(888) 815-0802Helping SEALs Transition Into Sales, with Chris Anthony and Robert Moeller [Episode 813]
On today’s special episode, Chris Anthony (VP of US Consumer Goods at SalesForce) and Robert “Moe” Moeller (former US Navy Seal and Director of Military Teams sales at WHOOP) discuss their work with the Seal Future Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping Navy SEALs successfully make the transition into sales.
Seal Future Foundation: https://sealff.org/
Episode Transcript
Andy Paul: Chris and Robert. Welcome to the show.
Chris Anthony: Thank you for having us. We’re so happy to be here. Really appreciate the opportunity.
Robert Moeller: Yeah, thanks for having us, Andy.
Andy Paul: My pleasure. So, uh, we’ll start with you, Robert, where are you joining us from today?
Robert Moeller: Joining you from right outside of DC on the Maryland side. So it’s nice and humid and hot here. So it’s, it’s, you know, I, I can’t complain because it’s 90 degrees and a hundred percent humidity.
Andy Paul: See, I would complain about that myself.
Robert Moeller: Great. Yeah, I could, but no, one’s going to listen, so let’s be honest.
Andy Paul: As a Californian, you know,. I was out like on my balcony, my building this morning and I had to put a fleece on cause you know, the cool breeze was coming in off the ocean. That’s to me that’s that’s summer. And Chris you’re in the LA area. Right?
Chris Anthony: I am in the LA area, specifically Redondo Beach, and I am right there with you on the moderate weather cooler in the morning, warm in the afternoon and Jack back on in the early evening, late evening. It’s fantastic. Not trying to rub it in.
Andy Paul: Robert, you know, we’re not trying to make you feel bad or feel left out, but yeah,
Robert Moeller: I was going to say, I don’t feel bad for either of you cause you have to put your jackets on in the evening. So, uh, yeah, no sympathy on this end.
Andy Paul: yeah. It’s a tough life. So, um, so Robert let’s start with you is, is, um, so how old were you when you first thought hmm, maybe I want to be a Navy
Robert Moeller: Seal?
Wow. Uh, I actually was eight years old. I remember the moment in the second it actually happened. And, um, the reason I remember this is because I wrote a book in the book was Brave Men, Dark Waters by Orr Kelly. And it is it’s the first book that I actually read from page, you know, page one to page 231 or whatever it is. And it’s also the first book my mother actually saw me read. And, um, I remember I put it down. I finished it. It was right, right before dinner was ready. And it was probably about a five 30, six o’clock layer in New Jersey. And I, I, I shut it and I looked at my mother and I said, I figured out what I want to do. And that was it.
Andy Paul: So what was it that you read that inspired you?
Robert Moeller: Brave Men, Dark Waters was about Vietnam era Navy Seals conducting covert operations in Vietnam. And it was the first thing that I read that sounded just so cool to me. And I actually got it because, uh, I was a junior lifeguard working at the YMCA in New Jersey. And a Seal actually came in to the pool, met me. I asked him, I mustered up enough courage to ask this guy, huge guy. You know, when I was young, six foot full of muscles, uh, Hey, I said, excuse me, where do you swim? I thought he was a collegiate swimmer. He said, I’m not a swimmer. I’m a Navy Seal. I never saw him ever again, but he did send me the book to the YMCA. And that’s why I became a Seal because I met a guy randomly lifeguarding.
Andy Paul: Do you remember his name?
Robert Moeller: I, I don’t, I don’t know who he is and I’ve looked for him since. And I just to thank him because that created the path that I’m on now.
Andy Paul: Wow.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Paul: I mean, that’s like a TV show, right? This mysterious stranger shows up, you interact with them and gives you a gift that dictates the course of your life.
Robert Moeller: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what happened. And, um, you know, from that point forward, I was a chubby kid with a learning disability and a bunch of other stuff. And I told people from that moment forward, I’m going to do this. And, uh, along the way, I encountered a lot of people that naysayed and whatnot, but eventually I got to where I wanted to be.
Andy Paul: So, what was that path? Cause you went to college first before joining the Navy.
Robert Moeller: I did. I, uh, I was in a weird spot and again, and bringing everybody back to Jersey, but-
Andy Paul: Hey, why not?
Robert Moeller: That’s where my, my sales career actually started. Um, when I was transitioning, I think it was my sophomore year. Let me back up. It was my sophomore year and, um, I actually got fired from my job. Uh, I was a lifeguard, surprise, surprise, and I got fired because I wouldn’t throw certain people out of a pool because I felt it was morally wrong not to get into it. Uh, and then I actually started selling vacuums, Kirby Vacuum Cleaners door to door, and-
Andy Paul: I love it.
Robert Moeller: And anybody that’s been a salesman door knocking knows that you learn real quickly what works and what doesn’t and, and, um, That’s what I did for that summer.
I got into sales that way, and that was the summer right before 9/11. And once 9/11 happened there in September, I was in school going to New Jersey and, and I was going to leave. I was leaving work and I was going to go enlist and that’s was my path. This is it. This is my calling. I knew I was going to be a Seal and take it from there.
Uh, and you guys were around then and, you know, all the boards were jammed, especially on the East Coast. My mother called me on my Kocera analog cell phone and just gave me the advice that mothers usually give. And she simply said, Bobby, listen the Wars are not going to go anywhere, finish school, and you can go into the Navy after that. And I turned around, I was literally probably five, six blocks away from the Trenton and recruiter. I turned around and finished school. And then I enlisted after I graduated college in 2003.
Andy Paul: Wow. So as an enlisted person in the Navy then is you went in with the intention of becoming a Seal or, I mean, how does that process work? I mean, they identify you as a high potential individual or tell us a little bit about that.
Robert Moeller: Well, I think the process is different now, and I can only speak for it back then, but you were able to sign or tell the recruiters that you wanted to do, you know, some type of special operations. So whether that was a explosive ordinance disposal or Seal, it just depended on what you wanted to do now, this was great for the recruiters because you had a bunch of, you know, young men coming in saying, I want to do this. And of course it was before all the silly books and movies and all that stuff that a is around now. Um, so it made their job pretty easy. They said, all right, great kid. You don’t even have to pick a designation. Meaning, what is your job going to be when you maybe do not make it through buds? They just kind of skipped all that. And then if you ended up washing out of the program, you were in the Navy as undesignated. And if anybody knows what that means, it pretty much means you’re chipping paint on a ship somewhere 24/7. It’s just not a good deal.
Andy Paul: So you use the acronym bud. So that is the training course for becoming a Naval Seal.
Robert Moeller: Right. Basic underwater demolition Seal training is out there in California in that nice weather that you guys are enjoying right
Andy Paul: Well, I, if I turned my head to the right, I’m actually looking at Coronado Island, so yeah. Where you spent some time.
Robert Moeller: Some time and a lot of great memories there, but a lot of hard ones, uh, at that to say the least.
Andy Paul: Yeah, let’s see. You mentioned sort of silly books and movies. Is this meaning sort of glorifying in an unrealistic fashion? Is that-
Robert Moeller: well, I’ll say this, you know, I’m, I am who I am and this I think that as a topic that every Seal wrestles with, because I don’t like to promote the fact that I was a Seal, nor do I rest on my laurels of, of being one. And you know, that a lot of lessons learned from that environment translates into, you know what we’re going to be talking about today. Um, but it is one of those things where, yeah, I can’t have a 15 year gap in my resume. So at points, I know I have to talk about it, but it is one of those things where I think a lot of different individuals out there rest on their past accomplish accomplishments of what they did as a Seal. And, um, you know, I think it’s great to, to, to be one and have been one, but there’s just more to life to just having a Trident.
Andy Paul: Right. Yeah. I, I, um, was recruited to become a VP of sales at a company here in San Diego and at the end of the eighties, and yeah, one of my sales guys was, I don’t know, I worked with him for two and a half years before I found out. Yeah, he’d been a Vietnam era Seal. Um, yeah, it just never came up.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. And it’s just one of those things where it’s, um, It’s some guys look at it differently and that’s okay. You know, and I think it’s any vertical, whether it’s sales, military, you know, anybody can pound their chest about their accomplishments, but, um, you know, the humble ones and the quiet ones are the ones that you gotta be careful about.
Andy Paul: That’s right. That’s right. So you and Chris met through this foundation, the Seals Future Foundation. How did how’d you guys meet up on that?
Robert Moeller: Well, Chris, I’ll let you take this because you definitely tell the story a lot better than I do. I sound like your wife right now. I
Chris Anthony: You’re, you’re so much nicer though. I appreciate that. Um, more
Andy Paul: Wait, I was gonna say, is that your current wife?
Chris Anthony: Yeah, exactly. It’s my, it is my current wife. By the way I, and I, I definitely answered that question, how we found each other and found the foundation. Um, but it, it is interesting what Robert was talking about, the idea of just knowing at an early age, in one of the gifts of being involved with the Seal Future Foundation, myself and I look very much through the business side of having been in business my whole career and specifically sales for close to 25 years is, uh, I’ve worked with, gosh, I think it’s creeping up on like 30 transitioning team guys. Now it’s just insane. But that, that same story, that same question that you asked Robert, you know, this idea of knowing is such a consistent theme. And I find it fascinating because every single individual I work with, they just knew, they knew at some point that they were going to go down that path and they were going to get there and they were going to give it their all to get there. And I just, I always love hearing that. Um, I will say on the flip side, uh, I don’t know exactly when I was going to get into sales, but, and I
Andy Paul: Yeah, probably a month after you’re in it, I imagine if you’re like most people,
Chris Anthony: And I definitely wasn’t on my dad’s knee and he’s like, you’re going to go in to sales, uh, but uh, here I am, and I can’t think of a better profession. It’s been absolutely fantastic. And so one of the gifts of that has been having the opportunity to be in a position where I can teach what I know and share my knowledge from my career. Which I’ve had a lot of fun with lots of challenges. Yeah. And lots of learnings along the way. But there was an opportunity where I was, uh, about a year ago looking to reset myself, rethink, uh, my health and just be a better me all around.
And so I wrote a plan and, uh, in that plan, Uh, I said, I need to focus on my health and I need to focus on my, uh, exercise. I need to focus on sleep. I was a very short sleeper and I promise this will tie back to the foundation. Uh, but one of the devices that I found, uh, that was a good way of tracking your health and your sleep and helping you be smarter about the data of you was this device called Whoop.
And anybody can look it up anytime and it’s a crazy name, but come to find out, it can tell you so much about your sleep and your recovery and how hard you exert yourself. And I, I went all in on it and it’s, it’s been life changing. Well, I listened to the podcast that Whoop puts out in. They’re fantastic, but I step into listen one day and Robert was on there and he was talking about a big challenge he was going to do and his, his, his background and, and, you know, he was going to do this fundraising challenge. And he also just happened to work for woop and he was going to do it with some former Seals and one existing one, I think too and so I was like, dang, that’s a really cool story. And at the end of the podcast, they said, Hey, and if you want to help out the Seal Future Foundation, which is very much focused on helping, uh, transitioning members of the Navy Seal community move into the civilian world. Reach out. And so I did, I just that same day, I think I was getting, I listened to the podcast on an airplane and I reached out on a website and, uh, next thing you know, I’m working with a handful of guys and met Mo along the way, or Robert along the way, and, and that led us to this conversation today. So hope that provides some context.
Andy Paul: Yeah, no. Great. So taking a step further then is, is you had recently given a presentation about the top five traits of top performers. I believe you presented it to the foundation members. Um, what was sort of the genesis of that presentation?
Chris Anthony: Another gift of being in my profession for, for 25 years is the chance to work with absolutely exceptional professionals, top performers that are like no other. And I’ve seen the best of the best. I’ve seen the worst. I’ve seen everything in between, but I started thinking about, as I started to get involved with the Seal Future Foundation, I started thinking about Seal culture. What I thought I understood about Seal culture. And I was having a lot of conversation with these guys and, you know, there’s a lot of unknown going from a very structured military community and Seals are very focused. And Robert, you please correct me right away if I get anything wrong here, but Seals are very focused on success and they manage ambiguity really, really well.
Um, but, you know, the idea of moving from what is known and understood in a military career into a business career sometimes can seem really ambiguous. Like how can the skills that I have acquired and Excel that in the, in the teams be applicable to business. And I started thinking about a presentation that I give internally at my company.
And I’ve given several times about the top five traits of top performers and I thought, wow, if I look at those top five traits and then I compare it to what Navy Seals are known for and what they excel at, they’re almost perfectly aligned. And so I used it as a way to guide some of the individuals I was working with to do a compare and contrast. And I would give them the example of each of the traits and say, can you relate to this? Is this something that you’ve accomplished in your career in the military? And they’d be like, well, yeah, absolutely. We did. And so I found it that it was a great framework for helping build confidence, but also just to align already existing skills, not only for the transitioning Seals, but also for business owners that are looking to potentially hire these guys. Well that framework turned into a much larger conversation that Robert and I started talking about when we thought, well, let’s use this for the foundation as a means to educate everybody so that as they’re helping the guys make this transition, they can use this framework as a template for helping them understand how to translate skills.
Andy Paul: Got it. Well, we’re, we’re going to go through these, these five traits but I thought the thing that was interesting about the presentation as sort of a top level was, and you know, maybe it struck me for reasons you sort of just talked about is that it was primarily you’re presenting the challenge of, of one of being of confidence and it’s so interesting as is, you know, our perception, Robert of Seals is of extremely confident people. Right. Um, and so perhaps, you know, it’s almost confident people in the world and it’s like, yeah, this is kind of interesting. As you know, as we make this transition, one of their biggest challenges is one of confidence.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. And if you pull it apart a little bit and, and I’ll do that, you know, to pre-frame, you know, these five different pieces, if you will. To give you just an example, and I’m sure Chris can, can back this up from, you know, the number of Seals that he’s worked with now. It’s one of those things where, when I was transitioning out of the Navy, you know, my threshold or what I’m used to is, you know, jumping out of airplanes, scuba diving, shooting guns, all those things. Now that’s my normal. That is my every day normal day job. However you put me in an environment in a boardroom where I have to put on a suit and, you know, uh, interact with people in ways that I’m just not trained to do. It is probably the scariest thing that a Seal can think about. Now to take that even further when you’re transitioning out and you have to go on your first interview, you know, I was 35 years old and my resume was made out of crayon at best. And I didn’t even know how to tie a tie. And it was one of those things where I was so scared to go on an interview. And I would, I told people on my first interview, I said, I would rather be in a firefight right now overseas. And actually be sitting here talking to you because that’s how nervous I was.
Andy Paul: And what do you think that was from? Is that sort of lack, lack of preparation for the situation?
Robert Moeller: Well, I think, I think when you sit down with somebody like yourself or Chris and they break it down for you and they’re like, listen, man, your threshold is jumping out of an airplane at night at 35,000 feet blacked out, and you’re going to go do things that nobody will ever know about. And now you’re about to walk into, I don’t know, pick a company, Whoop, Salesforce, whoever it may be, and just sit down and have a conversation with a man or a woman that puts their pants on just like everybody else. You’re going to be fine. You just don’t look at it that way, because you don’t know, you know, about the unknown until you actually live it and do it. So I think with a little bit of coaching and a little bit of, you know, massaging, I think most guys get through it, but it is very scary if you walk into it without any experience,
Andy Paul: Well, the other part of that, that was in the presentation is talking about giving business people, business owners, and senior leadership, and so on the confidence to hire.
Robert Moeller: Yes.
Andy Paul: And let’s say it’s, you know, former Seals it’s like, are anybody in a similar, from a similar background? I was like, why is that? I would think that for the reasons Chris laid out before is for me, it’s like, Wow. They’ve got, you know, the baseline traits that you look for just as a human being for someone. Right. Am I want to say I, when I interview, I always want to start with who’s the human, and then I’ll worry about the skills afterwards.
Robert Moeller: Right. Well, I think for the veteran community as a whole, not just Seals, you know, I think there’s a lot of baggage that comes along with that title veteran, you know, and, and whether that’s, you know, Oh, this veteran might snap and he has, or she has PTSD or, um, you know, it just has issues from war. And just some of the stuff that is portrayed, whether it’s right or wrong, whether it’s through the media or different TV shows, I think a lot of employers don’t know how to have a successful transition period when they bring a veteran into their communities or into their workplace, because, you know, think about it and, and associate, or a brand new person comes in as a civilian and it’s like, all right, here’s your introduction, maybe a week or two weeks, or maybe, you know, four weeks at best and get to work.
Andy Paul: Or in sales, you know, you get a 90 day onboarding program. It’s like, yeah, well, that’s you, right? It’s not an offense. One thing site oftentimes rant about on this program is like-
Robert Moeller: Sure. We’ve talked. We talked about it last time we
Andy Paul: rightR right. It’s just like, yeah, everybody’s a human giving them. You know, you can tailor this program to the people that come in. If you’ve got the right person, invest in them.
Robert Moeller: Absolutely.
Chris Anthony: I think too, Andy, you bringing up a really good point. And just to tack on to what Robert was saying is, is that, you know, from a business owner perspective, there is a lot of times a misperception or misunderstanding of the, you know, the world that the individual is coming from. And so I think, you know, we’re, we, we do our best to educate business owners, but we also are trained to, you know, help that sir, or help these guys in particular start thinking about anticipating that conversation. That you need to come in with some stories, you may need to come in with some examples that you can tie back and help connect the dots on how you have negotiated something. And if we, you know, as we go through the five we’ll we’ll, we’ll share some of that. But part of it comes back to just educating the business owner because, you know, Moe talked about jumping out of an airplane, blacked out in the middle of the night in to territory that we’ll never know or understand what went down there, but there’s actually a lot that went down before that someone had to plan that mission. Someone had to sell that mission internally, someone had to approve it. Someone had to train for it. Someone had to anticipate failure. So it’s about education and storytelling to connect that gap often from the veteran, but also for the business hiring owner or business owner.
Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. When to get into storytelling we’ll dive deeper, because when Robert and I spoke last week read, I think a really interesting example of storytelling came up that I think early it’s so directly to sales. So we’ll jump into that. So that the five traits that you talked about or vision strong brand problem solving. Storytelling and gratitude. And so Chris, I’ll ask you, so yeah, I read your presentation sort of also one of reassurance, right? Because there is this overlap between what we look for or should be looking for in business versus the skills and traits that people bring. But, you know, for me, it really sort of started with this idea that it’s character and values. I mean much of what you’re talking about and you know, the brand and even the vision, some degree it’s, it’s, it’s who you are as a human.
Chris Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Paul: And I feel like we, we don’t put enough emphasis on that in the people we hire generally in sales, because that informs, the character informs, so much, you know, of what follows.
Chris Anthony: 100%, I think that’s spot on. And that the idea of looking at the, like you said, human looking at the complete picture, looking at the role, looking at the opportunity and helping both sides of the equation, the hiring manager, but also the individual doing the interviewing. Seeing it in its entirety becomes a different discussion. It’s also differentiating in the sense that, you know, when we’ll, we’ll talk about the traits, but, you know, having, having a grip on these and, and being aware of what you are made up of internally and how that’s applicable, and I would also say more importantly, maybe what you’re not made up of. Right. So a self awareness to be able to identify, Hey, I’m going to need some help in this area.
Business acumen might be one of them. Okay, cool. I can teach you business acumen, but you’ve already shown commitment. You’ve already shown them the ability to execute complex series of asks and planning. So yes to all of that.
Andy Paul: Yeah, very interesting. All right. Let’s talk about the first one. So first one vision, um, and these just so people are clear, and this is, this is a presentation you gave internally, you said, prior to talking to the Seals Future Foundation,
Chris Anthony: Yeah, the foundation of this presentation all started with being asked at my own company, Salesforce, to come in and speak to day one employees at our company. And share what I witnessed in my career and provide, you know, uh, executive welcome and make everybody, try to make everybody feel good and excited about the great journey. They’re about to start with us. And, and so, you know, these are, these are very much my views, um, not that of Salesforce, uh, but a lot of this comes from Salesforce. And so what I would do is I would start to share, Hey, in my career, I’ve seen it all, you know, the best performers, the not so great performers and everything in between. From our CEO all the way down to, you know, the, the janitor level, what are some of those traits that everybody has that top performers carry, and this is true across my career. And so, so that’s where it started is speaking internally. But, like I said, when I figured out that this was a good conduit for helping vets and specifically the Seal Future Foundation, um, I I’ve shared this presentation and in many places, just as a framework for discussion, it’s also a great interviewing tool I’ve found as far as when people ask me, Hey, what does some of the best people on your teams over the years have in common? This one’s it.
Andy Paul: Okay. So let’s start with vision. So, um, you wrote that for the Seal is that success is dependent on a clear vision and objective or lives will be lost. The stakes aren’t quite as high obviously in sales, but the lack of clear vision and objectives, in my opinion, is what handicaps most sellers is. They don’t understand what it is they’re trying to accomplish.
Chris Anthony: I could not agree more. And when you look at clearly defined outcomes that are written, a vision statement, that are well articulated, well understood to the individual, but even more importantly, well articulated to those around you. That are going into that meeting that are trying to do that next big deal or that next big sale or that big successful partnership session when that is well-defined, when that is well communicated, well rehearsed and then measured against and continually, uh, tailored for success. The outcomes are so much stronger than to everything you’ve just said, is this sort of variable, not, well-planned not well executed. I don’t know what I’m going into this meeting for. That has all kinds of downstream badness that comes with it. But when I look again at all different levels of an organization like ours and what I’ve witnessed over my career, top performers are really good at always having a vision of what they’re going to do in the long term, but also in the short term. Hey, I’m asking you to get on a call with me, the vision, the objective of this call is X.
Andy Paul: Well, and for me, I look at it even a more base level than that, which is, you know, I’ll be speaking to a group in public of salespeople and I’ll say, “Okay, well what’s your job?”
And invariably the answer is always to sell something right. To sell my, and I’m like, Hm. Yeah. Cause for me, for the successful people, their job is always about how do I help my buyer make a good purchase decision? And that, as you know, for me is that’s where the vision starts. Right? What am I trying to do? So I wonder how that maybe translates into the Seal world is, is how you look at, you know, you’ve got specific discreet missions, but the overall vision of what you do.
Robert Moeller: Right. And it starts on the Seal side, you know, and it doesn’t, and again, you can use any unit, um, not any unit, but, but you know, for, for, for what you’re asking here is it’s just, you know, on that clear vision, it starts with the day one, minute. of when you go through the pipeline of becoming a Seal.
And what I mean by that is, they start with the most mundane, busy tasks that they can give you because the attention to detail – and I’ll say that one more time – the attention to detail is what matters. And you’re doing this as a young guy that just wants to get to the next day. And they provide you with these tasks that you have to do that take hours and it’s for nothing. For example, here’s a paddle and I want you to dig a hole in the sand, on the beach ,that’s six foot that you can jump in.
Andy Paul: Okay.
Robert Moeller: What does that have to do with operations? Nothing, but if I’m willing to do it and I’m figuring out a way how to work with my team, or do it individually, if I can handle that one task and do it well, it starts to amplify. And that’s how they build on that from day one of training too now you have a 300 pound boat over your head and you need to run 20 miles with it, you know, bouncing on your head with you and your, your, your friends. The vision is to get from point A to point B, but it all starts with that small task and it might seem like it’s completely pointless, but they’re always stressing attention to detail, which is a part of the vision. How am I going to get from point A to point B.
Andy Paul: Yeah, and this is not to get sidetracked, but I mean, is this attention to detail something, maybe Chris over the course of your career, you’ve seen become more of a challenge for sellers.
Chris Anthony: I think so.
Andy Paul: I mean, I’ve seen it and I’m not trying to pick on a generation thing here at all, but I think that the, yeah, I see it too. And it concerns me in some level, just that, and I, yeah, just a simple example is like, No one pays attention to spelling anymore. Um, and-
Chris Anthony: I mean, we are 24/7, seven days a week. Our attention is dragged from one thing to the next and if an individual doesn’t have discipline enough to reign it in and get focused, um, All kinds of downstream effects happen from that, including lack of it, attention to detail, because they’are constantly wandering to the next thing. And they’re not even stopping long enough to think about that. And, and, and frankly, you know, as most talking about these, these little actions, these tasks, these, these seemingly, you know, focused on just getting to the next completion of a, a step in the process. Being forced into very focused behavior, I think, and believe that it, you know, it creates the ability to do that on a grander scale and thinking in terms of the team and then, yeah, and today’s society and business, we’ve just lost our way with being focused on, you know, at times on what the vision is, if we’re not careful.
Andy Paul: And so with your experience, Robert, I mean, you find that you’re better able to focus perhaps than some of your peers.
Robert Moeller: Uh, uh, you know, I think it’s dependent and really, it doesn’t-
Andy Paul: Not to make it a loaded question, but-
Robert Moeller: It is. Notice how I was political there. Um, but let’s be honest, I think with a certain experience, you know, with a certain level of experience, the same thing that required focus when you first started your career, doesn’t require as much focus as it does once you have, you know, 10,000 hours or, you know, a thousand reps under your belt. So I think it, it varies, you know, Chris and I are in completely different uh, parts of our careers when it comes to sales, because, you know, I did, you know, 15 years in the Navy and Chris was selling the whole time and and doing his whole thing. Um, but we come together so nicely because we’re, we’re, we’re coming around to this piece, you know, right now we’re just talking about vision, but it’s one of those things where, I don’t know who could focus longer, you, myself or Chris on one specific task.
Now, if it was jumping out of an airplane and I took the three of us up in an airplane. I wouldn’t be focused at all because I’ve done it thousands of times. Right where you guys would be focused, you guys would be really, hyper-focused like, okay, I’ve got to go through my emergency procedures, et cetera, et ceter., where I don’t know, pick a, pick a scenario, I don’t know, doing something that you guys have done thousands of times that I have not, I would be hyper-focused where you guys might not need to be.
Andy Paul: Yeah, well, and airplane example, I’d be focused on my heart not jumping on my chest, but yeah, uh, that address is some major fears for
Robert Moeller: There you go. Something I recommend for everybody. If you haven’t done it. I definitely see, I definitely recommend jumping out at least once.
Andy Paul: Okay. Well, maybe I can work up with that. Um, so the second trait then was strong brand and I love, Chris, what you had written there, because I think this is so applicable across the board as you, that for Seals, your reputation starts at the first day of training and stays with you forever. And, and I’m a huge believer that first impressions, I call them first perceptions actually, are so, so valuable and we don’t pay enough attention to it.
Chris Anthony: We, we, we, we don’t, and in that one came from, I was, um, working with a transitioning, um, Seal, actually the very first individual I ever worked with. And you know, we were having this conversation and I was walking through these five things and I, it, it, it started as just an example. And I said, you know, these are the five things that I’ve seen in my career.
And we were talking about brand and, and I, and I, I said, can you give me an example from your world of where brand is really important? And I define it as Jeff Bezos does, which is, you know, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. And he said, Chris, that’s a no brainer. He said, your brand starts the minute you step on the grinder at buds and it stays with you throughout your entire career in the teams. And it makes all the difference in the world. And, and, and I liked that so much and Robert, you can definitely expand on it from firsthand experience, but it is, it is just true. And, and, you know, young kids right now, it’s, it’s, it’s so funny, you know, telling them about how much your brand sticks with you, just even from a child level as well. And how that carries you downstream. I mean, the magic of social media, connecting people, all that, maybe you never wanted to talk to him again, but you end up talking to just because of social media now you’re connected, you know, having someone reach out and say, I remember you as such a nice kid. I remember you, then I’m like, damn. Brand definitely with you a long time. I, and I was thrilled to hear that. Um, I thought it was very nice, but like how long does that last? And so I, this one to me, for so many reasons, we think about people that, you know, and, and Andy think about. In sales and sales leadership, when you’ve had that rep that comes to you and they put their hands up and they go, nobody will help me. Oh, really? Why, why do you think that is? And come to find out they have a terrible brand internally. They didn’t show up when they say they were going to show up, they didn’t have good vision. They didn’t set others up for success. And then you look at the other reps. And everybody dives in, I was everyone’s trying to help.
Yes. We should all try to help each other equally. But at the end of the day, your brand really matters. And so, you know, in talking with that first guy I was working with from the foundation, I mean, he gave me example after example of this,and Robert I don’t know if you want to expand on that, but I love this one.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. I mean, we have a saying, or we had a saying in the teams that it’s, you know, um, you know, team gear and then your own gear. And what I mean by that is we would always do the team tasks first. It didn’t matter if it was three in the morning and everybody was cold and tired. You take care of the team gear first and then your own, and then you go home and that follows you. And again, that started from day one minute one, when you got to training. But it transcends through the years. And what I mean by that is it doesn’t matter if you took a guy that went through training in 2001 and paired him with a guy that went through training at 2014 or 2020. It does not matter. The foundation of that training as far as your own brand and how you always put the team first and then yourself is what is ingrained in Seals from the minute they get into training now, when it comes to your own brand, if you’re not outwardly trying to help all of your friends to the left and right of you, you know, your brothers to your left and right of you, your reputation is starting to get tarnished from training immediately.
And typically, to be honest with you guys, those types of folks go away.
Andy Paul: I was going to say-
Robert Moeller: Easily. Because you need the team to, to keep, you know, to keep going forward day after day. So it’s one of those really small, but super critical points. And that’s why I loved that when Chris brought it to the table for everyone, because.
Yes, your brand is you, but not necessarily just you, but the people around you and your team as well and that’s something that’s been stressed from day one and it’s transcended over the years, you know, decades among decades. And if I met a Vietnam Seal, it would be the same thing.
Andy Paul: And so Robert, you know, in the work that you’re doing with Whoop and on sales is, is so how’s that, you know, manifesting itself there for you.
Robert Moeller: Well, that’s interesting because for me it’s been a journey. And before I was working at whoop, I was working for another nonprofit and I was raising money for that nonprofit. And I was raising money for gold star children that lost a parent in the line of duty. So I went from selling vacuum cleaners to being, you know, a Seal to then, you know, going back into sales under the veil of nonprofit, then moving over to the Whoop side. So I’ve had a lot of different flavors and a lot of mentors along the way. And to be honest with you, I think sales in general, and I’m not saying this on the Whoop side, meaning just, you know, the Whoop team, but it’s an art form. And if you don’t spend time learning the art and talking to the people that have thousands of reps under your belt, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice because you know, a four week or a 30 day or 90 day training package of this is how you sell.
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Robert Moeller: Doesn’t translate because again, you know, similar to something that we’ve talked about in the past is what, what is influence or persuasion when it comes to making the sale? You know, how does that work? Well, how are you presenting yourself as a brand? Are you garnering trust? Are you coming off as salesy or sleazy? You know, all those things come into play and you need to read the room or read the person or read the customer in all of those situations.
Andy Paul: Yeah, I mean, so true. And I, this is, again, something else that I bring up in the public talks I do is, is you always ask is, you know, what’s in terms of brand name. I said, what’s the one question a customer will never ask you? A buyer will never ask you as a sales person? Any ideas? I’ll save you. save you the work. never say, well, you know, Andy, I really, I really like your product, but you know, you’re just not salesy enough. Could you be more salesy? This is what we hire and train people to be right. Be salesy, the customer customer doesn’t want you to be sales thing. So when you think about your brand, you serve to you left on your own to sort of figure that out.
Robert Moeller: Right, right. What, what style style of brand works for you if you are in sales? And I think there’s not a lot of stuff out there talking about, Hey, you need to be, you. You know, just because this works for Chris or this works for Andy, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me because that’s not me. I’m an individual and I’m coming to the table selling in a way that makes sense for me and the customer.
Andy Paul: Well, yeah. If, well, yeah, if only we had more, more sales leaders and managers that understood that, right? IBecause we are in this phase of our profession where, you know, compliance is oftentimes, to a process and methodology, is favored over the individual becoming the best version of themselves mostly goes to sale managers don’t wanna spend the time coaching and doing things that cause they’re fearful of deviating from the process. Cause fear they might fail
Robert Moeller: Right. And then also, you know, as a leadership problem that we all know about, but I’ve seen, and, um, you know, one of those things where it’s unfortunate, because if you’re not willing to fail and at least fail in front of your team, what kind of leader are you?
Andy Paul: Yeah. Well that’s the brand issue right there. Right? Because people won’t trust people don’t trust that person.
Chris Anthony: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you said it best earlier in the, the, just the word human. I’ve heard that a couple of times and I mean, we were human beings first and foremost. We’re people, we have feelings. We have emotions. We can be vulnerable come to find out. Um, but that is hard. That is very difficult. And I think this, you know, that, that whole perspective, right there says a lot about brand. And now I feel like more than ever more than ever having a really strong brand matters for so many reasons. And who you want to work for and who you’re going to perform best with and who you’re going to learn from. Looking at brand is, is really, really important. And again, you know, I, I’m using this in the sense of just a compare and contrast when I’m working with, with some of these individuals, you know, moving from the, the special operations community.
I live this fundamentally every day. I’m always trying to figure it out, but I’m always mindful of it and trying to, you know, authentically, always show up as myself, but I’m looking at the team around me and thinking about how good of a job are they doing in representing us. And Moe talked about, you know, you’re going out there representing the team, us, over the years, right. And it doesn’t matter what you are. You’re from. It’s a brand and you’re all attached to it. And it’s the same for us, right. Our company and our organization and the people we worked with over the years. And I talked about my people from my childhood, reaching out, saying one thing or another, it’s all connected. And I think, I think right now more than ever, this is a really important one to be mindful of.
Andy Paul: And, and it starts with you as an individual, right? I mean, this is, I’ll just, yeah, one thing I remember from my childhood and I forget how old I was. Yeah. Preteen, but, um, just more my, my, my Dad saying, I think I remember what sort of started as we’d been at a restaurant and the, the waiter had undercharged us. And my dad saw that and corrected him and said, you know, you charged a little on the bill here and, you know, could you correct that? And so on. And I remember asking him about it afterwards. And then he, his answer was really simply says, you know, when you, at the end of the day, when you, when you’re dying, the only thing people remember about you is your character.
Chris Anthony: Yeah.
Robert Moeller: So true. So true.
Chris Anthony: Yeah. Yes. That’s
Andy Paul: And that’s that stuck with me throughout my entire life. I would say I’m older now than he was when he told that to me. Um, but that’s, that’s where the sin for me, at least the, you know, the human part of the brand really starts
Robert Moeller: And I think from a sales perspective as well, just bringing it back to sales is, you know, your level of. Comfort of being you as you sell. I have to be honest with everybody listening is I probably wasn’t comfortable being me as a sales person when I first got out of the military probably for the first 12 months. And then I realized, you know, what if I’m just. If I’m, if I’m going to pretend, why do this? I’m not going to pretend I’m going to be me because that’s what, that’s, what works for me is be me and also sell. And after I gave myself the permission, after 13 months, I remember it so clearly, you know. I’d been trying to emulate my mentor. And I just said to myself, enough of trying to emulate somebody else, just be you and sell that’s when things start to connect and take off for me.
Andy Paul: I love that. Yeah. I think you’ve maybe had an advantage. I mean, I compare myself with my 21 year old self, when I first started in sales, is it, it took longer than 12 months to get to that point. Uh, the advantage perhaps of being a little more mature and in terms of who you are, but, um, so the third trait will jump onto us is master problem-solver. Another one of my favorites. Um, cause I imagine that that in your life as a Seal is no matter how well the missions are planned, um, something goes wrong instantly, perhaps. And so you have to problem solve your way out of a situation.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. It’s one of those things where being that master problem solver, and I’m not saying Seals are better problem solvers than anybody else. But what I will say is the level and depth that they go to when it comes to any problem set, it does not matter what happens. In that real world, real, real world environment, because they’re so well prepared going back to the vision and having that strong brand. And everybody is on the same page that when all hell breaks loose and you know, a firefight and, you know, ensues or whatever that may be, the problem solving is almost a poetic. If you will. I used to tell my guys when I was training. Them that there’s nothing more beautiful than organized chaos. And at a very deep level that’s what problem solving is. And we deal with that on the personal side career side, and everything in between, there is nothing more beautiful than organized chaos because you’re in your own mind trying to figure out a solution to the problem. And it all starts again, going back to the very basics of how am I going to dig this six foot hole in the sand with a paddle.
Andy Paul: Well, I love that, that imagery of, of organized chaos cause that, yeah, that’s, that’s very descriptive of a lot of sales in general. What do you think?
Chris Anthony: I absolutely think so. And you know, I, I, the other aspect of this, and there’s, there’s really, if we’re putting images out there to imagine for a moment, I’m a big fan of the documentary Free Solo with Alex Han. You know, and it is a nail biter and your pumped, right. And you watch this guy climbing El Capitan time, you know, no ropes, no restraint, just goes up there and does it. It’s awesome.
But when you listen to him being interviewed and he describes how he prepared for that climb, he climbed that rock thousands of times, using ropes, anticipating every fail point, knowing when things could possibly go wrong and what to do in the moment. So he looked genius like in the moment, but he had already worked that through in his head, you know, and I heard him on a 60 minutes interview at one point and he said, if I lose my cool, and I lose my calm. Yeah. And start to get nervous and get sweaty palms. Something’s gone wildly wrong because I didn’t prepare correctly. And, and I think about that because again, thinking about the conversation I’m having with some of these gentlemen in the transition and much to what Robert was just talking about is problem solving a lot of times has to do with just preparing and anticipating failure and how to navigate around it. And every single moment along the way. And so master problem solvers in my experience, um, do just that. And they look at the vision and they look at the intended outcome and then they, they to the very best ability. And I think we’d all argue in our lives. We wish we had more time to do this. They try to branch out every potential fail that could happen and what we’re going to do to get around it. And I think that that really becomes the foundation that prep and planning and rehearsal becomes the foundation of, you know, why top performers are master problem solvers
Andy Paul: Yeah, I think I’m sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, I think, um, there’s another element for me, which is that. You assume nothing. I mean, for me in sales, it’s like, you know, I think part of the process, part of problem is we’re so driven by process and we think everything’s so repeatable. It’s like, yeah, you just can’t assume it’s going to be the same way. I mean, yeah, you’ve, you’ve practiced. You’ve got certain competencies, but if you’re not being mindful at each step of the way, then you’re going to create more problems than, than are necessary.
Robert Moeller: Andy, I couldn’t agree more with you on that. And how boring would sales be if every sale was this same exact thing over and over again, it’d be terrible.
Andy Paul: Yeah, I would’ve left at 40 years ago. Yeah.
Chris Anthony: Yeah. I think that I think that’s so true. The other aspect of this, and just trying to bring imagery to the surface for everybody listening is the idea of picturing a closed door. And Robert and I talk about this one a lot because I look at this closed door and I see a boardroom and I’m thinking to myself at this closed door, just imagining one, what preparation, it’s a boardroom, the CEO’s in there, the CMOs in there, whomever, and we’ve got to get in there and we’ve got to give such an effective, compelling, persuasive presentation that they sign on the dotted line, or they agree to partner with us or, or do whatever, whatever that objective is because we’ve got a vision for it.
But, I look at that door and I think, what do we need to do to prepare going through that door? Who’s gotta be in the room with us? What happens if this, he only says she has five minutes for the meeting? So there’s all that preparation that goes into it. But as I had this conversation with Robert, and I’ll let you expand on it, you know, he was telling me about looking a little bit at a doorway, a closed door from being in the teams, which is name to here in a second.
But, but also about the idea of what did we learn when we went through that door, how did that translate downstream for the next time we had to go through a door. And I think that’s important as master problem solvers are not only really good at problem solving for what they’re about to do against their vision, but they learn from it and they communicate what they learned in what problems occurred. So that next time they rented that problem, they don’t hit it again. But you want to expand on that Robert, a little bit.
Robert Moeller: Yeah, absolutely. So when you look at the door and we’ll just use, you know, the door in your house, or it doesn’t matter wherever you are listening to this, it’s it’s you, if you take a second, look at the doorframe. You have a couple of basic things you have, you know, you have your horizontal on the top and you’ve got your verticals go into the ground or the floor.
And then you have a couple, uh, you know, a couple of doors have these, uh, levers, or if you will, and you have the hinges on the inside, you can’t see them. And then you have the doorknob pretty simple, pretty basic, pretty universal across the board. Now, as a tactical individual, going through the door, you know, Chris says who’s going to be on the other side of it, you know, is it the CEO?
It doesn’t matter who it is. In my world. You know, before I was doing what I’m doing now is, you know, there’s somebody on the other side of that door that could potentially kill you. Bottom line. And how do you approach that door? How do you put your hands on the actual door knob? Is the door locked? Is it, is it unlocked?
Is it going to squeak and alert the people on the other side of the room that I’m coming in? There’s so many different what ifs going back to preparedness?,If you will, when you approach the day? Now there’s a couple of ways that I can go through that door. I can go hard, fast with my team behind me and make a bunch of noise or what we learned from thousands of reps, does it make more sense for us to be slow, methodical and slowly turn the door door handle? Creep in and see what’s on the other side and then make the decision from there. And that’s how we started approaching going up to every door, is how do we take this door? Not every situation is different. And if we fall back on the framework that we know going through a door, what works, what doesn’t that gives us an advantage 90% of the time, once we get through the threshold, once we cross the threshold of that door and after we read the room, then we can make that last 10%. But all the work is done outside the door before you cross that threshold, because you’re reading the door and you’re attacking it the right way.
Andy Paul: Well, yeah. I love that. I mean, one of the things that that brings to mind is, you know, I think about how so much of the, sort of the approach to the door, looking at it from a sales perspective is dictated by the personality types that we bring into execute this task. And, you know, if you read a job posting for, you know, a sales person, oftentimes that has the sort of macho language, you know, hunter. Yeah, aggressive closer, which you know, is sort of a substitute for saying the word killer and it’s like, yeah, none of it talks about what the buyer wants. Right. Is, you know, we, don’t curious open-minded problem solvers and that really dictates how you approach that door.
Robert Moeller: Absolutely.
Chris Anthony: Yeah, I like that.
Andy Paul: Yeah, it’s just, it’s it’s I think there’s so much we could learn from that. And I love the idea of approaching it slowly. You’ve got a framework, but you also know that yeah. You don’t know what you don’t know that last 10%, which I think is so, so valuable.
Robert Moeller: Right. And Chris hit that too, because you know, you walk into the room and you think you’re going to do a 30 minute pitch and the CEO stands up and goes, Hey, I got pushed. I got 10 minutes go. That’s that last 10%. And you’d better be ready for it.
Andy Paul: Yeah, well, gosh, I’ve flown to Europe and had the CEO tell me anything, yeah, I got five minutes. It’s like. Hmm, you realize I just flew 12 hours. Yeah. We’ve all been there,
Robert Moeller: We’ve all been there.
Andy Paul: Yeah. My favorite story in that, regardless we were, this was years ago. I was with a satellite communications company. We were, had gotten approached by, this was before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we’ve been approached by TASS, which was the Soviet news agency to sell them a satellite communication system. So they could distribute their Newswire to the various outlets around the world. And so we had cleared with them, the FBI and state departments, all we could go over and do it and had made a trip over and we’d move the deal forward. And I said, okay, we’ll schedule a time for you to come over. We’re gonna negotiate the contract. And this was the time if you went to Moscow, there weren’t a lot of flights in and out. So you booked your flight. You weren’t getting on an earlier flight or anything happened. And so I booked myself for a week coming in from London and yeah. Show up the first day for the negotiations and something was happening internally and they decided they weren’t going to do it. So I sizing. Moscow for five days. Minding my own business with my KGB minder with me.
Robert Moeller: I was going to say, well, who was following you during that time? Cause
Andy Paul: Oh, it was here. It was, he was, he was, he was the driver now. He was, he was right there. Yeah, he was, it was pretty open the way it was, but, uh, yeah, it was pretty, pretty interesting situation. So, um, alright, so let’s go to storyteller. And again, I like like this one as well, because it works on so many levels. So Christie wrote the best story always wins. So tell us about that.
Chris Anthony: Yeah. If we, if we think about really having. Someone responds to us and really hear what we have to say and really have it stick and have it gravitate. Can I have a great story that goes with it and. You know, we do say, and something we say right about to my company a lot is that the best story always wins.
And in, can you paint a vision of success? And can you put the customer in the center of that vision of success authentically, uh, truly, and, and are you going to help them deliver on whatever their objectives and whatever it is that they’re trying to achieve and have you do the gap on how you’re going to help them do that?
You gotta be a really good storyteller in order to do that. And part of the way that you do that is you have to understand the context of your audience and who are you speaking with? And what’s going to resonate. Are you speaking the language of the customer that’s relevant? And remember when I’m talking about this trait, which is the fourth one on sharing, you know, why storytelling matters so much in business.
Um, but I also firmly believe that being a personal. Storyteller’s important as well. And what I mean by that is the ability to talk about your values and what you stand for. And I’m going to go back to the word human that you use, you look at in a hiring scenario, someone that you’re interviewing and you ask them, Hey, tell me a little bit about yourself.
What are some of your values and what you stand for? And the person says, you know, I stand for my family. I stand for health. I stand for trust and I stand for giving to others. And then you ask another person. And you say, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you stand for. And they’re like, well, you know, my family is pretty cool and I want to take care of them and you can see that they’re thinking their way through it, which person stands out more.
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Chris Anthony: It’s fascinating. First of all, uh, one of my favorite questions by the way is just to, when I’m interviewing is just to go down that path of that. And I’m not asking anybody to fabricate a story about themselves personally, but it tells me a lot about their ability to tell a story. Now sales is very much all about storytelling, painting that vision of success.
Now I’m going to tie it back to the Seal Future Foundation. So when I’m doing some of this coaching and I’m working with the guys and I say, you know, tell me about a time you had to tell a story, tell me about a time you had to negotiate something. What does that look like? And, you know, one of the guys I was working with, he was like, well, I’m not really sure.
And we started to unpack it a little bit about storytelling and having a negotiate, something we’ll come to find out. He actually had to negotiate peace on behalf of two tribal elders and a local security force in three different languages and come to find out pop tarts was the magic key to make everybody at ease at the table. And they also had to negotiate with the. Uh, attorneys internally to make sure that the peace package that he was helping put together among all these different armed factions was going to be cool and going to be good for the longterm health of the country, uh, and that local region. And, and so he actually came back with an amazing story.
And that was pretty phenomenal. He had to negotiate that. And so I worked with him to really frame up that story in a way that was compelling and interesting. Cause it is, it was just a matter of having the confidence to be a good storyteller about it.
Andy Paul: Well used line in the presentation, which I think is powerful. As you said to broker, from the Seals perspective to the broker piece, we often have to use stories to describe a life without fear or danger. And Robert United spoken about this last week when we were talking, is this listening? I think that’s so interesting and so vital and so missing so often in sales is there’s been this huge emphasis on storytelling, but it’s about telling stories that, that illustrates something that’s outside the customer, right? This is how something, somebody similar to you did something similar to what you want to do, but I’m remembering reading this line from John Steinbeck years ago, it an East of Eden, actually the book is saying, you know, “If the story’s not about the listener, they don’t want to hear it.”
Right. Yeah. People are basically interested in their own story. And so this is a story and it’s, as you described it, Chris early, just before us, this is the story we have to get adept at telling our customers is their story, their vision. Right. And, and that’s just not enough emphasis on, on that. And every time I mention that social, the storytelling people always attack. I mean, but, um, but yeah,
Robert Moeller: Why wouldn’t why wouldn’t they, why
Andy Paul: Well, yeah, I mean, cause people written books, don’t X number of stories. You needed every Salesforce in these to be able to tell. And I say, we only need to be able to tell one story and that’s the customer story. And that’s, that’s what you guys are doing in negotiate with these tribal elders. And as you’re telling their story, right. This, to be able to this division and be able to live in peace without fear of danger, that’s their story.
Robert Moeller: Right, right. No, absolutely. And there’s so many versions of that type of environment where a guy doesn’t know that he told the master story and a culture or a village or a country is better off and, you know, not to get political here. But it’s just one of those things where storytelling is, is so critical to everything we do. It’s not just the, you know, making the sale. How do you build rapport with a customer? You don’t just walk in and ask them to give you a million dollars. You have to sit down and tell a story. Well, if it’s not based on what the customer needs, or you don’t know who you’re speaking to, and you’re just blah, blahing about, you know, this random, it doesn’t work that way. So it has to be hyper-focused when you, when you storytelling, know who your customer is and know your audience. And, you know, one of the things that I found was on the sales side is, you know, be open and be vulnerable. Be open and vulnerable about you and maybe your product isn’t 100% perfect. And that’s okay.
Don’t try and sell it that way if it’s not, but from start to finish, you’re human be vulnerable, here’s our technology or here’s our widgets, if you will, let’s talk about it.
Andy Paul: Yeah. Very, very much so. Very much so. So the question is, so how, cause you described a situation when we spoke before about you’re thrust into negotiating, you know, between various groups, it’s like, how did they train you on that?
Robert Moeller: Wow, man. That’s a great question. It there trial and error, I’ll be honest with you. They’re a trial and error and we, we, we, and I mean, we, and I mean, this is across the board. Um, you know, we learn the hard way and I think you have to learn that way because. Even in sales and this is really applicable, you know, when let’s just say an American goes overseas and tries to make a sale in Europe or Asia or the middle East, the process is completely different in every single culture. And I think that’s where you don’t really hear a lot of talk about is okay. Just because this worked in Europe, it doesn’t mean the same approach is going to work in Asia. And either you got to find a guy that’s very experienced and has a lot of reps under his or her belt, uh, from that region and kind of compare notes, or you just got to learn the hard way by failing and failing quickly and doing it over again.
Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s, that’s exactly what you do. I mean, do we talk about lack of training and certain things on sales I’m in this idea of doing international business, which is yeah, yeah. I was just thrown into the deep end of the sewing poor from the beginning on that. I mean
Chris Anthony: Same her,. Andy. I mean, doesn’t that just resonate, Andy? What, what Robert’s talking about? I mean, like, you know, with our business backgrounds, I mean, same boat for me. I had to go to Tokyo and present to a Japanese CMO, zero training and nothing against, you know, any companies, just a lot of times the frameworks for training wasn’t there and, um, all those little cultural cues and all those little moments.I mean, there were some tough lessons learned along the way and ironically, my life wasn’t at risk going.
Andy Paul: Though my life was not at risk either. Oh, well, yeah, my wardrobe is at risk. My, my wardrobe is at risk. So my first international business trip came about spur of the moment. I ended up taking over international sales at this one company and had to short notice, go off to Stockholm. And so I’d spent some time overseas and in high school and so on, so, but hadn’t traveled widely internationally other than to Japan and back. But, um, So we fly to Stockholm, get in first thing in the morning, you know, go to a hotel for a couple hours then going to meet with the CEO and the managing board of this company. And as the, actually a Swedish national at the time, nationally owned telecom company, and, uh, as were they live, they were working, you know, classic old building and Stockholm and near the opera house and we’re walking over and sort of approaching the door with that guy that worked for me is suddenly I felt plops all over my shoulders and forth and head and about 10 pigeons that hit me as I walked in the door to this building for my first international business meeting with the CEO of this company, it was like, okay, there’s a message there. So we were in the bathroom, cleaning myself off, like walk in. Yeah. They’re like what happened to you? Your pigeons greeted me hello.
Chris Anthony: Oh my
Andy Paul: gosh.
So yeah, you have to be prepared anyway. Um, all right. Let’s jump into the last one, cause it’s a great, great conversation we’re having here is talking about gratitude and, um, yeah, I love the expression from one of the team members. Don’t confuse kindness with weakness.
Chris Anthony: Robert, do you want to take that one?
Robert Moeller: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s interesting because this one is close to home and this is a personal friend of mine. I won’t mention his name here, but, um, you know, that’s, that’s kind of what I live by in my own sales career now, because, you know, just because I have the sword and I know how to wield it doesn’t mean I’m right.
You know, pulled out and, and, and, and whatnot. And I think when you become a veteran in the sales game, everybody, it has a version of their sword. Now mine might be real or literal, whatever. Um, but you know, don’t confuse kindness with weakness because at the end of the day, You know, it takes a lot of guts, grit, call it whatever, when it comes to standing up and saying, Hey, you know, no, this isn’t the right way to go about this.
Or I think more managers need to do this and failing all the things that we’re talking about here. Um, and it’s just one of those things where. At the end of the day, you know, expressing that gratitude to the people around you, to the people that work below you and every, every direction, you know, I found that to be, you know, one of the best civilian lessons that I got was being able to tell somebody, thank you, thank you for helping me. Thank you for answering that question. I don’t care if it’s the janitor to the CEO. I don’t care who it is, but. Being grateful every day and expressing your gratitude to others has gotten me farther than me. You know, unsheathing the Sealed, if you a sword, if you will, and wielding it that way.
Andy Paul: Yeah, I think it’s such a, such an important lesson. A current example. I’m a huge soccer fan. Uh, Liverpool’s my team and big Juergen Klopp fan, and, and what he insists on, he took over the team five years ago is that the players had to know, the names and basically the personal background, so every employee for the club, man, and they insisted on because yeah, you can’t do your job without people to sell tickets. Yeah. Make the food, you know, all the way down. And yeah, I just don’t see them enough of that. Um, where people acknowledge that they’re part of a team. Right. I mean, every time I’m on LinkedIn and, and here are these, uh, Um, or reading the titles and the profiles, and it’s like, yeah, you know, three times X, uh, uh, you know, seven time close this much business. That’s like you that as part of a team, that didn’t happen because of you.
Robert Moeller: Yeah. And that’s, that’s something that’s stressed again, going back to day one week, one minute. One is you’re not going to make it. And it does not matter if it’s Seal training or the corporate environment. When it comes to sales, it is a team effort. A hundred percent all the time. And if you’re all rowing in the right direction, that means your, your level of readiness, preparedness and willingness is going to go a lot further.
And at the end of the day, once you guys get through that dynamic task or dynamic target target, everybody should be looking at each other and saying, thank you because it doesn’t just take one ever.
Andy Paul: As well as job well done.
Robert Moeller: Absolutely.
Chris Anthony: what’s interesting about this one to me is I, you know, this is something I’ve been using to present. And I talked about gratitude and I have so many, I had so many business examples of like, you know, why gratitude’s important. It’s and to me, a lot of times it’s the small thank yous, right? It’s the unexpected small thank yous to people that don’t.
Don’t don’t anticipate and you’ve gotta be of course authentic with it, but taking the time to call someone out for something small that they did that, you know, back to this team concept that moved everything forward. Um, and, and I have tons of examples and, and you know, one of my favorite quotes that I always think about when it comes to gratitude is, you know, when you see something beautiful in someone, tell them. You know, it only takes a second to say, but for them it could last a lifetime. And, and we’ve all been been there. We’ve had that moment where we’re having a really bad day and someone says a little, thank you. And it changes everything. You feel like you’re walking on the moon. I mean, everything is great because you got acknowledged in, in, in, so I could think of those examples in, into what Robert was talking about. You know, this again, I use this as a framework for working with some of the guys and I was trying to think of how can I apply this in, in, you know, the lesson, right. He got out of it. Not only is the, um, don’t confuse kindness with weakness, but. Don’t no. If you think in terms of gratitude also means, um, showing or showing up as being in service to others. And well, members from in the military community are all very much in service to others. They’re all about giving back and, and, and that became a great moment for me to really connect the dots. And, and one of the challenges though, that I’ve, I would run into frequently and still do is very much along the lines of what Robert talked about.
Team culture. It’s so driven into team mindset is so driven into the military culture until that’s an, especially the Seal community I’ve found. So getting someone to tell a story in terms of I getting these guys to tell in terms of a success story, where they did X, can sometimes be a challenge because of, that’s not how you show up in the teams.
You don’t speak in terms of I. So one of the ways that I’ve, you know, that we have is, yeah, this is the foundation that we we’ve tried to bridge that gap and get a little more comfortable with it, and this very much has to do a storytelling as well as speak in terms of how you did something with the team that was in service to others. Because I was a part of this team, we worked collectively to achieve a vision. We had a strong brand with the local elders and we did it to help them find peace. And I was a part of that team. Now I’m speaking in terms of what I might’ve done in that process, but I’m also acknowledging team and how it’s service to others. But at the end of the day, it’s really highlighting the importance of gratitude.
Andy Paul: And speaks to brand, right? I mean, think about it-
Chris Anthony: This is last for a reason.
Andy Paul: Yeah, but you think about, um, you know, the, the impact you had on that person that reconnect with you from elementary school, right? I mean, it always calls to mind, sort of the Maya Angelo statement, you know, people may not remember your name, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
Chris Anthony: A hundred percent.
Andy Paul: Rough paraphrase of that. And this was a person that yeah. They remember how you made them feel.
Chris Anthony: Could not agree more. It’s it’s this is, uh, of all of them. It’s my absolute favorite, because I think as I get older and allegedly wiser and I do use the word allegedly, um, gratitudes where it’s at and. Saying thank you to others and trying to help one more person that is, that is come to find out kind of awesome.
Uh, really awesome. And, and I never really, uh, along my career personally, you know, I never really thought in those terms and you know, it is a deeply, I’ve always. I like to think of myself as showing good gratitude over the years, but the importance of it is not maybe what I realized to the degree that I had. And then when I got involved with the cl future foundation, starting with these guys and thinking about how it’s always about team, and it’s always about service to others, I was like, Oh my God, like, this really is the most powerful of these five.
Andy Paul: Right. Absolutely. I love it.
Robert Moeller: For sure. For sure.
Andy Paul: Alright, well, gentlemen, we’ve run out of time, but, um, if you could, Robert and Chris is how we could connect with you. If people want to connect with you, and if people want to learn more about Seal’s Future Foundation, how they might help.
Robert Moeller: So on the Seal future faces, I can’t even say it on the Seal future foundation side. You guys can find us on all the social platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and also visit our website at www.Sealff.org. That’s Sealff.org. And if you ever want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, under Robert Moeller. And, uh, I’m the big happy guy with the grin on his face. That’s me. So that’s, that’s how you can get in touch with him.
Chris Anthony: Yeah. Uh, Chris Anthony, you can find me on LinkedIn and I know you we’ve already said what my name is. I’m sorry. Search Chris Anthony on LinkedIn. And you can find me there. Uh, there’s maybe a couple of others, but, uh, you’ll find me, uh, listed under Salesforce and working with the Seal Future Foundation.
And I would just say this though, too, uh, please do reach out first and foremost, reach out. And if you’re a business owner, sales leader, anybody in this capacity and you have some interest in the Seal Feature Foundation, maybe hiring some of these individuals, uh, want to help and coach and practice interview want to donate. By all means, reach out to Robert and I, we, we really do need some help. It is a tough time in this economy right now, uh, in the world that we’re facing. And, um, there’s a lot of, uh, healthcare that goes to this community, uh, that the foundation does. And I know we’re talking about business here, but there’s a lot of, uh, care that is being affected because of the current state of the planet. Um, so if you want to help, nothing would make Robert or I happier than to hear from you. Um, or if we can help you in any other capacity, very, very willing to do it.
Andy Paul: Alright. Well, Chris, Robert, thank you very much for your time. And I look forward to talking to you both against soon.
Robert Moeller: so much, Andy.
Chris Anthony: Absolutely.
