John SmallMtn (01:18)

Welcome to another episode of Founders Growth. My name is John Hill. I’m the founder of Adapted Growth. Today we have a very old friend of mine who I’m excited to have on the show. His name is Moose Reed.

I’ve known Moose since back in the day when we were just selling on pipelines and helping people get programs. And he’s had this very cool path about staying in the high-ticket space much longer than I did and finding a way towards being a partner in a company now called Sphere Rocket. Moose has had such phenomenal success in sales that whenever he left whatever he was working on, he really could have gone and done anything, right?

But he found this lane with Sphere Rocket. And so we’re going to talk to him about his path, about how he got here, why this stuff matters, and what he’s learned along the way. But Moose, did I miss anything in there? Anything you want to kind of call out or highlight?

Moose Reed (02:04)

No, you hit the nail on the head. Appreciate you having me as always, man. Great to connect again. I know it’s been a couple months since we’ve caught up, so I’m just excited to talk to you and hang out.

John SmallMtn (02:14)

Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. One of the things that I talk to people about a lot with a lot of salespeople is around the idea that I personally think that if you have some sales chops and some sales savvy, becoming a founder is a very natural progression, right? A natural part of the process. When you were leaving the sales recruiting that you were doing there, were you…

Were you thinking about all the options? Were you in a scramble to try to find something else to do? How were you feeling when you were leaving that space before you moved to where you are now?

Moose Reed (02:45)

Yeah. It’s an interesting question. I think as a salesperson, right, you’re always, in your mind, thinking, “Can I do this better than the person who I’m doing it for?” Right? So naturally, you always want to evolve into some type of business owner. You’re always thinking about different streams of income while you’re selling, right?

I heard this talk by Mark Cuban when I started in sales many years ago, right? And Mark Cuban says, “If I started from scratch again, I don’t know if I could become a billionaire. Becoming a billionaire takes a lot of luck. But I know for a fact I could become a multimillionaire, right? And the way that I would become a multimillionaire is I would work two jobs. The first one is a high-commission sales job that increased my upside. But I would also bartend at night, because people don’t realize that you have to protect your downside, and commission-based sales has a large downside.” So I heard that advice early in my career and I really took it home. So when we met, John, a lot of people don’t realize that working in high-ticket sales was my commission-based gig, right?

John SmallMtn (03:57)

Yeah, it does. Yeah.

Moose Reed (04:11)

I was an Area Sales Manager for a large company—a $4 billion sales org called Regis, right? Regis was high salary and then a bonus, very low commission. High salary and bonus.

John SmallMtn (04:21)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (04:25)

And to sort of maximize my income, ironically enough, I staffed two virtual assistants while I was at Regis to do the majority of my job for me, right? I was probably spending 10 hours a week in corporate work. And then my full-time job—even though it wasn’t perceived to be—was high-ticket sales with coaching sales when we met, right? So I was working two gigs.

John SmallMtn (04:45)

Really? I… okay, we’ve never talked about this before.

Moose Reed (04:51)

A lot of people didn’t see the Regis side of it, right?

John SmallMtn (04:53)

Yeah, that’s fair, yeah.

Moose Reed (04:56)

And I had gotten recruited—this is why I left coaching sales, right? I had been recruited to my first Sales Director role. So I was the number one rep at Regis out of 473 reps, right? And then I was working commission-based in high-ticket sales. When I was approached for my first Sales Director role, I was offered a salary of 130, right? My top year working both jobs was like 150.

John SmallMtn (05:12)

Okay. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (05:24)

Right, so I was like, “Yo, I’m willing to take a haircut to put my concentration towards one job.” You know what I mean? This was going to a Sales Director role in international logistics, right? I took that job. I loved the guy that I worked for, I really consider him a mentor in my life, right? But I hated the industry, right?

John SmallMtn (05:24)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Man, I’ve been there.

Moose Reed (05:47)

Talking trade lanes between Shanghai and LA versus our world of high-ticket sales and getting people emotional, et cetera, wasn’t my cup of tea. So Justin, the founder at Sphere Rocket—him and I always stayed connected. I built out his sales team while I was at Coaching Sales.

John SmallMtn (05:59)

Yeah. Okay.

Moose Reed (06:08)

We always stayed connected and he poached me away from that gig to go and be the Sales Director for him. So of course, I thought about going in to start something of my own. Of course, I thought about, “Could I be a sales rep and have more of an upside?”

John SmallMtn (06:15)

Okay.

Moose Reed (06:25)

Justin poached me. He kept my base the same at the time, right? He gave me accelerated commissions versus where I was at, because I got paid commissions quarterly in logistics, right? And just to be frank, with my experience on Wall Street, right, I have always been very timid to take a gamble on myself. I’m not afraid to admit that, right?

John SmallMtn (06:29)

Mm-hmm. That’s interesting. Okay.

Moose Reed (06:47)

The emotion of gaining chips is a lot lower of an emotion for me than losing chips. So I’ve always said that I’m a much better Robin than I am Batman, you know?

John SmallMtn (06:52)

Hahaha. This is fascinating, okay, please keep talking. This is a weird take for me to hear from you, okay?

Moose Reed (07:01)

Yes. So because of that, you know, when he poached me, I sort of said, “Hey, here’s my path where I’m at, right?” I had gotten partnership, I had gotten equity at Coaching Sales, right? I explained to him…

John SmallMtn (07:18)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (07:20)

…the upside of that, the downside, and everything in between. And so I said, “This is what my career path would look like if I went into the world of SaaS or whatever, right?” And we came to a conclusion, right? Where it was like, “If you hit XYZ, I’d be willing to give up XYZ.” Right, with the foundation and what was on the offer, I was like, “I think I can do that. Let’s make the transition,” you know?

John SmallMtn (07:41)

Yeah. Okay, man, I would like to go back to the thing that you said a second ago, that you’ve never really felt comfortable taking a big bet on yourself, right? I see, like my perception of Moose is you’re always the guy out there taking big bets on yourself, right? And so where, how?

Moose Reed (07:50)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John SmallMtn (08:03)

And being in sales is chaotic, right? I mean, we’re all seen as these like huge pillars of endless confidence and resilience and everything. I’m always weirded out whenever people are like, “How’d you get so confident?” I’m like, “Who were you talking to? I’m not a confident person, right?” How do you bucket that? Where is Moose comfortable with chaos and big gambles and where not? Have you found clarity on where that line is for you?

Moose Reed (08:05)

Yeah. Yeah. Man, this might sound super selfish, right? This might sound super selfish, but I’ll say the first thing that comes to mind, right? It’s almost like if it’s somebody’s dollars that we’re putting on the table, right, I will go and work my ass off for that person, right? But if it’s my own, I’m… you know, if you look at…

John SmallMtn (08:44)

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Moose Reed (08:51)

…my portfolio, right, I’m super safe. I’m in index funds, and you know what I mean? My financial advisor is always like, “Go heavier into equity, right?” I’m like, “Nope, put me in bonds. Put me in bonds.” That is crazy, dude. I’m 34 years old, right? I should be willing to take more of a risk. But that’s sort of it. You know, yeah.

John SmallMtn (08:56)

That is interesting. I can’t do it. Yeah, you have time. Yeah. So, okay, I have a side question to go off topic. I know you’re a big college football fan, right? Do you bet on college football?

Moose Reed (09:23)

Yeah, I do. But this goes very much hand-in-hand, John, right? Justin, my CEO and founder, he’ll always bust my balls, right? Because he’s like, “Yo, why do you bet so little? Why are you betting $10 a game? Like, what’s the point of that?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” I’m like, “I won $200 last year and you were down $5,000. So who’s ahead?”

John SmallMtn (09:36)

Okay, because you just need to feel invested. Okay, so that’s fascinating. So a little skin in the game is enough for Moose. He doesn’t need big skin in the game. That is fascinating. Okay. So when you’re going through…

Moose Reed (09:58)

It’s enough for me just to get the taste, yeah. Yeah, so… but what’s interesting, man… You know, I can’t figure this out. Maybe this is a talk that I need to have with a psychologist or whatever, right? At Sphere Rocket, we’ve had a lot of situations where we’ve had to put all the eggs in one bet. You know what I mean? When we threw our first internal event, I think…

John SmallMtn (10:11)

Hahaha. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Moose Reed (10:27)

…I think our bank account had like $400,000 in it, right? And we went and spent $600,000 on our internal event. And it was like, we better go and sell from this damn thing, otherwise the business is done, you know? I was just telling the story this morning. And we did like a million and a half in sales, so it was like, “Oh f*ck, this was awesome.” Sorry for the language, right?

John SmallMtn (10:31)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, you’re fine.

Does that feel different? Because, you know, sales is about testing, and I’m a big fan of testing and picking your winners solidly, not emotionally and everything, but in that kind of situation… And you and I connected whenever y’all were in the middle of your big event hypothesis and like, is this where we put our focus? That’s when we spoke last time. Like…

Moose Reed (11:11)

Yeah.

John SmallMtn (11:13)

…does that not feel like the same kind of gamble? Does it feel differently? Or is it that “put me in, watch me go” kind of thing?

Moose Reed (11:18)

See, it’s almost like… we just recruited John, the head of partnerships from ClickFunnels, a guy by the name of Ben Harris. And I was like, “Ben, why would you bet on us? ClickFunnels is so much further ahead.” And he said something that I loved. I was like, “You’re hired.” He said, “I want to bet on the jockey, not on the horse.”

John SmallMtn (11:30)

I saw your post about that, actually, yeah. Mm-hmm. Hahaha. Whoa, that is very interesting. Okay.

Moose Reed (11:47)

And I was like, “That’s cool, dude.” So it’s the same thing. Justin last year—we took out a million-dollar loan. Again, a lot of people didn’t see the story. We took out a million-dollar loan. Of that million dollars, we took 400 and went and sponsored events with it.

John SmallMtn (12:01)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (12:10)

With that 400, we ended up doing 2 million in sales, right? Which was really cool. But I said, “Justin, take the million. Be confident in taking the million, right? And put me on the road. Watch what happens,” right? But it wasn’t my million, you know what I mean? It wasn’t my million liability, yeah.

John SmallMtn (12:15)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, I have questions about this thing, right? One, I would like to talk… do you think if the situation was different, if it was your name on the loan, right, and this was your baby, do you think you make your decision differently?

Moose Reed (12:42)

Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. And me and Justin talk about that all the time. Now that we’re partners, right, we have key man insurance policies out on each other, right? We have a lot of different hedges in the business, but Justin talks about that all the time in sort of a joking way. But we know it’s true too, right? Where…

John SmallMtn (12:50)

Interesting, okay. Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (13:14)

…if he passed, right, I would take over as the primary decision maker, and the decisions that I make would probably be a lot more hedged, right? But…

John SmallMtn (13:24)

Yeah.

Moose Reed (13:27)

…I think if it’s a salesperson who’s listening to this, or if it’s a founder, really, a really important piece of my story and Sphere Rocket’s story is to understand who you’re getting into a relationship with. A lot of people try to get into relationships with someone who’s similar to them, and it creates too much one way or the other. A really cool thing about me and Justin that we don’t see…

John SmallMtn (13:41)

100%, man, absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (13:54)

…is on the outside, I look like I’m really outgoing, and the big gambling man, and the funny hat, right? Yes. But internally, I’m like, “Hit the brakes.”

John SmallMtn (13:59)

You look like the bull in the china shop. Yeah.

Moose Reed (14:08)

And then Justin is the opposite, right? From the external side, he looks like he’s a bit passive and blah, blah, blah, right? But he’s like, “Yo, how much money can we borrow and throw at the house? Like, let’s roll,” you know what I mean? So a lot of times I’m talking him down and a lot of times he’s talking me up, right? It’s just… but that’s a really good relationship, because we can balance each other out. And it leads to a lot of arguments, right? Me and Justin argue with each other a lot, and we set up daily meetings…

John SmallMtn (14:11)

Hmm. That is interesting. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Moose Reed (14:38)

…with each other intentionally so that we can argue with each other, right? A lot of people want to avoid those hard conversations. I think the reason why we’ve thrived—we’ve gone from 3 million in high-ticket sales when I got here to 10 million in ARR.

John SmallMtn (14:41)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Which… I can appreciate the distinction between those two labels, right? And not a lot of other people who… If you’ve not spent time in high-ticket sales, there’s a big difference between revenue and high-ticket and ARR, right? Because usually these two paths do not lead to the same thing, right? And that’s one of the weirdest parts about high-ticket, is everyone trying to shove things into a high-ticket container so that way they can try to have some version of this high-ticket pipeline kind of situation.

Moose Reed (15:09)

Yes. Yep. Yep, yeah.

John SmallMtn (15:25)

Changing topics for just a second. You said this thing about knowing who you’re going into business with, right? I talk about this with some people—I got pretty lucky to work with some of the mentors and some of the people that I have. But then I was also thinking that they were so rare and unique that I had to go out on my own to go do it my way and not have to compromise and different things like that. And what I love is you…

Moose Reed (15:32)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

John SmallMtn (15:51)

…because of who you are, you have this awareness of yourself that you didn’t feel that pressure, right? So when you’re going through and you’re talking to Justin, and you’re negotiating partnership and this ability to work together, I know you know how to negotiate. Obviously, you’re a sales guy. I also know that you’re passionate about the work that you do, right? It’s not just about winning, it’s not just about closing and stuff like this. So when you were going through the conversation with him, were you being the hard negotiator, or were you just excited about the opportunity and you didn’t really push for everything that maybe Moose would tell someone else to push for in that kind of situation?

Moose Reed (16:20)

Yeah. So when I got started in the world of high-ticket sales, right, I’ll give you sort of a nightmare story and it kind of comes back, right?

John SmallMtn (16:29)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (16:33)

I was with that company, Regis, I told you about. I found high-ticket sales, right? Let’s say I was making eight grand a month at Regis, right? And then I found high-ticket sales. I started part-time in high-ticket sales and I made 10 grand my first month, right? So I was doing both in tandem and I was like, “My God, what is this industry? Right? This is awesome. Right?” So like everybody, what did I do? Right? I went full-time into high-ticket sales, right?

John SmallMtn (16:40)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, enamored instantly, for sure. Yeah. Yep.

Moose Reed (17:02)

We moved from Sarasota, Florida to Washington, D.C., so our expenses went up by 40%. Then the marketing funnel tanked 60 days later. All of a sudden, I went from making 18 grand a month to like $2,000 a month, right? Dude, my career path went from working on Wall Street for BlackRock, right, to Area Sales Manager at Regis, to high-ticket sales, to being a server at Melting Pot, right?

John SmallMtn (17:15)

Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Moose Reed (17:30)

Like, it was a mental collapse for me. When I got back into high-ticket sales with coaching sales, et cetera, I picked my job back up at Regis. We moved back to Florida, and I was double dipping for a while there. So coming from logistics, the second time I came back full-time into high-ticket sales…

John SmallMtn (17:43)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (17:49)

…Justin was trying to poach me, and I actually turned him down, right? I was like, “Dude, I appreciate you. I’ll keep coming to events and selling for you, and we’ll keep our relationship, but I don’t want to get back into the world of small business, right?” He made me the offer for partnership, right? He made me an offer for salary plus commissions, plus bonuses, right? Plus overrides. “I appreciate it, dude. I don’t want to get back into the world of small business,” you know what I mean?

John SmallMtn (18:15)

So you were thinking that all the static, all the friction was that it was like small business, and not maybe some of the people in small business, right? Cause like, I had to have…

Moose Reed (18:25)

Yeah.

John SmallMtn (18:27)

…a similar kind of awakening, right? Because I’d done the business thing with my old business partner. And then I launched this business and wasn’t really sure exactly what I was going to be putting myself out there yet. I just wanted to help with growth, and I started doing high-ticket selling and everything. And I was thinking, “Well, because I know some really cool founders, everyone must be cool, high-level, high-thinking, caring about the right things and everything.” And then I had to realize just how many people were not that.

Moose Reed (18:42)

Yeah.

John SmallMtn (18:56)

You know, so yes, it’s rare to find people worth doing business with. Yeah, it’s tough. Especially at that level, right? Because there is this thing of, “If you get that opportunity, go work your ass off,” right?

Moose Reed (18:57)

Yes, yeah. In fact, the opposite, right? It’s rare, you know? Yeah. Yep.

John SmallMtn (19:18)

If you’re spending half the time looking over your shoulder to make sure that the agreement is good, and then all these other things are happening, right? You’re diluting your focus, right? And as salespeople, one of the things that I don’t think other people understand is, just because of the sales role doesn’t mean that it is winnable, right? That you can earn off of it and stuff like this, right? And so then partnership is even more than that, you know? And so there’s a level of sales of like, “We don’t really know what we’re getting into, but if you can sell, you will…” I’ve had people going around being like, “Come partner with me, come partner with me, come partner with me,” and half of those people are like sinking ships, right? Nothing going on. You could have saved a whole bunch of time and heartache if you had just stayed selling whatever it is you’re selling and stuff like that. How did you know?

Moose Reed (19:26)

100%. 100%, yes. Yeah.

Moose Reed (19:55)

A hundred percent. What 99% of people—you know this, right?—what 99% of people are looking for in a partner is cheap labor, right? Is cheap labor.

John SmallMtn (20:11)

Yes, yeah. So what was it that your partner was saying or doing that made you realize that this would be worth your time? You could put full focus into it, you wouldn’t have the same sort of concerns and ideas. Was there one moment when you were like, “Okay, yeah, I want to try”?

Moose Reed (20:35)

So the big moment for me—and I wish this made more sense with the story—the big moment for me was after I turned down the offer at Sphere Rocket. This was November of ’23, right? We’re now in October of ’25. So November ’23, he made the offer and I said, “Justin, thanks, but no thanks. Keep inviting me to events, blah, blah, blah.”

John SmallMtn (20:45)

Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (20:55)

That next Thanksgiving week, I had three deals in international logistics. The operations said that they weren’t interested. This company was doing $100 million a year in sales, right? Operations said they weren’t… Huh? It wasn’t necessarily that they weren’t big enough. It was just operations carried like, “If they’re moving frozen product from Shanghai to LA, we don’t want to deal with the frozen product. There’s too much risk.”

John SmallMtn (21:06)

So it just wasn’t big enough? Been there. That’s fair.

Moose Reed (21:23)

Because it wasn’t defined terms, they could change it on any deal. So you’ll get where I’m going, right? There were three deals that were turned away the week of Thanksgiving, right? Which prevented me from hitting my next bonus, which would have increased my income by 25% on the year, right? Literally, when they got declined all in the same day, I called Justin and was like, “Yo, is that offer still available? I’m coming over.”

John SmallMtn (21:42)

That’s wild, dude.

Moose Reed (21:53)

Yeah.

John SmallMtn (21:54)

Dude, I mean, but that just kind of goes back to how we don’t always know what we’re getting into. I know a guy who made a job hop because they poached him, and they told him everything he wanted to hear. They were like, “Yeah, uncapped commissions, rah rah rah.” Then he makes the jump, goes over, and leaves his benefits and his recurring commissions. They say, “God, we’re so glad to have you here. You can onboard one new client a month.”

Moose Reed (22:05)

Yeah, sure. As long as we got the room.

John SmallMtn (22:18)

Uncapped commissions, but we can only bring on one new client per month. Exactly. I really appreciate the thing that you said earlier, right? If you don’t care about the audience, the market, or the people that you’re selling to… I had the same thing whenever I was selling to surgeons. I didn’t want to hang out with surgeons. I thought they were all taking themselves way too seriously.

Moose Reed (22:41)

Yeah.

John SmallMtn (22:42)

And so then it was easy to opt out. It was easy to not want to go spend the time that it takes to build those relationships so that you actually have the insights that lead to other conversations and everything, you know? You have to have leadership you trust, or else you’re looking over your shoulder the whole time and you’re not going to get anything done. You have to care about the people that you’re selling to, which is the weirdest thing. I’m sure there are going to be some people listening to two sales guys talking about needing to care about the customer—all the guys who are trying so hard to just be jaded, brass-tacks sales guys reading The Wolf of Wall Street and being like, “You don’t have to care at all.” Everyone else is like, “Isn’t it just easier if you care, though?” It’s just so much easier. The other thing is you just have to believe that the product actually helps drive some value and stuff.

Can we talk a little bit about Sphere Rocket itself? Because I think a lot of people get caught up, especially founders, who start off small and don’t know anything when they’re brand new. You don’t even know everything you don’t know, right? You have people telling you to go build everything yourself, or you have people telling you to go hire a fleet of VAs, and you see a lot of people get stuck between these two goalposts. Can you talk a little bit about founders that you’ve worked with and how they should be thinking about bringing on help and building a team if they decide to do so? What are the inflection points? When does it make sense?

Moose Reed (24:06)

Yeah, so I think a couple things at Sphere Rocket. We start on two ends of the spectrum. We have clients like Cole Gordon, or Gym Launch—Gym Launch is a client of ours—where they are already doing millions of dollars a year in sales and they get a huge team with us. Awesome, right? But then the other side of the spectrum is a solopreneur who needs to get their first hire, right?

John SmallMtn (24:18)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Moose Reed (24:32)

Is that fair? What I think a lot of the earlier businesses need to realize is two things. The first one is that when you staff somebody, it’s not a forever commitment. Justin talks to me about this all the time. When he was making a bet on me to pay me X amount of dollars salary plus commission, blah, blah, blah… if I came in and fucked something up and wasn’t holding to the standard that I told him I was going to do, it’s not a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year gamble. It’s a $10,000 gamble, you know what I mean? You can cut that relationship at any point. If you’re hiring a virtual assistant—let’s say it’s a $4-an-hour virtual assistant—it’s not a $7,000-a-year gamble. It’s a $600 gamble.

John SmallMtn (25:08)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Now, I would love to zero in on this for just a second, because I’ve talked to hundreds of founders and a lot of people who want to use VAs to offset some of their tasks—lots of salespeople, let me be honest about it. I think what happens is that it’s super easy to bring on a VA and expect them to be trained. Why would they be, especially if you’re not going to pay a premium for a trained VA or go through one of these programs? Then it’s super easy to bring someone on, not train them, not coach them, put them under all kinds of performance pressure, and when they burn out, blame them, not take note, and just go looking for someone better. Is my perspective on the fact that that happens way too often valid, or do I just talk to too many people and it’s not that big of a deal?

Moose Reed (26:16)

It’s completely valid, John. That’s the second portion that I was going to bring up. The second thing a business owner needs to learn is it’s not about talent. It’s something I talk to salespeople about all the time: If you want to grow from salesperson to Sales Director, if you had to grow the org without depending on sales talent, how would you do it? If you can answer that question, that will lead you to the result of getting you to Sales Director, right?

John SmallMtn (26:45)

Yeah.

Moose Reed (26:46)

It’s the same thing with a virtual assistant. Same thing with nearly any hire except for your C-suite. You’re paying your C-suite—I hate to say this, John—to think, right? Outside of your C-suite, you’re paying them to do, right?

John SmallMtn (26:52)

Mm-hmm. 100%. Right. I agree with that.

Moose Reed (27:07)

So you have to tell them what to do. When I hire…

John SmallMtn (27:12)

And that’s the crux of it, right? Because different people do this differently. I’ve always been curious: Does Sphere Rocket help people build a process, do you guys have locked-and-loaded processes, or do you pull their process—good, bad, or otherwise—out of them? How do you fix that problem of getting the knowledge to the people doing the work so that there’s less frustration, it’s easier to stay in momentum, and you actually get this person to where they’re part of the team and not just a contractor you’re paying on the side?

Moose Reed (27:42)

It’s a bit of a mix, because we’ve staffed 9,000 virtual assistants across 4,000 different businesses. We have internal visibility to see how John’s virtual assistant is working versus Moose’s. But if I bring in a new client, their business is going to be different than John’s and Moose’s business. I can’t assume that the SOP we’ve created for John and for Moose is going to be the same for Bob.

John SmallMtn (27:58)

Mm-hmm. Okay. 100%. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (28:19)

So we have a lot of templates that we follow. We give our clients a one-on-one coach, and then we give our virtual assistant an international coach. We give them a lot of templates to follow, and then the client reports back to the domestic one-on-one coach so we can adjust their SOPs together. Then the virtual assistant meets back with their international coach so we can help them with their career growth.

John SmallMtn (28:46)

Wow, dude. I love that.

Moose Reed (28:49)

Yeah, it’s kind of a hybrid model. We had a good talk about this. There are three different routes you can take to get a VA. You can do it on your own. The benefit is that you can do it completely for free by going to websites like Fiverr, Upwork, or OnlineJobs.ph. The downside is, if you’re spending time recruiting a virtual assistant, you haven’t yielded any new time for yourself, right? If you’re spending time building out processes from scratch, you haven’t yielded any new time for yourself.

John SmallMtn (28:58)

Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (29:17)

You could go to a traditional VA agency where they own the labor of the virtual assistant, and the consumer pays a mark-up on their labor. Makes sense? Maybe the VA is paid $4 an hour, and the agency is paid $10 an hour, right? The problem is that the virtual assistant works for multiple consumers—it’s the only way that company can concentrate their scale. Because of that, the virtual assistant doesn’t have a true focus. That’s when you hear nightmare stories of, “My VA is struggling to learn my social media,” or “They’re struggling to learn my script.” Well, of course—they’re juggling five jobs at once, right?

John SmallMtn (29:57)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Moose Reed (30:01)

So we’re a hybrid where we are able to charge less than the traditional agency, but we have to charge more than the free model. But the virtual assistant doesn’t work for us, so we’re just giving the client all the resources that we have. You know what I mean?

John SmallMtn (30:10)

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I’m going to zero in. I’ve got some rapid-fire questions. The first one is for you specifically. If a founder is starting today, and they’re new to being a founder, new to the idea of VAs, working with people, building a team, and new to entrepreneurship…

Moose Reed (30:22)

Yeah, sure.

John SmallMtn (30:39)

When would you tell them that it’s time to start looking for some help? Are there certain milestones? Is it Day 1—go find someone so you can work with low pressure and begin to figure out how to lead? What would Moose recommend to someone on Day 1 as a founder starting out, knowing nothing about delegation, SOPs, or any of these things we’ve been talking about?

Moose Reed (31:00)

John, I always try and undersell it. It would be super easy for me to be like, “Everybody get a VA.” Gosh, I used VAs when I was in corporate. But just to try and keep the conversation as realistic as possible, I think at pre-revenue, you’re too early to staff. Fair, right? I don’t think it takes a huge revenue threshold to staff. I think if you went into a traditional business, 20% or 30% of all revenue is going to go back to labor costs.

John SmallMtn (31:05)

Yes. Mm-hmm, I agree. Yeah.

Moose Reed (31:29)

Right? If I started a restaurant, it’s usually higher than that in a brick-and-mortar.

John SmallMtn (31:30)

Okay. Yeah, labor is crazy high in restaurants.

Moose Reed (31:38)

So I think if you got to $10,000 a month, it’s time to start considering staffing, right? So let me pull this up for you. Are you familiar with Dan Martell?

John SmallMtn (31:46)

Interesting. Okay. I am familiar. Actually, someone recommended that I try to get him on this show. Do you know Dan?

Moose Reed (31:59)

I don’t know him personally. Kind of a cool story: He opened for me last year when I spoke on stage. I was like, “Dan Martell’s opening for me? What do you mean?” That was cool. That was a good connection.

John SmallMtn (32:07)

That’s a nice little feather in the cap. I’d have been pretty excited about that. That is very cool.

So, a different question: You’re a sales guy, and you know sales inside and out. This is kind of how I want to frame this question: Do you think it makes more sense to delegate things that you know super well, where you can think about KPIs, planning, and forecasting? Or do you take the approach where you keep the things you’re good at and strong at, and delegate everything else? What is Moose’s core philosophy around that idea? Because I hear different people approach that differently.

Moose Reed (32:40)

Great question. Let me start here. The real question that you’re asking me is, “What should I outsource first?” Is that fair? This is something that Dan Martell lives by. We treat Buy Back Your Time like our Bible.

In Buy Back Your Time, Dan mentions what’s called a “replacement ladder.” He says the first position that any founder or executive should staff is an assistant. He explains that the ladder is cumulative, and where a lot of founders go wrong is they try and skip steps in the ladder. They should be trying to buy back their time by plotting the ladder and then replacing the next rung—the first one being an executive assistant to get back their bandwidth.

John SmallMtn (33:33)

Interesting. Okay.

Moose Reed (33:35)

What does an executive assistant do? I’ll give you an example of things that Tracy does for me. She’s my executive assistant. She manages my email and does operations. If you email me after this, John, you’ll talk with Tracy in my inbox, you know what I mean? She got a property survey done for me this week so I didn’t have to sit on hold with the county. She booked doctor’s appointments for me. She booked date night with me and my daughter last night. She takes care of a lot of things in my personal life where I just say, “Tracy, do this, do this, book my flight,” you know what I mean?

John SmallMtn (34:08)

That is interesting. A lot of people would feel like, “Okay, I need an assistant for my work stuff,” but I wouldn’t even think about how to use an assistant for my personal life. Personal versus work stuff. But you’re saying just go find the things that take up time—whether personal or professional—and have an assistant work on them. That is interesting.

Moose Reed (34:29)

Yes. So many founders say, “I have ADHD.” It’s because you’re trying to concentrate on sales, you’re trying to concentrate on marketing, you’re trying to concentrate on deliverables, you’re trying to please your wife, and you’re trying to please your kids. Get 20 hours a week back of mental bandwidth first.

I love sitting down with Tracy once a week for an hour. She’ll have 20 projects halfway finished, and then we can sit down in that hour and crank projects across the finish line because I assigned her way too much, you know what I mean? I love that.

John SmallMtn (35:12)

Okay, yeah. Interesting. Huh.

Moose Reed (35:15)

Once you have admin, then you hire delivery. At Sphere Rocket, that would be recruitment. You’ll never catch me interviewing a virtual assistant. In real estate, that’s a transaction coordinator—someone who’s pursuing people for their financial paperwork.

Then you get into staffing marketing. You know this firsthand: A lot of times people try and skip rungs on the ladder and say, “I want to hire sales,” when there are no leads coming in yet. Who is sales going to call? You need marketing generating leads, then you hire sales. Now that you have departments, then you can hire leadership.

The second piece to answer your question is that Dan also references something called the “buyback loop.” He says there’s a process in hiring. You’re asking, “Should I hire for the things that I’m familiar with?” Well, yes, you should, because the first step in creating an SOP is to go through the pain of doing something yourself. That’s the first step—you have to do that activity yourself first. You can’t hire a salesperson who doesn’t have a script and doesn’t have a lead-flow process. You have to figure out that script on your own. Then, once you’ve yielded X result, you audit what you’re doing. Once you audit it and know it’s going to create Y outcome, then you create an SOP and transfer that SOP to a new hire after you fill the seat. Does that make sense?

John SmallMtn (36:43)

100%. Absolutely. Yeah, dude, I can’t wait to read this book. I’m going to drop this in here just in case anybody’s watching: If anyone is watching this and they message me saying, “Hey, I watched the episode with Moose. Can I have a copy of the book?” I will buy you a copy of the book, Buy Back Your Time. We’re going to hide this as a deep Easter egg in here for the singles upon singles of people who are watching this in the early days. But yeah, I love that idea.

Otherwise, it’s just going to be up to emotional thinking, which leads to, “Well, I don’t want to do this.” Saying “I don’t want to do this” is usually tied to, “I’ve not done enough of this to not be emotional about it.” We see this so much on the sales side. Everybody wants to outsource sales and marketing as much as they possibly can, and it often comes from a place of abdication as opposed to actual delegation. Founders are really good at telling themselves, “I’m not a salesperson, that’s what you do,” because they say that to me, so I know they say it to you.

It’s not magic, though. They start to think that because they haven’t been able to convert a “yes” in three conversations, it takes a magic trick or a wand. First of all, they’re not even on the level about the volume that it takes, let alone qualifying for the need. The other part that a lot of people miss out on—and I’m curious to hear your take on this—is that in the early stage of being a founder, you don’t want to go the transactional route at all. You want to focus on relationships so you can figure out why they said “no,” what they would have said “yes” to, and improve all of that stuff. Whereas the high-ticket thing is much later down the pipeline. All these people who think that sales is meant to be “don’t take no for an answer” can’t have that mindet too early-stage, because you’ve got to be able to pick brains and build relationships. Have you found that to be true in your experience, or is that just me being a relationship guy?

Moose Reed (38:55)

It’s not just with my clientele, John—it’s everybody. I love giving this example: When Justin staffed me, we had a team of four inside sales agents who were all virtual assistants. We were losing about $6,000 per year per head on the inside sales team. So we were losing like $24,000 a year, and they had no production to show for it.

John SmallMtn (39:12)

$6k per year per head, and you had four? Wild. Yeah, okay.

Moose Reed (39:20)

So Justin always loves busting our chops, because it took me three months to say, “Hey Justin, I think we need to hire an inside sales team to set more appointments.” And he said, “Shit, I forgot I have an inside sales team. Let me introduce you.” And I was like, “Hey guys, nice to meet you.” In that meeting, I said, “Hey guys, what’s your process?”

John SmallMtn (39:35)

Hahaha, yeah. Well, if it’s like most sales teams, he thinks there’s four, but there’s actually two because the other two left, tired of grinding through the graveyard of old leads left there.

Moose Reed (39:52)

They were just collecting their hourly pay and chilling, you know? When I asked them what their process was, they said, “Well, we go to Realtor.com, copy a real estate agent’s email address, reverse phone lookup their number, and call them. Usually, they don’t answer, and we move on to the next one.” That was the process. I was like, “Got it. Okay, let me work on fixing this.” I built out a very simple inside sales process: Create a lead magnet, offer the lead magnet, get people to opt into the lead magnet, confirm that they received the lead magnet, and then ask, “Do you want to go through the lead magnet on your own, or can we book a call?” Very simple.

Today, that same inside sales team… it wasn’t a matter of the talent, right? That same inside sales team has 15 people on it now, led by one of the guys who was in that initial meeting I had. They booked 550 appointments last month.

John SmallMtn (40:38)

Dude, there’s so much time that people don’t think about when they’re thinking about sales, because change does not happen in an instant. One of the hard things about sales hiring—not even talking about selling as a founder, but a founder trying to hire for sales because they want to get out of that seat—is it takes time. It takes longer than you think it’s going to, and it definitely takes longer than that Dan Lok-certified inbound closer thinks that it’s going to. On the other side, we have also seen people and talked to people who have waited too long and nothing is working.

How does someone, very specifically, if a founder is trying to outsource selling… let’s say that they maybe have jumped the gun, they didn’t benchmark it for themselves. What would you tell them to be looking at to measure so that way they know what to adjust? Is there one metric, or is there one area that you think leads people in the right direction if they don’t come from sales, if they’ve not spent a lot of time there as a focus?

Moose Reed (41:49)

I think everybody will look at conversion metric as their primary driver. But John, if somebody hires you, who’s coming in to redesign the entire sales process for them, you’re going to see the higher up somebody is, the longer it’s going to take to experience that ROI. But when you experience that ROI, it’s exponential.

When I got to Sphere Rocket, again, we were doing $3 million a year in high-ticket sales. We went backwards the first year that Justin staffed me. But the reason why he loved hiring me was because of all the non-negotiables. We had a team of four independent contractors that were all high-ticket salespeople that had no meeting cadence, no pitch day. We had guys taking sales calls in cars. We had sales guys taking calls with their shirt off. It was just like, “Hey, do you want a VA? You want a VA? Awesome, $4,000. Great, let’s get you going.”

John SmallMtn (42:24)

Yep, absolutely. “Yeah, let’s go,” and then disappear for three days. Yeah.

Moose Reed (42:49)

Because with an offer, you can still do $3 million, right? And then we moved to the MRR, which is great. You know this, but we get a 5x valuation if we ever want to sell the company on MRR versus maybe a 1x on high-ticket, right?

John SmallMtn (43:01)

Just revenue, yeah.

Moose Reed (43:06)

So I had to replace the whole team. I think the conversation that answered it, John… me and Justin sat down, and one of his salespeople was his best friend from high school. I sat down with Justin in his house, and I said, “Justin, I hate to tell you, but I need to fire Matt.” And his answer to me was, “I would fire you if you didn’t fire him.”

John SmallMtn (43:17)

Wow, that’s a cool moment.

Moose Reed (43:33)

And it was just because of an attitude, so it was re-establishing the culture. Today, like I said, we had four 1099 reps; I oversee a team of 40 W-2 reps now. The culture took a complete shift. Now everybody shows up to huddles. In our world, that’s… it’s not part of the game. Everybody shows up to huddles. I measure every single call that comes through our org to make sure that our sales reps aren’t overselling. I make sure that no sales reps are walking around shirtless, or whatever.

So it was a game plan of, “Justin, I’m your new director. You can expect I’m going to release everybody. I’m going to readapt a new culture. We’re going to go backwards, and because we’re going to go backwards, we’re going to rebuild from the ground up.” I think as a C-suite, if you can predict the future better than what’s currently happening, that’s more valuable than what you currently have.

John SmallMtn (44:36)

I love that. That’s very interesting. Yeah, for sure.

I want to be super respectful of your time, so I have a couple more questions for you, and then we’ll let you get back on with your day. Thank you so much for doing this, I really appreciate it.

When you’ve been in the game for a long time as a salesperson and as a founder, you’ve got multiple revenue streams. I’m curious: There’s all these dogmas and mantras and people throwing around words of wisdom on social media. What is the one thing that you didn’t appreciate until you had to run into it yourself?

Moose Reed (45:19)

I think this is the truth, John. This is speaking more to the salespeople, but maybe it can be for the founders: Everybody wants growth right away. I remember sitting in my first sales role in timeshare and being like, “Why didn’t I get the management opportunity? My numbers were better than that. Why was I overlooked for the role?” What you don’t realize is that as your career grows, each step always leads to the next step. It doesn’t make sense while you’re in it, but I can refer back to the last 14 years and know exactly why I played every single role that I played. I know why I lost or went to that $2,000 a month in income when I moved to DC and had to go and serve tables, you know what I mean? Each step always leads to the next step. I never appreciated that until 14 years later, which is a pain in the ass.

John SmallMtn (46:03)

I can remember one time I applied for an assistant manager spot. I was working retail with AT&T, and I was like, “Well, maybe I should care. Maybe I should try.” I went and asked my boss, “Hey, am I good enough to be an assistant manager?” And he was like, “Yeah.” So I started applying, doing some interviews, and talking to them. They were always like, “Well, John, you’re not very charismatic. You’re not very energetic.” I would just be like, “Oh, right, you don’t like me because I’m not this person, because I’m not bubbly enough.” But looking back on it, it would have been a nightmare to move me into it.

What I’m hearing from you is a little bit of a warning, because I know a lot of salespeople who are just not cut out for leadership. But they come into sales roles with a short-timer mentality of, “I’m just going to grind and grind and grind, because I only have to do it for a little bit.” But not everyone needs to be the sales manager or the sales leader. For some people, that way doesn’t make any sense. If you can’t coach, if you can’t teach, if you can’t manage, don’t think that it’s required. Don’t think that it’s a mandatory step, because I’ve known reps that have moved up and then moved back down. Sometimes you have to go change orgs because they don’t want you to move back down out of leadership, because it looks bad on the leadership. Don’t sell yourself that you have to go into leadership, and don’t do it until you’re really ready, because you’re potentially going to damage some people’s lives and ability to earn if you’re not really ready to be a good leader—whether that’s sales and leading yourself, or moving into the founder seat and leading other people.

Moose Reed (47:52)

My top rep was applying to be my team lead, and I had to tell him, “Dude, you’re not who I’m looking for. I love you so much, you’re my top rep, but you’re going to slow down your income so much. Why would you want that?”

After he saw it, he’s now making $25 grand a month residually with me. He’s like, “I get it.” But in the moment, it was like, “Dude, you’re not this guy, and you don’t want to be this guy. I know you think you do, but you don’t.” For what it’s worth, I wish I was more like him.

John SmallMtn (48:20)

The role isn’t going to change you, right? You have to decide that you want to be what that role requires. That’s honestly where part of this show comes from, is around this idea of showing up with a beginner’s mind. In martial arts, it’s called white belt mentality. You have to show up as the beginner, because if you show up thinking, “I’m smart enough, and I’ve got it all figured out, and watch this,” that’s where you’re probably going to fail.

So last question, Moose: You’ve been in the game for a while, and there are people starting every day. What is the biggest word of warning that you would give to someone who’s starting today? How would you advise them to stay on the path?

Moose Reed (49:22)

I think the most important thing is to protect your downside. Protect your downside.

I see a lot of people who are trying to leave W-2, and they’re like, “I hate my corporate job, therefore I’m going to go commission-only,” and they’ve got a family, kids, and everything else. There’s a lot of attractiveness to commission-only, but you should sort of dip your toe in. Like we talked about at the beginning, have your high-commission sales job, and then bartend at night—no matter what that means for bartending. So, protect your downside.

More than anything else, if you get started in the industry: Call your leads. I say that tongue-in-cheek, because you know that’s my brand, but seriously. Everyone’s trying to figure out, “Should I use this AI? Should I do this in the CRM? Should I do this?” Everything—do it in addition to calling the leads, not in replacement, because you can’t replace it. You know what I mean?

John SmallMtn (50:08)

There’s a lesson here for people that want to hear it, because I was thinking through the story that you were talking about. One of the things that I forget to talk about is I took a pay cut to go into medical device sales. I was working in finance at a bank. I had all these great licenses, and I could sell anything in the banking suite that I wanted to. But I had an opportunity to go sell medical devices, and it came with a huge pay jump down the line. Now, it had a base, but you’re trying to build relationships to move off of the base. If you’re good enough, you get to go be commission-only.

A friend of mine gave me the opportunity, and I decided that it was good enough, but I had to go get a job waiting tables because I saw it as an opportunity. I knew that I couldn’t afford all my bills, and we had an infant—she was less than a year old at the time—so daycare… and my wife was working at a bookstore and not making anything. So I see this opportunity, but to take advantage of it, I need to go supplement my income. At the time, I was not thinking of it as limiting my downside; I was thinking of it as, “Okay, this is what it takes to go figure this thing out and learn this situation.”

I was working Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning, and then Monday morning I’m up at 4:00 a.m. in the OR trying to talk to a doctor about screws and stuff like this. It’s funny, because I talk with a lot of salespeople now, especially people who are in that boat of, “I hate corporate, I want to go high-ticket.” It’s like: Are you ready to take a pay cut? Can you protect your downside?

A lot of people get stuck in the lifestyle of sales. They start earning a lot, and then they hate their boss or they hate their offer, but they can’t leave because they’re living on that lifestyle. Now you’re handcuffed to it, and not even with the good version of handcuffs—you just didn’t spend very well.

Moose Reed (51:52)

If you can’t stomach that side of it, don’t take the risk, because it’s highly likely to happen. My wife knows that no matter what comes to show, I will always feed the family. You know what I mean? I don’t care—that’s part of the risk.

John SmallMtn (52:15)

It’s probably going to blow up, 100% you have to.

The interesting part about this is I was in my thirties, and I already had a kid whenever I was going through all this change. Sometimes I think about how it would have been cool if I was 21, finding this path without any attachment or responsibility. But I wouldn’t have done it; I wouldn’t have had to figure it out. I just would have gone and found something else to do. For me, I needed the weight to really make myself invest, figure it out, and change for what the role was. Do you think you would have been able to do it without the family weight, pressure, goals, and bills?

Moose Reed (53:10)

Good question. Could I have been able to do it? Probably not. I love saying I would have moved to the Philippines early on and done it, but because I didn’t have the pressure, I probably would have given up and just been like, “Nah, screw that, there’s another opportunity.”

But you know what’s interesting, dude? If you listen to any rich person, they’re always asked, “Have you ever been broke?” They always say, “Yeah.” They’re willing to take that risk, which is interesting.

John SmallMtn (53:37)

Because now there’s this very interesting thing: Since we have both been there and waited tables, this could all go up in glorious flames tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to—something catastrophic would have to happen—but I could go get another job waiting tables. I could figure it out. There’s that lack of preciousness that enables the ability to just keep moving and driving. I don’t like to fail, but I know that I’m not going to fail absolutely. I might have some setbacks, which is interesting. I’ve never thought about it like that before, though.

Moose Reed (54:08)

It’s one of my biggest fears, right? I’m like, “Okay, I made it through. I hope I don’t find it again,” but dude, it could happen. We could take a big bet, you know?

John SmallMtn (54:25)

It could happen. To me, there’s this old question: If you ask yourself, “Am I being narcissistic?” you’re inherently not. So if you’re the person who’s like, “Could I lose all this?” you’re probably doing a good job of planning for it, having a bigger emergency fund or war chest, however you think about it. But you’ve got to have some stability. Salespeople and founders need more stability than other people do. We didn’t even really talk about that today.

Moose, you’re a rad person, man. Thank you so much for doing this. Where should people come hang out with you if they want to learn more about Sphere Rocket or the work you’re doing?

Moose Reed (55:01)

Facebook is always the best place, guys. Please feel free to connect with me on Facebook. Search me—it’s Moose Reed. There are not too many other Moose Reeds out there. You’ll see a picture of me, my wife, and my baby girl. You can find me on Instagram. I don’t spend too much time there, but I’m there; my social media managers are on Instagram. I’m on YouTube, so tag me—I know this is going on YouTube. I started a YouTube channel about 60 days ago. Tag me so that we can get connected. Primarily Facebook, though.

John SmallMtn (55:25)

Epic. Moose, thank you so much for coming on here and doing this with us. I really appreciate it, and I really do think that this is going to help some people on that founder path stay in motion and stay out there on their own. So, thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Cheers.

Moose Reed (55:30)

Appreciate you, man. Thank you, man. Appreciate you having me. Bye.