ll look back and appreciate what you had in corporate. Because I do do that quite often. I’m like, “Man, I used to have this, this, this, and this is all I had to do.” I just had to bring clients on and not think about anything else. Right now it’s like, okay, I start to bring clients on, but I got to think about all these other things.

0:23:03 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. So speaking of that, I mean, even with your journey now, were there positive things that, that you brought from being in corporate that help you now?

0:23:17 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna say the bike taught me a lot from a productivity, efficiency, how-to-do-things-in-bulk perspective. Because when I trained so much, I learned so much and the mindset and a lot of my coaching came from that. But from the corporate perspective, I mean I had 25-plus years corporate sales, and I was trained at the highest of levels. I mean I used to walk into T-Mobile; for example, I walked into the C-suite, right into the C suite and it had nine minutes to do a presentation on why we were the best solution and then got around to where we were able to do a 45-minute presentation. Right.

0:23:49 – (Chris Colt): So I understood how to really find what a person need to help with and give them a lot of value to help them for it. And I didn’t have the fear of asking a person. This is a big one, guys; write this down. If you know you can help somebody. Never have the fear to ask the simple question, Bob, would you like help with that problem? Because guess what if Bob says no? Okay, Bob’s not in the right place right now for this. But guess what? Most people will say, ‘You know what? Tell me more.’ And that’s one of the biggest things that I’m grateful I learned in corporate America.

0:24:18 – (Chris Colt): I would simply ask that question. I know it seems like such a simple question, but most people don’t ask it because they’re afraid of rejection. I’m not afraid to somebody say no. Because if I ask that question enough, which I always do, somebody that’s looking at an opportunity to change their business or life is going to say, ‘Yeah, tell me how you can solve this, Chris.’ And then you have that conversation, and then it’s up to them: do they want to take the opportunity to make that change? But please don’t be afraid.

0:24:43 – (Chris Colt): If you know you can help a company or a person change, don’t be afraid to simply ask them, ‘Do you want help with that?’ You might hear ‘no’ once in a while. That’s fine. I guarantee you it’s more often.

0:24:55 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, I mean it’s a really good springboard question, I think. And, and it may take you in, in directions that you’re not even expecting too, which, which I think is always cool because it can also surface some other things going on that you don’t know about just because it hasn’t come up in conversation yet, but yet it’s a way to not only find out what’s going wrong with them more, but at the same time, you know, it really gets you thinking about, ‘Okay, how can I truly help these people?’ Because one of my, one of my phrases is always stop talking about how you help people and just help people.

0:25:31 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, it, you know, it’s, you know, it’s definitely along those lines there.

0:25:35 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, but it’s such a powerful. I mean, I’ll give you an example. Like, I went on vacation two weeks ago. You caught the, the event I did, right. When I came back from vacation, two days for electrification. A person that I met on LinkedIn. I’m just going to share this very first meeting ever with the person. Now, they had an idea what I did, but we were not meeting for them to potentially become a client. We were just meeting to get to know each other other. And they started sharing some things going on in their business with me. And I heard five things I could help with. Right?

0:26:01 – (Chris Colt): So, yeah, protocol was quote, unquote, ending. I just asked the person, are you open to get some help with any of those things? Because let me know. And she said, ‘I’d love help with this.’ I’m assuming you can help. I said, ‘Yeah, you want to know how?’ Now stay down with me another 20 minutes. And on the spot. Became a client on the spot. And she even told me, she goes, I always love spending money to help my business and get things for Chris because I had no intentions on spending any money on this call today. I was just to get to know each other call. And she said to me, ‘You asked me if I wanted help, and then you just dug in.’ So you knew my problems, and you showed me how you can solve them. How can I say no? These problems have been around for five to six months with me right now; I want to get rid of them.

0:26:42 – (Chris Colt): Hired me on the spot because of that simple question, first meeting. So that’s why you can’t be afraid to ask that question.

0:26:49 – (Bob Woods): That’s amazing. That’s amazing. How’d you come up with that?

0:26:52 – (Chris Colt): Corporate man. Corporate. That’s like, wait, I hired. So I’ve always had coaches and mentors my whole career that I paid for out of my own pocket. Right. And I had one. I’d say, ‘When was it?’ 20, probably 2005, 2006. I was in a very, very challenging startup at the time, and I was one of the ones. I was personally struggling to stay above quota, blah, blah, blah. Just this crazy rinse and repeat cycle that they had hired a coach, and he goes, ‘Listen, it gets you over the finish line as fast as possible.’ If you know you can help a person, start asking this question nonstop. Let’s see what changes.

0:27:23 – (Chris Colt): Within two months, I was back ahead of quota, and I was one of the top sales reps. So I never in my career stopped asking that question.

0:27:30 – (Bob Woods): That’s powerful. That, that, that’s extremely powerful. And you don’t hear it a lot either. I wonder why you don’t hear a lot. But, but you don’t really hear it a lot out there.

0:27:38 – (Chris Colt): Everybody hears this, this, this podcast now. You know, there you go.

0:27:42 – (Bob Woods): Everybody’s closing business left and right who listen to us, obviously here at Making Sales Social. I just had to get that in. So take me then. And this is going to be very open-ended. Yeah, yeah. Take me from, you know, that first year or so up until now, what you learn how business went. There were definitely a couple of bumps along the way. Without a doubt.

0:28:10 – (Chris Colt): Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I’ll go back. This journey started in 2017, and I have some themes for these, for each of these that are right. So I’ll give you some themes that I kind of themed each each year. So the first year was 2017, and it was only half year. But my lesson then is life is too short to not go after your passion. Now, if I look back and I took a big step of faith, there are many things I would have did differently. And I just want people to know I had an okay bank account. I had a lot of good things going on, but I probably would have wanted double of what was in there.

0:28:44 – (Chris Colt): But I still went after my passion. So just remember, if you have a passion, things will still come together for you. I will tell you in 2018, people started seeing I was serious when I was on my own, and they start coming after you for silly little things. And I’m not going to go into all the silly little things. But it’s like when you take anything serious, you get a lot of. I call them elevators or escalators. Okay. People that are meant to lift you up. Most people are going to call them haters. I don’t like using that word. I don’t believe in that word.

0:29:13 – (Chris Colt): I believe those people fueled me to a different level because I saw I was serious and they were coming after me. So that was one of my biggest lessons in 2018. You know, 2019 became a very, very interesting year financially. A lot of things started pivoting fast for me. We had to sell our house. And I call that the year the days that break you or the days that make you. And Bob, I tried to back to a job at that point, and it wasn’t that easy to find one.

0:29:39 – (Chris Colt): So I kept on pursuing this, and I would start getting offers from jobs that were just like I was making more doing what I was doing. So I decided just to keep on pushing through this. But that was year that would have broke me. And, you know, I go back to that year many times; it broke me. I mean, I ended up going through a personal bankruptcy after that year, just to be very transparent, because I had multiple things hit me at once that were just stacked one after the other.

0:30:03 – (Chris Colt): Very, very humbling moment in life, right? You go from, you know, going out and making a lot of good money. And it wasn’t about the money. It was about the freedom and what money allowed me to do for my family and other people. That’s what was most important to all of a sudden, having to ask for help. That is probably the most humbling moment in your life. And I’m going to tell you, if you’re going to go out on your own, I promise you, you’re going to ask for help more than you can ever imagine.

0:30:26 – (Chris Colt): So just remember those days that are breaking you are the days that are made to make you. Just like that bike race we talked about, when the seat broke, that would break most people. And I pedal through then. I’ll give 2020. This was one of my favorite years where things, you know, it was a crazy year. There was that. That virus thing that was going around. The world was changing. People were freaking out.

0:30:46 – (Chris Colt): Right? Everything changed.

0:30:47 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, everything changed. Without a doubt.

0:30:49 – (Chris Colt): Yeah. I learned then. And this is when my journey pivoted from helping people to LinkedIn to what I’m doing now. Okay. It was actually when I went through bankruptcy, I had to come back. And we can talk a little bit about that story before we depart here today. But. But 2020 was all about, you can get everything you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. So when you find out what people want and you can give it to them, I guarantee you there’s going to be a ripple.

0:31:10 – (Chris Colt): Then I ended up talking about, in 2021, my mess. You know, I. I didn’t really want to go public with the things I’ve been through, but I had a coach at the time, and she’s like, “Man, your story’s so real.” Do you know how many people face what you face or are about to face it, and they don’t share it or they need to hear the message? So I started sharing my mess and it became my message. People started seeing I was real. I mean, you were in my event last week. You heard some very humbling things, right, to share that.

0:31:38 – (Chris Colt): But that’s the relationships I have with my clients. If they got stuff going on, they can just say it to me. And maybe some people tell you that’s not the best thing as a leader. I actually believe it’s the best thing as a leader because I want to know what’s going on in people’s lives so I can relate to them. So my mess became my message. Then the other thing I mentioned, I kind of use my. I’m going through years of themes because these were the transitions that I went through in 2022. You know, I realized I needed the right partners.

0:32:05 – (Chris Colt): So for what I was doing, there was a lot of tech involved, there was a lot of marketing. So I started developing partners around that and that ecosystem. That started helping me a lot. Then as I went into 2023, I started to hit a whole new level, right? What I was doing was shifting. I was helping people with virtual events. People were converting in a one-to-many sales environment left. And. And then I had this moment of comparison. How’s this person a little further than me? How’s this person a little further than me? Right. You ever have that? It’s like, all right, so I’m going to tell you, comparison will kill you. It will kill you 100%.

0:32:39 – (Chris Colt): So don’t let it kill you. Because I let it get up here a little bit too much. And being an athlete, I was taught not to do that. But there were people that were moving a lot faster than me. And you know what? It was like, I’m doing things more authentically, more real than him. Why is that? But I got past that season of life. And then I will say again, last year in 2024, I landed some well-known names as clients. Okay. Very well-known names.

0:33:04 – (Chris Colt): And when you start to win big, they’re going to come after you. So I had some people come after me. I had a few things come up that were very unexpected last year in 2024 that involved lawyers. And then ended up with an apology. Oh, we made a mistake. Sorry. I just have to pay lawyers a lot of money. Right.

0:33:22 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah.

0:33:24 – (Chris Colt): Can I get that cash back?

0:33:25 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.

0:33:25 – (Chris Colt): Never got the cash back. But those are things that you really. That’ll start to happen. And then, you know, here it is, 2025. I know I. The Leadville 100 is 104 mile mountain bike race. They lie about it saying Leadville 100. I feel like I’m somewhere in the mile 80 mark where the final climb, the final big climb is and I’m still climbing out to my finish line. And I don’t mean that in a bad way because now I’ve seen how I can impact lives in such a dramatic way and I can help those people impact lives that it’s like, okay, the foundation is built, the stability is there. This is it. Now how do we take this so it scales all the way to the next level? And it’s a whole new challenge for me now in a good way.

0:34:02 – (Bob Woods): Finish lines are always defined.

0:34:05 – (Chris Colt): Yeah.

0:34:05 – (Bob Woods): What is your finish line?

0:34:07 – (Chris Colt): You know, it’s, that’s such a good question, man, because I, I, with the eight-year anniversary, I’ve really been thinking about this, and you know, my original finish line was as low as this sounds. It was to help a hundred people get their message out to the world faster and each make a million dollars. Right. That, that was my finish line. Has that been achieved? Not in the realm from the financial perspective. Right. Not that, but helping that many people. Absolutely. And that will ripple from there.

0:34:35 – (Chris Colt): I’ve taken a different look, and really the finish line for me is leaving something for my kids. Now what kind of legacy can I leave for them to walk into that they don’t have to build all these things that I built and they can take it to the next level? You know, I started this with helping people on LinkedIn. And then I started, you know, being stuck against the wall doing nonstop one-on-one sales calls and going through a bankruptcy. I had to get income coming in.

0:34:58 – (Chris Colt): And when I started doing virtual events, specifically five-day challenges, I started converting people that were paying to attend what I was teaching them at scale. So I was like, this is a no-brainer. So then I started building everything I did around that. Let’s build a whole social selling ecosystem that uses events. But now what I’m starting to see is like my kids can get involved with helping with the tech; they can get involved with, you know, helping with some marketing, doing some things I need to do on the back end, and then teaching them how to run a business.

0:35:25 – (Chris Colt): And then ultimately, you know, I believe community is the biggest thing you can have. So I’m trying to teach them how do you build a community of support around you and grow it from there? So where does this go? I can’t answer that right now, Bob, because I’m really evaluating that to be 100% transparent. But I know it’s bigger than what’s in my head because my, My coach always tells me that every time we have these conversations, he goes, “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s bigger.” And I’m like, okay, like, so what’s that mean?

0:35:53 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. So I just want to take the conversation in one more direction. But before we do that, why don’t we go back to the story that, that, that you wanted to complete before?

0:36:03 – (Chris Colt): Yeah. Well, what was that story?

0:36:06 – (Bob Woods): I knew you were going to say that.

0:36:08 – (Chris Colt): I should have said, make note of that. What was it?

0:36:10 – (Bob Woods): No, no lawsuits, I think.

0:36:13 – (Chris Colt): Oh, well, it wasn’t around the lawsuits, but I mean, I can talk about that. You know, I will tell you as you go through the journey, especially as you grow, have a, Have a lawyer friend that you can trust and have them on the bat phone where when things come up, you know, I had some things thrown at me. I mean, I’ll even share one crazy thing. You want me to share the Stripe story?

0:36:30 – (Bob Woods): Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good one.

0:36:32 – (Chris Colt): Okay, so for all you that know how Stripe works, let me tune in carefully here, because Stripe and any of these payment processors—I’m just using Stripe as the one that I was impacted with. Imagine working with somebody, and if somebody is listening and says, this will never happen to them; it more than likely will happen to you. You know, I’ve helped over 150 people at this point, and I’ve only had what I would call two sour apples. Okay.

0:36:56 – (Chris Colt): And one was because the person just ended up having a baby and disappeared, and they just got really mad because they never implemented what I taught, and they blamed it on me. I was like, I’ll give you all your money.

0:37:05 – (Bob Woods): Being clients, I, I. Yeah, yeah.

0:37:09 – (Chris Colt): So I ended up giving that person the money back because, you know, they had a. Their whole life changed after they signed up with me. So, you know, but they blamed me for not helping them implement what they wanted. I’m like, you disappeared for 16 months because you had a kid. That’s not my fault. It’s not. That’s a great thing. That’s a great thing. Right. But I had another person who. And this is where you all have to be careful. So there are things with credit cards that you can mark anything, fraud, typically within six months in the United States. So.

0:37:35 – (Chris Colt): So I had an individual that I helped dramatically. And, you know, we have documentation, and I was almost going to do a lawsuit with this, but my, My friend decided; we talked this out. We decided not to. But long story short, one day I go into my Stripe account when I’m trying to buy my kid a car, and there’s $6,500 missing. I mean, not my Stripe account, my bank account. There’s 65. I’m like, Wait, that was there last night.

0:37:56 – (Chris Colt): So, long story short, a person marked me fraud that I worked with for six months because they disappeared on me for three of those months because it was summertime. And then all of a sudden they needed results, they needed money. Quite frankly, that’s really what it came down to. It’s the person I’ll never forget. About a month before the person did this, I need to make 20 grand real fast. And that’s when you know you got a problem, right?

0:38:16 – (Chris Colt): So long story short, they went to Stripe and said, ‘Hey, this person never delivered on their promises, blah, blah, blah.’ And I got marked as fraud. And I got that mark off of me from Stripe because I had a long track record. But long story short, when that moment happens, here’s how it goes down. Boom. Reported within 48 hours, pulled out of your bank account. Nothing you can do about that. So always have extra cash flow running around. But be. Be very careful of who you take in on clients. And here’s the crazy thing. I’m very, very careful who I take on as clients.

0:38:47 – (Chris Colt): That person was actually a referral from another client. So my trust factor was up a lot higher. And my qualification factor was, looking back, I should have kept my normal qualification factors going because I know for a fact, seeing what played out, I probably would have caught that in my normal qualification processes. People need to hear that. And, you know, I shared that story in some other communities that I’m in. And, like, it’s scary, Bob, how many people will put in the chats on, like, Zoom. I’m like, I’ll be on Zoom, like, 20, 30.

0:39:18 – (Chris Colt): Well, that’s happened to me four times, five times, six times. So it’s human nature. But this also goes back to a point of when you were in corporate America. You know, corporate America protected you from that stuff because don’t think corporate America didn’t deal with that stuff. When somebody bought software that didn’t work and they look at, we’re getting our million dollars we just spent back.

0:39:36 – (Chris Colt): So corporate protecting you from that. You just need to protect yourself from this. And a lawyer is key in this scenario. And when you’re involved in these kinds of things, do not do the communication yourself. I never replied back on email. I never. My. My lawyer did everything. So you have to be. When it gets to that level, just. It’s gonna hit you internally; control your nervous system. That’s another big one.

0:39:58 – (Chris Colt): But just. Oh. Just know that in order to pull this off, you’re going to want a lawyer protecting you and talking to you on your behalf.

0:40:06 – (Bob Woods): There you go. Very good.

0:40:07 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, that’s the guy. Eight years of doing this, like I said, there’s only been two. That person and the other woman. Like, now she actually ended up apologizing to me. I should have just said to you, Chris, ‘Can I get my money back?’ Because I was more than willing for the other one. She just went down a route because she didn’t think I would do it.

0:40:23 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. Geez. Well, that’s. Chris, that’s really. That’s really, really good sage advice is to always have a lawyer somewhere around that. That can help in situations like that. So now I want to turn to a group that I’m calling aspiring escapees.

0:40:40 – (Chris Colt): Yep.

0:40:41 – (Bob Woods): So people who want to do it. And, you know, I normally have something at the very end of the show that’s, you know, one thing you can do right now. Question. Like, an actionable type of thing. But I’m gonna use it here because I think it works better. What is the very first step you recommend aspiring escapees take if they really want to do it? I mean, like, the very first thing they should do?

0:41:05 – (Chris Colt): Well, I mean, first, map out your finances for at least two years. Can you hang on for two years? I’m serious on that one. I’ve seen two.

0:41:13 – (Bob Woods): Oh, yeah.

0:41:13 – (Chris Colt): Myself included. Messed that part up right now. And can you scale back? Right. We ended up selling our house, trying to make that part of that reality. That would be the first thing because that’s the biggest. But at the same time, why aren’t you building something while you’re in your corporate job? I mean, I built $15,000 a month income stream on a side hustle before I left. So I had that going for me. I ended up crashing as part of my journey because I stopped putting energy into it.

0:41:37 – (Chris Colt): Oh, yeah. Looking at your finances, really, how can you build a side income stream? I mean, I know a lot of people right now that are all building side income streams. And I’m like, when this thing’s at this number every month, I’m out. So I know there’s plenty of those aspiring out there. And that would be my biggest sage of wisdom, is build something that you got some cash coming in, so then you can go scale what you really want to scale.

0:41:59 – (Bob Woods): That’s excellent advice. Quite frankly, I’ve been thinking about, about side hustles too. I haven’t really done anything with it yet, but I think that’s very, very sound advice to take.

0:42:08 – (Chris Colt): Yeah. And I mean to bounce off that when you do make the move. The first thing I would do, because this is how the challenge champion started. I worked with 10 one on one clients, and I got them all results, and I documented everything before I built my framework. I would go get one-on-one clients, and you know, whatever you charge, you charge. You should be charging at least 10% of the outcome you’re going to get them. So if you know you can get them $100,000, you should be charging 10,000.

0:42:32 – (Chris Colt): But I would also maybe, because this is their first one-on-ones, say, ‘Hey, I’m documenting all this because I’m building out my framework.’ I would also be tied into the revenue a little bit. So maybe instead of say you give them a hundred thousand dollar outcome, maybe say, ‘Hey, start with me at 7500, and then we’re going to have a percentage when you get your investment back that you pay me going up to 100k.’

0:42:51 – (Chris Colt): Nobody’s ever going to complain if you’re taking 15 to 18% if it wasn’t all paid on the front end and you’re getting paid results. I do that with my clients to this day, and they love me for it because like, wow, you made this easy to start. And then you’re tied into my results. Right. That’s how I always try to get my clients results. I’m like, ‘Guys, I don’t… I’m in this with you.’ So that’s another big thing I would do. But if you can get 10 one-on-one clients to build out your framework, then you can start building everything else out.

0:43:19 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So from there I was going to ask, what’s one thing that you would con if you had to start over? Would you continue to do that you’re doing now? That just took care of that.

0:43:28 – (Chris Colt): That’s definitely what I would do. Yep.

0:43:30 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. What would you not do if you were starting over again today that you did?

0:43:36 – (Chris Colt): What would I not do? Get caught up in like, I would not have sloppy messaging. Okay. I hired somebody who cleaned my message. Slick words mean nothing. You need to have simplicity and exact what you do. You want somebody looking at, if it’s a LinkedIn profile, your social profile, your website, you want them to understand exactly what you do in the simplest of formats so they can look at it and say, ‘That is exactly what I want.’ And there’s so many different frameworks that you can use, but one of my favorite that I like to use, it kind of really, it’s all about transformation, right? That’s what you want to do.

0:44:12 – (Chris Colt): So I always tell people, ‘Hey, I’m going to help you build a repeatable one-to-many client acquisition system. So you onboard new clients every month in bulk. So guess what? You never have to worry how you’re going to get your next client. When somebody hears that statement, they’re like, ‘Tell me more, Chris.’ Because they see what they’re going to create together because I create a system with them. Bob. That’s what it’s all about.

0:44:32 – (Chris Colt): So the more you can just give that simple Chris or Bob starts here. This is where Chris or Bob is going to be after done working with me. The clearer that is, believe it or not, the easier it is to convert somebody. And the money doesn’t always matter in that scenario because you’re so clear on your messaging it.

0:44:49 – (Bob Woods): Okay, that’s. Yeah, that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. Okay, it’s time to put on your thinking cap for one final thing be before you start wrapping this thing up.

0:44:57 – (Chris Colt): Yep. Oh, he is. Oh.

0:44:58 – (Bob Woods): Oh, I thought you were reaching for a cap there first.

0:45:00 – (Chris Colt): No, I’m getting water, man. Just in case you got a good one here.

0:45:04 – (Bob Woods): If you had to sum up your eight years in one sentence, what would it be?

0:45:11 – (Chris Colt): Oh, I know I would say, you know, it’s I, it’s words. It’s not even a sentence. It’s not even endurance reveals truth. Because this is an endurance game, and the truth is going to come out as you go along. That’s what I would say. Because I can tell you, Nia, you’re getting this from an endurance athlete. But all those little consistent things that you do day in and day out that you don’t think are productive – guess what? They produce every single little thing you do. So if it’s you sending DMs every day and you’re not getting results for five days, guess what? Probably on day 12, you were going to get some results.

0:45:46 – (Chris Colt): If you were doing virtual events and you got the first one was a bomb, the second was a bomb, then all of a sudden the third one would have been the one, but you quit. Guys, this is an endurance game. You have to go into this game with an endurance mindset. Doesn’t mean you’re not going to have a lot of sprint wins. Right. I’m not a sprinter, but I do get sprint wins here and there. Over time, this endurance is going to reveal the truth to you of what this is all about. Well, yeah.

0:46:10 – (Bob Woods): Wow, that sounds. Well, this was a masterclass. I tell you, I gotta tell you where, where can folks get in touch with you?

0:46:17 – (Chris Colt): I easiest place; just go to the challengechampion.com. That’ll take you where? That’s my website, and I don’t have this big, overwhelming, crazy website. It’s real simple. You’ll see I’m on there on a video, and it shows you how you can learn more about me. I have a complimentary master class that teaches you how to use virtual events to convert at scale. So you’ll on there; you can download that, and then you can find me on LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn’s the place I, you know, I really post and build my audience on. So I’m on LinkedIn, and you’ll find that right off the challengechampion.com.

0:46:46 – (Chris Colt): Yeah.

0:46:47 – (Bob Woods): So eight-year corporate America escapee and now a successful entrepreneur and my LinkedIn brother, Chris Colt. Thanks so much for joining me today. Really, really appreciate you coming on this episode of Making Sales Social Media.

0:47:02 – (Chris Colt): Yeah, thank you, Bob. Appreciate it. And to all those that listened, you know, gave you a lot of value there. Feel free if you have any questions to reach out to me directly.

Outro:

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