Leading The Sales Rebellion with Dale Dupree

Dale Dupree:  A lot of people saw the track like, Hey, if I do these things, X, Y, Z, line up A, B, C, do my thousand calls a week, blah, blah, blah. I'll make success and eventually I'll be the manager and then maybe I'll get a shot at equity. Right? And I was just kind of like, I don't care about any of that. I want to do what I love.

Chris Hill: Welcome to We Built This Brand, where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind your favorite brands. Today, I’m talking with The Copier Warrior himself, Dale Dupree. Dale’s the Founder and leader of The Sales Rebellion, and his unique approach to sales and marketing inspires New Hope for the industry. This is a guy who cut his teeth in a Metalcore band and now channels that DIY attitude into changing the game. Are you ready to and take down the established Empire of sales? Then suit up! Here’s my conversation with Dale Dupree.”

Welcome to We Built This Brand.

Dale Dupree: Thanks, man.

Chris Hill: We're just diving in.

Dale Dupree: Excited to be here.

Chris Hill: Yeah, I'm happy to have you. Thank you for your patience as we've been getting set up and everything.

Dale Dupree: Good.

Chris Hill: It's a lot of fun to have you. So excited to talk to you today. You know, a lot of who we've been talking to recently have been agencies, like marketing agencies, PR agencies, folks like that, and always love being able to talk to someone who runs what I would call, like, "a true brand," a business that is not just representing other people, but you're actually doing something, creating something unique in the marketplace, and I think what you're doing with Sales Rebellion's really cool.

So happy to dive into that with you today.

Would love to start, as we always do, with a little bit of your background, and if you don't know who Dale Dupree is, there's a lot of places you can learn about your story, and would love to hear just your Reader's Digest version, because I know you, we've talked about it a bunch.

Everywhere I look you up, it's like, alright, your background, and 30 minutes in, we finally get into some meat. So I'd like to kinda bypass that today and dive more into where you're at with Sales Rebellion and everything else. So, I'll let you take it away.

Dale Dupree: Thanks. It's easier this way too for me, 'cause it typically, when I do those podcasts that you're talking about, people say, they go, "Tell us a little bit about yourself," and then they hear like four things and they go, "Yo, you gotta talk more about that," and then all of a sudden we're 30 minutes in, and we haven't talked. But, Dale Dupree, my friends, they call me the Copier Warrior. Now, to ultimately understand where I come from. You gotta go back a little bit further real quick. In 1984, my father broke away from the status quo of sales selling copy machines for the corporate monster, doing awesome, number one rep in line to take over the business. He left all that safety, all that security, everything that he had built because he just didn't like the way they did business. Had nothing to do with what he was making or ultimately like being an entrepreneur even, he didn't like how they treated people. He didn't like how they ran their operation, and he wanted more, not just for himself, but for his customers and his client base.

He felt like he could get that too. So he said, you know, by the grace of God, I'm gonna go build something. And by the way too, just to like mention it, although my father eventually became a born again Christian at that point, and when I say by the grace of God, my dad was like an atheist, right? So he just leap of faith, like literally on himself in that moment said, this is something that I need to do, and I shouldn't call him an atheist. He grew up in a Christian household.

Chris Hill: Sure.

Dale Dupree: He did not know who God was and didn't really care at all, right? But the year after 1984 is my birth year, 1985, and people joke with me all the time. They say, "Dude, Dale was born with toner running through his veins," okay? So, 'cause here's my dad's 10 years into the copier industry from an injury, a football injury. He broke his neck. It kept him from getting into the NFL basically, and instead he was like, what am I gonna do? And he sold paper like Dwight Schrute, and that led to copiers, and then all of a sudden he is opening his own business. So it's my legend, right? It's my legacy. And so I spent years from a child to an adult teen wandering the halls of my father's business.

Letting that toner really sink into those veins and into my bloodstream. I learned the industry without ever really trying to learn the industry, if you will, and what I really learned is I learned how to become a servant leader. I learned how to give experiences. I learned how to be a man that didn't need recognition.

That's what I learned, and I learned all those things from my father in a nutshell. There's a lot more that I learned on top of that, but like how to now lose money when you're selling stuff, and you know, lots of other things, right? But ultimately that shaped me. It gave me an imagination, and my father was, he was always very entrepreneurial to say, "Yo Dale, I want you to do what you love. I don't want you to do what you think is gonna make you a lot of money," and whatnot. So with that same motivation, I took it, and I actually ended up skipping college and touring in a band on Warner Bros. Records eventually.

Chris Hill: That's awesome.

Dale Dupree: I mean, we started on Pluto.

Chris Hill: Sure.

Dale Dupree: Indie label. My boy Brian, shout out to Brian if you're listening to this, influential entrepreneur in my life as well for sure. You meet people along the way that have such a huge impact on you, and they never even know in the first place, but yeah, that man helped me and guided me and got me into Sony distribution and Warner Bros. Records distribution, and you know, we had people buying our stuff in Tokyo, you know, and our albums, right? And so for me, like, I could see I had this vision, right? But then I saw it come to life, and it was never the glitz and glamor that people say it is at the end of the day. 'cause we weren't the Rolling Stones.

That's how you have to, that's the only way to make money in the music industry, is sell your soul and become a 50, you know, year band, right? But I digress. The passion was why we did it, the love is why we did it, and eventually, those things brought me back to the copier world, and I would say that there was some instances and circumstances that put me there, but, you have to really understand that I started in this place of creativity.

I started in this place of entertainment. I started in this place that I loved That I wanted, that I dreamed of becoming, if you will. I even turned down somewhere in the ballpark of a dozen scholarships, some partial, some full rides, all of, most of them, there was only two academic ones, but most of them are sports related.

So here I'm an athlete, but I play in a metal band, and I'm like the weirdest kid you've ever met, right, at the time. Just imagine, long haired dude, dunking on you, and then moshing, you know, later that night, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Like it was, I was a very unique person, right? So, and I, hopefully, I still am to some capacity, but got back into copier sales, spent 13 years doing it, and that's where I created the moniker, The Copier Warrior, and I built my reputation on the back of serving leadership principles, and ultimately on the back of a ton of failure, a ton of risk, which led to a lot of reward at the end of the day that I don't think a lot of people of my age would've ever really even thought about, especially in the industry I was in.

I think a lot of people saw the track that were in my industry, like, "Hey, if I do these things, X, Y, Z, line up A, B, C, do my thousand calls a week, blah, blah, blah. I'll make success and eventually I'll be the manager and then maybe I'll get a shot at equity, right?" And I was just kind of like, I don't care about any of that. I want to do what I love. I kept going back to that. I wanna make people feel seen and heard, and not because I have to do that, but because they deserve that, and that ultimately I'll build a community similar to the one that my father did for himself. Eventually that led to me leaving, we were talking about the corporate world a little while ago, like, it led to me leaving corporate, knowing that in my heart, more so than anywhere else, it wasn't a place for me, and that there was no way I was going to change it. That's impossible, but instead I said, yeah, but I can go and start a movement, and I can win the hearts and minds of people that feel the same way that I do, that want to be more than just a salesperson, that desire more for their life than just transactions that want to experience it, that want to breathe life into something that's dead and stale, and badabing bada boom, 2019, launched The Sales Rebellion. Had no idea what I was doing, still don't really understand what I'm doing, but I'm six years in, and I haven't taken a paycheck from anybody else but myself.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And man, even if it crashes and burns tomorrow, and I'm done with it, what a ride it's been for sure. So.

Chris Hill: That's exciting. That's really cool, and I know there's a lot more to that on all fronts. One of the things that I think is really interesting is how you've kind of kept this creative element going this whole time. Like, there's been kind of this pattern of, you know, you wanted to do music, you wanted to do something artistic, then you got into sales, which can be very structured and very formal, and you found a way to make it really creative and really unique, and dare I say, a little metal, I found as I was looking back. I was checking some stuff out last night and I came across your band, and, Imperial. Is that right?

Dale Dupree: That's it.

Chris Hill: Yeah, and very metal, and that is the genre that you would consider, right? I just wanna make sure you went like, oh, it's actually this mad sub genre, Gothcore. I don't know. I'm just kidding, but you know what I'm getting at, but very metal. And then I went and checked out your video that you have for The Copier Warrior, which was really fun.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: And it had just so many elements of it. I was like, "Okay, this guy hasn't left his roots." Like, he's still got some of it with him as he is traveling.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: And then where you are now, even within, you know, The Sales Rebellion and things, there's a lot of creative elements there that are very unique. So it's cool to see you being true to yourself as part of the process, too. And so with that, we get into starting this rebellion, this sales rebellion.

Tell me how did you come up with that idea? I mean, you left, you got burned out and you started, wanted to start something, but where did you go from there?

Dale Dupree: Know I'm such a nerd. In the beginning when I started to look at this idea of leaving the corporate landscape, and let me just say too, that I didn't suffer from burnout in the corporate landscape, or even in the private business side of things, too. I mean, I did a lot, I worked really hard. I preach the idea of not doing that as much because of my experiences and the things I learned, and there was also a balance there. I hate to call it that, but really what there was, there was a rebellion there.

So in my, and like to just give a little context to that, in 2013, I made the first year that I made six figures, basically like 2012 was the year my father sold his business, and by the way, I started in 2008 as well too. It was late 2007, so I was picking the copy machines up from the companies that you're talking about going like, "Yeah, we're outta business now," and they were shredded files everywhere. I mean, Severance, the TV show like we were talking about. I mean, it was like war zone stuff, dude that we were experiencing.

Chris Hill: Oh man.

Dale Dupree: So this is like my introduction to the B2B space, right? Well, this is a great place. Like, no, I felt terrible about the B2B space and thought, well, this sucks, and why I'm gonna go work at a fast food restaurant and at least know that I'm gonna make a paycheck and then like do something else, right? That I had that temptation many times, but, you know, ultimately I came back to this space for myself in my upbringing of business that stayed the course. And by 2012, 2013, right, I, my dad's business sells, I go over to the new company through the acquisition, and I'll tell you right now that I was ready for that.

I was so fired up for that, dude. Four years of basically rebuilding a business, and you know, hitting a million dollars in there selling, for any of my copier homies listening, used equipment and hitting a million dollars, which I think a lot of people respect that thing more than anything. So, 'cause if a machine costs $15,000, brand new.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Used, it costs $2,000, dude.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: That's the literal cost, right?

Chris Hill: That's a lot of volume.

Dale Dupree: It is a lot of copy machines, dude. I mean, I think one year I was over 110 total accounts, like, with my father and net new business. The average in the copier space at the time especially, was like 12 to 15.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: Maxim right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: So, I 10Xed, if you will, shout out to Uncle G or whoever. Grant Cardone, isn't that his name? Maybe, yeah. 10X or whatever the hell. Let's call it 11X. I 11Xed it. I went one step further than Uncle G. Anyway, so the idea though, was that, like, I took that to the corporate landscape.

I never lost myself in the process. People tried to get me to lose myself, for sure. "Hey, man, you need to be at your desk more often." Yeah, right, dude. No, I'm in the field. I'm a salesperson, right? So when I looked at this idea of starting a rebellion, it was really just looking at all the things that I had already rebelled against in the first place. From being like slapped on the hand and saying, "Hey man, this is the marketing you're passing out? You stabbing copy machines in the middle of the woods? Like, this isn't acceptable. Like, at least you have clothes on, but this is strange. We don't like this," to that same group of leaders coming back to me and going, "Do whatever you want. I'll never forget the first email that ever went out from my second generation of leaders. Shoutout to Rich Johnson, by the way. If he's listening, he was one of the good ones, but in that second generation of leaders, I got Steve Clap. Love this man. He is such an incredible guy, but he sent an email out after the first year, and he said, "and the words of Rocky Balboa," and it wasn't Rocky. It was somebody in like Rocky B that was like, "he's not human," and that fired me up so much to hear a person that knew Jack about one year of my life, to see what I was capable of, and to tell me that, it was so exhilarating. It was so, just in general, it was powerful from a motivational standpoint for my life, not just my business walk, and I took that fire and I turned it into six figures that next year for the first time in my life, right? Because I had to not take a paycheck, man. Like you remember 2008, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Imagine running a small business with your dad, basically, and you're like the only ones left that aren't getting paid at one point because you're trying to keep the employees on. You're paying them.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Yeah.

Dale Dupree: It was a wild ride, dude. So when I hit those milestones for myself, I think the number one thing I realized was that it wasn't better than the four years that I had spent leading up to this. Like, I hadn't suddenly, like, changed my life. Like, I was already changing my life four years ago by making the decision. The journey became something that I started to romanticize.

Chris Hill: Mm.

Dale Dupree: And so then I started thinking, well, if I can make my first year, I made $180,000 when I made six figures. So it wasn't like a $101,000. It was like BAM. Like from $65,000, that was the most I ever made, to $180,000.

Chris Hill: That's awesome.

Dale Dupree: It was a crazy jump, right? And from, and that was 2012, 2013, right? So from there it was insane what happened to me. And so when I looked at starting a movement around money, that was never the motivation. Starting a movement around loving what you do and achieving ultimate freedom from those things?

That was the motivation. And so it had nothing really, ultimately, to do with burnout or being sick and tired of stuff or, you know, my corporate job, definitely, they brought me back to work way faster than they should have when my baby was born, and they cited, "Well, you know, you haven't actually earned, you're two months shy of your tenure here to earn those extra weeks. So, sorry about that."

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Like, things like that really just set me off, and then words that were expressed to me by my leaders, and I mean, I've never, I don't know if I can even say it on this podcast, but.

Chris Hill: You can say it, and we can take it out later.

Dale Dupree: Oh, I've never heard the term in a meeting with the HR person present, and all the leadership of the organization, the word ****sucker used, pointed at an individual.

Chris Hill: Good Lord.

Dale Dupree: Never heard that.

Chris Hill: Wow.

Dale Dupree: I've heard it in a fist fight, but like never in a boardroom setting. Like, whoa, buddy, this is intense. And really, I realized that I was in a place that when people were powerful enough, they could get away with anything.

Chris Hill: Mm.

Dale Dupree: So it, again, it had nothing to do with like, "Man, I'm sick of this," and it had everything to do with, "Man, wouldn't it be nice if we changed the way this worked?"

Chris Hill: Mm.

Dale Dupree: And and even if we didn't change the way these people worked, that we built our own thing.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And we did it ourselves.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And we ignored all this crap and all these rules and all this stupidity.

And we did the things that I was able to do to make myself a millionaire, make other people millionaires, and ultimately gain financial freedom that led to ultimate freedom in my life. So yeah, that's a real, I took like some left turns, some right turns in there, but hopefully that hits your, your question.

Chris Hill: No, no, no. It's good because, like, you're showing kind of the rebellious stage of it, but it was really about a rebellion for something better, and, like, for me, like, in just thinking about my own career, that was a lot of what I experienced too, of like, oh, people are getting away with stuff they shouldn't be getting away with. And, you know, I was told at one point in my sales career to lie to a customer. Boldface lie to a customer. Now, how do you think my sales career went after I told my boss, "No?" Did not go well.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: And so, like, that became the tension and the ultimate impetus for me moving on and leaving sales entirely for, well, I thought I was leaving it.

I didn't really, but I thought I was leaving it for a while and, yeah, I didn't wanna be around that. I didn't wanna be around an environment that encouraged that and thought of that as the winner.

Dale Dupree: Right.

Chris Hill: And those people as the good people, so I can totally relate to that, and yeah, that call to something better, I think salespeople need to hear that because it can often be a very toxic environment.

So tell me a little bit more. So you get this name, Rebellion, where else does, I feel like there's something else with Rebellion too. It feels very Star Wars-y.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: I've noticed some Star Wars themes to what you do.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: Is there's some elements there?

Dale Dupree: Yeah. Imperial, The Sales Rebellion.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Yeah. It really was easy for me to decide to call this a, "rebellion," and then it felt like everybody wanted to use the word after I used it. So it's almost as if like everybody was thinking about it, and I was the first person to just like, dare mighty things and say like, I don't care if I'm in a corporate landscape.

I'm gonna call this what I wanna call it. And yeah, it, 1,000%, I'm a rebel dude. Like, I'm a rebel scum, bro. I'm a big fan of Luke Skywalker, his story, I know it's not real and it's fictional, ladies and gentlemen, but I just love this idea of like the farm boy who knows nothing but his parents upbringing, who are not even his parents, by the way.

Gosh. Spoilers, spoilers, by the way, Darth Vader and Luke. There's something, there's something happening in there that maybe. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it anyway, but yeah, we don't wanna spoil it. But like his erraticness, his, you know, just his energy, his excitement to go to war, you know, against the empire and to fight back, and man there that, I was inspired by that, and my mother was the big push and those things. She loved Star Wars too for the storytelling and the sci-fi, and it was like one of her first movies that she ever saw in the theaters. And, you know, because that was like a big deal at that point in history in the '70s, and like, you know, my mom was primed. She was like in college and it was like perfect timing for someone like her to be immersed into those stories, and she's a pretty straight-laced woman to be quite frank with you, but she's fun, she's quirky, she's got a big imagination. And sometimes I wonder if ultimately I get my imagination from my mom, and she's just never really said that, you know, in the first place. But because of that, I operate in nostalgia dude, and I believe that most people do as well.

I believe that when I get a marketing piece, or I field a sales call that if there's some type of experiential moment there that leads toward curiosity, toward nostalgia, toward the idea of even like taking a little bit of a risk, like some adventure, if you will, that people will respond better, more efficiently, and different, and, like, different is what all of us need from people in responses, because otherwise it's just the status quo and otherwise, like, we're just noise.

So when I thought of, you know, like how do I name a corporate brand, it made so much sense for me to just go back to the things that drive me that I'm passionate about, that I love, like a sci-fi thriller called Star Wars that kids, which is even crazy, right? That kids, you know, around us coming up in a whole new generation think that The Acolyte is Star Wars, and I'm like, no bro, it's The Return of the Jedi, dude. That's Star Wars, right? But anyway, the goal was really also to think about what is the evolution of the buyer? So if I call my company "Deal to Pre-sales Training" or something more corporate, well in about 10 years, who am I selling to? Well, I'm selling to kids, man.

I'm selling to the next generation, 65% of decision makers, even with the groups that we support in the B2B space, from solar, to copiers, to IT, to the financial side of things. Like you name it, like FinTech, SaaS, they sell to people that are between the ages of 25 and 45, dude. That's the majority of buyers now.

So if, again, like in my mind, just like you have looked at my brand and said, "this is cool, this is fun," like, that's the point is to let people know that like, hey, like stretch your legs a little bit, man. Like, unbutton the top button. Take your tie off even like. Be yourself. Be authentic. It's okay. it's fine.

Chris Hill: Yeah. And you bring up a good point with like who you're marketing towards too. Like that positioning is saying, "Hey, we're here for the people who see this, get this, understand it, which is gonna attract a certain type of person to you," right? Which is really helpful for you as well. But also with that positioning, you know, I tend to forget about it, but as you're saying it, I'm like, let me think about all the sales training I've ever been in. Oh yeah. There was SOCS at AT&T. The Science of Consultative Selling. Yes, and it was a whole formulaic thing. I even had to get SOCS sales certified, which included like sales tests and role plays and all this stuff.

I did Northwestern Mutual at one point in my career. Like, that was actually my first experience was insurance sales with Northwestern Mutual, in a market where I didn't have family too, which was really tough. And so like, it was, you know, I've, I've been through all that, and then I've also dealt a little bit with like Sandler Sales, and the one constant theme through all these is they are boring. They are not fun. It makes sales out to be just a science and a numbers game, which it can very well be, and very much is at times, but it's very much just this boring process, and you're breathing new life into it.

And I think that's what I find really interesting about it.

Dale Dupree: Word. I like the concept too of, so I feed off of the old to create what I have put together. So, I like going back to the Zig Ziglars and, like, learning about what they were trying to relay, or the David Sandlers, and then seeing, finding the gaps first, and then also like understanding their science, if you will.

Because the way that that helps me to break it down is I get to say, okay, cool. So, in all science it becomes predictable is the thought process. Well, humans are not predictable, so if I boil everything down to a science, you know, and I'm Sandler Sales Training, it's gonna definitely work throughout the '80s and the '90s and maybe even some of the early 2000s, but over time, like, people are gonna start to understand what you're doing to them. That science, that predictability of that science with an unpredictable environment, they don't mesh, and so at a certain point you lose it. And so here we go with the whole, like, this is anybody listening, this is the literal purpose, let's just say, of The Sales Rebellion.

The purpose of The Sales Rebellion is to meet people where they are, not to force something into their ecosystem. Science forces stuff into your ecosystem. It says, "Well, now what's important is your ROI." We all wanna make money off something in the business environment, but that's not the most, what's actually important is what I'm doing with that money.

My people that I'm hiring, how I'm supporting their families. My customers and their happiness. Not just because I had a good product, but because I treated them like normal, rational, intelligent human beings.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: And that I respected the emotional side of things as well, too. Groups like Sandler, the Challenger, so they don't respect the emotions of people.

They don't care about how you feel. They need you to meet them where they are. That's what their systems are all designed to do, and mad respect for, you know, the old guard and the people that have built what they've built, but they live in a fantasy world now. They live in a fantasy world. They put out books, like, right literally at the peak of COVID saying, "Oh, I'm an expert now in selling on Zoom. Here's my book." Like these are the companies. This is who they are. There's no integrity in that. Four weeks of selling on Zoom, and you're an expert. I mean, GTFO, bro. Like, that to me is absolute garbage and totally nuts.

And ultimately too, like selling, expertise of selling doesn't come from sales experts, dude. It comes through the way we experience the buying market and the way that we buy ourselves just the same because we're buyers too, right, ultimately, at the end of the day. So really, like, the science of sales, the numbers of sales, those are mythology, in my opinion.

The art of sales is the only thing that is a constant that will always for generations to come until every, until you and I are robots, right, doing this interview, which no one will watch at that point anyway. I mean, just robots watching robots talking to robots.

Chris Hill: Well, it's part of why we're here in person.

Dale Dupree: Right? Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Hill: Real, living flesh.

This

Dale Dupree: is the rebellion, bro. You're leading one in the podcast space, right?

Chris Hill: That's right. That's right.

Dale Dupree: So, but yeah, that the point being though that like emotion, the human experience, that is the thing that's always consistent within sales and marketing, and that's why people that look beyond what is corporate, what is acceptable in the business what is even appropriate in the business box, those people fail.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Constantly. Like, I want you so lit up that you're angry with me. Because when I call you and I go, "Hey, this is Dale, the guy that sent you that thing that made you angry," and you're like, "I hated that."

And I go, "Yeah, but like, you remembered me. For the first time you remembered a salesperson."

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: "Okay. I can see that." And then when you understand the context of like, why I sent you what I sent you in the mail to have this experience and you give it a couple days, you're a $400,000 sale. And not because I like did some weird science on you, but because I met you where you were, and you didn't even know it at the time, but because I understand you, and I made the effort to do those things right, it might feel cold, but man, the internet, AI, when you use it right, powerful places in order to, like, for me to learn about Chris.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Knows just like you, we're going out and checking Imperial out before we got together, right?

Like, you would've never known that without the option of being able to go and do that research in the first place.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: And that's, I believe that selling, it's not about, I'm not a big personalized everything kind of guy. I'm just like a, I'm rational about that. Man, if you just like mention one thing that's important to me, I'm gonna listen differently. I'm gonna trust you differently. There's more credibility here. So.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: There's a rant for you.

Chris Hill: I like it though. I mean, finding that human connection with people, is something, and even human emotion is something we're learning as we've interviewed other folks for this podcast. Like, it's a big thing to find that human element to a sale, to a purchase.

Impulse buying is becoming more and more common right now with the way the Internet's going and things like that, and a lot of that's driven by people that are bored, that are tired, that are interested. It just gets you, just right time, right place. You're always looking at your phone, so why not throw an ad up there for something that looks mildly intriguing and dirt cheap, or claims to be dirt cheap.

If you spend any time on TikTok, you know what I'm talking about? It's just they're crappy products, but you get 'em. 'cause it's like, ah, well you know what? It's only $20. If it doesn't work, I can throw it away. You know?

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: And it's sad that we're at that point in the economy, but like, you know, but that's just that human element, and even as you get into sales, like, yeah, if you can't interact with people in a way that grabs their attention, like, you're just wasting your breath.

So how do you get people to respond for those that may not know much about The Sales Rebellion, like, what is your, what are kind of the core things that you do to help people? And then specifically, like, what kind of, like, I don't wanna say products 'cause I don't know that that's the right way to put it. It might be, but what are the things that you all offer to help people with this sales process to think differently?

Dale Dupree: It's a great question, and you did. You put it all the right way. Yeah. We believe in layman's terms. So you call it a product, if I call it something different, you're not gonna know what it is.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: We're always about meeting people in those spaces, and so ultimately though, like, what we do is we create differentiation when you find it. So if you see that The Rebellion has curriculum, but so does Sandler, most likely you're gonna be drawn over here to this Sales Rebellion thing, especially 'cause of the aesthetics of what we provide for you. The experience that we give you. It's not like, "Boost your sales by 20% today!" It's more like, "Hey, are you tired of doing the same stuff that your boss keeps telling you to do over and over again that barely helps you hit quota every month? It makes you stressed, makes you anxious, makes life at home harder, makes you drink, makes you pick up bad habits in general. Makes you hate your life, and you've been doing it for seven years now. What the hell? Well come over here. We have something for you that will elicit freedom in your life."

And like when people see the difference in those things, it's like, well they saw it 'cause we called it curriculum, but they bought it because we pulled at their heartstrings, and ultimately because we offer something so much different than everybody else. That's really what we offer, man. We offer this I idea of changing the way that your sales works. So, the thing is though, is that we're not cutting edge, dude. Like, I have traced contact marketing back with the father of contact marketing, if you will, Stu Heinecke. It's a silent mentor turned really good friend of mine at this point. That's cool. He's actually gonna be a Totality in Knoxville, Tennessee.

August 26th, 27th, and 28th. Shout out to Totality.

Chris Hill: Fascinating. Okay.

Dale Dupree: If you wanna meet him and learn about his crazy life, you know, 50 years almost of contact marketing. It's a wild ride.

Chris Hill: That's amazing.

Dale Dupree: You know, but through people like him, I was able to find like the Medici bro, like Da Vinci created a, like a painting for the Medici to like sell this other banking family on using their, you know network, if you will, by painting this picture, you know, through this famous artist, right? Like, to get these people to basically be like, "This is awesome. Let's take a meeting with these guys." Like, this is something that's been happening forever, dude.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: But the idea is that we've lost touch with it because of the word "scalability," first and foremost, and the greed that people have toward quick, fast, easy money, that doesn't last, by the way.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Right? Most of the companies that quick, fast, easy money, they sell, or they have to become an acquisition God among the marketplace in order to remain relevant to begin with.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Yeah.

Dale Dupree: It's crazy that the biggest brands out there are big because they bought everybody else that was coming in to beat them, right? And that's what the, like literal strategy is a business these days. That to me is not sustainable, bro.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: It's monopolizing networks and marketplaces. No one likes it on the consumer side. Like if you can only get one type of cable TV to your house and one internet connection and one phone, you know, provider. What the hell?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: How is that a free marketplace? Welcome to America, right? The concept of what we sell is getting back to the roots of like, you don't have to build a big company and sell to some guy. You could just do this by yourself for the next 25 years. Make plenty of money. Be happy. Live in ultimate freedom.

Give yourself time back to your life. Spend it on the things that you love and really literally do it different than everybody else, 'cause if I send a trash can to an office where I could potentially make $10,000 a year on a B2B product for a four year contract, right? $40,000, right?. One office, outcome, one type of revenue, like if I'm looking at ROIs, and everything else. And instead of, like saying, let's do the science and let's make a 47 touch sequence that lasts, you know, four months with emails and phone calls and you know, some drip stuff and blah, blah, blah, like if, but if instead, if I were to just say like, no, we're gonna instead just do like a tense touch sequence, and we are gonna take our time. If it takes a couple months, that's fine.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: But we're gonna give people an intense experience unlike anything they've ever gotten, and so that person has people calling on them all day long. "Hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time?" "Hey, this is a sales call. Do you want to hang up?" Like, no shade. No shade. Like those are, those things work sometimes, right? For sure, but the obnoxiousness really, and like the tone of voice is because, like, that's what a lot of people who buy, that's how they feel about it. Like, a lot of 'em will still entertain it just because it's different, but they're like, yeah, you know, it kinda gets old over time. But that's with anything.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Like we just talked about over time.

Chris Hill: Oh yeah.

Dale Dupree: People catch on, man, but if instead I send you an experience and it's not like a catchy line or a, let's just say a misleading subject line about, like, chicken soup or something stupid, like these people think are, you know, are a pattern interrupt, but instead it's a trash can, and you're like, "What is this?" And you open it up, and there's a letter that says, "Hey, I threw this away," 'cause sales marketing, you know, and brochures and white papers, they're trash.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: You toss 'em anyway, so made it easier and just like pre-crumpled and pre-threw mine away, then some people would say that that's a gimmick, and while I would agree, I would also say like, in this buying market is actually the most relevant thing you could tell somebody because well, all they do is get inundated with cold calls all day long. They freaking hate it, bro.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And so I can literally speak the love language of the person I'm calling on by doing that.

Chris Hill: Yeah. And it's a great pattern interrupt too, because you don't expect to get a crumpled up letter in the mail. You look at it and you go, why the crap am I getting this? Like, what's going on? And then. You know, you're more likely to read it because you're curious about why it was crumpled in your in your enve

lope to begin with.

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Chris Hill: I think you, did you say at one point you even, like, I think I recall this from previous thing I saw where you actually were, I think you talked, you do like a basket, you send 'em like a basketball goal for the trash can or something like that as well.

Dale Dupree: They, you know, there's like variations of the crumpled letter for sure. I learned it by, so I actually, the origination of the crumpled letters that I was tearing my business cards in the middle and telling people, people would say, "Can I get your business card?" And I would hand it to them, and by the way, I actually had somebody manufacture them where they velcroed in the middle.

It cost me so much money, but it was like one of the coolest things I ever did, but I was sitting in my car one day, and after like an FU experience like a literal, "Get the F outta my office," experience, and I, you know, I'd gone through stuff like that before, but this one was just super intense and I thought to myself like, what, you know, what can I walk in with?

'cause the card, even the business card was like something I gave at the end, you know, when they asked, I got the like the scissors that had like, the texture to them, so it looked like jagged edges, you know, when I cut down the middle. So it was cool. People loved it, but I couldn't, I didn't walk in the door and like say, "Hey, here's my business card. It's pre-torn so you could throw it away." It didn't feel right, so I started coming up with this idea of, well, most of what we're doing angers people, and I actually came up with, at the time, I came up with two other letters that I just didn't try, because then I heard about a version of the crumbled letter, if you will, which I'll get into. But first, I burnt the edges of a letter, and I put it in a matchbox, and I just put like, "Light this on fire," on the top of the matchbox, and I was like, that's sick. And then I did a coffee stain letter, 'cause I was thinking about my demographic. Who am I selling to? Why would it be relative relevant to them?

And the second was like IT. I deal with it all the time, so I did like Mountain Dew, and then I did coffee. And I put these stains of Mountain Dew and these stains of coffee on the letters, and I just put like.

Chris Hill: So wait, were you hand staining though?

Dale Dupree: Yeah, dude, I was doing this my hand at the time, right?

Chris Hill: That's impressive. Okay.

Dale Dupree: We were like sitting in my office like a scientist.

Chris Hill: You're just making a mess.

Dale Dupree: Just like making an absolute mess, and my boss like, "What are you doing man?" You know, like, and this was my dad at the time, so I was my boss at this stage. This was 2009 when I first started dabbling in contact marketing, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: But then I heard this story about this guy who he was sending letters to people through real estate, and he was like friend of a friend kind of thing, so I heard, I didn't read about this. I heard it from the horse's mouth when he saw my letters.

He goes, "Dude, check this out," and this guy was sending in the real estate world, he was sending to all these people who had listed their houses for 90 days, he was sending them advertising and getting like a less than 1% response. And so like he'd send it and 10 days later when he got a response, he'd send it again, except this time he put like a marker, a red sharpie on it that said, "Don't throw me away again." It was almost like it got resurrected from the trash, and I was like, damn. That's a good idea.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: The guy was calling it the crumpled letter. I think it was actually crumpled too, which is why he called it that.

But that was the story I heard, and then I took one of those letters I had and I like, I balled it up, and I opened it back up, and I was like, yo, this is a really good idea. Bought some little mini trash cans, and then I made envelopes too that said like, "crumpled letter inside," using like the red handwriting like he had. Where he had put, "don't throw me away again," I just put, "crumpled letter inside," you know, dot, dot, dot, 'cause I felt from my perspective, it was how do we drive curiosity in people? How do we create relevance to the messaging? Drive back to what we fix and help people with and then also give them this epic experience that makes them curious, excited.

Even if they're like, yeah, you know, it was whatever, 'cause they're just not a very fun person, that they would never forget what you did to them because of the way that, typically, salespeople reach out in the first place. So that's like the entire context of how I started to create this idea of doing things different. And that's what The Sales Rebellion does, man. We literally, and every imagine that you get a response from somebody in your typical sales walk that says, "Hey, reach out to me in 12 months." What do we typically do? We reach out to them for the next six months, like every other month kind of thing with like some stupid marketing thing that we think they'll like and enjoy, but we have no idea. They've never, they didn't even ask for that in the first place. But imagine like a month later, they get a save the date in the mail like you would send out when you get married or have a bar mitzvah or whatever, right? Imagine to save the date. And it's like, you know, the alignment, or you could even call it the matrimony of ABC company and XYZ company, and then it's like the date they asked you 12 months later, and like, "Hey, I know you asked me to reach out in 12 months, so I'm saving the date for us, and I look forward to meeting you then." And they have this whole experience and they're like, they say two things.

Like, either this person is genius or they're insane, and both of those things I believe to be really good options as opposed to indifference, right? Because that's how they look at 99% of salespeople is they're indifferent to them. You don't exist in their mind, in their heart, in their ecosystem, period.

Because you're forgettable.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Nothing like finding ways to stick out, and when you mentioned people being angry at you all the time, like so much PTSD just flashing through my head of times where I've been yelled at or hollered at, and I wouldn't consider myself that annoying.

You learn to be persistent and not, you know, pestering as I like to say. But yeah, you definitely run into situations where people are like, "Stop bothering me, quit," and they do anything they can to tell you to stop. So if you can do something to make them laugh or at least make them think before they throw it away, you know that that's gonna help you on that next follow up or that next contact, so that's awesome.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: That's really cool.

So you do stuff like that, you also do what? Consulting on top of that as well?

Dale Dupree: Yeah. You know, we're like a, I don't know, there's just like a trash can of options, right? Like ultimately we have "advisors" is what we call it. So like if you came in, and you're looking at your sales process, whether it's just your outbound or it's a couple different, it's discoveries, it's closing, like wherever your problems are, we have an advisory program we put people through, but like ultimately, like what everything drives back to in our organization is fulfillment. So if you're a company that doesn't have salespeople that are achieving outcomes that you desire, you know, we used to do training.

We did it for like five years almost. This is the first year that we haven't really done quote unquote "training," and, but because the problem with that is that like five of the 50 people that you put to the program are gonna actually do it. And even though they make, they end up filling the gap and getting record years to the organization, we got 45 people that still, yeah, just kind of like existing. And so what like B players and C players, right? Like do they exist? Yeah. In a competitive environments, but if you culture that, there's nothing good about that, so I, what we figured, you know, about a year ago was we need to make some changes here. We need to not just go in and show people what to do and how to do it and provide them with all the resources.

You just do it for them, so we become more of like a boutique agency, if you will, for sales. So you hire us on as like a sales rep.

Chris Hill: Okay.

Dale Dupree: And we become, we're in the bullpen, like we're a ghost because, you know, we're just an empty chair 'cause we're remote, but we use the mail system, which is widely effective.

People just don't know how to do it right is the thing. There's a lot of rules that have changed. Mail forwarding, digitizing mail, so there's a lot of ways to get to people, remote or not, through the mail. So we use the mail, and then we have a system of follow up, which is way different than agencies that are doing just straight cold calling using their pitches, which are great.

You know, I have a couple great friends that run agencies like that, but our calls are hated. This is the guy that sent you that trash can in the mail, and the conversion of that is insane. I mean, we'll take a list of 150 people and we'll, 51 of them will become disqualified really fast because they'll respond, "Yo, I got your letter. We don't have what you offer though, and we don't need it, you know? Thank you though." You know, so like enrichment, things like that are important, right? But like, imagine that you put a, I say it this way, 'cause imagine you put a rep into that seed and gave 'em 150 names and said like, get some responses, and 51 of those people don't even qualify, but you never hear from them. You chase them for the next 10 years.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: What a wild thought man, and so like, we're helping organizations to understand list integrity, data integrity. We're helping organizations to understand that sales doesn't have to be done the way that everybody does it.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: And that ultimately, like even if this idea becomes mainstream, it's freaking good. For the buyers. So people say all the time, like, "Well, it works now, buddy, but it, you know, enough people are doing this, it ain't gonna work," and like, bro, everyone calls and says, "Hi, this is a sales call. You wanna hang up?" "Hi, can I have 27 seconds of your time?" You know, like everybody says that. So like, what's the difference? Well, the difference is that people like ours. People really enjoy the experience and when, and again, like when they don't, it doesn't really matter that much, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: So I think the problem and why I bring that up is that people are afraid of those risks. Well freaking just hire us and we'll do it for you, man.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: And then like, and if we don't work, fire us, right? Like you've got 12 months of us building a pipeline for you, basically, which is highly effective, and then you just fire us and take the pipeline and go close it however you want, if you feel like it, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: But additionally, like an individual, like if an individual is listening right now that doesn't like, have $30,000 to hire us as a sales rep and then pay us commission, you know, like. An individual can go to the rebel arcade and just buy the tutorials $24.99, all the way up to $490.98, right, of like the different packages, and you can, you'll coach 'em with that.

You get resources with that and show you exactly how to build these campaigns for contact marketing. How to implement them, your ICP, how to speak to them effectively through written word. How to follow up with them effectively over the phone and through email after you're using these mediums. So we're really, like, for the people is how we look at it.

Like, we're for the rebels. Like, we want everybody to be able to experience rebellion. So if your boss is like, "No, we would never bring these guys in for a workshop to show all 50 people for three days," or "No, we would never hire them for 12 months to do sales for us," or you know, like, "No, I'm not putting you in one of their sales cohorts. You can just like outta your own pocket," spend a $100, $200, buy our playbooks and go implement them yourself. And then we have a free community that attaches to that as well too, for people that just want to come and like get some feedback and say like, "Yo, I sent a hundred things in the mail, and I didn't have the greatest experience. I need some help."

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And allow, you know, our ecosystem, our community, our people to breathe life into them. So I mean, ultimately I think what we're turning into, bro, like just in a nutshell is, we're turning into a community for people that's more in-person than it is anything else.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And we're not a community that offers like a service that we coach you on for you to go and implement.

We offer life transformational moments for you that go beyond sales, that help you to think bigger about your life, because as soon as you make that $20,000 commission check for the first time in your life at 27-years-old, or 21 or 47, because you've been jerked around your entire sales life thinking that, you know, $2,000 or $3,000 is acceptable, right, but instead we get you those big wins, that I'm telling your life changes in a flash, and especially with the things that we preach. It's not, "Go buy a dope car and a big house," it's cool, how much time does that buy you with your kids? With yourself, with your spouse, with your friends? How much time does that buy you to invest back into your own life? How many times do you need to make that check in order to just stop altogether? Having to make a big check, right? And just go be a greeter at Walmart for the rest of your life, and like, live in happiness. Yeah. And like we really, really, really, really preach the identity of doing what you love.

And we believe that sales is a great place to start that, and that most people will end up making sourdough and selling it for $50 a loaf at like the local farmer's market because of what they found in the process of becoming a rebel. So rebellion is really a lifestyle. The Sales Rebellion in our product offering is life transformational.

It's not just, "Let's sell more stuff," it's, "Let's be better."

Chris Hill: That's awesome. That's awesome, and with that, I noticed, you know, you talk a lot about the joy of selling. It's, dude sales is not always joyful, you know that, and I think it's counter cultural almost to talk about it being a joy and something people can love doing.

Because for me, like I know through my career, it's been like, "Alright, this is the job. This is the career I chose. This is the path I went down. This is what I'm stuck in," and then coming back to it almost like in the Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder's saying, "Destiny! Destiny! No escaping! That's for me!" That's how sales has felt for me most of my career. I try to avoid it, I try to be the Frankenstein, not Frankenstein, you know, up until that moment where he realizes, "Oh, I am Frankenstein, and for me, that's a challenge. So tell me more about like, that finding of joy. Like what does that mean within sales to you?

And I mean, you've said a lot of it I think here, but I'd love you to just to kind of like sum it up.

Dale Dupree: Yeah. Life is sales, and sales is life is the way that I look at it. I don't box sales into like some kind of compartment. I see sales as like a literal motion of life. That in sales, just like in my life, I'm gonna meet strangers and have the opportunity to be impactful to those people, to give them something, which is again, going back to the principles of serving leadership, but also to the principles of just being a good person and living a good life.

So if we really look at, like, life is, we wake up in the morning, we do, you know, eight cold plunges and, you know, 7,000 pushups or whatever y'all do.

Chris Hill: And roll a banana on your face and all that.

Dale Dupree: Banana water, and then we go to work, right? We eat lunch. We get outta work. We hang out with friends. Watch Severance, you know, like.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Whatever. Life is very predictable, ultimately.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: It's the same thing over and over again, and it's very simple things, and those things do what for us. They bring us joy.

Except for work.

Chris Hill: Hmm.

Dale Dupree: Right? And the way that you described it, I think it's beautiful because it's, you know, it's like, "Well, life hasn't been good to me, bro." When I think of what you just said about sales, like, but I still find joy in life all the time. I think that the real opportunity is finding the failure. That's what brings you joy. I love it when somebody says something like, "You know what? I don't like what you're sending me in the mail. It's weird." Because it happens.

It's rare, but it happens. I love that. I love to say to that person, "Sorry that it came across that way for you. I'll cease and desist, hang up on them instead of trying to like, do something crazy with them, and then immediately I'll do a little research, call the front desk, Hey, what's Jeff's favorite thing?"

And then like a ghost or a fart in the wind, right? Like, I'm in and out and no one even knows I existed. I'll send him something without my name attached to it, nothing, and just say, "Hey, someone out here wants you to know that you're appreciated." Because when I hear some people say things like that, I think, man, they don't get enough joy in their life.

They don't have the things that I have. They don't have a incredible wife. They don't have two amazing kids that I shouldn't even have, bro. I should be dead. My story is that 2014, I should have been gone.

Chris Hill: Hmm.

Dale Dupree: Right? I'm a miracle. I'm a product of grace. So when I think of joy, I think, bro, everything in life is joy for me, right? Again, because of my story, because of the things I've experienced, because of the fact that I shouldn't be sitting here with you right now, which gives me chills every time when I think about it, just how miraculous my existence is, and I totally take advantage of it. I eat too much. I play too much, right? But I love my life. I love the good. I love the bad. I love the indifference. I love the ugly, all of it. I find joy in it. Instead of stress and anxiety. I'm a patient person. I seek out moments where I have to test that and challenge that, and in sales, I think, like when you make the commitment to it, what you have to understand is that because it's a part of life, that's why it's the hardest thing for people to do. Because me and my preferences, I would prefer that my life look like this, but I am not the driver, and that's the thing that most people don't understand. Like, I might impact the decisions through my action and my free will if we even have that in the first place, right? Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but sure, I have to be the one that makes the decisions. But man, like if I could just like surrender and die to myself every day, my life would be full of joy, and those are the decisions that I made a long time ago. You know, so a kid is getting outta hand at the home front, standing up in his chair, you know, screaming and yelling at his mom. Like, sure, there's an appropriate way to reprimand that child and to help that child learn versus one that's not.

But you can find joy in that moment. Just like when someone tells you to, "F off and never email me again." You can find joy in that moment. I'm going to literally, I'm gonna write an email, I'm gonna print it. I'm gonna send in the mail with a little note that says, "Hey, you said never to email you again. So, I sent this one in the mail," and literally when I call back or behind that guy, I like, either they have a restraining order, you know? Like it's over.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Or they got a really good moment from that, even if it wasn't like a chuckle, it was more like impressive or intense, you know, can't believe this guy actually did this.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Which hopefully just opens people's mind to what joy really is.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, the way you're describing it too, it's not just, and I've always thought of joy this way too, of like, it's not just about having fun. Joy is really more than just being pleased with something in the moment, or, you know, something that like what a Marie Kondo, like, sparks joy in you. You know, it's not just something that makes you happy. Joy can be something that you feel even when things are tough, and having that ability to identify that.

I think that's a great perspective on it because a lot of people, including myself, you know, you're gonna get down on yourself. You're gonna get frustrated, oh, I didn't close this, I didn't close that. Oh, this didn't go my way. And all of a sudden things start to fall apart and it's really easy to, get stuck in those moments.

And then just to give up entirely. So, I think that's a, that's a really good perspective on it, so that's awesome.

So you mentioned you're doing Totality. What, what is Totality? Tell me about that.

Dale Dupree: Yeah, simply put, If people are ready for something different, if they're ready for something that isn't gonna teach them to be a better seller or a better marketer, or a better business owner, but it's gonna teach them to take risks, to challenge themselves, to do things that are unpopular, if you will, with the end goal in mind of becoming a better person, that will subsequently make them better at their profession, Totality is for you, and it really, what we decided is like there's a lot of people out there that's like, "We're the anti-sales conference," or, "We're the anti-conference," and then you go to 'em, and it's like, are you sure about that?

Chris Hill: It's just a conference.

Dale Dupree: Y'all are still just throwing a conference together.

It's just, I'm not getting pitched as much as I normally would. I'm still getting pitched, right? Ours is a community-based concept that you don't know the agenda when you come. You know that there's speakers, but we also don't have any speakers. It's nothing but live workshops.

Chris Hill: Oh, wow.

Dale Dupree: It's nothing but interactive workshops as well too.

Chris Hill: Oh.

Dale Dupree: So like you're immersed into something that you didn't even know was gonna happen in the first place.

Chris Hill: You have to do something. You can't just nurse a hangover the whole time.

Dale Dupree: That's true, and actually there's no alcohol at Totality either.

Chris Hill: Oh, interesting.

Dale Dupree: Yeah, we do everything actually against the grain of the way the conferences work. So we make it exciting. There's tons of twists and turns, lots of very just experiential moments for people instead of just like a, "Oh, that was a great talk," it's like a, "I participated in what just happened just now that I didn't know was gonna even happen in the first place."

We have it at a place we call the Rebel Hideaway. Which is really fun because the lore of The Sales Rebellion is that there's all these mythological creatures and people like The Copier Warrior, and we've got a guy with a personal brand called The Finance Viking, and it's fun. Like we've built this mythical place and all this lore where you come and experience that lore, dude, in person.

It's like you said earlier, there's more to this name, dude. I feel some like something go, I'm a nerd. I said it right earlier. I'm a nerd man. Like, when people come to Totality, their life changes because of what we desire for them, not what we want to build ourselves. Like we're meeting people where they are.

Like most people, that came for Totality One, 90% of the feedback was, "I would normally, I would never say yes to something like this. I didn't even know what to pack. In my back, other than a toothbrush," you know, "but I just trusted that this was gonna be insane and holy cow, you delivered." And that was just the first one, bro. On a shoestring budget, you know and losing money, even like, you know, like, so imagine what it's gonna look like in year two, and then I've already planned 10 of these, man. I've never told anybody that outside of the close circle. So you're getting an exclusive right here, but I've planned 10 of these. So, who, because who knows, you know. Like what, eventually when you build something, what you're trying to work toward, the thought is that in most cases we have this idea of the outcome. Man, I'm here for the journey. So when I sat down and made the first one, I was like, okay, but what does the second one look like? And then by the time I got to 10, I went, oh man, I'm feeling this. I'm feeling this, and the idea is that if we can, it ultimately allow people to dream the same way that we are through Totality and giving them permission to just think outside the box, to be rebellious, to be more creative in their work life and their personal life, to be more present in their work life and their personal life, to really like experience this thing that we get to do as people together.

We were talking about the actual Totality, like the eclipse, right? Going to that, like a lot of people have never experienced that, dude. It, and then the people that have, when you ask 'em like, what was it like if they didn't have their phone out recording everything, they'll say, "Oh my God. Buddy, you suddenly realize how small you are in the grand scheme of things when everything goes black."

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: From a moon in front of a sun. Like this is insane what's happening right now. Right, but.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: That's what exactly the kind of feeling we want people to have at Totality. We wanna break you to the point of like, oh my God, am I letting them do this to me. Sadness and overwhelming emotions of man, am I doing enough, man?

Am I trying hard enough? Absolutely. What we want you to feel in those moments.

Chris Hill: Wow.

Dale Dupree: Because otherwise you go to a conference and you leave and you're like, oh my God, that was great, and then you get pitched for nine weeks, you know, from a bunch of people you never met to go, thanks for coming by our booth.

You know?

Chris Hill: Oh gosh. Yeah.

Dale Dupree: This is such a nightmare, right, in general. And then ultimately, it's this idea too of like micro meetups, if you will. So we cap it at 150. I'll probably do less than that this year. We did a hundred people a year one. We had a hurricane, like literally.

Chris Hill: Oh wow.

Dale Dupree: Eye of the Storm came over where we had the event. Right.

Chris Hill: Were you in East Tennessee or where were you this year?

Dale Dupree: Yeah, we were here. We were up here in Knoxville. Yeah. And we're here again.

Chris Hill: Golly.

Dale Dupree: This year, right? It's about like, we still had an amazing turnout even with, despite the storm people still landed somehow and got to the event.

It was crazy, dude.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Right? And we got to experience what it's like to just like have a hundred people in a room, right? Like, so we're not gonna go much bigger than that. I'll probably cap it at 125. We're like 50, 60% tickets sold right now. This time last year we had nine tickets sold, right? Like, it's a whole new thing for us, right?

But I believe we're doing it right. I believe that we're doing it effectively. I believe that we've started something. I won't be surprised to see other people doing it too and giving us zero credit, which is totally fine, but I won't be surprised by that at all because man, people are looking for this.

And that's the ultimate outcome of the question is that you're looking for this. If you're listening to this right now, and you're hearing this, I promise you that even if you don't think you are, I bet when you show up and have the experience that you leave going, holy cow, I needed that so bad.

More than I knew.

Chris Hill: Yeah, I could definitely, I mean, I could definitely see that, 'cause I actually had a chance, I was spying on you a bunch last night doing my research for this interview, but I looked at a little bit of your documentary series that you did on last year and everything you're doing there.

And I could tell, like it's definitely a different event. It's definitely something that people, I think would really get a lot out of, especially being in, having been in the sales room. Like I've been in a room in an auditorium in Little Rock, Arkansas with Zig Ziglar and his whole crew of people, which aren't direct salespeople, but they definitely are, you know, the motivational types.

And they'll tell you how to get a million dollars overnight if you sign up for this one thing. And I think Rudy Giuliani spoke at that. He did. Yeah. Shoot. Good Lord. Yeah. That was wild.

Dale Dupree: Sorry.

Chris Hill: I know. Thank you. Yeah, I didn't notice the oil running down the face or anything, but yeah. Anyways, so that was, that was just a wild, flashback in my head just now, but yeah, you know, like you're used to that or you're used to these sales training events you have to go to, and it's like, I mean, again, I'll go back to my AT&T days. It's like, I would be in a room in, you know, Dallas, Texas, and you just be in a windowless room for hours on end and learning sales principles and reading things and falling asleep and trying to stay awake and hope you can get to the evening when you can use your per diem and go out and get some good food and beer and just be done.

So the idea that you're doing it differently, even down to no alcohol, to, for, I don't know if it's a personal principle that you're not doing that for, or if it's a, "Hey, we want people to be focused at this conference, and we don't want the hangovers at the every day during the event," but that idea alone is like different.

It stands out and it's gonna be for people that want that difference. And I think that that's cool. So. Yeah, I think you're doing something neat.

Dale Dupree: Thanks, dude. I

Chris Hill: think you're doing some cool stuff, and I'm not just saying that to like just brag on you, but I've been really fascinated with everything you've done with The Sales Rebellion.

So it's really neat to be able to learn more about it today, learn more about what you

're doing. Last question on The Sales Rebellion. I noticed on the website you have a button for submitting a prayer request. What's that about?

Dale Dupree: My business is a ministry. Just like I said, that sales is life. I also believe that like in all facets of everything that I do, that I want to make sure that people understand my purview is, or really like I should say, that the vision of my life is not what I'll do on this Earth, it's eternal, is the idea. It's that I'm looking at something completely different than what everybody else is. So when you see a website and you see this cool thing that this guy is doing, I really want people to understand too that like, I don't find that to be the most important thing in my life.

Most important thing in my life is people, and ultimately in my faith and the way that I live my faith, and I practice my faith, and I've learned my faith, and I've become deeply ingrained in my faith is that people matter more than we have let on. And that in most cases, something as simple as letting a person, which by the way, we have thousands of submissions, letting a person just reflect for a minute, first on like what they're grateful for and then what we could pray for them for. And like knowing, even if we never contact them, if they're not interested in that, knowing that someone out there is lifting them up, even if they don't believe in the same God that I do, or they don't follow the same religious principles that I do, just knowing that a person cares that much to stop what they're doing and lift them up, or to take a minute out of their morning and to lift them up. It's that joy principle that we keep coming back to in this conversation, really. How do I give people joy in their life by helping them to see how important they truly are?

And again, like through my religious principles, I think that, I believe. I'm a follower of Jesus, bro. To me, it's that, right? It's love for everyone, man. Eternal love too, not just while you're here on earth, but this idea of like, where are you headed? What does the story look like when you're gone, who will you bring with you through the process? I just, I think that we look at that as more of a fairy tale than we do as reality in this generation and in this world in general. I think that we've dumbed religion down to just a church, like an organization, even. We don't live it on a daily basis. It's just Sunday or whenever we did our Hail Marys. Shoutout to my Catholic friend over here, but the real principle to me is like, well, what, what about every other day? What about every other moment? What about the ability to be able to let other people in on what it is that you do without it being a place where they think they might be judged? Or where they don't believe they can go.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: But if you give them that outlet, and that's why there's a prayer request on the page.

Chris Hill: I love it. That's awesome. I'm a big believer in like, well, I'm a big believer, period. I am a Christian as well, but one of the things I'm big on is, like, not just including a Jesus fish on your website if you're gonna preach your faith. Like, that to me is the most annoying thing ever because how many times have you seen it there, and then you know something about that company, and you're like, or you've heard something about them like that just completely discredits everything else about that.

I think it's a very, it's not the worst thing in the world, but like claiming it versus doing it is something different. So seeing that button on your website really stuck out to me is like, oh, he's really doing it, and hearing you get people submitting and stuff, like, that's a great way to connect with people, and you know, even if you're not going to respond directly to them through that, it's just an anonymous prayer request thing. Like the fact that you're doing that, you're thinking you're praying, like all that stuff is awesome. So.

Dale Dupree: Yeah.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I just found it really neat. So.

Dale Dupree: Thanks, bro. Our mission statement, just for everybody here, is to tear down the castles of the old guard and to build a kingdom of rebels, and that kingdom mindset is really what we lead with in all things.

Chris Hill: That's so cool.

Dale Dupree: So in the way that we wear our ministry and our sleeves, so.

Chris Hill: Yeah. That'

s awesome. Okay, well this is, We Built This Brand. I always have this wrap up question, so I'm gonna ask it to you anyway. You know, I always like to know like what brand, out of everything that you deal with and everything in your life right now, what brand do you admire the most?

Dale Dupree: I think the most disruptive brand right now that I admire a lot, I think a lot of people, don't like the brand because of their name, mostly. And they've done some really weird stunts as well too. Like, I saw something, actually a guy in my network, friend of mine showed me like where they hired a witch doctor for an advertisement, right?

Chris Hill: Uhhuh.

Dale Dupree: Like it was total stunt, right?

Chris Hill: Uhhuh.

Dale Dupree: But they made people think that they were like cursing their product for everybody to be cursed, you know?

Chris Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dale Dupree: Total stunt, right? But anyway, but so I think they get a bad rap because of things like that in some circles, but bro, they are the literal definition of disruptive, and they're called Liquid Death.

Chris Hill: Oh, yeah.

Dale Dupree: And when you think about how they started, there's three things that I admire the most about them. One is just that the world was inundated with cans of energy drinks, right? So when you go to the gas station, you can get a can of energy drink or a plastic bottle of water, and a lot of the time it's an emotional decision, man. So you look at this cool can with this awesome artwork, and like, I could use a little energy, even to an extent, and you buy that. And like water's just like, I can get that outta the sink.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Whatever. And so they've disrupted that whole mindset of the consumer that goes in to buy, and this is real. These are facts, bro. These are, I've learned a lot about this brand. I really admire them. I'm trying to give them to be the main sponsor of Totality. It'll happen one day. Don't worry about that, but the second thing that I love is that part of their model too was like going to bars and saying, hey, like, you know, instead of this like, tap water out of this gun, you put our water up here, and just like, 'cause it's so metal, like you said earlier about me and my existence, right? Like these guys, they are so smart. They go to all these bars and they go, "Here. Here's cases of our water. Sell it to your people," and people just buy it because it looks like a, you know, like a big can of beer, right?

Like literally, that's why people psychologically we're just like, oh, this is cool, and then they drink 16 ounces of water after too many drinks, which helps to sober them up.

Chris Hill: Right.

Dale Dupree: Which helps their health in general. Maybe not. Maybe I'm a little, it's a stretch there to say that, but again, the thought of how to disrupt a bar market with water is, it's a losing thought, right?

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: Unless you're Liquid Death, and then the third thing that I admire the most about them is they are so risky with the way that they advertise. I mean, like pregnant moms drinking their water for the Super Bowl ad, I think is what it was, and like, they sell a casket full of their water because.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: And just their whole mantra of like, "Murder your thirst." What a genius idea, man. I mean, they're a really disruptive brand. Again, I respect the people out there that don't like the word "death" on a can that they're drinking water out of, or some of the weird stuff that they've done.

But like, it's like I said earlier, I'm that guy, bro. I'll hang out with those people, right? I don't have to be a part of them, but like you can influence people that way as well too.

Chris Hill: Oh yeah.

Dale Dupree: And ultimately, I do think to an extent too, like you should learn about these guys.

I've gotten to know some of 'em over the time that I've spent, like trying to get them to sponsor us, and they're good people, dude. And I think at the core of what they're doing, they're misunderstood by the public, but they're a huge brand now because there's a lot of us out there that like, dude, every time I stop for water, I grab or at a gas station for what used to be a Dasani. Dasani is disgusting. A Smart Water. Whatever, you know. I just grab a Liquid Death now, dude.

Chris Hill: Yeah.

Dale Dupree: I don't even think about it. I get two, as a matter of fact, every time, and I think a lot of people do that because they see less plastic. There's still plastic in those cans.

Chris Hill: For sure.

Dale Dupree: There's a lining of plastic in it, but less plastic, you know. It's promoting something different. It's super, just, it's fun. You know, like, especially if you don't have kids going, "What's a Liquid Death?" You know, like, although my kids don't even question that. Oh yeah. They just go, "dad, the design on that is so dope.,"

You know? I'm like, yeah, it's cool. Right. So yeah. Anyway, that's, I think those guys are doing it right.

Chris Hill: Yeah. No, no, for sure. My 6-year-old was asking me the other day if he could get Liquid Death, and it's always cute hearing it from your son. "Daddy, can I have Liquid Death?" I'm like, yeah, okay. Yeah, sure. That's fine. Yeah. Whatever. You can have Liquid Death, son.

Dale Dupree: I got carded buying it the other day, by the way. Like.

Chris Hill: No way. Someone actually carded you?

Dale Dupree: Swear to God. I was like, they go, "When's your birthday? I need your ID," and I was like.

Chris Hill: You do realize this is water?

Dale Dupree: I just looked at 'em and was like, well, this is gonna be awkward for you.

And I pulled my ID out and I handed it to 'em, and they were like, "Why?" And they rang it up, and it goes this water, and they're like, "Oh my God. Yeah. That is awkward."

Chris Hill: I am, I am in shock. But that's hilarious. That's funny, right? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, Liquid Death is just one of those brands you just can't get away from.

Like, they're just so good at branding and marketing and their content is amazing. They partnered with ELF Cosmetics.

Dale Dupree: Yes. Yes.

Chris Hill: To do like a whole makeup kit too. Like, they do the wildest things. I just love it. I just love it.

So that's awesome. Well, good. Well, Dale, where can people connect with you?

Where can people find out about you? Maybe even sign up for Totality if they're interested?

Dale Dupree: Yeah, you can. Everything that we do, you can find on salesrebellion.com. We're doing a lot of changes to the website and whatnot and the brand, but Totality on there, a lot of our resources are on there.

Our advisory programs, stuff that we talked about earlier. Really, I would recommend people to just Google my name. I know that sounds like kind of you know, vain or egotistical, but it's just kind of simple to find, and I have a lot of guest podcasts. I have a lot of just PR in general that I've done.

So if people want to just like snag some free resources and learn a little bit more about our methodology, what we do, how we change the game, how we differentiate, how we lead as servants, you know, just Google my name or Google The Sales Rebellion. In general, our content feeds, our best ones are LinkedIn for sure.

It's where most of our audience is, but you can find me on all the major channels. I'm a TikToker, not really, but sort of, I dabble in the Tiky Toky with my own videos, but wherever it's most accessible to the listeners, but ultimately, like salesrebellion.com is where you get all the resources, and then again, there's plenty of free stuff out there for people to come and just learn and start thinking like a rebel.

Chris Hill: Excellent. Well, Dale, thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate the time. It's been a pleasure.