How Training Builds Scalable Leadership: Damon Lembi’s Baseball Playbook for Winning in Business | Ep. 187

Damon Lembi: 00:00:00

You should set these moonshot goals because they can happen.

Intro: 00:00:06

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Superfans Podcast with your host, Freddie.

Damon Lembi: 00:00:31

Ready, Ready.

Freddy D: 00:00:46

Hey, super fans. Freddy D. Here in this episode 187, we're joined by Damon Lemby, CEO of Learn it three times best selling author and a host of Learn it all podcast.

Damon takes on a challenge many service based business owners face right now. How do you keep your team skilled, adaptable and competitive when the pace of change never slows down?

Too many organizations get stuck in old ways of learning and that's exactly where growth stalls.

Drawing from his early career as a professional baseball player to leading a live learning platform that's upskilled over 2 million people in, Damon brings an athletics mindset to leadership and performance. If you're serious about building a team that learns faster and wins more consistently, this conversation delivers a clear path forward.

Freddy D: 00:01:37

Damon, welcome to the Business Superfan Advantage podcast. Great conversation we had before we started recording, so let's continue that energy and that conversation. Welcome to the show, Brady.

Damon Lembi: 00:01:48

It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Freddy D: 00:01:51

So let's go back a little bit. I know that, you know, your dad's kind of started the business and you were pursuing baseball.

We talked about, look, I have a friend that used to play for the Chicago Cubs and you're a diamondback guy and, and you've actually interviewed somebody from their team. And so let's. What's, what's the story?

Damon Lembi: 00:02:11

Well, the story is I'm Damon Lemby and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 80s, really, let's say. And I was all about sports and it was football with the 49ers, Giants, San Francisco and the Warriors.

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I realized that if my ticket to play in college or pro was baseball. So I went all in on baseball. Worked really hard, turned out pretty well for me. By my senior year, I was a high school All American.

And Freddie, I had my first really big decision to make. I was drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school in the 13th round. And my parents said, hey, it's your decision.

Do you want to go to college or do you want to play minor league baseball. I chose to go to college. I got a full ride to Pepperdine University, and I really did it. As one of my great first leadership lessons.

My coach, Andy Lopez, had this moonshot goal. Pepperdine's a small school, and he said, within two years, we're going to win the College World Series. A lot of people thought, well, that's.

That's crazy. How's that going to happen, you know, going up against Arizona State or lsu, these big schools. Long story short, I went to Pepperdine.

I dealt with a little bit of imposter syndrome. I ended up getting hurt. I left. And that year that I left, they won the College World Series.

Shows you that you should set these moonshot goals, because they can happen. And so from there, I transferred over to Arizona State, hit a home run in the College World Series.

I was getting ready to be drafted for the third time. I got drafted also by the Yankees in the lower round, ready to move on to my professional career. And sometimes things just happen for a reason.

I didn't get drafted. So here I am, 22 years old, and my whole life identity was as a baseball player.

And I wasn't sure if any of my skills were transferable, but my baseball career was over. So that's. That's to be my story when it comes to baseball. Wow.

Freddy D: 00:04:07

So how did you get started with, you know, the learn it business? And you kind of helped stepped in with your dad, from what I read. And then you guys grew it, and then you've kind of run it now.

So let's go down that road a little bit.

Damon Lembi: 00:04:19

Yeah. So here I am, 22 years old, and I was really fortunate.

I came from this family with one of the largest real estate companies in the Bay Area in San Francisco. And this was then. I'm dating myself here a little bit, but this was the late 90s. Well, actually 95. And computers were still pretty new.

And my dad was trying to figure out how to digitize his portfolio, get it out of the drawers, onto the computer. And he dragged one of my sisters to a computer class. And he got up after two hours. He said, this is boring. There's gotta be a better way to do this.

So he called somebody who ran our savings and loan and says, I want to have these classes that are short, fast, inexpensive, and people want to come and hang out. And that's where the idea of learn it came from. And it was at the time was all like, Windows 95, Microsoft Excel.

And I. I was intimidated to go work at the big real Estate company or a hotel chain. So I took a job as a receptionist. And I really did it for two reasons. Like I said. One, I was intimidated.

I didn't know if my skills were transferable. But two, I also wanted to prove myself. I didn't want to be the guy who came in for daddy's company, some executive role.

And so I just rolled up my sleeves and answered, I don't know, thousands of phone calls. And over the years, I taught classes, I did sales, everything.

And about five, five, six years later, when things weren't working out with the CEO we had, I threw my hat in the ring and I kind of took over as CEO then. Now Freddie, my dad, started to learn it. Absolutely. It was his invention. He was amazing. He was my best friend.

He passed away in: 2010

But he'd always come visit me, and we go to dinner every Monday night.

Freddy D: 00:06:03

started in the tech space in: 1980

And if you remember the: 1982

And I ended up going, and I'm sharing this because it'll relate, is I got a job as an applications guy for a software company that was developing CAD software. And we just got taught how to use the software. And then I'm picked and I'm sent out to go train a large company in St. Louis.

And I was an engineer, so what do I know about even standing up in front of a room? And I got the manual, and I'd be going, all right, Damon, here's the command string. And you'd be sitting next to me. And we were just two of us.

There's two computers. And, okay, now this is how you're going to click, click over here. And I was like a paragraph ahead of where you would be.

That was obviously the worst possible training, but the reason I shared that is because training is really important in helping people level up. And I ended up my next company was this little company called Eaton Corporation.

And I've shared this on the show in the past, and I was doing the same type of training. And that manager pulled me over and said at the end of the day and said, that was the Worst effing training I've ever seen in my entire life.

And he goes, this words are burned into my brain. I will give you till tomorrow to get it figured out. Otherwise I'm going to call your boss and have your blank, blank, blank rear friend terminated.

I slept well that night.

Damon Lembi: 00:07:57

That's how you could talk back in the day, right?

Freddy D: 00:08:00

Exactly. And what I ended up was I created what I call engagement training.

And I would turn around, says, all right, here's a command string to create a box and whatever. Damon, you know, is that command string correct? Mike, do you agree with Damon? Well, no, I think this is wrong.

Steve, do you agree with Damon and Mike or what? What do you see wrong? And I got everybody into the conversation and completely changed.

And I became the most sought after installer and trainer for about five years because of that. So training is really critical. And what your dad started and what you're running right now is really transforming people's lives.

Damon Lembi: 00:08:38

Thank you, Freddie.

And that story you gave at the beginning there of being an engineer and being kind of thrown in there to have to deliver training, we see that all the time with customers or prospects and they say, you know what, it's pretty expensive. We're just going to have somebody on our IT do the training. And we say, okay, before you do that, let's think about this for a second.

Does this person have any experience delivering content or training? No. Does this person have any interest in doing that? I don't know. We haven't asked them.

Think about the cost associated with putting 12, 14 people in the classroom. Let's say they're making $80,000 a year. What's their time worth? Plus the guy delivering the training.

If you spend a day in there and it's a terrible experience, you're not winning any fans internally at all and you're just wasting time. So it could be penny smart and pound foolish going that route.

That's why spending a little money on investing on your team and bringing in somebody like a learned or a coach go a long way. I love your story about how you learned how to make it engaging. It was great. This guy gave you direct feedback, right?

Freddy D: 00:09:43

Changed my life.

Damon Lembi: 00:09:44

Change it completely. But. And that's what's so great about training too.

It's not necessarily just what you're teaching them as the instructor, but you're bringing in other people in the class and sharing their perspective, you know, making it engaging.

Because like my dad saw when he took that first class at CompUSA back in the day, anybody could Sit in the front of the room and just read page by page, help you fall asleep.

Freddy D: 00:10:04

That was me where I started.

Damon Lembi: 00:10:06

Right. Learning is all about engaging and getting people to think and actually apply what they're doing as well.

Freddy D: 00:10:13

Sure, yeah. Because I got picked after I was doing a lot of the software installations and training engineers, we sold a system to a local college next door.

And I was one of the guys picked to teach at the college level. And because of who I was at the time, I got to pick the section. So I took Saturday mornings from 8 to 12 and there's someone else did from 1 to 4.

I didn't want to ruin my weekend, so I picked the mornings. But I had a rule because I was in my 20s, so I was out playing Friday night.

Damon Lembi: 00:10:46

I was going to say that could ruin my weekends. 8 to 12 on a Saturday morning, a little hungover. Having to teach college students. Students.

Freddy D: 00:10:53

But there's a catch.

And the catch was, Damon, you're not allowed to ask me questions from eight to nine because in the real world you need to figure it out and talk amongst your co workers, AKA the classmates to figure out the homework assignment while I was drinking coffee to pull myself back together. So some cleverness that came into play. But I had the most sign up for the advanced class than anybody else because of the way we were doing things.

Damon Lembi: 00:11:25

Well, Freddie, where were you back in 96 when I was teaching classes in my 20s where I'd go out, you know, on a big night with my buddies or whatever and then I'd come in the next morning and have to teach Excel or ACT. I should have implemented that, no questions between 8 and 10 so I could catch up and drink a little coffee. Too late now.

Freddy D: 00:11:46

Yep.

Damon Lembi: 00:11:47

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:11:48

Wow. Act, I remember that brings back a platform.

Damon Lembi: 00:11:50

Yeah, that was right before, way before Salesforce. Right. Back in the ACT and gold mine for all the content management software.

Freddy D: 00:11:57

Yeah. I wrote my first CRM using Helix on a Mac and I used to carry a Mac around for my sales because I'd moved into sales and I was very fortunate.

I got six months of high end sales training.

And so again, this goes back to what you guys are doing is had I not gotten that sales training, I wouldn't have the plaques for top sales guy and wouldn't have gotten to the point where I was in charge of global sales for a software company had I not gotten that level of training.

Damon Lembi: 00:12:26

That's great. I mean, I think one thing that training does, it not only teaches you skills but it helps give you confidence to Grow and develop in your career.

Speaker E: 00:12:37

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Freddy D: 00:14:00

So let's talk a little bit more about how do you guys do the training and what kind of trainings that you guys offer and how does all that work?

Damon Lembi: 00:14:06

So learn it. You know, we're a live learning platform, so essentially we do everything mostly over zoom.

During COVID we went from being mostly in person to mostly over Zoom.

Now about 15% of the training still takes place in person, and customers turn to us when they're promoting people from an individual contributor to a new manager. You know, completely different skill set.

Think about yourself as a sales rep. You know, you go out and you're doing, you know, getting everything done yourself. Well, when you're a manager, you need to learn how to win through your people.

So you need to learn how to, to delegate, how to have tough conversations, how to build trust. So that's one of the main areas we work on. We still do a ton of Excel training and Microsoft Office training.

And also now, of course, companies are turning to us because they're rolling out AI and are trying to get adoption and people are maybe afraid and don't know how to use AI. And so we're just doing AI essentials and eventually teaching people how to lead teams that are both human and AI.

So we work across the board with different organizations, typically in business units or through HR and design programs to help them achieve the outcomes they're Looking for always to grow people professionally, but also maybe optimize the workforce that they have.

Freddy D: 00:15:23

So can you share a story of, you know, how, you know, a company came to you guys and, you know, they had some personnel that needed to level up and what's the story?

And then how did that company become what I would call a super fan of you, of how you transformed their team to where they're promoting you and becoming your sales team because of the work that you did with their internal team?

Damon Lembi: 00:15:49

Yeah, well, I mean, we work across the board as far as industry agnostic, but, you know, let's just stick with baseball, which is kind of serendipitous. Like I mentioned, I was drafted by the Atlanta Braves.

The Atlanta Braves sales and ticketing team is one of our biggest clients and one of our best clients for about five to seven years.

I just recently had a call with them and we were talking about some of the initiatives they had and how learn it added some strategic value to their organization.

They were talking about how they recently rolled out ChatGPT and Copilot, but a lot of their sales reps and their customer service team was afraid to use it. They thought it was overbearing.

But once they got in and took our classes on how to use AI to write emails, how to leverage AI for decision making, it really dropped that barrier where people got a lot more confident in their ability. They saw that AI wasn't necessarily going to replace their job, but it was going to help augment what they did.

They saw a great deal of transformation from doing everything manually to how to leverage this tool to get better at their role, free up time and get on the phone to make more sales calls because of that, which has been great.

Our contact over there introduced us to a bunch of other sports teams and shared with them because a lot, you know, those sports teams, they don't really compete with each other at all. Right. Because they're in their different markets. So they share a lot back and forth.

So that that's a great example of somebody who's just been a huge fan of learn.

It's by opening doors for us and sharing the best practices and some of the trainings that we've done for their teams that can help benefit other organizations, whether it's the Milwaukee brewers or the Giants or even the Oakland Raiders. So that's one example of organization who I would consider a super fan of ours.

Freddy D: 00:17:37

Yeah, because, you know, basically the whole idea that I came up with super fans is you think of the sports team, super fans of people with their faces painted, the jerseys, the tailgate parties, you know, the banners, they're die hard sports fans.

And you know, if you imagine transforming your whole ecosystem, so it's not just leadership and it's not just employee experience, it's not customer experience.

Because nobody ever talks about the contractor, nobody talks about the supplier, nobody talks about the distributor, nobody talks about the complimentary business, and nobody even thinks about the ancillary business. But I look at that as that's your whole ecosystem.

So if you can transform, I say a real conservative number, 15% of that ecosystem into brand advocates.

But business Superfans is a cooler name and that are promoting you just like that guy is opening up the doors because he's a super fan of how you've transformed their company. The fact that it's a baseball team is irrelevant, still a business. And that person's opening up the doors and they're selling on your behalf.

And what's really important about that for our listeners is that's not a referral, that's an introduction. And an introduction is significantly a collapse sales cycle.

Because when someone introduces you to somebody else and says you need to talk to my friend Damon here, boom, that's it. That's where you go. You don't look at anybody else, you just go where you're selling because that's a trusted person that's recommended you.

Damon Lembi: 00:19:09

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And can I share another superfan story with you?

Freddy D: 00:19:14

Sure, absolutely.

Damon Lembi: 00:19:15

So this is a special year. It's hard for me to imagine, but this is our 30 year anniversary for Learn It.

Freddy D: 00:19:21

Congratulations.

Damon Lembi: 00:19:22

And so in late June, we had our anniversary party and we invited hundreds of past employees. And I never, you know, when somebody leaves Learn It, I'm usually, I'm happy for them. Right.

Because they spent their time with us, they gave their best, and then they moved on. So for all you listeners out there who run small businesses or teams, don't burn bridges because those people become your super fans.

I referred to it as the Learn it alumni.

And it was one of the most special days of my life was being in this room with 400 people, Freddie, 400 people who were customers, who were employees and now customers. And they're all sharing the praise of Learn It. A lot of these individuals started at Learn it early in their career.

I love to hire people who had the right attitude and aptitude and gave them an opportunity to grow and see them evolve over the years to starting their own businesses. And it just pays dividends because they're always Referring people to me to hire, for one. Right.

Because they say, hey, look, I know how Damon's culture is. I know what it's like. And so they're referring. Great. It's like a flywheel for talent, you know, bringing in great talent.

And also when they go to these organizations and they need training, what do you think they do? They refer back Learn It.

So when I first heard of your show business superfans, that's one of the first things that came to mind is the Learn it alumni and how we've cultivated that over the years through the wonderful talent that's come through the door, which I would have to say more than all the great clients we've worked with, is what I'm most proud of is the. The people who spent time working at Learn it and now have, you know, moved on and still feel like they're part of our learning. Alumni.

Freddy D: 00:21:01

Well, yeah, because it's a life experience, so that's never going to go away. You can't take that away. That's always going to be there.

And you made me remember the fact that when I talked about me teaching at the college, a lot of these people were coming into the class. And back then it was 500 bucks to take the class per person. And these people were coming in to learn about the technology and where it was going.

Because this was in the beginning, the very beginning of Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing. And you're absolutely right. These people left.

And then when they got jobs at someplace else, at a company and they were looking to bring in a CAD system into their facility, they would come back to this guy because I had moved into sales. And so now that sale was collapsed because of the fact that, okay, they just called me up and hey, you know, heard you're in sales now.

We're looking at this stuff. Come on over and boom. And it was. They were buying. It wasn't me selling anymore. They were buying.

Damon Lembi: 00:22:03

Yeah. And that's the thing.

It's not you selling, is you helping people achieve whatever those outcomes they are or close that gap to help them get where they need to go.

Freddy D: 00:22:13

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:22:14

And so let's talk a little bit more about, you know, some of the different things that you guys are offering with Learn It. I mean, I know that we talked a little bit about Microsoft and we'll talk a little bit about AI, but let's go a little further into that.

Damon Lembi: 00:22:26

I'm a big fan of helping new managers in their role, and I think it's important for your listeners out there if you're considering moving into a leadership role or a management role, first think about why do you want to do that? Is it because you feel like you're going to make more money or is it going to look better on your resume?

Or is it because you truly want to coach and be a people first leader? I think that that is so important because these days not everybody has to move into a leadership role.

I mean, I think that there's plenty of people out there who can be super successful as an individual contributor.

So a lot of companies make the mistake of taking their top performers, whether it's in sales or engineering or whatever, and automatically assume that they lead. So that's important.

But when somebody does move into an emerging leader role or a new leader role, that's where I'd say our key focus is on, is helping leaders learn how to delegate, how to communicate, how to create and share a vision.

And our classes are typically, we do public classes where anybody can come and take classes or cohorts for an organization where say you have 10 or 12 people from a company and they're all new leaders. And we really drill down on how do you learn how to delegate.

And we walk them through role playing and examples that are really specific to their work so they get real time practice how to do that. You know, giving and receiving feedback, Freddie, is huge, right?

You know, not just giving feedback, but being open and curious and non defensive of letting people give you feedback. Because I feel like feedback is the fuel for learning and growth and learn what you can, you know, what you do well and what you can get better at.

I think that's a game changer for people who want to evolve in their career.

Freddy D: 00:24:10

Yeah, and you brought up a great point there, Damon.

And that is the fact that you guys did role play and role play is often overlooked on the importance that plays into the learning part of the equation. Because years ago when I was in, before I got in charge of global sales, I was managing distributors locally.

So and we brought in, you know, the team and we actually did a personality training. So it was the different personality types and it was, you know, the driver, the expressive, the analytical and the amiable.

And what we did is we talked about the different personalities. This was, you know, our reseller team and they're representing us and selling, you know, on our software.

But we ended up playing role play into that so that we forced people to be in behaviors that was completely their opposite behavior and got them to play that. Okay, now you're a driver, you know, cut to the chase.

Give me the, you know, the bottom line personality, which is not your personality, but you have to play that personality, and the other guy is going to be the opposite. We teamed them up, we flipped it around just to mess with everybody, but it really.

Everybody had a blast, and everybody learned the importance of that. And our sal sales went up because people learn how to deal with different people.

Damon Lembi: 00:25:29

I think that's great. And I'm a huge fan of role playing, especially for I lead our sales team.

And, you know, sometimes you get veteran salespeople and like, I don't want to do role playing, you know, or I don't want to do this, but it benefits everybody. And it's just going back to the sports analogy.

You know, in baseball, people go back to spring training, they do batting practice, they field ground balls. So I think we all have an opportunity to learn and grow and role playing.

And I really like what you said right there is where you make people look at things from a different perspective, maybe even, you know, really get out of their comfort zone. Because whether it's a customer or somebody else in your team, you want to be empathetic and put yourself in their shoes.

And, you know, you could sit and listen to a podcast or take a class and just zone out, but if you're actively engaged and you're role playing or you're putting into practice what you learned in a class and held accountable for that, I mean, that's where the real learning takes place, Freddie. Otherwise, it goes in one ear, out the other.

Freddy D: 00:26:33

Yeah.

And the other aspect of it was the fact that the engagement becomes like you're talking about is the fact that they're now understanding from the opposite perspective what's going on and that person. And one of the things that I learned in leadership is as a good leader, your job is to empower your team and get the heck out of the way.

My belief, and this is again, my belief from the training I've gotten, is my job is to help you do your job, and I'm a resource to help you do your job. And that's it. I'm not here to micromanage.

I went to Dale Carnegie's management training program, and it was like, you create your own job description. Now you own it. You wrote it. I just tweak it so that it matches what the company's objectives.

Now my job is just help you do what you said you were going to do and get out of the way.

Damon Lembi: 00:27:35

You're 100% right. And that kind of goes back to What I was saying is that when you're an individual contributor, you do the work. You get to be your own star.

You could be a hero, but as a leader, you need to be a hero maker. You need to learn how to win through your team. You need to set them up for success.

You need to give them the tools and resources that they need and give them the space to fail. And they need to know that you have their back. And, you know, for your leaders out there, when things go well, shine the spotlight on them.

Give them the credit. And when things don't go the best, you need to step up and take ownership of it and, you know, have their back.

And when you do that, that's where you create super fans.

That's where you create talented teams that people will run through a brick wall for you because they know that you trust them, that you believe in them, and that they'll step out of their comfort zone and try things because they know if it doesn't work, that it's not a loss, it's a learning opportunity. And I think that what you mentioned right there is absolutely critical if you want to grow a team that's scalable.

Because what's not going to scale is a leader who needs to get everything done himself and micromanages. You just become a bottleneck then, because everybody sits around waiting for you to give answers and decisions.

Freddy D: 00:28:50

Right.

Another thing that I want to emphasize on there, Damon, that you're mentioning, is that team, once they see that you've got their back, they level up themselves. Because now all of a sudden they know that while someone has got their back, in a sense, you get that camaraderie going on within the team.

So now all of a sudden, the team energy is different. It's a much more positive energy. And when you get a team, you know, really operating collectively, great things happen.

I mean, I remember back in when we were all applications guys, when we first started in the early 80s. I mean, we had a great manager.

I mean, he would come in and, you know, late at night, while we're prepping for the demo, he'd show up with beers and stuff in the office.

We would go camping, he have a house party, and everybody would go to his house and party, but we would take our shirt off and work like dogs for Tom. That was his first name because of the way that he treated us. But at the same time, we were a tight team.

I mean, we would go out to happy hours together, go camping, go boating. I mean, once you have that energy within an Organization. It's magical. It's the best way I can word it.

Damon Lembi: 00:30:13

No, I agree with all that. I don't know about taking my shirt off. Nobody wants to see that.

But some of the best baseball teams I played for and organizations I've seen are the ones that can hold themselves accountable when the leader's not in the room. Because they have that camaraderie.

Because I interviewed Keith Ferrazi, who wrote a book called Never Lead Alone, and that was one of the main things there is that everybody held themselves accountable, you know, and their team accountable, because he had a certain bar of quality. You know, like if you be a learning instructor, you got to have a certain level of quality and passion for what you're doing.

And they're not going to let somebody join a team who's either not at that level or doesn't have the interest in growing to that level. And that is awesome, because then you don't need me or the training manager in the room at all points, because people have bonded.

They become friends, and they want to help each other inside of work and outside of work.

And I think all of what you're mentioning right there is really important because you want people to show up to work and not just be paycheck players, Right.

You want them to feel like that they belong and that they have purpose and that they're contributing both to the company's bottom line, but also to helping their customers or the vendors or whatever. Right. Learn and grow. And so all that is so important.

And that's why I always think, start with taking care of your people, because if you take care of your people, they'll take care of your customers. Your customers will then buy, and your shareholders or whoever will be happy. But a lot of it, to me, always starts with taking care of your people.

Freddy D: 00:31:42

Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Right. And part of that is, you know, you got to get everybody into.

As a leader, so you got to be the coxswain of the team, and you got to get everybody into the racing rowboat, or the shell, as they call it, and everybody has a single. They have a single or.

And you got to get everybody in synchronization of where the company's mission is, and then everybody's empowered because when they operate as a unit, that boat flies. And it's the same thing with the business.

Once you get everybody aligned into the mission and all the things we've been talking about, your company just takes off like this. And everybody's happy to do it, because their part of it, they're not there for a paycheck anymore.

They're there because they believe what's going on with the company.

Damon Lembi: 00:32:31

That's a great analogy.

And for you leaders out there, what I've found, where some leaders struggle, and I've dealt with this myself as well, is that you know in your mind what that vision is and what your mission is, and it's crystal clear to you. But sometimes we don't do a great job communicating that out to our team.

And so I want you to think right now, if you're leading a team, is everybody on your team aligned? Are they all rowing in the same direction? Are you sure of that? Because I don't think you could ever over communicate enough.

Keep communicating and making sure that people are aware of where you want to go as an organization and how it impacts them as well.

Because, Freddie, when you do that, when you over communicate and everybody's aligned around purpose, values, all of that, that is when your team just accelerates and they're.

Freddy D: 00:33:25

Having fun doing it. That's the other part, is it becomes fun. You know, my wife is in the other room here and she's working for a hearing aid company.

She's going on eight years with the company. She's one of their top salespeople. Selling hearing aids through the phone, not even video through the phone.

Damon Lembi: 00:33:41

Well, how does that work, selling hearing aids through the phone, people? Well, I guess you got to sell it to the other air so they can hear you.

Freddy D: 00:33:49

Yes, exactly. She kills it. But they do stuff to get everybody in line. They do training on a regular basis. They tweak the scripts so that it's updated.

They've just implemented AI and trained everybody on how to do that. So I'm sharing this because again, it goes back to training. And now they're using the AI, for example, a qualifying tool.

People go to their website and fill out the information.

So now when she goes in, she goes, hang on, let me take a look at what you talked to our AI agent, I think she calls it, or something like that, and then she's got all the information and she starts into the conversation right off the bat.

And it's collapsed their whole sales cycle because, you know, we were talking before, you know, when you were talking about AI with the sales team of the sports baseball teams, they've leveraged it to really collapse their whole process and their sales are going up a whole nother level again.

Damon Lembi: 00:34:49

Yeah, I think that if you're a sales leader or a sales professional, I don't look at AI taking your job. But it, there will be certain parts of it that will, whether it's maybe SDR work or other areas. But I believe in what you're saying, Freddie.

It's going to collapse the sales cycle. And if you really learn how to leverage it as a team, as an individual, it's going to make you stand out.

And it's still new enough right now where you can get ahead of the game. And that will take you from being a B player to an A player.

By being able to leverage AI for everything, whether it's research, whether it's being able to record your calls and send a much stronger follow up message, I think it's absolutely critical to get on board with it these days.

Freddy D: 00:35:37

Well, yeah, because there's really three types of people. Those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that wonder what the muck happened.

Damon Lembi: 00:35:47

Yeah, those are the victims. Those are the victims.

Freddy D: 00:35:51

Yeah, there's three types. So you want to be at least in the first two, not the third. So. Well, great conversation that we've had, Damon.

You and I could probably talk on this for at least another 20 minutes, but we gotta kind of wrap it up here. So how can people find you and learn more about Learn It?

Damon Lembi: 00:36:12

ive classes for you and up to: 1020

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Damon, and also check out my podcast, Freddie's gonna come on it. It's called the Learn it all podcast.

Freddy D: 00:36:32

Cool. Well, we'll make sure that's in our show notes. Great conversation. Thank you so much for your time. We'd love to have you on the show down the road.

Damon Lembi: 00:36:38

Again, thanks for having me Freddie. I had a great time.

Freddy D: 00:36:41

Thanks.

Freddy D: 00:36:43

Our conversation with Damon reminds us that real business growth doesn't come from doing more, it comes from developing people.

From his journey as an athlete to leading learned, Damon showed how training, trust and strong leadership turn teams into confident performers and customers into lifelong super fans. For service based business owners, the takeaway is simple. When you invest in your people, you help them level up. You don't just improve results.

You create advocates who open doors, collapse sales cycles and fuel long term growth. If you enjoyed today's conversation, hit, subscribe and follow so you don't miss future episodes.

And be sure to join the Entrepreneur Prosperity hub on Skool. It's free to join and grab your free service provider prosperity playbook at school. Skoo.

Inside, you'll find tools, weekly growth plays, and live virtual networking to help you build a business that runs smoothly, predictably and profitably. Thank you for tuning in today. I'm grateful you're part of the Business Superfans movement. Be sure to subscribe to the show.

We've got another great guest coming up focusing on what really moves the needle. I'll talk to you on the next episode. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer to lasting prosperity.

Intro: 00:38:10

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.