Sovereign Seller Email #36: Prospecting Is Marketing Sunday, May 10th, 2026 Indianapolis, IN 7:11 AM I never needed to learn how to prospect. I worked for big media brands on purpose because they came with built-in demand. The phone actually rang. Cold calling was for other people - those who didn’t work for a near monopoly. Fast forward to 2017, I get laid off from an ad-agency management role, moved back to Indianapolis, and went back into sales. This time at the #1 TV station in the...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER EMAIL #35 The Sovereign’s Hour: What Your Time Is Actually Worth Sunday, May 3rd, 2026 | Lauderdale By The Sea, FL | 7:11 AM I love my smartphone. I also resent it. I spend too much time on it - not during the day, when I’m working, but at night, when it’s competing now with the TV for my attention. Even during my favorite live sporting events I find myself checking social media and texting. But here’s one thing I’ve mastered: I don’t let it interrupt me. Ever. My phone...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER ISSUE #34 Own The Angle — The Best Application of AI in Sales Sunday, April 26th, 2026 | Lauderdale By The Sea, FL | 7:11 AM Two weeks ago, I held a focus group with twelve of my ideal buyers. None of them exist. I built them inside a custom GPT - twelve personas, each modeled on a real LinkedIn profile of the kind of executive I’m actually trying to reach. Credit to Kevin Donlin, a marketing mentor I hired, for the idea. A custom GPT is a version of ChatGPT you configure...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER ISSUE #33 Brand Coaster Part 2: The Portable Book Test Sunday April 19th, 2026 | Lauderdale By The Sea, FL | 7:11 AM I’ve watched this scene play out four times in my career. And becoming more and more common as technology continues to disrupt business. A senior seller gets laid off. Fifteen, twenty years at a legacy media brand ... Deep rolodex ... Awards on the wall ... Six-figure income that felt earned. Then the "notice" arrives, the parking pass gets deactivated, and...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER ISSUE #32 "Elon's Algorithm" Applied to Selling Sunday April 12th, 2026 | Indianapolis, IN | 7:11 AM I know you have opinions about Elon Musk. So do I. Set them aside for five minutes. Whatever you think of him politically, personally, or otherwise - the man has built more category-defining companies than anyone alive. PayPal. Tesla. SpaceX. Neuralink. Starlink. He runs them simultaneously, across industries most executives wouldn’t dare enter, with a consistency of...
2 months ago • 3 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER ISSUE #31 The Cheapskate Tax Sunday April 5th, 2026 | Indianapolis, IN | 7:11 AM Let me tell you about two CEOs. Both run B2B companies in the Midwest. Both sell to other businesses. Both have been at it for over twenty years. Both gross around ten million dollars a year. From the outside, they look identical. But they're not. ABC Corp’s CEO came up through the tech industry. She’s read the right books. She believes - deeply, operationally - in one idea: the business that...
2 months ago • 4 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER ISSUE #30 The Power of Packaging Your Offer Sunday March 29th, 2026 | Syracuse, IN | 7:11 AM For years, I believed custom pricing was a sign of sophistication. Every prospect got a unique proposal. Every meeting ended with "let me put something together for you." Every proposal took time I’ll never get back. The sales culture I was trained in had a specific philosophy about pricing: don’t reveal it until the last possible moment. Keep it off the streets. Make them meet...
3 months ago • 5 min read
THE SOVEREIGN SELLER #29 The Power of Triggers in Prospecting Sunday March 22nd, 2026 Syracuse, IN 7:11 AM It was a normal weekday morning sometime in the mid-1990s when I found out a huge retailer was coming to town. I found out from the business journal - the one I paid for out of my own pocket because nobody else in the office thought it was worth the subscription. I considered it my treasure map. Circuit City was coming to Indy ... And I worked for the only major newspaper in town ... And...
3 months ago • 3 min read
The Sovereign Seller Email #28: More on Referrals ... Welcome to Issue #28 of The Sovereign Seller. In today’s business climate “sales” is no longer the differentiator. The “edge” today is in “prospecting.” It’s the art and science of getting the attention of, and appointments with, your most ideal clients. Sunday March 15th 7:11 AM Indianapolis, IN Your email never had a chance. Not against what I’m about to describe. Last week I introduced the Give First System - the idea that the...
3 months ago • 5 min read