440-_Jordan_Curtis_-_Sales_Success_Fundamentals

Jordan Curtis, the number one new sales representative for Cutco Vector Marketing in 2023, achieved unprecedented sales levels in his first year. He is humble, coachable, and competitive. In this episode of Changing Lives, Selling Knives, Jordan shares his journey from never having sold anything to achieving incredible results overnight. The podcast features inspiring stories from successful entrepreneurs and business leaders who started their careers selling Cutco Knives. The lessons learned from Cutco Vector experience are applicable to both business and life. Jordan's success was due to his hard work and a fortunate freeze that led to increased virtual demos. He realized his potential after a few months and set his sights on winning the Silver Cup trophy, a prestigious achievement in the organization. Jordan's competitiveness and drive propelled him to reach his goals. My name is Damian Scopp and I'm honored to introduce this episode of Changing Lives, Selling Knives featuring Jordan Curtis. Jordan was the number one new sales representative in the Cutco Vector Marketing Sales Organization in 2023 and in the process he achieved a sales level that no other brand new rep had ever achieved in the 75 year history of Cutco. What makes Jordan special is that he's so humble, he's incredibly coachable and very competitive. What you can expect to gain from listening to this conversation are keys on how to go from never having sold anything to incredible results almost overnight. I'm truly grateful to get to work with Jordan every single day on the San Marcos team and I'm also appreciative that I was able to be a part of this very special conversation about this journey. Thanks in advance for listening to these insights with Jordan Curtis and go make it a silver cup year. Welcome to Changing Lives, Selling Knives. I'm your host, Dan Cossetta. There's a generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders out there right now who are positively impacting the world using lessons and skills that they first learned from selling Cutco Knives with Vector Marketing Corporation. This podcast was created to share inspiring stories from Cutco's most prominent alumni and current leaders. On this show, you'll meet successful entrepreneurs, best-selling authors, superstar business executives and transformational leaders from many walks of life. All our guests will have two things in common. One, they're all changing lives today through their work and their influence. And two, they all started out selling Cutco Knives when they were younger. The lessons of the Cutco Vector experience are numerous, are compelling and are real-world concepts for business and life. Through hearing real-life stories and hands-on experiences, you'll gain insights that can help you in whatever it is that you do in life. Thanks for pressing play. Let's get on with today's episode. Welcome, everybody. Hello. I am with Jordan Curtis today. Jordan was the number one new sales rep in the Cutco Vector Marketing sales organization for the year 2023. He started at the end of January. And in a mere 11 months in 2023, Jordan sold $215,298 in CPO sales of Cutco. And that placed him number one. Not only was he number one for the year, but that is the highest total for a rep's first year in the history of Cutco. Yes, and that is well over a million sales reps. It's probably several million sales reps that Cutco has had. No one has sold more in their first year than Jordan Curtis. So, really fitting to have you featured on the podcast here today, Jordan. And we're joined by Damian Skop, who is Jordan's manager, who we felt would also be able to add a lot of value to this conversation here today. So, welcome to the podcast, Jordan Curtis. It's great to have you here. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Excellent. And Damian, thanks for joining. Thanks, Dan. Good to be on again. Fantastic. Jordan, take us back to January of 2023. Tell us how you guys started selling Cutco. Yeah. So, I transferred into Texas State from Soros. I was out there playing college football for a year. And then the fall of 2022, that was my very first semester. I wasn't doing any sports or anything. So, I told myself, I just want to enjoy like a new school. I want to go and hunt whenever I want to go hunt. And I just want to have a lot of downtime. And so, after the fall semester, I told myself in the spring, I'm going to go get a job because I like working. I don't like not having a job. I don't have money coming in. So, I went to the Texas State Job Fair in the spring of 2023 in January. And that's whenever I came across Cutco Booth. That's when I met Damian there and I applied. And I went and interviewed that same day and I got the job. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. You were at the booth, Damian, at that time? I was. I was. And it wasn't just me. There was a slew of individuals that had come to watch us do campus. And Jordan has mentioned this to me and I thought it was kind of fitting. So, one of the other managers, Tristan Wegner, says something to you that you've repeated many times over as you've worked at other events. Would you mind sharing like what was the opening line that hooked you? Yeah. So, Tristan, he stopped me because I was just walking around and he said, have you ever got paid to read 11 pages before? And I said, no, I haven't. I was like, I barely breathe right now. I was like, what is this about? Yeah. That's what Tristan said to me. So, he drew me in to the booth there. Nice. Nice. Have you ever got paid to read 11 pages? I like it. I like it. Damian, did you have any inkling of what would happen here with this guy? No, I had no idea. I was excited about another opportunity to work with college students at Texas State. These job fairs in the past have introduced us to great people. And Jordan was just part of a training group that was about to get started. It was actually a really interesting training group. There were about 14 or 15 people that were in it. And what happened that really was unique because I don't think right from the jump, I think Jordan may have booked another 10 to 12 appointments his first weekend, is all of a sudden the week that Jordan started, there was a very uncommon experience in Texas. There was a freeze. And so, all of a sudden, the world shut down for like a week. Nobody was going to school. All of the moms were sort of stuck at home. And so, it kind of created this like perfect storm for representatives. And it actually, you know, Jordan was not the only 10K fast starter out of that group. There was actually two different people because there was nothing to do. Moms were stuck at home because it was freezing cold outside. College students were stuck at home because it was freezing cold outside. So, there was this like kind of odd scenario where there was like three or four days in a row where there was no classes. And some students didn't do much. They kind of did one or two demos. But looking back, Jordan was doing like five and six appointments a day all of a sudden. He kind of had a summer experience in the middle of the school year just by luck. Nice, nice. All of our colleagues in the upper Midwest and the Northeast are laughing at us right now that we would shut down everything just because it's cold. But that's a perfect storm for you to be able to have gotten a lot of virtual demos because you're at Texas State, which is there south of Austin, right? But your leads were all at home and your home is Uvalde, Texas, which is two, two and a half hours away, right? Yes, sir. Right. So, that's cool. Tell us about some of those early experiences, Jordan. Whenever I first started? Yeah. Yeah. So, I remember doing my first demo with my parents. They weren't taking it serious. They would stop me like, hold up. We need to get another glass of wine. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is taking forever. So, it was making me so mad. Like, that demo, it's a virtual demo. That demo took like an hour and a half. And I didn't even get the place to order because by then my mom's friend, she was getting on the demo. So, I was like, we have to wrap this up. So, it was awesome. Yeah. I remember just me and Damian were talking every day. Actually, whenever I first started in my interview, we could refer someone and I referred my friend, Matt. So, my buddy, Matt, he was going to UTSA. So, that week for the training and the advanced training, he actually stayed at my apartment with me. And I remember Damian calling us like at 7 o'clock, 7.30 in the morning, like waking us up, making us go on the phone. And at that time, it wasn't normal to wake up that early unless we had class that morning. But yeah, it was awesome. It was definitely like a lot of work. It's all new to me doing this on the computer. It was super cool. And getting to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in a while. But I remember putting in a lot of work in the beginning and it definitely paid off for sure. Yeah. When did you know that you were really good at this? I don't know. I would say maybe by May when I had an idea that I'm doing something pretty good that most other people were having trouble like continuing and keep going like that long. So, I would guess within about three months into it is when I realized I was doing pretty good. Yeah. You sold 12,000 in February, 13,000 in March, 12,000 in April, 14,000 in May, and then just kept on having these great months. A little bit bigger in the summer, 37,000 in August was your biggest, 33,000 in December to close out the year. Just really consistent all throughout the year. At what point did the new RepSilver Cup become a goal for you? I really don't remember, honestly. I would say maybe around SE1. Does that sound about right, Damian? Because I remember whenever Damian showed it to me, he was like, hey, look, you're in the running for the Silver Cup trophy. And I'm like, what is the Silver Cup trophy? What is that? And I'm pretty sure Damian said it's like winning the Super Bowl. And I was like, all right, well, I want to go win the Super Bowl. And I was like, let's go do this. And so, I just kept doing what I was doing, kept repeating everything I was doing. And yeah, the rest is history. Yeah. Do you remember, Damian, when you first started talking with Jordan about that goal? Jordan's just incredibly competitive. I remember the first thing that we started talking about was the All-American Scholarship. I remember showing him how his picture would be in this brochure. And this is sort of like when you're in high school, you go All-American if you want to be good at football. Well, that probably really resonated for Jordan. Obviously, that was his big sport when he was in high school, quarterback. And that was what initially he was going to college for, to play at school, to play football. And all of a sudden, there was like another opportunity to be competitive. So again, the Silver Cup, I don't even think that really became as big of a deal until probably, I would almost say towards the end of the summer, when it started to really motivate him. But initially, there were things that were motivating Jordan that I thought were way healthier, because the Silver Cup is such a long thing that it can be easy to get kind of dissuaded if you're not doing well at it. But the All-American Scholarship, I knew, was a big deal. And the other thing that became really sort of Jordan's badge of honor was Consistency Club. And this is something that I'm not sure if we're going to talk about at some point, but Jordan was the first person that I've ever known to complete 52 weeks in a row over $1,000 in sales. So literally the perfect year. And to be able to do that over Christmas and holidays and going hunting and the hunting season of just never dropping... It was almost like the Silver Cup was a product of Consistency Club, plus making sure that he was ranking in the top 10 of the All-American Scholarship, the two latter campaigns that he was a part of it. It was almost... It was inevitable at that point. Mm. Nice, nice. Well, Jordan, you not only won this Silver Cup, but you literally doubled the next highest competitor in the standings. What do you feel like made this possible? Like, tell me what you feel like are some of the things that you do well or that you do differently from others who you observe that have helped set you apart. So whenever I first started in my training, Damien introduced me to the Google Calendar. And then I just... I use that thing every single day. So I took that to my heart. So I started planning out everything I was doing. I remember very well in the beginning, I would plan out my weeks, when I'm going to make my phone calls, how many demos I'm going to do, my classes, study time, exams, homeworks. If I'm going to go see my girlfriend in college station, everything that I was doing, I'd plan that out. And then it got to a point where I was planning out my whole semester. So I would put in my calendar when all my classes or all my homeworks were due, when my exam was, when the breaks were, when everything was, so I could stay organized. And then I would just stay true to whatever I put in my calendar. So I would make sure in the beginning of the week, on Monday, I'd have my phone times in the morning. On Monday afternoon, I would also phone on Sundays to start booking my week. And then, yeah, I would just keep going. I'd stay on the phones until I hit my demo goal for that week. And I wouldn't stop until I hit my goal basically, or got close to my goal for the week. I stayed pretty consistent with that. And that's something I still do today. And I just keep perfecting what I'm doing. I'll talk to Damien, figure out better ways. I've had some bad weeks where I would have like 10 demos in a week. And I remember like one week for sure that I had done like seven demos and no sales. And I'm like, Damien, what is going on? And so me and Damien talked about it, figured out what could be going wrong. It could be something that's just like mentally in my head that's messing with me. And I remember we turned that week around and had like five sales in a row after that and made it a good week. But I also remember that the big thing for me was making sure I stayed on top of $1,000 a week so I can keep going and moving up the ladder on that, staying consistent. So that was one of my really big motivators for me was making sure I was hitting $1,000 a week. So yeah, that's great. Because I remember some of these scenarios where Jordan would have a lack of sales week or some appointments that didn't pan out. And from what I remember, the thing that we consistently would talk about is what's your why right now? So at the beginning, there was sort of a competitive, there was this, I want to be a competitor again. I'm so excited to be able to accomplish these things. And once you've sold 50, 75, $100,000 of Kutco in a year, some of those things that you initially started as your why, they need to be replaced with something that's way at a higher level. So we always talked about gratitude. What are the things that we're really, really grateful for versus what are the things that we're really proud of? Because that gratitude is something that you can share with your customers. And that's something that you give them versus pride is something that we have for ourselves that other people don't really get a chance to share and benefit from. And so we would always, again, we'd start the conversation when I would give coaching to Jordan on talking about what he's been so grateful for so far and what's the reason that he's challenging himself to go after things now that are going to be not just for himself, but for his community or for his future family, or for him wanting to buy a home and invest into real estate. So that way he can build himself up, not having to rely on his family anymore. Even just last week, me and Jordan were talking about the fact that he still split an account with his folks. And in the past, he did that for the same reason that most young people split an account with their folks, because that way it's easy for them to pass them money. And I asked when's the last time your parents gave you money? He's like, I don't know, it's been like a year. And it's like, well, I think you need to realize that right now. The reason why even today that we're working or that you're working, excuse me, is because you're trying to transition yourself more into the adult that you're trying to be. So you can be the leader of your community that you're wanting to be versus when you were new at this job, it was to build your communication skills. So at that point, we've already built them pretty high up. There's got to be a different goal, a different why. And Jordan was always really good at having a little slideshow at the beginning of his virtual demo that he would share on Google Slides that have a picture of him, a picture of his ranking of where he's at for his sales for the week or for the month or whatnot. He always put his scholarship brochure picture in there, his silver cup brochure picture in there, all these things that he was doing. But then he would take some time to explain not that he wanted to hit these goals, but just more why he wanted to hit these goals. It was really important that every couple of months, if not even more so, that we would take time to be like, okay, what are we grateful for now? And what's the next reason that we're going after this goal? Love that. That's really cool. Finding new reasons why and sharing those with everybody, with your customers, with everybody around you to help build up that support. That's really a great thing. I like that a lot. Sure. You mentioned the goal setting or planning and the idea of following your plan in detail, putting everything into your Google Cal, putting in your phone time, Monday mornings, Sundays, all those things. Every rep has heard this, Jordan, and yet not everybody does it. Why is it such a given for you to take action on your plan? Why are you so disciplined at actually doing what you say you're going to do? Well, my whole life I was raised by my parents with discipline and along with that with sports, especially with football, because that's one sport that you have to be disciplined in. For example, whenever football, we'd go left in the morning practice. And then I'd even go and practice after football practice. And then two times a week, I would drive to San Antonio with my quarterback, Coach Yale. And I was just doing so many other things to go above and beyond to try to be the best version of myself and to be that best teammate. And I think that's what's helped me translate like all that into this business. I just I'm very motivated. I'm very competitive. I want to be the best version of myself. And there's a lot of opportunity with this company. And I see that and I want to go for it. So yeah. Yeah. Love that. That's great. Damien talks about you have a relentless work ethic. What is your week look like balancing your work with school and other things? Maybe you can kind of walk through what a schedule looks like for you in a given week. Yeah. So I mean, the best example would be right now I'm taking five classes. I'm graduating in May. My goal is to do sixty thousand for the spring campaign so I can stay on key events for our event program. And then, yeah, be competitive with that scholarship campaign to finish the top five. So right now, yeah, I'm taking five classes right now. So Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busiest days with my classes. I set them up like that. So I set them up for success. So I don't have any class on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays. So right now, Mondays for me, nothing. I'm doing I'm cranking out as much demos as I can. I'm getting up Monday morning, making phone calls, going through the day, doing demos, knocking out my homework for the week if I haven't already. And then Monday afternoon, I'm making more phone calls. And to throw it in there for me, I make my phone calls in the morning from 8 to 9 a.m. And then in the afternoon, I'll make my phone calls from 730 to 9 p.m. And then Tuesday morning, I'll make more phone calls. And I only have time to do maybe do one or two demos Tuesday morning. And then I have class from 1230 to 150. And then I have another class from two o'clock to 320. Then I come here, do more homework. And then I have another class from 5 to 620. And then I have a night class. This is all on Tuesday. Then I have a night class from 630 to 920. So I can't make phone calls Tuesday afternoon. So Wednesday morning, I'm getting up, making more phone calls, doing as much demos as I can. Wednesday afternoon, making more phone calls. And Thursday, the same thing. This is Tuesday. And then like on the weekends, I'm either working a show, I'm going to call the station, see my girlfriend, I'm going home, or I'm here. I feel like I'm never here on the weekends. So I don't really do as much demos on the weekends anymore. But I try to maximize as many demos as I can throughout the week. So that's kind of how my schedule looks for me. Yeah. It seems like you're packed from start to finish Monday through Friday with a schedule right there. So that's the way to do it. You know, I love how you packed your school into two days. I did something similar. I went to a school where we had Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday classes. And I did the reverse of you. I try to pack most of my classes into Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then I had Tuesday, Thursday off to be able to do work or whatever else it was that I wanted to do during those given quarters while I was there. I think that is a good way to do it because it just keeps you focused, right? When you're at school, you're at school and you're doing school. And then when you have your work days, you have your work days and you don't have to worry too much about class interrupting that in the middle of the day. You can get demos whenever you can, whenever customers are available. And it also goes back from whenever I first started with Damien. Damien would always coach us up, just trying to figure out how much time we have in our schedule, help us maximize that time because everyone has the same amount of time in a day. It's just how you use your time. So I remember Damien would always coach me up and figure out like, okay, what are you doing this time? Well, I'm not doing anything. I'm playing Xbox. All right, well, you can do a demo then. And then I think from there, I've just got better with it and have a better understanding of how to use my time. So that's really helped me out doing all this. Yeah. And I love that you're so efficient during the week that your weekends are largely open, right? You either go home, as you said, or go to College Station, visit your girlfriend. It's cool that you're working so hard that you have that open time at the end of the week, every week as well. And that's something I think everybody can take to heart is that you're getting this done while having an active personal life, right? It's not like you're busting your ass all through the whole weekend just to be able to hit your goals and you're not doing anything for yourself. Right. Something that I remember Jordan really absorbing is this concept of like success leads clues. Every single week, Jordan made it very easy for me to promote his work ethic because he used the Cutco Vector Impact app that we have available now to make our calls. And so every week I'd be able to promote at the team meeting who made the most number of phone calls. And every single week, it was Jordan. Whether it was somebody's staff star, it was inevitable. That's why I was never very surprised. It was always more like I was pleasantly delighted to see his sales consistently, but it was always he made the most amount of phone calls. I always noticed that he would front load his schedule. He would make a tremendous amount of calls in the 40s, 50s, and 60s on Sundays and Mondays, right? And maybe a little Tuesday. So by the time the team meeting hit, he could leave for the weekend because he had already done 7, 10, 15 appointments by Thursday or by Friday. And this was again in the first semester and over the summer where he had school during both times. He was taking classes in the spring. He took summer classes the whole entire summer semester. Obviously, in the fall, he's never been just a student, just a Cutco rep. That was always sort of his badge of honor at the team meetings. I always kind of looked over his face and there was always kind of a lot of pride when I would recognize not how many appointments he was doing or how much he was selling, but the fact that he was the one that was phoning the most. And most of those times, he'd be running a phone jam on a Monday night or by himself. Some people would sign up to go to these Zoom phone jams and some of them didn't go, but Jordan just had a lot of pride in just being the one at these events by himself and completing the hour of phone calls and making 50 phone calls over the course of two days, even at a really young age in a position. Yeah. And one thing that really stood out to me in SE1 is whenever Stacey, I'm pretty sure it was SE1, whenever Stacey told us, actions over accomplishments. You're going to be doing seven demos a day. You're pushing yourself. Don't worry about if you're making sales or not. All you have to do is worry about if you're making phone calls. And if you're making a lot of phone calls, doing a lot of demos, let everything else take care of itself. You don't have to worry about anything else. Just get on the phone and make those phone calls. So I'd still do that now. Yeah. It's a great concept for anybody, particularly the newer you are at something, is to be what's called process-oriented or process-driven versus goal-oriented or goal-driven, because typically that's where success starts. It starts with habits and actions and doing those right things. And then the results tend to follow that. But as a new rep, sometimes it's hard to control the results always, but it is easy to control your actions and your habits and the process. So I like that as a first key to success for anyone. You were averaging, it looks like here, about $3,000 to $4,000 in sales per week over your first four months or so. How many appointments was that per week typically? I don't really remember. Damien might know better than me. It just really depends on the week or some weeks where I could do a lot more demos than other weeks. I don't know. I'd probably say, what, Damien, 10 appointments on average. And it was also an average order of size thing. His average order of size was worth $500 almost right away, $600, $700 in his first semester of working with us, which is double the company average. Right. And so the question is, how does somebody sell twice as much as everybody else? So for those of you that are listening to this podcast and haven't met Jordan, Jordan gives you a very small town type of vibe, right? For those of you that aren't watching, I'm going to blow this. Jordan's got the million dollar mullet. And we kind of have some fun about the fact, like I said, Jordan's just a really small town guy. And I don't know, something about the idea of a really small town guy talking about big world, big time goals, always in my, from my observation, generated a sense of fandom around him. A big amount of excitement that the kid from the small town that all of a sudden is trying to do big time things. It's just generating a tremendous amount of support. And that was so evident when Jordan started to utilize Facebook as a social media announcement point. You know, I remember him, first of all, starting to thank every single person that he would do a demo with a little thank you Facebook post, every single one. And eventually he started updating his tracks, his FB1 track, his FB2 track, his scholarship track. And I've never seen someone get so much attention every time they would do it. Jordan, I don't know if you can speak to, you know, maybe the kind of person you tried to be towards the people around you when you lived in Uvalde, but do you have any idea why people rallied around you so consistently every time you had a goal? I would say that it started whenever I was, whenever I made my decisions, I want to go try to play college football. My dad would post my highlights on Facebook, he posts on YouTube, things like that. And people loved it. And they wanted to see me like go and do well, go do big things with football. And then I think that played a big part into it too. Also being like a small town, like you said, a lot of people in small towns, they want to see everyone succeed and, you know, they'll do anything they can to help someone out. If that means like, you know, I'm going to buy the snack to help you out, help you get closer to your goal. And whenever I share my goals with people, I always, I want them to feel like tied in with my goal. Like whether like they don't get anything or not, I want them to feel like, you know, just because you're doing this, you're going to help me out no matter what. I want people to make them feel like they're winning with me too, like all my clients and stuff. Because where I'm at right now is because of all my clients. And I really appreciate all them too, because, you know, they're a part of this journey with me and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them too. I think that that's really, really valuable. You know, that concept of they're winning with you. In order for that to happen, they have to be consistently be told how you're doing. As if you can't watch one minute of a football game in the beginning, one minute at the end and be excited about the game. You got to be able to, even if you're watching the highlights, you got to see a lot of it. And Jordan was incredibly consistent on a daily and weekly basis of utilizing his social media as his big megaphone for his entire life. And something I've noticed is that sometimes young people are that they're embarrassed to talk about how they're doing, or I've heard the, I don't want to mix business with pleasure, right? My social media, that's for my friends. I don't want to put my job on it. But I think Jordan sort of moved past that and realized that that was actually the biggest ingredient to his success is that he was able to actually mix those two things in a way that actually benefited both parts. His customers now got a chance to walk the walk with him and his business is now a reflection of his customers. And he was just what united both of those and kind of pulled those places together so they can really become better than if they were just individually on their own. Yeah. Jordan, a big part of influence simply boils down to who you are and that's the perception others have of who you are, right? How do they view you as a person? And if people view you as somebody who they like, they respect, they trust, they root for, that garners a lot of support and that helps your words with people have a lot more power. It makes you better at getting appointments. It makes you better at making more sales. It makes you better at making bigger sales. Everything in the area of influence is affected by this principle of who you are as a person, right? So it seems like you've done a great job of building that side of your persona in your community, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. That's excellent. I like it. Damien has also mentioned to me, Jordan, your coachability being a really key factor. What do you do to develop yourself and your skills? What have you done over the past year to develop yourself and your skills and really dig in with Damien and with others in that area? Yeah. I mean, it constantly changes. If it's like a certain level, things are going to be different once you accomplish something. But for sure in the beginning, I was constantly talking to Damien or figuring out ways to be better. And I don't like losing. I'm very competitive. I like to win. So I would do whatever it took for me to win. If I'm doing something wrong, I'm going to call Damien. We're going to figure this out. We're going to figure out if I'm doing the right thing. If I'm doing the wrong thing, we're going to adjust and just keep trying to be the best version of myself with whatever it is. When I first started, like I was saying, my demos were an hour and a half, right? And now I've cut that down to like 30 to 45 minutes now, my virtual demos, because I'm constantly trying to find a way to get better at what I'm doing, whether that be on the demo, doing a phone, now working shows and events. And now I'm working with Sean Henry, he's my mentor. And so having Damien and Sean helping me out has been a huge part of my success. And also with all the other reps and managers that I've met along the way too, just trying to figure out like what's the best way to do whatever I'm trying to accomplish. Nice. Anything you'd add there, Damien, on what you've observed Jordan doing to learn and grow that goes the extra mile? He always did the right thing. He attended every key meeting and that seems pretty simplistic. Then we have our management program in our division that we're really proud of here in Lone Star. And he would just consistently just say yes to every single opportunity in front of him. Management training, he became an assistant manager, he was running interviews before he was selling Cutco, being a student, being an assistant manager. It was like all of the things he was adding was just making him better overall. And one of the moments that I was the most proud of with Jordan, the first time I really saw Jordan take a stand in his own personal success. Jordan, again, most of his initial career, yes, yes, Damien, go to this meeting, show up to this conference. There was never a question involved. And there came a moment at the end, I think it was towards the middle of July, where Jordan was slated to start with the next level of management training. And he came to me and he said, Damien, I am going to step away from the management training position and I'm going to become a CSB. And I remember talking to Stacey because I was devastated when he said that initially, because I've never had someone that decided to go CSB before going branch. And that's something that in our division, we've got a lot of success with, run their own office, and then they know how to run a business. And Stacey sat me down and he's like, Damien, with 99% of the people that I've ever met, I'd be kind of upset about this too. But look what Jordan has done in the last five months. He's been completely authentic. He's followed through on every single thing he said he's going to do. And so for a lot of people where branching might be that maturing experience, Jordan may not necessarily need that for him to be able to shine at his brightest level. I think this is the right thing for him. And as a DVM who has, I've never heard him say that before. At that moment, I was like, wow, this might be the first time I've heard someone say this. And I absolutely believed it. And from the moment that he put his flag down into the CSB world, he's shown even brighter. It was right before he had his biggest push ever, $40,000 at C2. Because I think I realized that as this was the first time he almost kind of like went against what I was coaching him into, it made him commit even harder because he wanted to be a person of integrity to follow through on what he said he was going to do. And now I'm almost in the manager position being like, man, when's the next great Jordan, I got to make sure that they like, hey, you got to see what he did. If you're going to go that route without going to management, because that is such a proven training ground for CSB hood. However, for Jordan, it really became when I noticed that he started owning his success and his path when he did that. And that was the first time I sort of like heard his voice. And I remember the meeting he came in. I think he was kind of nervous to say it to me because we had just become so enamored with the concept of him being able to lead in that way. But in retrospect, that really started where he started leading in his way. It was a time where I learned something new too, but it was really awesome to see him become more confident than I'd ever seen with a decision that he made. Yeah. And Damian, whenever we had that conversation that day, I remember that day too. I think I went to go play golf with my buddies, but I came back from the golf course after I had told him. And I think we met again and Damian was like, all right, if you're going to do it, this is what you got to do. You got to start making phone calls. You got to get a mentor. You need to get your booth. This is like different. And if you're going to do it, you got to be all in. And I was like, well, I'm all in. Let's do it. And I got to give a lot of credit for Damian because he really helped me out and helped me get started whenever I made that decision that I wanted to go CSB. Yeah. He didn't just say it. He spent $3,000 on a booth. He signed up for Vast Action immediately. And then he went to NET while being a full-time college student in his senior year during the semester that he took five classes. So yeah, I'm sold. Yeah. And signed up for mentoring with Sean Henry. Yes, sir. Yeah. Sean mentored me in the fall, the spring, and then we'll do the summer too. Nice. Nice. What I love, Damian, is that you and Stacy have supported what's truly in the best interest of Jordan. And you're able to decipher that this is the right path. Almost every great CSP in my region ran an office at some point. They were either a branch or a pilot manager of some sort. Some were district managers, but not every single one. And there are times where you see in somebody that this direction is the right direction. It's clear from Jordan's track record that he'd proven himself to be disciplined and focused. And a lot of the things that people learn being a branch manager, Jordan had already nurtured and developed those skills before Cutco and in the early first few months of his time with Cutco. So I like that you guys helped him to support that path. What do you think Jordan made such a big difference when you went big for SC2 Push? What made a difference? Yeah. I noticed he had a huge spike in your sales right there. Because sometimes it's just people just work 15 hours a day for two weeks. Right. Yeah. Well, for SC2, I knew what I was going up against. SC1 was completely new to me. So whenever SC2 was coming around, I was a lot tighter with my schedule. I knew what I was going up against. And I knew how to plan better for my summer classes that I was going to take. And I was just more organized with it and try to be more efficient with my schedule and sometimes things like that. Yeah. A lot of new reps are listening to this, are going to go out and try to do 10k for SC1 Push. And some will succeed and some will fail and some will fail miserably. But they all learn. And then there's that second chance at SC2. And it's remarkable the difference that some people produce, right? They'll go from falling flat on their face and doing 2k for SC1 Push to hitting their 10k goal at SC2. Or the ones that hit 10, 12k at SC1 will all of a sudden do 30, 40 at SC2 or even higher. And it's cool that you're able to make that leap right there. I think there's a lot of new reps that will be able to relate to that. You may be listening to this right now and experience the same thing in the summer going from their first SC1 to their first SC2. Yeah. It was awesome times. It was awesome. Yeah. Anything else, Jordan, that you feel like are success factors for your great year that we haven't touched upon? Anything come to mind? I would just say like how I was raised, honestly, by my parents and my grandparents and my family. I would say that contributed a lot to my success of what I've done. Just if you're all in, go all in. If you're going to do this, treat it like a job. If you treat it like a job, you'll do a lot better. If you treat it like a part-time job, you're going to get part-time job results. So yeah, if you're all in, be committed with it and focus on actions over accomplishments. Right. Yeah. Damian, you want to add anything? I think the biggest thing for Jordan is I have never noticed any arrival attitude. I have arrived. I'm already great. I'm great because of who I am. There's always a sense of he achieves great results because he's always very focused on either learning or fixing what's not going well. There's a certain sign of intelligence that I always notice in people when they're very adamant about asking a lot of questions versus blaming their results on external factors. He always seems to take responsibility on where he can improve, and very rarely does he seem to have any sort of unnecessary pride in what he's accomplished. It's just a certain level of humility and hunger for growth, which is why even still to this week, even though he sold more than I have ever sold in one year, he always will come to me and ask me more questions. Simple things, small fixes. I didn't get 10 referrals on this last time. I'm not booking as many demos as I want to. He's still focusing on the fundamentals. People that have gone field training with Jordan have consistently said, I don't think I learned anything. I'll ask why. He's like, well, because he just follows the script. I thought he would do something different. When people reply back, I'll say, exactly. He is a master of the fundamentals. He mentioned that now his demo is about 30 to 40 minutes on virtual demo. I don't think that's what happened for at least 150,000, maybe 175,000 hours of sales. I don't think he changed anything. He shared his goals really well at the beginning, but those 11 pages that he got paid to do, I don't think he's changed anything. I think that's part of his success is that, again, simplicity and a tremendous amount of connection. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel over here. I 100% use the script all of last year. I know I did. Then this year, I told myself in January, I was like, I'm going to try to personalize this and try to get away from the script. I didn't get away from the script. I got away from sitting there reading the script. I locked it all in my head. I just wanted to figure out a way to cut down my demo time. I wanted to try something new and see if it works. If it didn't, I'd go back to what I was doing. Now I've done so many demos, I know the script. That's what's helped me shorten down my demo time. I know more of what I'm talking about when it comes to the knives and different packages that we have. That's what's helped me able to short down that demo time, get away from reading the script. Yeah, cool. I like it. Well, hey, Jordan, as you look into the future, what are you most excited about? Right now, I'm excited to graduate and be done with school. I'm still ready for that. I have two or three weeks. I'm really excited about that part, being done with school and an opportunity for growth, implement new things to my business. This year, I really want to focus on taking care of my clients. I'm still using Bass Action, but now I'm starting to write thank you cards to all my clients and put a Band-Aid in there, things like that. But yeah, I'm really excited for growth and new opportunity. I'll have more time to do more events and shows on the weekends. And then also, yeah, basically to grow, things like that. Yeah, I like it. Damian, anything else? I'm really lucky that I get a chance to brag about Jordan in every interview that I run and every training that I have, because I've started to notice that representatives are way more excited about the sales representative position than I've ever seen in my territory. There's always been, we're excited about running a branch, but I've never had someone be this excited about sales that I can then put. And so for me, just continuing to watch what Jordan is doing and challenging other people to be able to be consistent and be able to make $100,000 in a year while being a full-time college student is an opportunity that Jordan has allowed me to be able to promote with complete integrity, because he did it first. And prior to working here, he was working at Tractor Supply, meaning he had never sold anything before in his life. So these are so many things that now I'm just like, I have so many answers to people's doubts. I have so many things that I can promote, whether it was he qualified for the Madrid trip in his first year on the job. He qualified for Jamaica in his first year on the job. He sold $200,000 in his first year on the job and did all of it while sitting in his gaming chair in his dorm room. That's a lot of things that as a manager is pretty incredible to promote. It really is. And I'll tell you, Jordan, your results will influence a lot more than just the San Marcos team or the Lone Star division, but your results will influence the entire nation. There'll be managers talking about your year just the way Damien is and inspiring reps what they can do everywhere in the company. So thank you for being a leader. Thank you for putting your best effort out for this past year and producing what you did. Congratulations on all your success. Congratulations on that shiny silver trophy that you've got. And I hope that the future is even more exciting for you as you continue to move forward, man. Sir, thank you, Dan. Yeah. Thanks for being part of the podcast today, sir. I appreciate it. Jordan Curtis, everybody. Number one new sales rep in the Cutco Vector Marketing Sales Organization for 2023. Amazing performance, well over $200,000 in Cutco sales in just 11 months and a few days of time throughout the year. So amazing. I want to underscore the point about who you are being such a critical piece of someone's success in any role where you're attempting to influence other people. We have plenty of reps that come in and out of Cutco who do not succeed, and there's a variety of reasons why that happens with them. But sometimes it's this reason in reverse, right? If a kid was a screw-up their whole life and like they were the kid that parents didn't want their kids playing with, they were the kid that everyone knew was like a troublemaker, right? When that kid comes to work at Cutco and they start calling people they know, those people are automatically hesitant or dubious right out of the gate. And those types of people have a hard time getting appointments and they blame everything but themselves. They have a harder time making sales. They have a harder time making bigger sales because people don't trust them. And usually, as I said, they blame everything but themselves, but who they are in the eyes of others holds them back. You can see with Jordan Curtis that it's that same principle in reverse. Who he is as an individual is helping him to garner more and more support from others around him. It's helping him have a greater level of influence. I love the piece on detailed planning using the Google Cal, constantly finding new reasons, up-leveling his reasons to succeed. And what he said toward the end where he talked about going all in, right? Treating this like a real job, being committed to what you're doing, the discipline that he learned in life from his parents, from football, and other places. Damien said something interesting. He said there's a sign of intelligence you can observe in others when they are highly successful but yet they're still hungry for learning, improvement, and more knowledge. They ask questions. They strive to improve their results. They take responsibility for every facet of what's happening in their life. Extreme ownership. That concept, right? That was really cool. And you know what? Kudos to Damien himself for all the effort he's put in to helping Jordan. You can definitely see that a big reason for Jordan's success is Damien Scott. Off camera at the end, Damien asked me if I had anything else I would advise Jordan. And I said three things. One of those things was run your own race. That success is not about necessarily competing with others. Competition should be a part of why you do what you do. You should get fired up to compete during a push period. You certainly should get fired up about an annual competition if it's toward the end of the year and you're right there in the race. Let that motivate you, of course. But it's more important to be striving for your own goals, your own objectives. Sometimes if you make competition your biggest objective, you can be pulled down when others around you aren't at your level, or you can be discouraged when somebody is just way above your own level and you don't need to be. So I think that's important. I also told Jordan align yourself with other highly successful individuals both in and outside of your division and your region who are doing big things. Jordan mentioned that he started building a relationship with Mike Dowd recently. That's a great one to have, right? And there can be many others that Jordan can build over the years that are going to help him to become very successful. Many other relationships he can build. The third thing I told him is that you got to make sure you take time to have fun, that the reason why we work is to live. We work to live. It's not the other way around, right? So making sure that you have all the personal things you want to do planned into your schedule in the same detailed fashion that Jordan plans in his phone time and his demos, planning that other stuff too. And when you're hitting your goals, make sure you're doing the fun things as well. There are times where we have to ramp up effort in our business. Sometimes if we're not hitting our goals, we just got to work through that. We got to work our way out of that in order to be able to get back to a state of balance. But for the most part, when you're achieving the things you want to achieve, it's very important to make sure that your personal life is spinning in a great way as well. So those are a few things I shared with Jordan at the end. Hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you, Damian Scott, for participating. And thanks to Jordan Curtis for a great episode today. Thanks for listening. If you got value from today's episode, please share it with others and consider rating or reviewing us on your podcast player. Subscribing to the podcast is free and ensures that future episodes are automatically downloaded directly to your device. For access to guest bios, show notes and other resources, visit changinglivespodcast.com. You can sign up there to receive valuable resources for free from people featured on the podcast. And to support our podcast sponsors, visit changinglivespodcast.com. This is Dan Cassetta signing off. We'll be back in a few days for our next story about changing lives.