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Selling from the heart comes down to one simple thing: showing up with the courage to care.”
“The opposite of love isn’t hate—it’s fear.”
“Love is not the absence of leadership—love is the essence of leadership.”
“When leaders show up with love—courage, care, and clarity—they unlock deeper engagement and stronger business results.”
“Being nice and showing up with love are different things.”
“We need to flip the switch—react out of love rather than respond out of fear.”
“Sometimes we think the work ends when the relationship begins—but that’s when the real work starts.”
Welcome to the Selling From the Heart podcast, your home for authentic, effective, and socially-integrated sales strategies to help you master the art of selling. Join your hosts Darrell Amy and Larry Levine along with some of the world's best sales thought leaders and practitioners as we explore ways to grow your sales.
Welcome to The Selling From the Heart Podcast. On the From the Heart Business Network, you've joined a global movement of sales professionals who are dedicated to being authentic and building trust. We call it selling from the Heart. Together we're on a mission to bring sincerity and substance to the sales profession we all love. Get ready to be inspired and equipped as we join our hosts, Larry Levine and Daryl Amy.If you love the Selling from the Heart podcast, then you know how much we value authentic leadership and building relationships with heart. But here's the thing, great leadership doesn't stop with sales. It starts at the top with CEOs who inspire, trust, create meaningful cultures, and lead with purpose. That's why we're excited to invite you to get involved with the Culture From The Heart Podcast. On Culture from the Heart, we celebrate CEOs who are transforming their companies by putting people first, and we're asking you to help us find them. Do you work for an incredible leader, know a CEO, who builds culture from the heart?. Nominate them to be interviewed on the show together. Let spotlight the leaders who make businesses thrive by leading authentically. So head over to culture from the heart.com to submit your nomination today because when leadership starts with the heart, culture, and success follow.Hello and welcome back to The Selling From the Heart Podcast, your co-host Darryl Amy here today with Larry Levine. What's going on, Larry?. Hey, what's not going on? Great seeing you. We always have a terrific time when we have guests on the podcast today, we're in for really good treat. Darryl Amy, we are going to win Monday. Get ready for Paul Epstein. We're gonna have a phenomenal conversation. Hey, the year is off to a great start and thank you to everybody out there in the Selling from the Heart community. It continues to grow. We continue to make new friends, and I wanna let you know if you're new to this podcast, you've joined a growing community of sales professionals that are dedicated to being genuine, being authentic, building trust. All those things are what add up together to become what we call selling from the heart and this community around the world is just incredible. Yeah, absolutely. I want to give a shout out, not to a new friend, but to a dear friend of ours here in the Selling from the Heart Community. That's Dave Klan. Darrell, I know you know Dave. Dave is a terrific guy. He pushes the button out there in the sales profession like none other. But we appreciate having you in the community. Very grateful for Dave.Well, hey, today's guest brings a championship mindset to the world of business and sales, one built in a high pressure, high performance arena of professional sports. Paul Epstein spent 15 years as a top sports executive leading billion dollar NFL campaigns, breaking Super Bowl revenue records, and transforming underperforming NBA teams into amazing success stories. Recognized by Success Magazine as one of the top thought leaders in business performance, Paul's insights have been featured on ESPN, NBC, Fox Business and USA today. Now as a global speaker, consultant and the bestselling author of The Power of Playing Offense and Better Decisions Faster, Paul helps leaders and sales teams unlock their potential and turn it into consistent, measurable performance. At the heart of Paul's work is his Win Monday Playbook. A simple but powerful philosophy for showing up every day with purpose, grit, and heart. And he's here with us today in the studio. Paul, welcome back to Selling From the Heart. It's great to have you here. Yeah, guys, I'm fired up to be here. So good to see Paul Epstein.Always fun. It's we're gonna have a good time, Paul, but as we get started, you know the question we ask every guest on selling from the heart. You're no stranger to this. What does it mean to you to sell from the heart?. Hmm. In the spirit of Better Decisions Faster, my latest book, we'll talk all about the next one and Win Monday. We'll get there, but Better Decisions faster, it's about checking in with your head, checking in with your heart to know what to do with your hands. Here's what I mean by that. Head is mindset, heart is authenticity. So I heard that all in the buildup about authenticity, right?. And then if you check in with your head, do I think it's a good idea?. Heart, do I feel it's a good idea?. Then just like at a traffic signal, you know what to do. Green is go, red is stop, yellow is assess. So when I ask myself, what does it mean to sell from the heart?. Should I take action with this product, with this surface for this job, for this career track?. Is it a green light decision?. Is it a green light action when you're heading hard or on board?. It's a green freaking light when neither your head or heart is on board. Red light when one of the two is on board, yellow light. So I say to sell from the heart, it has to be a green light. It has to be a hell yes, green. I think it's a good idea. I feel it's a good idea. It's authentic to me. And you talked about trust. The way I trust myself is when I keep the green light commitments I make to myself when I make green light decisions. When I take green light actions, that builds trust with me. And if you trust yourself, the market starts to trust you. So how's that selling from the heart?.Oh, hey. Hey. This is so good. Paul, I want to play on this green light just for a second. Yeah, let's go. What's green light action look like to Paul?. Anything that has to do with winning Monday. And that is because I believe that it's the only habit. It is a habit. I'm all about habits. You wanna be a great parent? Show me great parenting habits. You wanna have phenomenal health? Show me your health habits. Show me the quality of your habits, I'll show you the quality of your life. Show me the quality of your habits, I show you the quality of your career. I could keep going. And for me, I used to run a lot of reds. I used to struggle with the messy middle of yellow, and I think that's something that's required for growth. It's required, you know, to make a fun analogy before we get back into the work hemisphere, I always say, you gotta date some crazy to find the one, you need some crazy, you need some bad dates. And then when you find the one, you're like, ah, this is different. But you needed the dates, you needed the batting reps, you needed the experience. And I think that's been a big part of my journey is I know what a red light job is. I know what a yellow light career looks like, and I also know what hell yes, greens look like, feel like, taste like. And once you're on the other side, you just can't go back.So, such a great analogy and so, so practical. So we want to focus on a day of the week today, the most important day to win. According to Paul Epstein, you gotta win Monday. Why is Monday such a crucial day for all of our friends listening in?. Alright, as sales execs, as sales leaders, and you guys are the experts here, Larry Darrell. If I say momentum, growth and success are those three things that are of interest to our community. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. So let's start with momentum. Part of my Win Monday book. So we've got a whole growth lab. We incubate a lot of research because I wanted to make sure, and I honestly didn't have the answer to this, I know that winning Monday has changed my life. I know that I've been able to share it out with teams and cultures and organizations. I know it works, but I still was struggling to say, what's the true business case?. Like, can I create something that is research back? . because I didn't want win Monday to fall in the motivational camp because we all know that motivation expires. At a certain point, you're not gonna feel like doing something. At a certain point, you're gonna have to battle inconvenience and, but again, just like a health habit, we've all felt that feeling of not wanting to go to the gym. But yet some of us go and when we go, you know what?. I've never heard after a great workout, "I totally regret that," said no one ever. So we struggle to go, but then after we're stoked that we did it. And it proves to us that when we make a commitment and we force ourselves to do things, even when we don't feel like it, at the end of the day, going to the gym is good for you. So you do it and winning Monday is good for you.So part of the research that we found is what battles are we really facing?. I'm gonna give you the headline first and then I'll talk to you about what's getting in the way. So here's the beauty. I talked about momentum. 98% of people that accomplish something meaningful, key word, meaningful, on Monday, have momentum for the rest of the week. So it's darn near a guarantee. 98% is pretty darn close to a hundred. If you take a winning action on a Monday, you have momentum for the rest of the week. Sign me up for that. Rinse, repeat. Seven days later, stack winning Mondays, you have momentum for the next day to create winning weeks. Stack winning weeks, you have winning months. Stack winning months, you have winning quarters. Stack winning quarters, you have your most winning year yet. And the beauty guys is it only required one decision, one commitment, one habit of winning Monday. So 98%.Now, what's getting in the way?. I knew that our research was gonna prove a couple of things. I know that people hate Mondays. I know that people fantasize about Fridays, but, hey, look, I'm a crazy guy. I'm on a mission to flip TGIF into T-G-I-M. All right?. But here's what the research says. The research says that 76% of people think of Monday as their worst day of the week. Really scary stat coming up. Have you guys heard of the Sunday scaries?. Oh, absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.. Okay. So, to define it, just in case somebody is watching or listening and they haven't heard of the Sunday scaries, it is when you think of the week ahead and you feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and potentially you lose sleep on that Sunday. According to our research, 93% have suffered from the Sunday scaries. Wow. So you suffer on Sunday, you ruin kind of the back half of the week. And no wonder we're fantasizing about Friday and you guys know this. Not everybody is fired up about the work that they do. Now, the three of us are on a mission to flip that and to solve for that. But if you don't love what you do, of course you're not gonna feel like a winner on Monday. Of course, you're not gonna wanna take action, so it's this vicious cycle, and I feel like it's created these default settings where it's just about battling through and surviving to get to Friday.And the way I think about it from a sales perspective, we're all kind of competitive. I think understatement of the conversation. We probably have some competitive folks listening and watching. Alright, well let's think of your competition. You could think of your competition as somebody that sells at a different company. You could think it as an industry, however you wanna put context around competition. Here's what the research has proven: more people waste Mondays than win Mondays. So imagine most of your competition waste Mondays, but you can make the commitment and the decision to win Monday. Kind of in the spirit of the late Kobe Bryant. A lot of us have heard this infamous story about how he would get to the gym at three or 4:00 AM to get a practice in. Now, the way it works, and I worked in the NBA for over a decade, is on an off day, you're gonna get two practices in a morning practice and a late afternoon practice. So two practices that's just tried and true. Well, Kobe said if I get a third practice in and everybody else gets two, now you guys know this, if he did it for one day, it wouldn't make a difference. If he did it for a week, it wouldn't make a difference, a month. It probably still barely makes a difference, a year. It might start to make a difference, but if he did it for a decade. If he practiced three times a day for a decade and everybody else in the NBA practice too, how do you think he became so great?. It was not skills, gifts, talents, abilities. It was a process. It was a system. It was a habit of three practices. And I'll flip the script. Winning Monday is the same concept. Most people waste Mondays. Your opportunity to separate from the rest of the pack is to win Mondays. I don't need to inspire the world to win Friday. They're already doing it, but if we can make our Mondays 1%, 5%, 10%, 20% better, your entire world changes.Oh man, I really love this. So I'm gonna I want to continue to play on this win Monday, but I gotta bring some baseball analogy into this. Okay. This is what was going on in my wacky brain when I was sitting there listening to what you're dropping Paul, is I believe Sunday afternoon you're on deck. And Sunday afternoon, how you prepare, how you plan the mindset around all of this. To play on what you said, because I love this whole Win Monday concept is, I really think if you wanna take this to the next level, is how you prep on Sunday afternoon to carry the momentum to win Monday. I tell you why. I love Sunday afternoons. Like, I live in the West coast, just we're neighbors in Southern California. I love four o'clock to seven o'clock, four o'clock in the afternoon to seven o'clock in the evening on Sunday is my time to mentally get prepared for Monday. Is it because we're celebrating another Niners victory?. Is that why?. Oh no. I'm just trying to put my, no, but, but I love this whole philosophy you're dropping on us. But something tells me that the elite of the elite who win Monday, I bet you capture Sunday afternoon really well, too.Absolutely not just double click, but just to double down on everything you just said. All right, so my former boss, his name is Brian Laina, he was the head of sales and biz dev for the NFL that he was my partner in crime when we broke the all time Super Bowl revenue record and just a brother from another mother as somebody that lost my father. My hero when I was 19, Brian turned into a father figure for me when I was at the NFL League office. I love him as a human being. Now, his next chapter, post NFL, was Chief Business Officer of the LA 2028 Olympics. And so he's done a couple things in his career, just a few, you know, and not too shabby apparently. And so I have Brian on my Win Monday podcast, and I always close the question with what's one thing that you want to tell our audience on how we can win Monday?. So kind of just that silver bullet, something they haven't said. And he said winning Monday starts on Sunday. And so, like, not just to agree with you, but then he kind of went through his daily routine and nightly routine. And actually, I wanna say, I think you can, here's what's non-negotiable. What's non-negotiable is winning Monday does not start on Monday. That I will fall on the sword till the day. It does not start on Monday. Whether you wanna do something on Sunday afternoon or evening, perfectly great. Like if you're in the Larry Camp, perfectly great. What a lot of my clients have done is winning Monday starts on Friday. And so before they close up shop, the last thing that they think about, the last thing that they do is they put a marker on the calendar to say, how am I gonna move the needle on Monday?. Because remember that momentum stat, it doesn't say 98% of people achieve momentum if they get to the end of their inbox on Monday, or they execute their five meetings to talk about more meetings on Monday. No, it's if they accomplish something meaningful on Monday, there's gotta be value and stakes and it's gotta matter. And so if I think about every Friday, what's gonna move the needle on Monday?. What's my action?. What's my commitment?. I'm not gonna say get to the end of my inbox. I'm actually gonna have something substantive. And if I could do that, maybe Larry's doing it on Sunday. I do it on Friday. No matter what the non-negotiable is: prepare, plan and then Monday you execute.Mm, I love it. I love it. Paul, I plan on Saturday morning, so we got the whole call down. We run the whole weekend. But yeah. I love this, this concept of momentum on Monday. Monday momentum, let's get some momentum. So let's put our sales hat on now as a sales professional, Paul. What are three things that salespeople can do, you know, to maybe even just pick one to go, "Okay, this Monday, this is what I'm gonna do to get the momentum I need to move through the week.". A hundred percent. I'll take this in a couple of different ways, but I think about this and look, I'm a sales guy through and through, and I, yes, I happen to do it in a very cool industry like sports. But at the end of this, at the end of the day, to me, sales happens as soon as you're out of the womb. I think I was selling as soon as I could talk. I was trying to convince and influence and all of that good stuff. But where I'm going with this is I never thought of it like I work in the sales industry and I know that this is gonna sound, maybe I'm the 2000th person very well, but I know that I'm not the first person on your show to say that you're in the people industry. You're in the relationship industry. And I think that's a very fair statement. And so if I looked at it as I'm in the people business, I'm in the relationship business, then here's one thing you could do and I'll give a quick setup for this. So I used to go into one of the top airlines headquarters as a consultant and advisor, and they had 6,000 positional leaders and through a two year run, I used to go through training workshops with their leaders and sales and all that good stuff. I would go into floor five and they were all high fiving. I would go into floor six and it was, "watch out bosses around the corner.". And the crazy thing is guys, floor five and six weren't just the same airline, they were the same department, but it was a drastically different weather system. Floor five was warm and green and cozy. Floor six was frigid and cold, same department, different weather system, and that taught me that all culture is local. Down to the floor of the building, down to the division, down to the department, down to the business unit, down to the individual. Because when Daryl, Larry, Paul, when we walk in a room or we hop on a Zoom meeting, we either warm it up or we cool it off.The question is, are we aware of our own temperature?. And if we are aware of our temperature and we intentionally choose warmth, it invites warmth. It attracts warmth. The market gets warmer, our results become warmer, our future becomes warmer. But you have to own your weather system to own your life. So now for everybody listening in in the sales arena, what if every Monday you warmed up a new room?. What if every Monday you warmed up a new relationship and you scale that compounding effect?. 52 Mondays, 52 warmer rooms. 52 warmer relationships. You're not gonna just stop at Monday. You're probably gonna warm up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But even if you just did Monday, how much better would your business be with 52 warmer rooms?. 52 warmer relationships?. That's an example of how Win Monday gets into day-to-day practice.Oh, man, I'm gonna run through a brick wall here in a second. You got me fired up, but I want you to speak to something tells me that in order to do all this, you have to be really focused on what you feed your brain and what you feed your heart. So walk us through what that looks like to people out there going, "Man, I buy into this, but I gotta pay attention to my mind health, my heart health. So what do I feed this all with?". Hmm. Sales guy to sales guy. Sales guy to sales folks listening in and watching. We've all probably experienced, for better or worse, this thing called CRM. Just throwing it out there. Maybe we've dealt with a CRM or two in our life, and I remember our head of strategy and analytics at the Niners, and again, not the first person to say this, but data in equals data out. Good data in equals good data out. Bad data in equals bad data out. And so basically if we're sourcing our leads from manure, then you know what's gonna come outta the other side. And if you've got some, Glen Gary's clemen in. Amazing. So there's an input and output relationship here. I feel the same about anything that we consume. And so let's use my latest analogy of warming up rooms. What if your team, your culture, your organization was cold?. What if your five best friends had cold energy?. What if you were in a house with a lot of cold energy, do you just think you're gonna flip a switch and be a warm sales executive?. I don't. I don't. We are who we surround ourselves with. We are what we consume and who we consume it from.So when I think about feeding my mind, whether that's via podcast like selling from the Heart, whether that's books, whether it be one of ours or somebody else's, I care more than it doesn't matter if you're reading or consuming my books. I care more that you are consuming something from something and somebody that you believe in that you can trust because all of a sudden, I think there's two factors to this, guys. I think there's a learning element, there's a development element, there's a growth element, and also Win Monday is an identity. I am a person that wins Monday. You cannot take that away from me. I am committed to win Monday, and now the work that I do, I help teams and leaders and cultures and organizations say we are a team that wins Monday. We are an organization that wins Monday. Beautiful. So the way that we apply that in this setting is if I am a person that wins Monday, if I am a person that wants to feed my mind positive things and I listen to a podcast, I'm keeping the promises that I made to myself. I'm boosting my confidence by fulfilling my identity because if I say I'm gonna win Monday, and I don't take a winning action, now I'm lying to myself. Now that's inauthentic and I know, I know you might not know on the outside. I know that I'm lying to myself. I know that I'm not keeping my commitments. I know that I'm not keeping my promises, and to me, that's character and that's standards. Standards are who you are, what you stand for, and how you show up all rolled into one. The more aligned you are, then the higher you can rise to a standard of excellence.And so whether it's, what am I feeding my mind, what am I feeding my heart?. If you say you're gonna feed your mind good things, if you say authenticity, I'm only gonna have green light relationships in my life. I'm gonna stop running reds. I'm gonna navigate that messy middle of yellow. And you start executing on that, well now you start to trust yourself. Now you feel more accountable and honest with yourself. And I think that's a big part of it, and that's the same way that I talk about WIN Monday. Win Monday is who I am. It's what I stand for. It's how I show up. It's a part of my identity. And I think feeding your mind, feeding your heart, it's like the fuel and oxygen of building the identity of who you wanna become.Mm mm So good. Paul, what's win?. How do you win Monday?. Like what if I was hanging out with you on a Monday morning, and I know you planned the week before. Let's just take this Monday morning. Wake up. Like what does Monday morning look like to you?. Uh, we got so many people that say T-G-I-F-T-G-I-M. This is great. You got a new restaurant chain ahead of you. All kinds of great things. Um, yeah. What can you do?. How, what do you do on Monday?. And by the way, how do you celebrate it as well?. I love it all. All right. You know, the Vegas term of playing with house money, right?. Yeah, of course. Yep. Every single day I feel like I'm playing with house money and here's why. It's not accidental. There's a process and there's a system, and I'm about to make Larry very happy because as much as I said Friday is when you plan, and I guess Darryl, in your case Saturday and then Larry said Sunday. Cool, cool. What we can all agree is we need to prepare. We need to plan.So here's my process on how I set up a winning Monday, and then I'll tell you what I do on Monday morning. I believe that to win the day, you have to win the morning. It's the only part of the day that you fully control. I only fully control before other people get up. As soon as my house is buzzing, as soon as I hear a two and a 4-year-old making two and 4-year-old sounds as soon as. Now it's, I'm on other people's agenda and I, and that's great and that I signed up for that life. So I love it, but that means I need to make it a winning day before anybody else, before technology, before my inbox, before other people can enter. So if that's the case, that means I wake up pretty darn early. I'm not subscribing people should do this, but I'm a three or 4:00 AM guy. 4:00 AM is my standard. 3:00 AM is if I'm working on something big. So nowadays as an entrepreneur, that means I'm a 3:00 AM guy. Okay?. So here's what I do the night before. I journal three activities that, in my opinion, will move the needle the next day. And I tie a minimum of one of the three to sales. So every single day I call it an impact seed. Impact is my strongest core value. So I plant one impact seed a day. One impact. It used to be more. And then it just got to feel a little bit too heavy of a weight and I started to not execute a hundred percent of time. So in the spirit of authenticity, I said cut it down to one and don't take days off. Plant an impact seed. Plant an impact seed. So three critical activities that has at least one impact seed. And here's the beauty guys: they're the first three things that I do in the morning. So by the time if I get up three or four, it takes me two to three hours to execute these things, and so by six or 7:00 AM, and that's when my world is getting up, by six or 7:00 AM it's already a winning day. The rest of the day, I'm playing with house money. That's a beauty. You wanna feel like a winner, then own the morning and own your success, and own your growth, and own your plan. Guys, my whole day could go sideways after 7:00 AM and it doesn't matter. I'm already winning. I've already won the day: house money. LFG, let's go to the casino, let's go to Vegas. Let's go win Monday. That to me is like, that's the wrench repeat cycle, and I do the same thing every day.Oh, man, I love this stuff. I'm right there with you. I love my mornings, I love every lick of dark 30 in the morning. It's just right. It's just the silence of the morning because no one's up. Nobody is up. I, oh, Darryl, this is good stuff. Daryl Amy, I love it. Well, Paul, right now I know our listeners are all asking the exact same question I'm asking: how do I get more Paul Epstein in my life?. Well, welcome to Paul epstein speaks.com. That is the home, that is the hub for everything. I know y'all are gonna do a phenomenal job of getting everything in the notes and also win monday.win. Bottom line is this: let's start with my weekly playbook. That is a new tool, a new tip, a new tactic, one action that you can take every Monday, and it is custom for sales execs and sales leaders like I speak to the trenches that I once was in. So join my weekly playbook, and that is gonna be something that bite-size. I expect your Mondays to be chaotic. I expect them to be crazy. I expect you to be distracted and overwhelmed, and I know I'm gonna be one out of 200 emails that you gotta catch up on. And that is why they are bite-size and they get straight to the meet. What are you gonna do this Monday?. I give you one idea, we execute on it, and then the compounding effect is you'll have 52 winning weeks in a winning year.Beautiful, beautiful Paul. Always fun hanging out. Thank you so much for investing in us today. This has really been incredible. I love it. Hey, from the bottom of my heart guys. Thank you. Y'all are in the community and so thank you for always meeting me at the 50 as partners here. So let's go sell from the heart till the day we die. That's right. Oh, there we go. I appreciate you. That's right. I love it.I love it. Win Monday. We gotta win Monday. Momentum on Monday. This is a powerful, powerful concept that Paul has shared with us and I just there's so many things to say here, but I'm just like, yes, yes, yes, yes. Hey, I want to throw, I mean, there's so much about this. This is a conversation you're gonna want to just watch and rewatch and write down and write down all kinds of great nuggets. But something that was said at the very end of the conversation with Paul, and that is the morning. Mm-hmm. And I think Paul would agree with me on this: if you wanna win Monday, pay attention to what you do in the morning, that dark 30 hours, right?. We're not, you don't have to subscribe to the wee hours of the morning like Paul and I get up. But find that window that works for you and capture that. That's what's gonna create momentum. Absolutely. Well, hey, thank you for joining us this week. We've got great guests lined up, so make sure to like or subscribe and thank you once again to everybody sharing this podcast. That's how this incredible community of heart-centered sales professionals all around the world continues to grow. We appreciate you, Larry, and I am so excited about selling from the heart this year. Yeah, you know, without this community, the M word doesn't happen. This movement doesn't happen. So we're grateful for you guys. That's right. Well, hey, thanks again for joining us. Till next time, keep being genuine, keeping authentic. Keep building trust. Win Monday and most of all, sell from the heart. Thanks for listening to The Selling from the Heart podcast. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. We appreciate your encouraging reviews as it helps us spread the word. As always, we would love to connect with you. So look for us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and your favorite podcast platform. This podcast is produced by our friends at Sales Cast. Learn more at www.salescast.co. We look forward to seeing you next time.