We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sam Taggart. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sam below.

Sam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I have been coaching and consulting sales professionals for over 10 years now, and am really coming to the realization that the qualified workers candidate pool is continuing to shrink. The younger class is coming into the workplace very entitled and with a very low work ethic. Paying attention to these trends I am seeing a big shift in how people are associating education and true development through a new age of content consumption.

With free and paid content online becoming more and more accessible, people have really shifted to a quick immediate satisfaction level of education. There isn’t really the need to master a broad spectrum of skills then plug into the workplace. How often do you actually use general education classes from your college days.

Now you can go buy a digital marketing course, and start doing it really quickly, and make a living selling your digital marketing services.

I have created an app designed over time to disrupt how people consume relevant education and receive coaching all on a self guided journey called Xpand. This will be a place to house industry Xperts content, courses and programs and have users self select their journey on how they can gain relevant skills they are genuinely curious in.

I believe there wont be public schools how we know them in 10 years. Most things will be specialized community meet ups and online. If we can accept these facts, we can start preparing the accountability systems and tech that would need to support our future landscape of public education.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been in Door to Door sales since I was 11 years old, and never had a w2 job. From slinging golf balls, to painting addresses on the curbs. I then found myself right after high school selling alarm systems then solar. 5 years ago I started in the coaching and consulting business helping companies with Sales, Leadership and Recruiting. 3 key elements that really drive revenue in any business. Mostly I have focused in the home services businesses like Solar, Alarms, Roofing and Pest Control.

I host around 20 events a year, ranging from 40 people to 3000. I have an online university that has had over 30,000 students go through it. I have a mastermind of 70 awesome business owners that collaborate and help one another grow. I’ve now successfully launched 3 different tech companies. Vanillamessage.com, Recruitomatic.co and Xpandapp.io

These are designed to fill some of the gaps in our industries. Vanilla is an automated texting platform to help with customer communication. Recruitomatic is a direct sales recruiting ATS and Xpand is a Human Development System. A manager or coaches tool used to better lead their people.

I also host a Taggart Bucketlist Mastermind – where I take high vibe people on really cool trips. From Egypt, HeliSki Canada, Cemermonies in the Amazon Rainforest, and more!

I love live, I live Life and Inspire others to do the same.

We have been fortunate enough to have a really cool industry with lot of success stories. I am grateful for an awesome team that supports the growth of all things, and wouldnt be able to do it without them.

Have you ever had to pivot?

At one point I had close to 50 employees. I felt like we were making lots of money, but somehow had no money left over. It was crazy to watch how fast you can blow through money with a staff that size.

I had 14 full time recruiters in a recruiting dept, and about 10 consultants that would go out to companies and help train them.

I realized that I didnt love the responsibility and liability that came with such a large service based company, and decided that I was going to start cutting things back and focus on the things that were more profitable. Events, online training and mastermind.

This pivot was so hard cuz i scaled down to 15 people. Had to let a lot of people go, and it was really scary. Income started to shrink quite a bit, but profits 8x…

I realized that top line revenue isnt what business is about! Its about take home!

now we have surpassed monthly revenue marks from where we were last year, and doing it with a much much better margin.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

I remember a time where I had knocked a door and the guy sprayed me with a hose, and was extremely upset I had approached him on his property. He then proceeded to call the cops on me. I just continued on to his next door neighbors house and actually got inside to the kitchen table.

Then as im about to sign paperwork, the cop knocked on the door and pulled me outside. The customers were extemely spooked, simply cuz they had let this random door knocker in their home, talking about their most vulnerable parts that need protection. The cop checked for my proper documentation, and then let me back on my way.

I was like, “no no no” you aren’t just gonna ruin my sale like that, come back and tell them I am legit. So he walked back and validated me and I ended up getting the deal.

Contact Info:

• Website: thesamtaggart.com
• Instagram: @thesamtaggart
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/sam-taggart-27256962
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/d2dexperts
• Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-d2d-podcast/id1231680638