[00:00:00.100] - Brandon Reece
Well, my friend.
[00:00:00.820] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah.
[00:00:01.850] - Brandon Reece
How you doing?
[00:00:02.830] - Chris Nordyke
You know, I'm looking out the window right now and it's about as beautiful as it gets in Oregon.
[00:00:06.780] - Brandon Reece
I know. It was actually, I just ran outside, meet some folks from Power, and it is as nice as it's appearing. Incredible.
[00:00:14.020] - Chris Nordyke
70 degrees will be the high today. And there's basically not a cloud in the sky. Unbelievable.
[00:00:18.640] - Brandon Reece
That's Pacific Northwest at its best. Oh, that's what that is.
[00:00:22.030] - Chris Nordyke
So good.
[00:00:22.820] - Brandon Reece
That's what that is. We had a fun show, man. Of course, we're completely biased because it's one of our team members. So we have, we had Clinton Tierney on the show. He's our counterpart from North Carolina. He's one of our fractional sales consultants, really senior level. This guy's a hitter. He's done such a great job and the momentum that he gets the teams that he works with is just pretty remarkable.
[00:00:46.500] - Chris Nordyke
But oh God, just an A+ career from being a successful college athlete to coming up as a technician.
[00:00:53.850] - Brandon Reece
He's literally been in the industry since he graduated college, and he wasn't like, I, I finished my degree. No, later. That's like, it's incredible. Yeah, he's been in the business a long time. You know, we don't have a chance to get into it a whole lot, but at Floodlight we have the opportunity once a year, we get everybody together, and I just, I have a lot of fond memories from having him specifically out with me at the beach house at the end of last year.
[00:01:19.020] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, so cool.
[00:01:20.160] - Brandon Reece
He's just a really cool guy, and I've not only have I grown to just trust and respect him, but I'm learning from him all the time, and you're gonna hear it, like even on the show today, like we're really just having an open dialog and you're just gonna hear the experience and kind of the conviction and what he's delivering and what he's focusing on. So this isn't a floodlight advertisement. Don't make that mistake. Not at all. This is just a really open conversation with a very successful salesperson who's now teaching others how to do it, and he shares the stuff that's helped him create wins and it's good.
[00:01:52.730] - Chris Nordyke
Some good stories. I mean, it's, yeah. It's just fun. This is for salespeople. It's for owners. It's for operational leaders. Doesn't matter. There's some just really good stuff in here.
[00:02:01.720] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. Let's get in.
[00:02:02.870] - Chris Nordyke
Wow.
[00:02:03.420] - Chris Nordyke
How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart Boots podcast?
[00:02:07.320] - Chris Nordyke
I can't tell you that react how much that means to us.
[00:02:10.560] - Chris Nordyke
Welcome back to the Head, Heart Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:02:14.120] - Brandon Reece
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:02:23.410] - Chris Nordyke
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose?
[00:02:26.730] - Brandon Reece
No, I, I don't. I didn't, and I, I am not happy with it. All right, well, welcome back, as they say.
[00:02:35.000] - Chris Nordyke
Bro, you need a little more energy, man. Welcome back to the Head Hard Boots Podcast. I'm Chris Nordyke, and this is—
[00:02:40.350] - Brandon Reece
this is Brandon. That sounds like cheese.
[00:02:43.090] - Chris Nordyke
So listen, this is a special episode because this is the first— I think the first time we're featuring a Floodlight team member. We're here with Clinton Tierney. Our senior sales partner. Clint's got a really interesting background and we thought it'd be fun to just get together and do it on the show, rap about stuff a little bit. Yeah. So why don't we just dive right in, dude? I want to hear your origin story. I mean, it was one of the things that attracted us to you besides your glowing personality. You—
[00:03:12.410] - Clinton Tierney
you're a sales guy. Yeah.
[00:03:16.810] - Brandon Reece
Oh, and ravishing good looks. Yeah.
[00:03:18.670] - Chris Nordyke
In general, attractiveness.
[00:03:20.580] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:22.790] - Chris Nordyke
Athletic ability, all the things.
[00:03:24.190] - Brandon Reece
But actually, his arms are challenging me a little bit because we were at RIA together.
[00:03:28.540] - Chris Nordyke
Dude, that was my polo he was wearing.
[00:03:31.000] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, I actually got kind of pissed about it. I was going to talk to you later about the arms.
[00:03:34.770] - Chris Nordyke
I noticed that.
[00:03:36.210] - Brandon Reece
All right.
[00:03:36.700] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, I let him keep those too. I thought, hey, those, those show well. All right, Clint, you see how this works? You're seeing what this is.
[00:03:43.300] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah, yeah. All nervousness is absolutely gone now.
[00:03:47.250] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, there was no need for any of that. Yeah.
[00:03:49.580] - Chris Nordyke
So, dude, Take us all the way back. Give us a little bit of origin story about like family, like where'd you come from? I think your athletics background is actually like a really important part of your story. So just kind of walk us through some of that and then getting into the industry and onward.
[00:04:03.860] - Clinton Tierney
Oh man, yeah. So origin story, originally from upstate New York, a little place called Watertown. If you have a military background, Fort Drum is probably fairly relevant. Brandon, you may have— may or may not have been up there, but that's where I was born and raised and played baseball my whole life. Very, very important to me growing up, kind of showed me my leadership skills, my hard work. And I played all the way through high school and actually played in college as well. And that was some of the most exciting years of my life. When I left Watertown, went to school in Rochester, New York, played my years of ball there and got a degree in marketing, actually, and always knew that I was going to somehow figure out a way into sales. That was always kind of who I was from a personality standpoint. You know, I was always flamboyant and spoke with my hands, my face, and everyone always said, Clint, you're gonna be really good at sales. So after I graduated, and that was actually in Rochester, New York at the time, there, God, Chris, there really wasn't a lot of jobs at that point in time.
[00:05:06.750] - Clinton Tierney
And I always knew I wanted something more, if I'm just being honest with you. Watertown's really small, you know, it's home for a long time, nothing wrong with it. And nothing wrong with New York, but I just wanted more. And so when I was graduating, I moved to North Carolina after I graduated. I was looking for something more. And that time, this was probably 2004-ish, right around there, was one of the most prosperous places in the country to move to. They made it sound like they were handing out jobs at the border. So I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and I found a place to live and I had to pay for rent. And so got a little job in restoration for an old company called Carey Reconstruction Company. And I was just gonna do this job while I looked for my real sales job. And so I started off as a mold technician. And I think, guys, at that point in time, I think I was probably making $8, $9 an hour. It wasn't much.
[00:06:04.390] - Brandon Reece
And literally your first job out of college was right into restoration. Right into restoration. No fancy guys, nothing.
[00:06:10.300] - Clinton Tierney
No, no, no ties at all. Coming from a place where it's snowy and cold for 9 months of the year, I was excited to work outside. And that's how they'd advertised it, was work outside, different place every day. And I was like, oh, this is great. I'll get a tan and I'll do this during the day and I'll look for my real sales job at night. And yeah, I fell in love with it, guys. I was a Mold Tech for like a year and I loved it. And all my friends were like, dude, you have a college education. What are you doing in crawl spaces? And I was like, I don't know, man, but This industry's really cool and I was digging it. So I spent a year doing that and as I kind of learned the way my management team was set up, I kept going to them and I was like, hey, I want more, I want more responsibilities in there. So I eventually started doing some mitigation as well. So I was a hybrid between a mold tech and a mitigation tech. I did that for, God, a number of years in my young 20s, which Again, I just thought it was the coolest thing, but I always wanted more.
[00:07:08.400] - Clinton Tierney
So I started going to all my mitigation manager and my mold manager and I was like, hey, what do I got to do to get into management? And so after a couple of years, I was given that opportunity and I started. At first I was like a hybrid, run-write. I was running and writing estimates for both mold and water. So I would write them, train in Xactimate, then I would sell them and then I would run them as well, which was an incredible experience. And I did that for several years. Then after that, I moved into project management on the structure side, and I really did that for probably the latter 5 or 6 years of the 10 years that I spent in operations at Cary Reconstruction. And I ran residential losses and I ran commercial losses and probably $10, $15, $20 million worth of repair work. I had done large loss as well. I became really good at that. My last position at that company, I was there for about 10 years. Was kind of like a training manager. So we had at that time, we'd grown significantly. I think it was probably $60 million plus.
[00:08:11.930] - Clinton Tierney
I think we had 5 or 6 locations. So all new project management, as they came on, they came to me first and I taught them how to present themselves, how to write estimates, how to sell work. And I did that for like about 10, the first 10 years of my restoration career was spent mostly on the operation side.
[00:08:31.980] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't realize that you had— I should know this, but I didn't realize that that breadth of experience was quite that comprehensive. I thought for some reason I had it in my head that you kind of had one track up one side of the, of the org. I didn't realize you spent so much time in construction too.
[00:08:50.040] - Clinton Tierney
No, no. When I say I said 10, it's probably 15+ million worth of repair work that I've done on both, you know, multifamily, some commercial, light commercial, and a lot of residential as well.
[00:09:02.080] - Brandon Reece
When you were with that team, I'm just curious what happened. So they— you said they were at 50, 60-ish towards the end of your run with them?
[00:09:09.040] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah.
[00:09:09.220] - Brandon Reece
Wow, that's a big entity. Where did they start when you first joined them?
[00:09:13.370] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah, so if I remember correctly, and this is again 2004, 2005, it was— it started off as a carpet cleaning company. The owner, there was a painter and a carpet cleaner kind of get together and they created what was called at the time— yeah, exactly right. How most operators get together and start. It was a little bit of carpet cleaning at the time, but it was a construction company moving in heavy, trying to figure out how to do restoration. And I'm going to guess that sometime when I jumped on board, we were like $3 to $5 million at the time, somewhere right around in there. Oh man. We— but the leadership team on this place, in this office over the next 10 years, I think the top tier executive team ended up as we eventually got bought out by private equity, I think every single one of them ended up going off to run their own business. Incredible hunters, incredible culture, and I learned an incredible amount during that 10 years. I really, really owe a lot of, of my success to this day and my knowledge and my wisdom and my experience to that company and the people that were there.
[00:10:20.240] - Brandon Reece
Man, that's awes— do you mind just highlighting a couple top things that you feel like were real game changers for you that you experienced there?
[00:10:28.000] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah. One of the things that I think was one of the most important grassroots things that I learned there was the culture. I learned that if you are not selling it, someone else is. And we used to say, they're eating your lunch. And we just, we chased every fire. We bid as tight as we could. We really took it to heart, even as we were multiple locations. It was always a dagger to the heart when we didn't sell a job. And that was from the president down. That wasn't just the business development team, which at that time was run by one of the best that I've ever seen it done. But he only brought in so much. The rest of the team, the operators, the general manager, the technicians, the mitigation manager, the mold manager, all these guys, man, they sold and they sold hard. And they had to explain. If you didn't sell something, someone above you wanted to know why. So I really always took that culture because I know a lot of companies, they struggle to scale and they look to the sales team. And although that's fair, that's not the entire thing.
[00:11:32.620] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah, that was one of my biggest takeaways, Brandon.
[00:11:34.890] - Chris Nordyke
That discipline, man. I was just— we were talking with another current client we're working at that we're working with multiple locations of them and they've got a close rate issue. And so we talked about creating this kind of war room mentality. And how important it is. And I've watched Brandon lead this way a number of, through a number of different seasons where it's like, hey, if we've got a problem or we have in the case of close rate, we have an opportunity in front of us that we're not maximizing. You got to apply it this daily job by job focus, like looking at the production sheet and the pending and being like, okay, why is this job still in pending? Let's get this across the finish line. Just that discipline.
[00:12:10.850] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah.
[00:12:11.650] - Chris Nordyke
Every single job is so important.
[00:12:13.700] - Clinton Tierney
Right. And I spent a lot of time in WIP meetings and, and, you know, I was guilty of this when I was on project management, but we always wanted to move the goalpost, right? It's like, well, I've reached out, I'm waiting to hear back. Like, that was unacceptable back then. We didn't, we weren't allowed to move the goalpost. It was like, pick up the phone right now and call this client. Like, do it in front of me while everyone's in the room. And it was incredible how much we moved the meter just doing that. But it was a culture. It was a culture that was instilled us from the top down. And it was contagious. It was contagious. Yeah, I love that.
[00:12:44.540] - Brandon Reece
I, you know, I think one of the things that's challenging, man, is that You're talking about a culture that, that was built into the DNA from the beginning. That scrappiness ultimately is what, you know, started to earn your guys' right to play in that market. I'm sure.
[00:12:59.210] - Clinton Tierney
Yes.
[00:12:59.470] - Brandon Reece
But then not losing that is so important because I think that there's a lot of examples and it's happened inside organizations I've been responsible for where you become less hungry because you've developed some tried and true systems. You've got decent lead gen, you know, maybe you've got some BDs that you know, let's call them, they're 60% effective and you got enough of them. It's like you kind of know the devil, right, that you're working with and you grow a little accustomed that the work's coming in the door. And I think that a lot of us in the last 18 months are getting a bit shell-shocked.
[00:13:34.850] - Clinton Tierney
Yes.
[00:13:35.170] - Brandon Reece
Because if you don't keep that scrappiness in the system, it is so hard to get operational staff to want to pursue opportunities. It's, it's like It's kind of mind-boggling a little bit how difficult that is. Like, it feels like you're asking people to do something that they believe is outside of their job description.
[00:13:54.760] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah.
[00:13:55.300] - Brandon Reece
And it is just incredibly difficult to get that momentum and that grittiness back into the business if you let it go.
[00:14:02.370] - Clinton Tierney
It is, you know, it, you can— it's easy to become complacent, especially when you're one of the major players in your market.
[00:14:08.480] - Brandon Reece
But the—
[00:14:08.720] - Clinton Tierney
like you just said, Brandon, the industry has changed Jeff Moore talked about it at RIA. I don't know if it's going back. And I think the companies out there that have that all hands on deck sales culture, that's part of their role. It's not just to write an estimate now. It's, you know, we've talked about this. I talk about this a lot with some of my clients now. It's like, you don't work for a restoration company. The industry's changed. I like to say, you now work for a customer service company or a sales company. That just happens to do restoration. And that mindset is so fundamental to where we are in the industry now, right now.
[00:14:47.860] - Chris Nordyke
It's so true.
[00:14:48.730] - Brandon Reece
Huge, man.
[00:14:49.520] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah. Well, so keep moving, man. So you have this 10-year come up in the industry, taking on all kinds of operational roles and watching a company grow. Holy cow. From $3 to $5 million to $50 to $60 million. It's like What an incredible street MBA in the industry. And then you decide to make a pivot. So talk, talk about this pivot into the sales side of the industry.
[00:15:12.730] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah. So I pivoted a little bit at the time, uh, about 10 years in, we were bought out by private equity and I had really bought into our customer base. It didn't matter how big the job was, didn't matter how small it was. It didn't matter how profitable it was. We were going to take the work no matter what because it could always lead to something else. We had this culture of we were just going to take anything and everything because we knew that that was scalable and that was how we were going to grow. And again, if it wasn't us, it was somebody else, and we didn't want that. Well, as private equity came in, and I'm not here to say anything negative about that, but I just— they had a different avenue that I, I wasn't in alignment with. So I'd take a little bit of time off for a non-compete. But one of the guys from that leadership group that I was talking about. He, once his non-compete was up, which we left about the same time, he called me and he said, "Hey, Clint, I just bought this little carpet cleaning company that does a little bit of restoration.
[00:16:12.420] - Clinton Tierney
You want to do this again?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." Because at the time I'd spent a year working for a builder and it was great, but that wasn't in my heart, that wasn't my passion. And so I came in on that point, we were very, very small. So there was, it's kind of like a one hat fits all type of thing. I think I was, lead estimator/GM ops manager. I don't even really know what my position was at the time, but it wasn't a few months in to where I was selling a lot of work. I was selling a vast majority of the work, and I had done that before the previous company. And so my owner and president came up to me and said, hey, Clint, have you ever thought about doing business development? And I was like, I've never done it before, but how hard could it be, right?
[00:16:58.600] - Brandon Reece
And little did I know, —already. Yeah.
[00:17:02.060] - Clinton Tierney
I was like, I can just go sell, right? So I agreed to it. We worked it out. And I remember very similar, the kind of story went like this. I think most restorers would probably align with this. I know most BDMs would go, oh, I get this. So on Monday I show up and I'm like, all right, sounds good. When does training start? And it was like, here are your keys. Car's right out there. Who are you going to see today? I was like, oh God. And so I kind of had to learn from there. And I was an agent marketer at the time, so I was just hitting all my local State Farms. They're pretty strong here in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. And I did well my first year. I really did. And years 2 through the next 6, I expanded in the commercial markets and I learned a lot. I had to. I became a student of the game. I watched every webinar you could possibly imagine while I was driving. I listened to every podcast even before they were cool and popular. I watched and read everything that I could get my hands on.
[00:18:06.250] - Clinton Tierney
A lot of it was SaaS, tech, sales engagement type process, but I was picking and choosing the things I'm like, that corresponds to business development. And I eventually learned how to do business development really, really well. I had a genuine ability, I found out, to connect with people and they trusted me. So, I ended up after about 6 years in the field, you know, I was a high producer in the area and I had a lot of clients that were calling me on the daily and it was a great experience. It was a phenomenal experience. And I did find out, guys, that my strength was on the sales side. As good of an operator I was for the first 10 years to where they even put me in a position to train others how to do it. Yeah. I ended up being far better at the business development side. That was really truly where my passion was.
[00:18:55.590] - Brandon Reece
You know, it's something very interesting about what you said. So highlight a couple of things. One, this is like a freebie for me to like promote our team member because they're worth promoting. But the work ethic, I think, is what is interesting. So you approach— and you said this earlier about your connection with sports and some of the skills that it taught you. Yeah. You applied a similar mentality that obviously that you applied to sports to be able to play all the way up through college. To this learning, this tradecraft. And I think what, what is both frustrating for leaders and owners and kind of saddening at the same time, like it breaks our hearts when we see that people, they do have a phenomenal opportunity sitting in front of them. And even like, let's just call a spade a spade, even at companies that let's just say there's some rough things happening in culture. Okay. Some things aren't perfect in most businesses at any state that they're in, let alone now. Even in the midst of that, you really do as an individual have a choice to make. You either are going to fully take responsibility of how you're going to learn and advance in your skillset to succeed, or you're going to take the stance that someone outside of you is in control of how you're going to win.
[00:20:08.670] - Brandon Reece
And obviously you didn't choose that path. You chose the Extreme Ownership path and it made you successful to a point where it was outsized from the norm. And it's just like, why am I double-clicking on that? Because I want our listener— like, a lot of our listeners are not owners and key leaders. They're actually BDs. They're operational staff, just like the most of us. And dude, this is how— like, so Clinton is an example of succeeded in every role he had. Now he's in a position where he partners with other companies to help their sales team develop. And you do it phenomenally, by the way. But really, the way you got there had nothing to do with anybody else. It was about how you approached the tradecraft. And I just— gosh, man, I just, I want to hammer on that because I think it's so easy for many of us, to include myself, to get in these situations where you're kind of waiting around for the opportunity to be the best opportunity. And we give ourselves an excuse to not really have any level of success because the opportunity wasn't quite right. And man, dude, What a disservice that we do to ourselves, you know what I mean?
[00:21:17.000] - Brandon Reece
Like, it just— I just want to highlight that because you are a byproduct of that choice-making for sure.
[00:21:22.700] - Clinton Tierney
I fell in love with the process, though, Brandon, and I will attribute this to sports and my baseball background because you guys have probably heard this before, but you fail 7 out of 10 times in baseball on average, right? 6 out of 10, 7 out of 10 times. So if similar to business development, which is a long sales engagement process, if the only win that you can figure out is a base hit or a signed contract, you're gonna fail far more often than you're gonna win. And so the two things that I learned was when I play baseball, fall in love with the process, not the outcome. So I love the grind, I love the reps, and I attributed my success in sales from that same exact mindset. I love getting in my car, I love being strategic, I love banging out DMs on LinkedIn. I loved that grind and seeing seeing things move through the sales engagement process. And over time, I had to learn this the hard way, Brandon, but you have to find the small wins throughout the day. When you're making 12, 15, 18 stops a day and you've gotten nos all day long, I'm busy, I'm on the phone, I can't talk, I've got someone else, you need to be able to find that one conversation throughout the day that was a good win.
[00:22:37.650] - Clinton Tierney
That, that you were able to talk about their buying behaviors. You were able to talk about some of the negative experiences that they've had in the past. And they might not have went, hey Clinton, whatever you have to say, like, I'm buying. I didn't get that, right? But I learned how to acknowledge my small wins throughout the day and progress. Yeah, I fell in love with that progress. I fell in love with that, with that grind. Yeah. Yeah, and that helped me, that helped me a lot. Because for any BD that's listening to that, man, I've been there, like eating that ham cheese sandwich on a 90-degree day on a Friday. You're 50+ stops in and it's been a week. Like, been there, man, been there. And finding those small wins out throughout the week, that is— and that's what I concentrate on a lot with my reps when I'm coaching them, because it's not all about just me teaching them how to, to get a closed deal. It's, it's It's how to enjoy that grind and coaching and mentoring them throughout the week. Wow.
[00:23:34.090] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's huge.
[00:23:35.370] - Chris Nordyke
And that really is, I think, in some ways a unique mindset for a lot of BDs because a lot of BDs, it isn't the process they're in love with, you know? And so I think that's really good wisdom to offer is that is probably a more useful way to look at and approach the job. Yeah. Because Brandon and I've been saying this for years in all areas of the business. We don't have control over the outcomes in this industry, but we ultimately have control of the leading behaviors. Like, what are the inputs that we're putting in as a team? And obviously that's very true on sales side. I'm curious, like, as you look back, what you— one, you look at sort of your coaching framework and the way that you see sales today. What are the things that you continue to leverage or teach or hold people to today that you learned during that season those 6 years or so where you were doing personal sales? Yeah, my two—
[00:24:26.780] - Clinton Tierney
that's a great question, Chris. My two major takeaways are this: volume hides lack of ability. Volume of activity solves a lot of problems. I had to learn that the hard way. But any advice that I give to, to any rep, whether it's a client of mine or anyone listening to this podcast right now, volume, volume of activities and consistency of that volume challenge yourself to make as many stops a day, be efficient with your time, create your routes. That stuff was monumental. And I saw my sales just climb. And I really didn't get that much better over time, but it just climbed and climbed and climbed because it was consistency and high volume of activities.
[00:25:10.200] - Speaker 3
Are you a business that's under $5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team. Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. Like, how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep, their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might— they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.
[00:26:03.830] - Speaker 3
How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep, and it's only $2,500 a month. If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our Floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over $250 million in revenue, supported by, advised by an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment, and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story.
[00:26:35.630] - Clinton Tierney
And then the second one was, and I was probably the best at this, there are a lot of people out there that are far better than I ever was as a making discovery touches, as I call them, or, or maybe, you know, fresh contacts as you're, as you're going out and seeing people. I really loved scoring meetings with people. That was where my biggest ROI was, because at that point in time, if you can get a meeting with someone, then you have now permission to have that conversation with them about their business. About business. About— yeah, exactly. And I can start asking them questions about their industry, how long they've been in it, what does their future look like? And oh, by the way, have you ever had like the need for emergency services and where could those have gone better? And then you start having a true discovery call and we are unveiling true pain-seeking questions and we're unveiling true pains that they have. And then at that point it was, and I had a great team behind me, so I was able to critique and customize some solutions that really met their needs.
[00:27:44.040] - Clinton Tierney
And you know, one of the best stories I ever told, and this is a true story, I hounded a regional, excuse me, a property manager in the multifamily for, God, about a year. And at one point she finally called me and goes, if you send me one more email, Mr. Tierney, you know, come on in, let's meet. And she was tough. She was tough, guys. And she had kind of her arms crossed the whole time, and she really had no plans of using me. She just knows I wasn't going to give up because, like, like I told you, I was—
[00:28:10.150] - Brandon Reece
she's like, I gotta get this over with.
[00:28:11.910] - Clinton Tierney
I gotta get this guy over with. What does he have to say? And then at the time, she was using one of the local franchises and had no issues with them. I mean, just stop blocking every single question I had. And then so at one point I said, well, okay, I'm glad that you've got someone great. That's wonderful. I'm not here to I'm here to solve a problem. And if you don't have any, that's fantastic. But just so I can learn from that company, like, where could they be better? And she's like, oh, you know, it's nothing really. But she's like, the one thing that they could— God, you know, they don't invoice in time. Oh, I gotta wait for these invoices. And I was like, ding. So I was like, oh God, that's unfortunate, but that's not that big of a deal. Why is that a pain for you? She's like, oh, 'cause my regional, She's got to get me to clear the books every single— at the end of the month, got to clear the books. And it was a big deal for that person's boss in that organization. And so I just said, hey, if I deliver the same level of service— and you can see where I'm going with the conversation— I unveiled that.
[00:29:11.360] - Clinton Tierney
It was like my last Hail Mary. Didn't— I was kind of closing it up, and I found that pain point. I ended up working with her for years after that. And the pain was because no level of service, no communication, No timeline, no construction, nothing. It was invoice. So it was great. I love getting face-to-face meetings with people because that's when you can really, really start diving in to how they conduct their business and what's important to them and the pains that they have. And those professional always leak into their personal life. Oh yeah, draw out those emotions. That's really good at that. I'm sorry, maybe a little long-winded on that.
[00:29:48.260] - Chris Nordyke
No, no, beautiful. So good, man.
[00:29:50.380] - Brandon Reece
It's beautiful.
[00:29:51.120] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah, that was always one that stands out, but I love like high volume of activities and really scoring pre-scheduled face-to-face meetings and having a true pain-seeking question type discovery call with them. And I love that.
[00:30:04.490] - Brandon Reece
I loved it. Well, and I think it's interesting because it ties back to you finding the little wins, right? Like that's a great example of, in our business, a win is getting a standup. Like, because, you know, once they've said, hey, I'll, I'll meet with you 15 minutes, 20 minutes, they've said I'm open to having a business direct conversation. You're not going to go in and talk about sports and kids and the things they want to meet with you. Now, you know, you can go in, you know, and seek that. So this is so interesting too. I'm going to be very transparent as a leader. Okay. I have done the most mental gymnastics around sales and sales generating or lead growth over the last 90 days. I probably have in the entire 16, 17 years that I've been in or around this industry, 15, 16 years. Yeah. And you almost start talking yourself into going crazy because I can spend years. We have a commercial sales master course, for heaven's sake. Yeah, yeah. Like, I have been saying the same things for years because we knew we needed to start moving away from residential-heavy, agent-heavy marketing.
[00:31:08.110] - Brandon Reece
There's got to be another route. And so here I— we preach this stuff for years and years and years. I go and partner with, with FP. One very honor my, you know, my career to be able to be a participant. And then I catch myself doing mental gymnastics about how we're going to approach this, right? Okay. So woe is me. All right. So we kind of have a come to Jesus moment with ourselves and we're like, dude, we have a plan. Why are we not executing the plan? So anyways, I got a new team member that joined us, actually shifted from a role. And this week was like his first week on the ground. And I literally, I was like, okay, no mental gymnastics. I'm not going to create, try to create more complexity for my man here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give him— Chris termed it the mayor of the market. I'm like, dude, every legitimate business that's within a certain mile radius of our shop, all I want you to do is put our brand in their hand. Okay? It's not overly complicated. He's running the master course in the background every morning.
[00:32:05.070] - Brandon Reece
He's getting his training in. And I am not kidding you, dude. Dude went out day one on the ground, sends a summary of his day in our Slack channel. Dude did mega stops, volume stops, had 3 secured standup meetings for the following Monday. Yeah.
[00:32:22.380] - Clinton Tierney
Day 1. Day 1. Possible.
[00:32:25.440] - Brandon Reece
Oh, it is. And you know what was so cool, man, is that the language he was using, hey, I secured a standup on Monday at 9:00 AM with so-and-so. Like, my point is, is that you're right. Like, at the end of the day, aggressive action, action bias does work if you just do it and you're consistent. And I love that thing, the little win. Like, for him, I just freaking pounded the drum. Dude, 3 stand-up meetings secured in your first day on the ground. Do you know how awesome that is?
[00:32:57.480] - Clinton Tierney
You celebrate that, Brandon, not the outcome, because we cannot control whether it's 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or— that stand-up may be 100% yep, you've got my next, you've got my next call, sir. Might not happen for 3 to 6 months.
[00:33:13.030] - Brandon Reece
That's right. Yeah, but man, I just am like thinking to myself, bro, if you go out 4 or 5 days a week and campus like this and secure 2 to 3 agreed meetings. Yeah, bro is going to slay. Yeah, he slay. You give that guy a few more months. As long as he locks in and continues to do that, the numbers that guy is going to start posting is going to be phenomenal. What an awesome— anyways, I just got really excited because you're spot on, dude. You're spot on. And I almost have like rejuvenated excitement because I'm like, okay, I'm done with the mental gymnastics. Go back to what you know, because it does work. Just stop overthinking it.
[00:33:50.830] - Clinton Tierney
You know, I love that standup lingo, man. He's, he's diving into the Commercial Sales Master Course.
[00:33:55.870] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, he is. Yeah, it was so fun.
[00:33:58.360] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. So fun to hear him talking about it. So super cool. But by the way, man, total rando inside chat here. I've got an introduction I need to make to you, Clinton, of— I was telling you, there's somebody from the industry. Well, come to find out, he used the Commercial Sales Masterclass for 3 or 4 of his BDs that he was responsible for, and he ranted and raved about it.
[00:34:20.760] - Chris Nordyke
So, Chris, kudos to you. I mean, no rants, it was all raves, right? It was all right.
[00:34:24.370] - Brandon Reece
Yes, he was so excited. Yeah, it was fun. And the guy is like just one of those individuals you can't help but absolutely respect from the success that— so anyways, kudos to the team. Okay.
[00:34:33.910] - Chris Nordyke
Well, listen, before we, before we get out of time here, Clinton, I want to talk about the transition that you made from individual sales because you were very successful. I mean, you were a $3, $4, $5 million guy, like clockwork every year in that role, which is anybody who's listening understands just how high performance you were as a sales rep. But chances are very good, right, that there was a bit of a transition and learning curve into management, man. Talk about as you started to lead a team. Just what that experience was like.
[00:35:03.330] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah, what an eye-opening experience that was. You know, I had mentioned earlier, and you'll hear me say this a few times, Chris, the genuine ability to connect with people. And I was really gifted with that ability. And what I come to find out was when I had 15 or 16 reps at one point under me, they all didn't have that same level. And so I had to figure out why some were extremely successful and others were not. And where a lot of small independent owners, they kind of manage the sale or manage the deal, I had to learn how to manage people. And that was a really big— and I'm so blessed with my baseball background because the coaching and mentoring started to really come in. And when I speak about small wins, I learned that when I was a sales director, when I was overseeing others and some would get really, really frustrated, especially new business development managers when they come into a new market. And maybe we had multiple locations with the second company that I was with. And some markets were bigger than others and some of the teams had more abilities than the corporate office.
[00:36:15.010] - Clinton Tierney
So managing people was very challenging. But I found out as long as I was— and I take this into my fractional sales leadership now— as long as we set really, really clear expectations with each of the business development managers and I get their buy-in. It's not just me saying, hey, you're going to do this. It's like, I'm throwing this out there. How do you feel about it? Is that attainable? Is that going to put where you want to be financially? And we had a really like, what's your why? And then what are the metrics going to be? I was really heavy on those KPI metrics, but I had their buy-in and it made a huge difference once I could coach them towards that. And when they fell short, I was like, hey, we fell short of where you wanted to be, these were the metrics you set for yourself. Where do we need to pivot? Where do we need to change? A lot of times, Brandon, that always came back to volume, right? That always came back to volume or getting those 2 to 3 to 4 or 5 standups per week. And so, it was a change, Chris.
[00:37:15.120] - Clinton Tierney
Man, what an experience it was though to be able to start managing others. I enjoyed it. I have always, you know, I was captain of my team in high school. Captain of my team in college, and I always wanted to see others succeed more than myself. So I really poured into the people, and I got more out of that in the years that I was a sales director than, than any other time as an individual contributor. Yeah, that's—
[00:37:39.320] - Brandon Reece
I think that's a core point, though.
[00:37:41.430] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, it's, it's such a characteristic. That characteristic is absolutely unique, and I would say it's rare amongst high-performing salespeople. And it's neither good nor bad, like in a vacuum, right? Because we need high-producing sales reps that make a whole career out of that. Of course. But, but to have somebody like yourself who's been in the trench and successfully performed as an individual, but then to come into the leadership role with this intrinsic desire to coach up others and spotlight others is a really unique combo. I mean, I think obviously Brandon and I are really proud to have somebody like yourself on the team because it's rare. It's a rare combination. —within sales performers, but I think it is critical. I think it's critical that sales reps have a leader like that, that can both mentor them in the weeds because they've done it, but then also hold them accountable, coach them, encourage them. Yes. It is really unique. And I think it's the missing piece in a lot of cases because it's so common, not just in restoration, but it's so common that we promote up our best salespeople and we automatically think they're going to be a great manager.
[00:38:48.740] - Clinton Tierney
Yes. Yeah.
[00:38:50.330] - Chris Nordyke
And 9 times out of 10, they're not, you know? Yeah.
[00:38:54.260] - Brandon Reece
So, and I think it creates like almost a failure, a performance failure, which is really bad. Like it's bad for self-esteem. It's bad for your kind of confidence when we do that. You end up kind of accidentally underserving them when we put them in that position without doing some gut checks, you know?
[00:39:13.360] - Clinton Tierney
I think, Brandon, the strengths and attributes that create the top salesperson on a team. And full disclosure, guys, when I, you know, doing $4.5, $5 million, I was not the top producer on my team. I wasn't. But those, those attributes, those characteristics, those strengths of those types of people, they don't always convert to the management side. And I think that's often an issue that a lot of companies fall subject to, is they, they think, okay, my top producer, I don't ever want to lose them, I'm going to move them into a manager. And often they think that they want to be in a management position. And it really— I was good at my job, but my passion was always helping others. That's why I was a trainer at the previous role, Care Reconstruction. That's why at Restore Pro I was a director of sales, because I liked helping others. I always wanted to see others. That's why I love fractional sales leadership at this point more than anything else I've ever done, because now I'm helping I'm helping companies and business development managers across the country. Yeah, it's— but I get more out of that.
[00:40:18.310] - Clinton Tierney
And, and so you're 100% right. A lot of times your, your top, your top rep, yeah, not the best.
[00:40:24.440] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. I mean, some of the, the folks that throw up just ridiculous numbers, they couldn't help somebody else do that to save their life. But man, are they the hunter of hunters. Like, get out of their way, right?
[00:40:35.250] - Clinton Tierney
And that's— yeah, yeah, that's the right way. Yeah, it's just stay out of the way.
[00:40:39.690] - Brandon Reece
Don't ask any questions. Does justice of adding responsibility and lowering their income potential.
[00:40:45.700] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, I think, I think a lot of reps think, oh, I just want to get out of the grind. So the opportunity to manage is it's, it's you get out of the grind of all the stops and all the field time and the driving and everything else. But then you realize there's a different kind of grind essential to being a great coach and a great team manager. And many sales reps, when they get into that management layer, they're like, uh, this was not the stress. This is not the kush. This is not the job that you thought it was going to be.
[00:41:17.390] - Clinton Tierney
And I felt the stress of everyone on the team now, you know, before I just had to worry about myself. Well, because I cared, like now I felt the stress of the entire team and they were consistently calling me with conversion issues and I had to help them with that as well. And because I had a strong operations background, all the problems for all the offices of all my reps came my way. And so, yeah, one was not that— it was definitely not now that I'm out of the field, I'm no longer under stress. Couldn't have been further from the truth. Different kind of stress.
[00:41:47.130] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, right. Yeah, I think, I think you give up like personal performance anxiety to stress because that's where all the stress comes from. You start being responsible for others. Okay, so I got one more target I want to attack with you before we let you go, man. One of the things that, that is unique about you and I think has lended itself to your ability to coach and produce individually really is the discipline and cadence of activities. And one of the things that I've experienced with you, and it's actually helped me in my current situation, is I'm leaning in on the way that you hold accountability with your BDs. There is a system to it. You're very methodical about the way that you want to promote a focus on the vertical, a focus on weekly activity, and then getting them to come prepared and talk to you about what that week's performance was and what you're going to do to maneuver about that. So do you mind just sharing with us like 2 or 3 elements that you focus and hammer on that creates the most success with BDs that you're working with personally?
[00:42:48.390] - Clinton Tierney
Oh man, God, 2 or 3.
[00:42:51.040] - Brandon Reece
I know you got to— we got to— we can't allow you to go on a preach session, dude. Yeah, no, I know, I know.
[00:42:56.180] - Clinton Tierney
So, okay, so first and foremost, it's creating the vision. All right. And, you know, at Floodlight, we have the Commercial Sales Master Course, and that coincides with our Sales Blueprint. And creating a vision for that, creating a roadmap is crucial. And the only way that I could week over week focus with my, with my reps is having that vision in place. Too many owners and too many smaller companies are too reactionary, and they don't stay true to the vision because the economy slowing down, things react, and I can't do that. So staying course on our sales blueprint is first and foremost. Secondly, now I teach email campaigns and I teach LinkedIn outreach and social media brand awareness, and I teach lots and lots of ways, but I narrow down the most on activities of route stops or discovery touches. And then I really, really worked on pre-scheduled face meetings. You cannot get— I'd like to see someone have at least one a day schedule. That's always the goal. And then the third one is I love presentations. I love— I, I'm not a big fan of like the lunch and learn terminology, but more of getting in front of top-down selling decision makers where you are presenting and educating them on how to make the proper decisions during a buying process.
[00:44:23.370] - Clinton Tierney
Because a lot of them, when they say you're too expensive, or I'm using somebody, I'm going to use my carpet cleaner, or whatever, they, they don't understand the liability. So Those 3 metrics right there are the ones that I concentrate on the absolute most with my reps. Those 3 are the top.
[00:44:39.600] - Chris Nordyke
Speaking of presentations, you brought a cool story in like 3, 4 weeks ago. One of your clients was making an aggressive push in commercial and you directed them towards RIMS, Risk Managers Association. People have RIMS, right? Yes. And none of them had experience with RIMS, but through your guidance, they were able to get in on a RIMS chapter meeting. And ultimately that RIMS chapter said, hey, do you have anybody that wants to speak at this? And of course no one else had experience, but you have a ton of experience selling to risk managers. And so you actually flew out or you actually went on site and attended that meeting and you spoke on behalf of your client and crushed. And, and then subsequently they started getting some work from those folks, right?
[00:45:24.100] - Clinton Tierney
Yeah. Unfortunately or unfortunately, the president of that RIMS association ended up having a water loss at their personal home and they called my client. So I could have been, you know, I'm glad that we were the— they were the company that was able— I'm not glad that it happened, but I'm glad that they were the company that got the call. Yeah. Was that fun for you? I loved it. Yes. I get so passionate about this stuff and it was a great audience and we mostly talked about emergency response programs and how prepared were they and how— I know some of them thought they were. And then after I got done talking, about these ERPs, they were like, ooh, maybe I'm not as prepared as I thought I was. So it was a great conversation. It was great. And I love to get all my reps buckled into those types of associations because it's just, it's instrumental in their success.
[00:46:09.350] - Chris Nordyke
I thought that was so cool. I love that. And I was a little jealous because that's one of the things I miss sometimes is actually getting in that selling seat, right? In front of those end users. And it's really fun. I love it.
[00:46:20.410] - Brandon Reece
Okay, dude. You got 3 minutes. Okay. What is the one thing we didn't ask you that you feel like if you didn't share it, we'd be doing a disjustice to— injustice. Thank you. To the— personal or pro, you can pick whatever you want.
[00:46:37.680] - Clinton Tierney
I mean, yeah, let's go pro. Why? What's a fractional sales leader and why?
[00:46:43.690] - Brandon Reece
Hmm. Oh, sure. Total cheat code. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do?
[00:46:47.160] - Clinton Tierney
As Floodlight is a consulting company, one of our arms is actually just fractional sales leadership. So, for companies that are, you know, they're a little bit smaller, they don't have the ability to have $150,000, $200,000 a year type of sales management sales leader. A lot of them that don't realize that this service is available where we can come in and someone like myself with 20 years of experience can come in and set a sales blueprint, teach them the commercial sales master course, Teach them about what the small wins are. Teach them how to use social media, prospecting, overcoming objections, role play, and have a ton of fun doing it. Getting involved with the correct associations, making sure you're in alignment with the growth strategies of your company. All those things encompassed and we can come in or I can come in and lighten the load. A lot of owners, man, they're wearing multiple hats and they just don't have And most of them are operators, Brandon, like yourself. Chris has got the sales background, and not that you couldn't, but you're an operator at heart. A lot of them are same way, and they really don't know.
[00:47:53.610] - Clinton Tierney
They're the, here's the keys in your car kind of go. And there's a lot of that out there. And so this fractional sales leadership is, not to sound like a pun, but it's a fraction of the price. But you get 20 years of experience and people like what we have here at Floodlight and we can help with conversion, we can help with sales ops, we can, we keep the business development managers involved up to contract. So it's not just a ring and I'm out. And there's real, we're setting up and scaling business development teams for true success in the future. And so for those of you who don't know what fractional sales leadership is, I thought maybe just throw that in there. Yeah. I wasn't expecting that question, but yeah, that's what we do.
[00:48:37.020] - Brandon Reece
It's perfect. Here's a, here's a bit of a signing off. Like that was actually a perfect example of why we just feel a ton of honor to have you on the team, man. Like your self-awareness, your head's always on a swivel, radar on, antenna up. Obviously you were successful in sales. That's a perfect example of why you shared a ton of really cool, I think valuable gold, you know, for us to all leverage, man. I just really respect you. I'm, I'm still learning from you all the time. Just appreciate you being on our team, dude. Yeah, 100%, man.
[00:49:09.630] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, thank you for taking time with us, dude. I know you got a full plate, so, um, literally. Yeah, we're gonna let you go. Whether it's, it's baseball or client load, it's like you've always got something you're hammering on, bro. That's right.
[00:49:20.100] - Clinton Tierney
Oh yeah, my kids are both in playoffs right now. We're playoff mode, so— oh wow, playoff game after this. So yeah, both my kids play baseball and softball as well.
[00:49:28.380] - Chris Nordyke
So yeah, hey, listen, I just also want I want to affirm you. You, uh, you vulnerably, you know, share with me you're a little bit nervous about your first episode on HHT. I think you did a fantastic job, man.
[00:49:40.860] - Brandon Reece
Well done. That's right. I appreciate it.
[00:49:42.390] - Clinton Tierney
Thanks, guys.
[00:49:43.150] - Brandon Reece
All right, brother, thanks for hanging with us, man. Be good. I'll see you. Thanks, guys. All right, everybody, hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:49:53.460] - Chris Nordyke
And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.