Andrew Lasky (00:00)
But I bro so yeah, I got to figure out why the entrance that's the second time that somebody's had like an issue with it. I got to figure that figure that part out but

Ian Lenhart (00:11)
Noted noted

seems like it seems like you have to like start a session and then send it to them because when you sent that link, it's a join session last time it didn't say join session.

Andrew Lasky (00:20)
Gotcha. Okay.

Ian Lenhart (00:22)
Check, check, check, check. Okay, that looks good. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. One, two, yep.

Andrew Lasky (00:24)
Cool. just to give you like a little recap. So

like the whole show, the whole audience is for like, know, salespeople or aspiring salespeople, you know, lots of different things that they can learn. You know, they can learn different industries, how to get jobs at certain industries, because we're interviewing high performing salespeople in those specific industries, and then also managers. And then

So yes, if someone's looking to get into an industry, just understand sales better. Or if they want to like become a manager and understand how you know, management works and like, working with sales reps. So the first part of the show, I mean, we're just, you know, kick it, we'll go back and forth. You know, we'll talk about your background. And then I mean, dude, your your posts.

like kind of gave me like inspiration for what I feel like I want to talk about with you. So like, you're a master connector, super amazing at building relationships. And, you know, kind of, you know, networking that you're amazing at that. So that's just like a big part that a lot of people like struggle with. So I was thinking we kind of go down that, you know, rabbit hole and then

you know, we can, you know, do you want to talk about like the Vimo days and, and like the differences between the two, the two, know, the different sales gigs that you've had or like, how do you want them?

Ian Lenhart (02:01)
Yeah, yeah. mean,

you know, when you look at my career, I started off in network marketing and then got into traditional like, like traditional startups and working for startup and going through like the heart and hustle of building a tech company from the ground up, like not having product market fit to all that bullshit. And then also, ultimately becoming an entrepreneur, right? And then starting cigars.com. And, you know, we pivoted that business multiple times, a lot of cool stories that came from that but

Andrew Lasky (02:14)
Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (02:28)
Yeah, we can talk about like a lot of good stuff. Finding finding like I wrote down some things like finding common ground, project managers like because really sales reps or project managers, you know. And yeah, we can we'll just riff man. mean,

Andrew Lasky (02:42)
Hell yeah, nah

dude, it's gonna be awesome. And then at the end, I have like this last thing called the final four. It's the same four questions I ask everybody. First one is what's your favorite sales book or sales movie? Second one is, you know, what's one strategy or tactic that once you learned completely changed like your sales career? The third one is what's your favorite purchase that you've ever made with a big commission check? And then,

The fourth one is knowing what you know now. If you had to start all over in sales today, you know, what's the first thing that you would do to like to earn it all back.

Ian Lenhart (03:22)
All let me just think about that real quick. My favorite book would be, what's the one with Leonardo DiCaprio? What's the one with Leonardo DiCaprio that's just as hilarious? Yeah, I'm probably gonna do that. It's Tactic, all right, cool.

Andrew Lasky (03:27)
It could be book or movie, it doesn't matter.

What the wolf of Wall Street? Okay.

Ian Lenhart (03:42)
Purchase? What's a funny ass purchase? I know what it is. It's gonna be silly, but it's gonna be, I'll let you know.

Andrew Lasky (03:47)
Hell yeah. then

just like every other podcast at the end, I'll ask you, know, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? I'll ask you that too.

Ian Lenhart (03:55)
Cool, yeah. I brought some cigar merch, so at the really end I'll just kinda like showcase what we do, you know what saying?

Andrew Lasky (03:59)
Hell yeah.

Cool, so I'll introduce you as the guy that's done so many different things in network marketing, tech sales, then also has his own business, cigars.com. I'll kinda, let's go from there, baby. You look amazing. I can't wait for you to be back here in Miami. All righty. All right, you good, my man? Let's do it. Five, four, three, two, one.

Ian Lenhart (04:18)
You look amazing.

I know, let's go.

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Lasky (04:32)
Everybody welcome back to another amazing episode of the commissions and cash flow show. I am your host, Andrew Laskey. And today we have a very amazing guest, Ian Lenhart. Ian, welcome to the show, brother.

Ian Lenhart (04:49)
Thanks for having me, man. I'm so excited. This is awesome. The show is great and you were made for this.

Andrew Lasky (04:54)
So Ian, you're a very interesting guy in so many ways, you know, awesome human being, but even better salesperson, entrepreneur, you know, you've done a little bit of network marketing, you've done tech sales, you also own your own business cigars.com, which is amazing premium cigars. So just give the audience a little bit of background about yourself and how you got into sales.

Ian Lenhart (05:20)
Yeah, totally. It all started with someone pitching me on an energy drink, which is how I fell into the network marketing hole. And I always talk about that because I don't do it anymore. But it was sort of the gateway drug to entrepreneurship for me. Because it's the first time in my life that I realized I could go out and make my own money. And I could have uncapped income. What I love about that industry is it teaches people for very low costs, it gives them an opportunity to be awakened. And I think that's a really good word.

most people if their parents were an entrepreneurs or like their uncle or aunt or someone in their close life was an entrepreneur, they don't know any other path exists. You know, if your parents are chefs, you know, you just see being a chef all the time. So I think just being introduced to the possibility is really important. And that's ultimately what led to my career. So gotten to network marketing early on did that for many, many years still still do some stuff on the side. joined as first employee for a tech startup doing facial recognition.

and did the whole Silicon Valley journey, you going through a startup accelerator and having to go through product market fit and figuring out how to sell technology that wasn't quite built yet. And you know, all the the woes there and ultimately, you know, teamed up with, you know, my good business partner, Matt Dodge, big shout out and created cigars.com, which is a the online place for people to create their own custom cigar for events, weddings. And just recently, we became number seven on Google.

Andrew Lasky (06:30)
Yup.

Ian Lenhart (06:49)
So really excited. It's been four years coming and now we're number one on almost coming for number one. So got to stick with it, man.

Andrew Lasky (06:56)
That's awesome. Yeah, just seeing you guys launch that company. I remember we were smoking cigars on a rooftop somewhere in Miami and just the whole idea of making it very unique with the custom branding around it. I just knew it was going to be a very big hit. And to see where it's come today has just been amazing. And seeing where it's going to go next is even better. So going back to now the network marketing part, you know, you're a very good communicator.

even better networker. I call you the power connector. You're really good at bringing people together. How important is a skill set like that in the network marketing industry, but also in the other industries that you've been in as well.

Ian Lenhart (07:41)
Great question. shout out to you because when we started cigars.com, you're the first person I know in my life that said, I want to invest. I appreciate you. Thank you. You've always just been the biggest supporter. Yeah, so you're talking about relationships. And when people think about sales, you know, there's that friend like how to win friends and influence people. There's that book, apologies, how to win friends and influence. It's an amazing book. But I think I just really internalized that in my life. I guess

Andrew Lasky (07:50)
Still do, still do.

Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (08:10)
everyone has to know their superpower and my superpowers. I really like people. I'm an extrovert. I like being around people. Not always, you know, sometimes I just want to Netflix and chill. But sometimes I just I want to be around people and it's kind of come natural to me to to want to be around good people. I like being the dumbest person in the room, right? I get sort of edgy when I am not in that situation. So every time in my life, I've always tried to meet the most outstanding humans and that doesn't have to be financially. I think

you know, something I love is we have a mutual friend. He's a he's a chef, right? It's one of my favorite people. He does very well for himself. But I love Chef Michael, I love, you know, Peter Thompson, who's the founder of live ramp, I love my buddies from from my hometown, you just have to appreciate aspects and people and find people genuinely curious and build a real relationship with them. That's not built around fakeness. It's not built around success. It's built around like

If you were to lose everything tomorrow, I want you to believe because it's the truth. If I'm your friend, you're still my friend. And a lot of people can't say that in their life. A lot of people aren't being truthful to themselves. They're trying to act as if. I like the whole idea is like be it till you become it, not fake it till you make it. And that's just how I am with.

Andrew Lasky (09:11)
Mm-hmm.

Ooh,

can you repeat that for the listeners? That was great. Great quote right there.

Ian Lenhart (09:26)
that you just got

to it till you become it and don't fake it till you make it because if you're the if you're that guy for a long enough period of time, people gravitate towards you, you get the phone calls, but you got to build the foundations brick by brick and it starts with just not being a shitty person, be a good person.

Andrew Lasky (09:40)
Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, when it comes to like, you know, strengthening these relationships, because a lot of people when they go out and they network, or if they go to any event, and look, people are there to do business. And it can really come off as like transactional. But you've been able to just build really, really deep, long lasting relationships. How have you been able to like do that? Let's say somebody's brand new

You know, they want to get out there that they need to obviously earn money, but at the same time play the long game. So how, how would you recommend somebody being like authentic, um, you know, in a, a sense, knowing that situation.

Ian Lenhart (10:25)
Yeah, I guess I think about it sort of as tiers, right? I have like my tier one friends like Drew, you're a tier one friend for me. And there's not that many tier one friends for me. Like it's a smaller group. Those are the people I'm calling for like, something goes down with my family. Like I'm calling my homies, right? Like that's tier one. But tier two is huge for me. You know, tier two is people that I could call they'd pick up if they called me in something I'd help them out. And we have like I'd invite them to my house for parties and gatherings. I'd love to get dinner with them.

Andrew Lasky (10:42)
you

Ian Lenhart (10:54)
So and then like tier three and beyond is something that you can keep going on Instagram and things of that nature. But you need to do something that encourages you to build relationships. So just you starting this podcast, I'm a huge fan of podcasting because all a podcast is is essentially a forced conversation where you're basically locked in to learn. So everyone that's listening right now, you're locked in and learning you might be multitasking doing something but there's a nugget there's something that's going to stand out that might change your life. So if you start a podcast, you're going to

basically force yourself to be in a room with someone for 30 minutes to an hour. And you're to ask them intimate questions. And the more you get to know someone on an intimate level, and this isn't like in a weird way, this is just like, as a person, you get to relate more with them. And I think the best communicators, the best salespeople are people that are able to relate with everyone, right? So you kind of have to be a chameleon, you have to meet people where they're at, meet them at their energy.

Andrew Lasky (11:35)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (11:50)
Find what they like and show interest in what they like. Show that you care and show that you're open to learning the things that they're interested in too. Too many people have a selfish demeanor when they meet people. It's me, me, me. I wanna talk about me. No one likes those people. It's like, brother, ugh. Like you wanna be one of those people that's, tell me about you. I wanna learn about you. And that's the secret to making friends and building your network.

Andrew Lasky (12:08)
You

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, you know, I remember when you were doing the network marketing, I used to see you up on stages. I think you even had, you know, one of the BMW at one point. And so again, you're really good at building those relationships. And it did turn into business both long term, but you also were able to do it, you know, pretty quickly as well. I think you were in college when you were, you know, becoming very successful.

starting to be successful. So how were you able to build that long term relationship but also benefit yourself and also the person that you were doing business with?

Ian Lenhart (12:58)
just think it was being authentic and never changing who I was, right. So I always stayed in touch for the most part with the leaders in that company in that industry. And I always tried to have little touch points every now and then. And that came from just again, asking about them and developing some sort of relationship beyond just like, who are you? What are you? You know, that's when I was living in LA, I live lived in Miami. I'm in Tampa right now going back to Miami. But when I lived in LA, I felt like a lot of people were like,

Andrew Lasky (13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (13:27)
Like, what are you and not who are you?

Andrew Lasky (13:29)
Yep, like

gimme gimme gimme instead of you know, providing value.

Ian Lenhart (13:31)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all

about me. It's all about me or like, what can you bring me versus what can I bring you? I mean, that's just a I hate when people generalize an entire area because that's just insane. There's great people everywhere. But generally speaking, you know, but I just think that, you know, I looked at network marketing, because I was in a lucky situation in the sense that all of those people sort of became this sort of like business club or community. Meaning a lot of people that didn't make a lot of money back then ended up

Andrew Lasky (13:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (14:00)
crushing it in other things, right? But there was this underlying group because for network marketing, I was in college and we were all selling energy drinks. And imagine this, know, everyone in your college gets pitched on an opportunity to sell energy drinks, right? Some people got pitched by someone better or for someone worse, but everyone got pitched. Only a certain percentage of those people are going to actually do it and be like, ⁓ that's a good idea.

So you put all those people in a room that thought it was a good idea and you're gonna get some mind melding of people that believe in at least the root of entrepreneurship like let's get it. And good things happen. I mean you need to be in a room with other motivated people, right? You need to find your people and you stick with them and long term it pays off.

Andrew Lasky (14:37)
Mm-hmm.

So going back to that, so what was it that made somebody either having a very good pitch selling an energy drink or the one that wasn't? Did it have to do with being motivated and wanting to be an entrepreneur or was it more of certain sales tactics that you noticed that made one person more successful than the other?

Ian Lenhart (15:08)
I think it was a lot of learning. People want to feel like they're consuming and learning. So you can give value to someone beyond just giving them dollars. You can give value just by teaching and by being a positive light in someone's life. Like that's a way you could be a value add. Because I think the bigger picture is value add. Like how do you add value? And network marketing is different than entrepreneurship. It's very different than enterprise sales, right? All of them have their pros and their cons. Like there's just, that's just a fact. But

Andrew Lasky (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (15:37)
I think generally speaking, it's for me, what worked well for me was building an awesome culture where everyone had each other. You know, because we were having a good time and that didn't mean we were just like partying and being a savage. Some people were great at that type of thing. It was more just we were having a good time and we were believing that the future was going to be amazing. Right. You couldn't tell me back then that we all weren't going to make it, you know, and you can. No, go ahead.

Andrew Lasky (15:44)
People wanted to be around you.

Yeah. no, I'm sorry.

So like, in terms of like, you know, believing in and really, you know, seeing like a future with, you know, the hard work that you're putting in. So you went from network marketing to getting into enterprise slash like tech sales where, know, you worked at a company where you said you were the first employee. I mean, that takes a lot of belief to, you know, really go out and work at a startup and

you know, see that all the way through because a lot of people they want to work at a stable company where there's already like a really nice comp structure. But to go and sell something where I think you said the product wasn't even fully like finished yet. Explain kind of like the shift that you had to like go through like as far as like any challenges selling a product that, you know, with the network marketing kind of had a brand name behind it. But now this is a true startup.

Ian Lenhart (17:01)
Yeah, it's such a good question. It's probably the most value someone will get, especially if you're just breaking into this world. I remember when I was in network marketing, I kind of had a fast rise like I was crushing it. And I also you know, that company got shut down as an alleged pyramid scheme, which you know, I actually ended up having the founder on my podcast and he told the whole story three years later on my show, which was really cool. And we're still good friends today. He ended up winning that court case, which is crazy. It's called Vima. You guys should check it out.

But anyways, wild story. But back then I realized I'm like, damn, man, you know, I had the BMW, I was making the bills, I felt good. And then it kind of got taken away. And that's humbling, but you need to get humbled in life to ever grow. So at the time, I knew I wanted to learn practical skills in tech, because people in tech were having these huge exits. And I dreamt of one day having a big exit, you know, but step one is just getting a foot in the door. So what I did was I made a list of

200 companies I found on CNET and TechCrunch. And then I went on LinkedIn, used hunter.io to find emails and cold emailed over 200 founders and CTOs saying, my name is Ian, this is what I've done. I'm just trying to get a foot in the door. Out of those 200 companies, five got back that were promising and one of them was a company called Chewy, which turned into TrueFace. I got connected with Sean Moore and ended up working for free for a significant amount of time and eventually came on as first employee. you know that

changed my life because now I wasn't like, you learn hard network marketing, Ali, you know, now I was tech bro, you know, now is the guy that, you know, was having these very exciting conversations with top tiered C level executives, learning that high level negotiation when you're negotiating $100,000 to $1 million contracts. It's a whole different business set of skills, but you got to get in the game to understand how it works. Does that make sense?

Andrew Lasky (18:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so when it comes to enterprise sales, you know, for somebody that's looking to get into that industry, what does the typical day to day look like? How are you prospecting customers? I know you mentioned that you, you know, you were pulling emails with Hunter.io, which is a nice little software. But what like what does your day look like?

Ian Lenhart (19:21)
Well, if you're just getting in enterprise sales, you it's kind of hard to sort of surpass the whole BDR situation. A lot of tech companies will put you right into a BDR situation where you're just setting meetings for someone else, by all means do that. But it is possible to bypass that. And how do you do that you go and get a deal, right? A lot of times people want the offer letter with everything they want, but they haven't done anything. So my advice is go out and sell a deal and bring it to the CEO and you'll get

jumped up the pit right into an account executive or even an enterprise account executive.

Andrew Lasky (19:57)
So

when you were working for free, because you said that you did that for a good amount of time, is that the type of value that you brought to that company where then they brought you on as the first paid employee? Or how did that kind of come about?

Ian Lenhart (20:10)
It was more, it was more sort of, I assumed that if I put my heart into it, they would reward me. Does that make sense? Like I made that back, that free time in equity. But think about this, if you were to start a company, put it in the listener's view, everyone thinks about things differently when they start a business. You imagine you take a loan of $250,000 of your own money. It could be like everything. And you put your heart and soul into starting a business and you're hiring Drew Laskey.

Andrew Lasky (20:18)
with me.

Ian Lenhart (20:40)
Like if you're Drew Laskey, how do you impress me enough to make me feel confident that you can shepherd my baby, you know, and that you can represent my brand? So if you think like a business owner, you start to think backwards, what would I want to see if this was my company? And the people that start thinking about their sales role, like they own the business, those are the people that crush it fast because they just have a whole different demeanor. They approach conversations different.

Andrew Lasky (20:48)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (21:09)
They do more. Most people just do the bare minimum,

Andrew Lasky (21:13)
Yeah, oh, no, absolutely. They really do. you know, they call them like entrepreneurs, the people that they it's not their business, but they act as if it is their business. And they can take it to a whole other level. And those are the people that, you know, become the most successful. And so, you know, when you were working in the enterprise world, and then, you know, I think we were also building cigars at the same time.

How were you able to still perform at your enterprise sales job and start a company on the side? I know a lot of sales managers listening to this probably wouldn't like your answer, but I think time management is a very important skill set that everybody's trying to refine and get better at. So, I mean, you've been able to build a company on the side. How were you able to perform in like...

and actually do that.

Ian Lenhart (22:14)
The biggest word here is it depends. There's no perfect answer to this. Everyone is sort of in a different situation. So generally speaking, one principle is you never go full time with your side hobby until you're making two X the revenue that you are with your current hustle. Like that's a good rule of thumb because so many times people go all in on their side hustle and it sucks when you know, things don't go to plan and guess what? It's not going to go to plan. But largely, how do you do both? You got to just

Andrew Lasky (22:30)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (22:42)
understand time blocking. Meaning most people when they say they're working, they're not really working. They send like three emails in an hour and then they go get a coffee and they go to the bathroom like they don't understand productivity. It's less about output and it's more about being intelligent with your time. So I asked myself, what is this business owner need to see from me to recognize me as a top person working for this company? And how can I protect my future with the amount of work I'm doing?

Andrew Lasky (22:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (23:10)
So if you're in a big team, you better be top three in that team before you're doing all these side hustles. You know what I'm saying? Because here's the thing, if you're bringing deals in, no one gives an F what you're doing on the side. And that should be the biggest realization for everyone. If you're doing your job and bringing money in, what you're getting paid for, no one cares. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. But the people that stop performing and now aren't answering calls, it's on you, man.

Andrew Lasky (23:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ian Lenhart (23:39)
Might as my dad says handle your shit, you know

Andrew Lasky (23:42)
Look,

it all comes down to revenue generating activities. Like you mentioned before, people get so caught up, you know, answering the phone, talking to a buddy, talking about dinner reservations or, you know, going out to lunch and taking a two hour lunch and, you know, it's it's all about, you know, actually putting in the proper work. And so for somebody that's looking to get into like enterprise sales,

What are those revenue generating activities? And the reason why I asked that is because, you know, I just transitioned from, you know, medical device sales into real estate. And now my, my world's completely different. I was driving an hour and a half, two hours to meet face to face with a doctor. And if I wasn't doing that, well, then I wasn't making any money. Now, if I'm not in front of my computer, talking to people on LinkedIn, you know, phone calls, doing Zooms.

I'm not making money now. It's a completely different like sales process. So going back to enterprise sales, you know, what are the revenue generating activities and how can somebody just time block and be successful?

Ian Lenhart (24:51)
Yeah, you wanna kind of morph your world into it. So on LinkedIn, on Twitter, you wanna like unfollow anyone that's not gonna bring, you wanna follow all of your customers, right? You wanna see what they're doing so that every day you're getting the newest things in your feed and you're liking them and you're commenting on them and you're keeping in touch with people on a human level. So enterprise sales is actually quite simple because when people think about enterprise sales, what makes a really good sales rep?

sales reps are really project managers. They're not sales reps. They're people that are able to bring all the pieces, getting engineering involved, getting the technical involved, getting the NDA signed, you know, going through all that stuff. They're project managers. So think about building your enterprise sales business as project managing your entire stuff. All of this is going to take seven to 10 to 15 touches before you potentially are going to get a sale. So you have to, you have to ask yourself like, are you

Andrew Lasky (25:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm, okay.

Ian Lenhart (25:48)
putting in those daily, those like every weekly, monthly touches because the customer might not be down to buy right now. They're probably gonna be down in three quarters. But here's the difference between a good sales rep and a bad sales rep. A good sales rep touches base every month, just something small like, how's your dog doing? Find out if they like their dog. Find something that makes me human because you're talking to someone on Zoom. Find something that attaches you to that person. It takes work, like you have to get to know the person.

Other sales reps will just call them in nine months. Who are they gonna work with? The person that's been talking with them for the last nine months or for the person that's just hits them up like out of the blue? know, so, and this is, people do business with people they like at the end of the day and people do business with people they trust too. So if they can't trust that you're gonna stay plugged in, like how are they gonna trust you with their business?

Andrew Lasky (26:27)
Yeah.

So the sales cycles, those, those are typically two to four quarters away or from your initial point of contact, what is the average sales cycle for enterprise sales?

Ian Lenhart (26:53)
For like mid market, a good situation would be three to six months if it's a smaller tier. Sometimes for startups, you can get them in under three months, especially if the product's built out, you can close those the same month. But typical enterprise sales, you go through a month demo, you have to figure out success and evaluation criteria, then you have to evangelize to all the C-suite and then you got to pull in the different, know, companies and divisions and they isolate to see which ones are going to be most hyper relevant, you don't want to bring in too much people because then it gets complicated.

Andrew Lasky (27:03)
Mm-hmm.

How do you do that? That's that

good. A lot of people get lost. You know, I've worked with a lot of sales reps where, you know, they spend too much time with the influencer and they and there's nothing like wrong with that as long as you're aware of the actual capabilities that person has on either influencing the decision or actually making this the decision, which they typically don't. So how do you identify that?

Ian Lenhart (27:47)
You want to find a champion, generally speaking, and you want to have sales process. So, you know, I love the whole phrase, B-mantr, budget mandate, access need, timing risk, but there's a bunch of them like medic and these types of things. You want to find a champion that by working with you, they look like the hero in their company. So now all you're doing is helping the champion actually bring the deal home. So if you offer value to a company,

then that champion's gonna sell internally. And they're gonna listen to that person that works there a lot more than they're gonna listen to Drew Laskey on Zoom. So all you're trying to do is identify the mobilizers, the people that have gotten deals done. And you can figure out who the mobilizers are by asking them very direct questions. Like, hey, have you onboarded any software in the last three months?

Andrew Lasky (28:23)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (28:38)
you know, after you have built a relationship with them, of course, you want to just start off like that, but find out have they actually are they have they done deals? Or are they just, you know, someone that's not wasting time, but they're just not people that take action. You need to find the people that were involved in the deals, right? So you could go on their website and look at press releases, you can look at blogs, read their blogs, like, are they who's writing those blogs, you know, use that as an opportunity to reach out to those people.

Andrew Lasky (28:42)
Is it?

Ian Lenhart (29:05)
There's just a lot of different touch points, but you want to find a champion and you want to latch a mandate onto a need. So like the idea between need and mandate, everyone has a need, but not everyone has a mandate. A mandate's coming from the top. A mandate's coming from the CEO. We need to lower carbon emissions by 20%. A need is like, we want to drive more efficiently, right? So if you can figure out a way that proves that you're going to be able to lower carbon emissions and latch that need on to the bigger mandate,

Now you can drive past all of the blockers of an enterprise deal. Those people are the ones that make a lot of money. But on the flip side is so many times you get into a deal where someone has a need but not a mandate and you go through this extensive evaluation and you tell everyone the deal is gonna close and it doesn't.

Andrew Lasky (29:50)
There's nothing worse than that. Every I don't care how good you are as a salesperson. Everybody has experienced that multiple times. It is the worst feeling ever. And it's all that work. And at the end of the day, it doesn't turn into any commission and and no money coming home. So so going taking this even like deeper. So you have the mandate and you have the need and then you have all these influencers and then you're trying to then

Ian Lenhart (30:08)
Yeah.

Andrew Lasky (30:19)
tie in multiple touches in between these meetings, you know, what's something that, you know, you've done to like, convert that need into a mandate while working with an influencer, not a decision maker directly.

Ian Lenhart (30:37)
tough because you can always influence but you can't change. like you can't just turn someone that's cold because you're a good sales rep, right? If they don't have that mandate, you're wasting your time. You need to first of all have a product that solves a real problem because if you can save some money or save them time or make them more efficient, then you have something of value. But a lot of times people are just like selling a product that people don't really need. So you know, ask yourself like, do am I actually if I were them, would I buy from me?

Andrew Lasky (30:48)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (31:07)
Like, you know, if you can make that so compelling, you can sell, right? But if you wouldn't buy your own product, because you don't even believe in it, you shouldn't be selling that product, you probably should find something else kind of like what you did in your career, like you got really passionate about something else. And that's where your heart and soul was. And that's why you're successful at it now, because you're putting your heart and soul into it. I know I kind of went a little off topic there, but

Andrew Lasky (31:23)
Mm-hmm.

No, no, that's a good point though. It's like, once you learn sales, you you can take your skill set and move into other industries and yeah, look, there's different nuances and that's the reason why we have the show so we can share with the audience, you know, what the different processes are like in different industries. But once you learn those skills of, you know, isolating the objection, you know, uncovering, you know, what their actual need is and what their

problems are and how the problems are affecting their business and what their business looks like after those problems are solved and why they can't wait to solve those problems and they need to happen now. You can translate that into really any industry. So and it goes to show I mean, you're the perfect example. You know, you're now you've gone into three major industries, you've been able to take everything from network marketing and put in the enterprise sales, then enterprise sales. Now you're growing the super cool cigar business, which I

do want to talk about right now to kind of wrap up before we get into the final four. But your cigar business, I mean, you're working with some really amazing endorsers, doing a lot of cool stuff too with the community and a couple of your partnerships. So just really quick for the audience, just tell them a little bit more about your cigar business and how it could possibly benefit them as well.

Ian Lenhart (32:52)
Yeah, well, first off, it's cigars.com with an S not a C cigars.com six letter domain phenomenal. I accidentally got into cigars.com I've tried many businesses in my life, but you know, never really had true heart and soul into them and cigars everything lined up. I was working with you know, one of my best friends who is an ex UFC and NFL sports agent. And it started off with us just wanting to do a partnership with a UFC athlete.

Andrew Lasky (32:57)
With an S.

Ian Lenhart (33:21)
And then that merged into doing partnerships with athletes from the UFC, PGA, NASCAR. And it was just a lot of fun, right? And I think the biggest lesson is you always have to be open to pivoting and you have to test the market, right? If you have passion, it's fuel, but eventually that fuel runs out if you're not making money, right? So use that fuel to keep pivoting until you find product market fit.

So for us, we ended up doing a deal, this is a great story for the audience, we ended up doing a deal with this PGA golfer. He ends up connecting us with this really awesome charity called Folds of Honor. It's a military nonprofit, they've done such amazing things. And then through Folds of Honor, we got connected into the world of promotional marketing. Promotional marketing is the world where you take your logo, like Drew Lasky incorporated cash flow and commissions, you put it on a mug. That's what promotional marketing is.

and we realized there was no one in the cigar space doing it. So then we became niche, our niche became the number one cigar suppliers for the promotional marketing industry. So now I wasn't selling cigars to like Joe from down the street who wants to buy one cigar for $20. Now we sell a minimum of 60 cigars per order with our average order being over $1,500 in order. So I'd rather do.

Andrew Lasky (34:33)
Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (34:41)
big orders than small orders because you're going to spend the same amount of time on a big order as you would a small order. Does that make sense?

Andrew Lasky (34:48)
Absolutely. Absolutely. You're getting higher revenue per client and that's how you're building your business. You know what, Ian? This is what I want to do. For everybody that's listening right now, I think you'd be okay with this. Why don't we do a discount code? For the first time buyers, let's do, what did you say? 10 %? 10 % use the TCCS. Ecommissions Cash Flow Show, TCCS.

10 % off cigars.com that's within S. Hopefully that's okay. But no, it's an amazing story. Great business. I'm a customer and it's a phenomenal business. So Ian, we're gonna get to the final part of our show, which is called the final four. These are the same four questions that we ask every single guest. The first one being, what is your favorite sales book or?

Ian Lenhart (35:21)
Let's do it. Totally done. That's cool. Yeah, just shoot.

Andrew Lasky (35:44)
Sales Movie.

Ian Lenhart (35:47)
I mean, first all, sales movie, I just love the Wolf of Wall Street. I mean, that's so funny. I mean, it's degenerate. It's a horrible like judgy book. Like judge me all you want, but that's just makes me laugh every single time. if you, know, the four agreements is a good one too, you know, understanding like who you are as a person is really good, but I'd go Wolf of Wall Street all day.

Andrew Lasky (36:07)
Okay, okay. Question number two, what's one sales tactic or strategy that completely changed sales for you in terms of adding more revenue to your, you know, top line and bottom line?

Ian Lenhart (36:24)
Number one, be insanely good at customer service. Listen, it costs you nothing to respond to an email fast. Nothing pisses me off worse than you get an email and if you don't know the answer, just tell them quickly you don't know the answer but you're get back to them. If you just respond to people in a timely manner, you're immediately in the top 5 % of your entire industry. Does that make sense?

Andrew Lasky (36:44)
Mm hmm.

Yeah. I mean, speed and speed is all about success or success, love speed. Question number three, what is the your favorite purchase that you've ever made with a large commission check?

Ian Lenhart (36:51)
Yeah, totally.

Well, my first large commission check I was in college, I was 21, I was in a fraternity, like such a typical frat bro move. Made like three grand and I spent it all on a speaker system. I got a 1400 watt Behringer subwoofer and it just shook the entire building and it made me so happy. So that's a silly one. And then a good one was a down payment on my first home. And that came from, you know, an exit opportunity, which was huge and nothing feels better than just to be able to

be in your own walls and your own little kingdom and do what you do.

Andrew Lasky (37:34)
And that one is now a rental as well providing you cash flow. So you took the commission and you turned it into cash flow. There we go, baby. And then last question, you know, knowing what you know now, if you lost it all, and you had to start over, you know, what's the first thing that you would do in terms of sales?

Ian Lenhart (37:42)
There it is.

I'd say I'd build my brand faster. I mean, that's the easiest thing you can do, right? Become an expert fast, start a podcast, start putting stuff out there and become an expert in your field. I always talk about this. We have a good friend, Chris, right? He's a finance guy. His niche is finance, corporate finance. He's been grinding at it his whole life and now he's built to a point where he has a skill set that people pay for. So identify a skill set that people pay a lot of money for.

and then work on building that skill set. If you start young, 10 years from now, you'll be anywhere you want. So that's my message, build your brand faster, identify a skill set, and start working on learning and growing as fast as possible.

Andrew Lasky (38:37)
I love it. Ian, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Ian Lenhart (38:42)
I love you, Drew. You're just you're so good at this. You're so good at podcasting. This is awesome. You can find me at Ian Lenhart on Instagram. You can check us out at cigars.com. You can check yourself out. You can get custom custom boxes is something we did for angels envy. You can check it out. Really want to impress your clients. Get them some custom cigars. Yeah, but hit me up on Instagram. And it's a damn good day to have a damn good day. But now's the time. Let's get it.

Andrew Lasky (39:08)
It sure is.

Awesome. Ian Lenhart, thank you so much for being on the show and I will talk to you soon my friend.

Ian Lenhart (39:15)
Thank you, sir. Have a great day.

Andrew Lasky (39:18)
Let's go.

Ian Lenhart (39:20)
Let's go.

Andrew Lasky (39:22)
Yo, there's only one question that I like blanked for a second. And, you know, I don't know if you if you if you want to keep it in here, we can but I was like, oh, about about building the cigar business on the side. I don't know if it just popped into my head. We can keep that in there if you want. Okay, cool.

Ian Lenhart (39:38)
Yeah, I don't care. I don't care.

I don't work for that company anymore. So it's what

Andrew Lasky (39:43)
Yeah,

yeah. But other than that, bro, it was very good. I mean, I thought it flowed, you for the most part, I mean, you're a way better interviewer than I am.

Ian Lenhart (39:53)
I

disagree. 100 % disagree. It's so fun being on the other end of that because you are phenomenal, bro. What you do really good is you keep it into these like no more than 45 second spiels. Like you cut it quick and it's more like yours is more snippetable. I thought that was really good.

Andrew Lasky (39:59)
Really?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, okay.

And then like honest feedback, anything that I should change, just whether it's delivery or just like anything, any feedback, because obviously I'm trying to grow this.

Ian Lenhart (40:30)
I mean, dude, I really think you're a fucking G. I think you're a star. I really think you were really fucking good. If I was Grant Cardone, I would have just easily been able to follow you. You were fun. You edified me very well. Yeah, it was was great. mean, I edification is the biggest thing always is just making the person feel like because if they ever have the EBGBs before, you know, nothing makes you get over that faster than making them feel good about themselves.

Andrew Lasky (40:58)
Yeah.

Ian Lenhart (41:00)
That's something everyone can be better at. There was time, like I thought I did really good besides one point when you were asking enterprise sales, like it took me a minute to go into like, find the mobilizer. At that point, I felt like I was giving really good feedback. I was a little all over the place at first, but that's how we're all just in our own heads during these interviews, you know.

Andrew Lasky (41:18)
Yeah,

yeah, Cool, bro. I greatly appreciate you coming on. And so this is going to go live probably in like a week or two, probably closer to two weeks. So I got a bunch of these lined up and then I got to like kind of like piece them together. I have a VA that's going to help me and then do all the software stuff is crazy. Like the one I did last night, it's already like edited as far as the actual episode.

Ian Lenhart (41:46)
What

do you pay?

Andrew Lasky (41:47)
I mean, this software is like 30 bucks a month. It's super easy. And then the transistor website, which I have it hosted on, I think that's like 20 bucks a month or 15 or 20.

Ian Lenhart (42:00)
And then

what about the person that edits it?

Andrew Lasky (42:02)
So that I have him for everything. I pay him 1000 bucks a month. And he does all my admin stuff. He does all he does all the stuff that you see on social media now, which I'm going to add a bunch of clips for you. Yeah, we're gonna put out a bunch of these promote it. And yeah, bro. Fucking love you and I appreciate you coming on and

Ian Lenhart (42:17)
Hell yeah.

Yeah, I

haven't done a podcast in a while. This is good. It's good for my brain. This is fun.

Andrew Lasky (42:29)
Yeah, it's do this is like a good setup for now, you know, just doing it virtual. And then if it grows and it takes off, then I want to do something you know, like, like you have, you know, the setup. But for me to go out and like buy like $5,000 worth of stuff, it just doesn't make sense right now. But

Ian Lenhart (42:48)
Well, this is the only way, dude, because like, you'd have to have a sky in the room if you're going to do it like that. And that's one more fucking thing you got to coordinate on top of everything else. And getting someone to come to your house is 10 times harder.

Andrew Lasky (42:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, with this, I could do a podcast every single night.

Ian Lenhart (43:06)
Yeah, I mean, if I do a pot again, when I get the damn good day going again, which I am I'm going to probably do a mix of both. Just because I want to get in front of the right people and you can get in front of people here and you can you can scale faster during this. But yeah, man, I my biggest advice to you is just shoot big, you know, throw a Hail Mary's spend 10 minutes every day sending DMS to the biggest people the biggest dogs and just shoot for the stars. You know what I'm saying?

Andrew Lasky (43:21)
Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Ian Lenhart (43:36)
because

eventually you run out of your like super warm pipe and then you have to keep finding people.

Andrew Lasky (43:42)
Yeah, that's so that the what I wanted to do is, you know, have it the first eight to 10 episodes already like done. And then like show people it's a real podcast and then have it, you know, start doing a lot more marketing DMS. I've also set up like this funnel that actually you have to like if you find my podcast and you want to be on it, you have to refer somebody as well. So it kind of creates this like referral, you know, program as well. So

Yeah, dude, if you know any if you know any top, you know, salespeople, because it's again, obviously show strictly on sales. But, you if you know anybody that you think would be a good fit, dude, that would be awesome if you could connect me.

Ian Lenhart (44:11)
That's cool.

So are you then on

the backend getting these salespeople to then invest in your portfolios? that the other side? That's awesome. It's smart.

Andrew Lasky (44:28)
That's the long term. Yeah, the long term game. Having a

having the emails and the connections and again, like we just like we talked about, bro, building that relationship. Yep. Creating a community of badass people, you know, so it's awesome because it gets it gives people the chance for them to go out and shine and like tell their story and me like help promote them.

Ian Lenhart (44:40)
NFI gangsters and then they then you can pitch them on deals, which that's what gangsters do. Yeah.

Andrew Lasky (44:56)
And at the same time, it's a cohesive relationship.

Ian Lenhart (45:00)
If you want to add another

thing onto your plate is it'd be kind fun for you to do a cash flow and commissions meetup in Miami.

Andrew Lasky (45:08)
Yeah, could do that.

Ian Lenhart (45:10)
You know what saying? So it's like this community and you could even do it with someone else like a girl that would like organize it or something. So it's less than your plate. And then it's like everyone pays $50 a head and you can meet up and network with other top performing sales reps and maybe you have to hit a certain threshold or something. Like you have to send in a fucking W two to prove it or something bullshit or I don't know.

Andrew Lasky (45:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That's

a good idea. Yeah, I was actually thinking of something like that. You got to prove that you're making at least 200 grand or

Ian Lenhart (45:37)
Yeah, just like, just shows that you're at least in the club or you just, it has to go through the gating. But I mean, that's a lot. It's a whole fucking thing. You know, planning an event. I don't know why my thing seems so blown out. Like these things are on so light.