Q&A WITH TYLER CAUBLE

Q: Let’s talk about how you first got started with Vector back in 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.

• I had just graduated high school in 2011. I had grown up working construction under my grandfather and I had gotten to the point where I didn’t want to do that physical labor anymore. My neighbor had actually sold Cutco to my Mom when we were in middle school, so I grew up using Cutco. I knew my neighbor had done really well with Cutco and made a lot of money so I decided to give it a shot. I walked in and applied in Dave Powers and Andrew Smallwood’s office and the rest is history.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the experiences that stand out from that summer.

• Absolutely! When I was going through my training I saw the Fast Start record on the wall of sixteen thousand dollars and I couldn’t believe that somebody had made a high level of income from selling that much in their first ten days. I wanted to go out and beat that, so I took the contacts part of the training very seriously and actually ended up having 52 appointments in my first ten days. I ended up at almost twenty-two thousand dollars in sales at the end of the fast start.

 

• Q: What helped you do so well in those 52 appointments? 

  ● Honestly I just listened to my managers Dave and Andrew. They told me that if I booked more appointments than everyone else then I was going to beat everybody else. Every time I had an appointment cancel I would just hop back on the phone and book another one. I just did everything I possibly could to keep my calendar full.

Q: Do you recall how many customers out of the 52 did not buy anything?

 

• I think there was only one customer that didn’t end up buying something. I went 3-4 days into my fast start before I had a no-sale. Then when I finally got my first no-sale it was devastating, but the next person ended up buying an Ultimate Set. It was a good ten days.

Q: What about the experiences you had for the rest of that summer and the rest of your time with the company?

 

• Right after my Fast Start we had a break of about a week and then we had SC2. We were told to take it easy as a break before gearing up for SC2, but I still sold eight thousand that week. The record for SC2 at the time was around thirty-six thousand for two weeks and I had a goal of forty thousand. One week in and due to cancelled appointments, no-sales, and small orders I had only sold around $10 thousand. We were thinking we might have to adjust my goal, but Andrew kept saying that every ‘no’ is that much closer to a ‘yes’ and I just continued calling after every single appointment so they could keep me grounded after big sales or to lift me up after small ones or no-sales. Andrew and Dave really helped me out. I sold thirty or forty thousand the second week and several thousand on the way to SC2. I had orders coming in right up until the awards ceremony and the total ended up being a little over fifty-two thousand.

Q: To go from ten thousand at week one to fifty-two thousand, nine days later is pretty immense. What made that difference in the second week?

 

• Momentum. It got to where all the people that cancelled in week one rescheduled for week two and I was doing 8, 10, sometimes 12 appointments a day and I think the last 2 days I sold another ten to twelve thousand.

Q: What do you think were some of the other keys to you becoming a top performer in Cutco?

 

• I just genuinely love working and working hard. I was always one of the earliest guys to the office and I would stay the latest. We would get there early and I would just be on the phone, hammering away, setting up appointments. I pretty much just didn’t give myself any down time. Any time I had between appointments I was just sitting down on the phone setting up more appointments. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I went from working in construction where I was taking a sledgehammer to old bathtubs and tile showers and doing demo work to being able to sit in a nice office and making phone calls. Then you get that first paycheck and you’re just like, “Man, I’m really going to take advantage of this!”

Q: So then you were an assistant manager for the company for a summer and then you ended up getting recruited into the commercial real estate business. How did you end up getting into that?

 

• I did. I had dropped out of college, because while I was going I couldn’t sell Cutco so my income lagged and I got bored. I had sold this big developer a Homemaker+8 set for his beach house down in Florida and he reached out when I was back in town. He said that they had some of their shopping centers listed with some national groups and didn’t feel that they would pay as much attention to them as someone like you would, so we’re gonna pay for you to get your real estate license and they kind of trained me in commercial real estate. It’s so true that you really form good relationships with the people you see when showing Cutco. One thing that I got really good at was sharing my goals with every client so that they knew what I was working towards. Knowing that I wasn’t just working for the money. I was working towards breaking all these records and really trying to make a name for myself. When you share your goals with people like that it almost becomes like a goal that they themselves can cheer on and champion as well. Thinking bigger was also a big part of getting customers tied into me reaching my goals. Doing so well in the Fast Start, I won a Signature Set, so I went into all my appointments with the second biggest set saying, “This is the set that I bring to all my appointments because this is the ones that most of my customers get.”

Q: So what have been some of your success factors in your current role in commercial real estate?

 

• A lot of it has been just career milestones. At about two years in, I had leased out all the property that that company had been struggling to fill. I had worked myself out of a job, so I put together a 42 unit townhome development in a suburb just south of Nashville with them. Then about four-and-a-half years into it I launched my book ​Open for Business: The Insiders Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate.​ I got featured in Forbes for Instagram and thought, “You know what, it’s time to start my own gig.” In February 2018 I started my own commercial real estate brokerage as the youngest commercial real estate broker in Nashville. Shortly thereafter, I started buying buildings and taking advantage of all the offerings that I was giving to my investors previously.
• Getting started, I was very much a self-starter. I got my commercial real estate license and I asked them how I was supposed to do it and they said, “Go find us a tenant and we will show you how to get it done.” I had no idea what I was doing. I was just going out and knocking on doors, trying to get people to lease commercial real estate. I read every book I could and listened to every podcast. I think the only thing I did for months in my car was listen to every podcast on commercial real estate, on sales, on being a broker and I just hit the pavement. I tried to learn as much as I could. I would ask questions when I didn’t know something and I would never pretend that I knew something that I didn’t, because people always appreciate the honesty there. I’m not smarter than everyone else, I just work harder than everybody else.

Q: So to connect the dots between selling Cutco and what you are doing now, what are some more of the universal traits that apply to Cutco, apply to what you are doing now, and apply to other areas as well. We’ve talked about work ethic being one, but what are some of the other things that stand out as universal traits for success in business?

 

• I think interpersonal skills are one. You should be able to communicate with other people and not sound like a robot or have to read off of a script. All the scripts we were given in Cutco were great skeletons, but I expounded upon those and made them my own. You gotta get your outline and add your flavor to it, because people want to have a human conversation.
• Product knowledge. Having more knowledge on your product that anyone else in the market makes you an expert and people want to rely on experts to help make decisions when they don’t know as much about something. You also gotta have faith in your own product. If you don’t believe in your own product, and you wouldn’t use it, you wouldn’t love it, and it wouldn’t make your life easier, then it is going to be really tough to sell. I have never and I will never sell anything that I don’t believe in. People can kind of tell if you believe in it or not and it is just a harder sell.
• Getting to the office earlier than anyone else and leaving later than anyone else.
• Not being afraid of hitting the phone and making the ask. If somebody says no, you just call them a week later, ask again, and call a whole bunch of other people in between. We have an agent in my office that I have taught that philosophy to and he has had people cuss him out and send him text messages threatening him if he ever calls them again. He calls them back and apologizes and he has had people invite him over for coffee after that.

Q: So I heard through a mutual friend that you just celebrated a nice milestone here recently. That milestone was achieving a $1 million dollar net worth. You are only 27 and I am not afraid to say that it took me longer than age 27 to achieve my first million dollar net worth. It isn’t an easy thing. You are on a great path already in your financial life. Tell us about the pathway to get to a million dollar net worth.

 

• I spent about 5 1⁄2 years learning everything I could about commercial real estate and how to underwrite deals. I kept bringing them to these investors and kept thinking that as a commercial real estate broker, I was making 3%-6% of the deal while these guys are taking home everything. We had deals where guys had bought property for $500,000 and they were selling it for $2 million dollars. I would get a $60,000 dollar commission and they would get $1.5 million dollars. I kept thinking, “Man I am on the wrong side of this, I gotta fix this.” I got to the point where I was confident in my track record, knowing I had a nose for a good deal. I decided that the next deal that came up, I would get it under contract and approach investors about it. That’s what I did. Being in sales, you get taxed really high and you have so many expenses as a business owner that you don’t make nearly as much money as you think you do. But when you own commercial real estate, you get taxed passively, you don’t have to work, and you get paid while you are sleeping, so commercial real estate is a really attractive investment. I went and found a deal and the first two guys I pitched it to gave me $50,000 each. They said that they didn’t even need to see the building based on my track record and they just told me to, “Go make it happen.” That was in February. We know have a pharmacy in that building and it is doing phenomenally well and it is in an up and coming neighborhood. It took me 5 1⁄2 years to buy my first building, 4 more months to buy two more, and 4 months later, I bought another one. It was one of those ‘think bigger’ moments. Once you learn how to do it and you have the guts to go out and do it, you realize how easy it actually is.
• For anyone that has started saving and is ready to start investing in deals, I would tell them to find the expert in the field they want to start investing in. Find the one person that is just absolutely crushing it. Learn from them and do what they are doing. That is what I did. You learn from the best. When I wanted to learn and get better at business I went and joined Hal Elrod’s mastermind. Everyone in it was an author and guess who else became an author. I did, just because I was around those people. I surrounded myself with the experts. Whenever you are looking to invest in something or be the best at something, go find someone that can show you how to do it, because a mentor can put you on the fast track and you will cut ahead by years.

Q: What other advice do you have for some of our young people that aspire to have some of the success that you have had?

 

• I think getting up early and finding something you are passionate about that makes you get up that early is important. Then you just gotta work harder than anyone else to make it happen. If you don’t have the work ethic, then it doesn’t matter. Also, if you are not passionate about it, then it doesn’t matter, you are never going to be great.
• The other thing I would say is to just make the ask. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. Whether you are raising money for charity, asking for a sale, or asking a girl out, it doesn’t matter. Make the ask. The worst they could say is no and then you move on to the next one. One thing I learned on the phones at Cutco is just to ‘assume the yes.’ Don’t wonder whether they will say no or yes, just assume it will be a yes. You say, “Ms. Jones, does Tuesday at 9am or Wednesday at 3pm work better for you? You give two options and they are both yeses.

Q: Tyler, this has been great. I think that people are definitely going to get a lot of good stuff from your ideas and just from hearing you, your confidence, and your persona that you bring. I think that is a great example for people to learn from. As you look to the future, how do you think you aspire to change people’s lives through your work or through your influence?

• Being a Nashville native, commercial real estate has a big impact on my life, my neighbors’ lives, the city’s lives, the tourists, and just everyone overall. It’s fun to get to be a part of that. We are essentially building Nashville. Right where I am at right now, five years ago, you wouldn’t come down this street. One of my buddies put a really cool coffee shop next door and that really changed everything. People started coming over here and the neighborhood started changing. He took something that was a vacant, decrepit building and put a really cool coffee shop in it and now it is a meeting place. People are meeting each other for the first time there, they are getting coffee, they are working, and it brought new life to this property. I love that we get to do that in commercial real estate. It is neat to see how the built environment really does impact everyone’s day to day lives.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Momentum. In Tyler’s story about the sales contest his goal was to sell $40,000 and in the first week he had only sold $10,000, but by the end of the second week it had gotten to $52,000 as the momentum reached a tipping point where everything started falling in place. The big takeaway here is to make sure that we get to this tipping point and what it often takes to reach this tipping point is a high level of energy on the front end. The old analogy of priming the pump that Zig Ziglar used to share stands here. For a while after you start pumping the handle on the pump, nothing comes out, but then it starts to come out. Once you reach that point, you can just slowly and consistently continue pumping the handle and water will continue to flow.
• Interpersonal Skills. These are a necessity to success in business and as Cutco reps, many of us get to practice these on a regular basis.
• Product Knowledge. Becoming an expert in your field is really key.
• Making the Ask.
• Exhibiting Confidence and Where Confidence Comes From.
  ○ Learning is one of the first places confidence comes from. Every new skill you gain makes you feel better about yourself and makes you more confident that you can take on the challenges of the world. This is why I think it is so important to be seeking out opportunities to learn. If you are listening to this podcast, think about what your peers are doing right this minute. Your peers are probably not engaged in a learning opportunity at this exact minute. As you look towards the future, the number of opportunities will probably be outpaced by the number of people who want to have those opportunities. The ones that are going to get the best opportunities are the ones that are the most prepared and are the most highly skilled. Learning is a big key to confidence.

○ Being a part of a supportive environment. It is important to surround yourself with people who are encouraging you and helping you. Finding that network, mastermind, or group like Tyler had first with Vector, then second with Hal Elrod’s mastermind is critical for success.

○ Success Experiences. When you do well at something, succeed, make a sale, or achieve a goal, all of these things add layers onto your self-confidence. It is very important to set and achieve a lot of small goals. I would encourage those of you in Vector to have weekly goals that you are working towards. Of course goals for the month, the campaign, and the year are important, but small, regular goals that you achieve on a regular basis are key to building confidence.

○ Overcoming Challenges. This builds confidence, because challenges force us to be resilient and find new ways to reach our goals. If everything is easy then your confidence doesn’t grow as much, but as challenges make your goals difficult, but achievable you are pushed and stretched to reach them. You need to find the sweet spot between goals that challenge you, but that you can and do achieve on a regular basis.

○ When You Know Other People Around You Respect and Admire You. When other people around you respect and admire you, it really helps to solidify that identity you have of yourself as an achiever, someone who gets things done, and achieves success. Tyler Cauble has earned respect and admiration both in Vector and his current career. What do you respect and admire about Tyler Cauble? What do other people respect and admire about you?

 

CUTCO/VECTOR TERMS
● Fast Start – A competition period for new sales representatives that takes place during their first ten days.
● SC2(Summer Conference 2) – A summer sales contests for sales representatives.

 

BUY TYLER’S BOOK

Show Notes for this episode provided by Jared Moon.