In this uniform episode, Todd Schuchart, Founder of Razor Ridge Leads, shares how to master consistent lead generation and sales without burning out in stage 2. If you struggle with feast-or-famine revenue and relying on referrals alone, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What simple scripts and follow-up cadences turn cold outreach into warm conversations
– How to build repeatable outbound systems that fill your pipeline predictably
– Why consistent daily prospecting beats sporadic “big swings” every time
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a founder, I’m your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and if you’re in a service based business or you you really have to sell anything to anyone, but particularly for those of you who are in that stage two startup entrepreneur mode, getting out there and getting it done. You know the brutal truth, you can have a great product, you can have an amazing service, and still struggle to close business. And we almost universally fall prey to the lie that it’s just because we don’t have enough leads. But that might not be the problem. In fact, there might be a different problem that no matter how many leads you have, you simply cannot overcome, and our guest is going to share what that problem is here in just a moment, but he’s well equipped to do so, because he’s totally flipped the script on how sales are done, particularly in B to B and insurance businesses. He Himself sold six figures in 60 days, and he’s here to show you how our guest today is Todd Schuchart, who is an expert in life insurance sales and lead generation, leading razor edge leads now with a deep understanding of the industry, he focuses on developing innovative solutions for agents, including conversational sales training and AI driven CRM tools. He uses all this to help life insurance professionals streamline their profits processes, improve client connections, can’t talk today, and boost conversions. Oh my gosh, here we go. Todd is known for his commitment to simplifying the sales process, his levity to everyday situations, and his agent first approach, creating high quality resources that empower agents to succeed in a competitive market, and he’s here with us today. Todd, you got to tell us a story. How’d you do it? You went from I believe it was nothing, to generating six figures in your first 60 days. What’s the what’s the secret here?
Todd Schuchart
Yeah, decades of secrets sitting behind that one for sure. You know, it’s that overnight success thing where everybody doesn’t see the bottom of the bottom of the iceberg and all the work that you put in to do it. Truthfully, I didn’t have a choice, right? So when you don’t have a Plan B, Plan A has to work right? And I think that anytime that you have, you enter into anything that you’re doing in your life, whether it’s for pleasure or for profit, if you’re coming in with with half a cheek and you’re not fully committed, then you’re going to get the results of a half a cheek, right? You’re not going to get when you’re fully committed. I listen to a lot of different podcasts, and one of my favorites is, is some is actors talking about how, you know, they finally made their break in. Every one of them, every one of the household names that you guys, that everybody listening would know, they all have a very similar story. I wasn’t good at anything else. I wasn’t going to do anything else. This is all I had. It had to work. And every single one of them, every single one of them, did not have a plan B. So when Plan A starts to get a little squirrely, what do you do? You don’t leave it. You shift and adjust to it. So half of the game Scott is figuring out how to sell, what it is that you’re selling, that’s it. And you know, you only do that by playing, you know, it’s not rigid, right? And I think a lot of times, especially entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs, not young in age, but young in effort, or young in the entrepreneurial world, we come in with a with a very, very specific mission. I’m going to do, I’m going to this is what is what we do. This is how we do it. And then we roll it out to the world. And if we’re if we’re paying attention, we let the audience or the world tell us how we need to adjust that messaging so that it will resonate with them, so that they’ll work with us. And then we can take that really great idea that we have and birth it. But so many times I see guys get in and they just, they grind to the right. This is my idea. It’s going to work. I’m going to get the world to bend to it. It’s not going to happen. And then we start seeing all these, you know, things go sideways. And there’s a lot of really great ideas collecting dusts on a lot of shelves and garages and basements around the world for that reason alone, right? It’s so true. Yeah, and check your ego, because it this isn’t where it exists. You know, you get the ego later when you exit it for a billion dollars and, you know, you’re, you’re floating around, you know, drinking my ties on your your yacht. But until then, it’s a very humbling experience, and you’ve got to be paying attention. You have to listen to what your audience is trying to tell you. Make sense?
Scott Ritzheimer
It does. It really does. There’s, there’s so much to unpack in that. One of the things right out of the gate is I love this idea of playing that’s not how most people think about and teach about how to succeed as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, but you’re so right. You don’t know the answers when you start. And and so one of the traps I see folks fall into, especially when they follow these rigid processes, is that they are rigid processes based on assumptions that were never validated. And and so I love this idea of playing because I think it brings freedom to actually validate some of those things and freedom to adjust them when you invalidate some of them. I really like that language. I think that’s fantastic. The other point that you made in there, that I want to draw out is this is a really big distinction between the entrepreneur stage and the pre entrepreneur stage, stage one. And in stage one you have other options. In fact, you should be exploring other options once you make the leap to stage two, once you jump in the game, you’re right, if you’re if you got one foot in, one foot out, I’m yet to see that work well. And and so for a lot of folks, there’s two things to take from that. Is one, be more thoughtful before you make the leap. You know, make sure this is really what you’re you’re going to do, and then once you make the leap, be more diligent in working through the inevitable shortcomings that are coming. I’m interested to know, because you did this in a very short period of time. So what does, what did that play process look like for you in in kind of cracking the code so quickly.
Todd Schuchart
Great question, man. You know, I think that if, okay, so this goes back to Plan B, right? If we have a plan B and A starts to get wonky, we just go, Well, I got Plan B. I’m okay. But when B doesn’t exist, and you’re back in the corner. You have to fight your way out of the corner. So you just start doing what anybody does that’s ever been in an actual fight that you just start throwing things, you’re biting, you’re kicking, you’re punching, you’re swinging, you’re jumping, whatever you can do to move. And what happens eventually is maybe one of those, those frantic throws catches. And if you’re paying attention to that, you go, Ooh, let’s try that again. Hey, wait a minute this. I got something here. This is working, right? So for me, originally, we had rolled out, you know, a beta with our leads, and it did well, because we had top closers in our in our group, and then we rolled it out to a mass audience, and everybody kept telling me how bad everything sucked. And I was like, okay, so I don’t believe you, because I’ve been doing this since a long time ago. We’re not gonna confess to ages, not true confessions today. Is it we? I just said, You know what? I know they’re not bad leads. I’ve worked leads my entire career, and anytime I found a lead of the quality that we were generating, I tried to buy all of them. I tried to lock that market up. So something was a miss. So I got jumped in, jumped in the ring, and started working the leads. And I was calling them just like you would any other lead. And they were right. They sucked. Nobody answered the phone. And I was going, what am I going to do? Pure desperation, I started throwing those frantic punches, and I wrote 15 text messages to 15 leads. Three of them were the same, and then I’d switch, and I’d write three variants, and then three variants. And then I closed my computer and I went to dinner, and when I came back, 14 of the 15 had replied. I was jockeying 14 text conversations all at the same time. First person I text was the first person that responded, was the first appointment I booked, was the first deal I closed. And I went, Oh, wait a minute, we don’t call people anymore. We text people now because nobody cares about the phone, right? They don’t. Nobody answers the phone. So that was it. It was, you know, the gloves came off. I got my spot. Now, it was, how do we optimize these processes to get the most response out of what we have? And that’s really been the mission ever since.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Now, what does optimization look like? Because, as I understand it, you’re not a big fan of of scripting, or at least over scripting the process. So tell us a little bit. What does the process look like and and how you think folks should really approach the sales function?
Todd Schuchart
Yeah, I, you know, my sales philosophy is conversational, right? So there’s a couple of trainers out there that I really like. I don’t know if I’m is that cool with you that we dropped those? Okay, so my first is, I love Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street. Only lots of reasons. But you know, I don’t, I don’t think that the process that you know, the the straight line process is, is innovative on its own. I think what he’s done really well, because that’s sidestep rebuttal clothes. But the thing that he’s done really well is he simplified a very convoluted, hard to train process, so I appreciate that from him. So it’s always staying on your direction. You’ve got four to seven seconds to win him over when they answer the phone or they get on the call with you. Um. You’re enthusiastic as hell, and tonality drives your intent. Right. Then from there, we go to an old school trainer, Stan Ballou. Stan came around the mid 80s, late 80s, early 90s. Amazing. If you can find his stuff, I promise you, it’s worth the hunt. Stan has since left us, but you know, you’d appreciate to know things that are secrets, wouldn’t you? Scott, yeah, right.
We, we like to do those types of things, don’t we stand ballooning you right now, is what I’m doing, and we have firm things, right? Does that make you feel? How does that make you feel? Felt found. It’s all Stan. Stan brought that to the market. Now he’s been ripped off more than I can tell at this point, but and then I like Jeffrey gitimer for his givers gain. So I think when you when you line all those things up together, you have structure from Jordan, tonality from Jordan. You’ve got how to say what you’re saying from from a stand below, and you’ve got givers gain coming from a Gitmo which positions you to really be of value while you’re doing your sales calls. So for me, a sales call is it’s a conversation, that’s all it is. I have no intention at all other than to bridge that gap between you and I Not knowing each other, and now we know each other, if, in that process, we decide to do business together. That’s a win, win. But I am not the guy that’s going to going to say, Oh, here’s your canned replies to when they say this, because it’s conversational. So I love when a new, newer sales person says, What do I say when they say and the it’s really simple. Stop trying to be in sales mode and just be a person, because if your best friend just asked you that question, you would answer it, and it’s the exact same answer that you would give that person, that best friend, that you would give to the potential new client.
And then the last thing I’ll tell you on this piece is, if you’re going to ask a question, you better be paying attention to understand the answer, because the answer is going to drive the rest of your conversation, as they do in any conversation. So take sales off of the table and just connect with people, find out if there’s a need there, pay attention to what they’re saying. Do not think about what you’re going to say next, because what you’re going to say next probably isn’t going to be relevant to what they’re replying to you with, right? That’s really it in a nutshell. It’s that simple. Now you can you get past the basics. You can start layering in things like psychology and the takeaways and all the other kind of fun little things you can do on sales calls, but at its core, it’s just two people connecting. It’s all it is. So if you can do that, and most people that are probably listening to this have had conversations in their life where they’ve connected with somebody, same rules, right?
Scott Ritzheimer
I certainly hope so. Yeah, I and I love that, especially for for founders who who are actually quite gifted at this within their domain, right? The thing that they love, the passion about it, and the drive. I mean, so many founders, at least the ones that I work with, are not just driven by the thing that they do, but the that what it does for the people they serve.
Todd Schuchart
Right there, it’s what is it doing. It’s not what is it it’s what is it doing, right? So amplify this thing. I don’t care about your mp three player in 22 gigabots or whatever. It doesn’t matter to me now, 1000 songs in my pocket. Yeah, that’s exciting. And that’s also where they owned that space, and you don’t see any of those players anymore. They’re just they’ve all kind of given up for good reason. Sorry to cut you off there, but.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, no, that’s exactly it. And I think it’s so freeing for folks. And one of the things that got me excited about this conversation is that to succeed in this stage, you don’t have to be what we think of as this great sales rep. You don’t have to have the perfect sales script. You just have to connect with the folks that you want to serve.
Todd Schuchart
Write a script and write it again. So you write your first script, and you’re in the movie, man, your hair is blowing. If this is just audio, I have no hair, but your hair is blowing in the you know, and you’re standing in front of your troops, and you’re rallying them, and, you know, it’s like the Mel Gibson, where he’s got his face painted blue, and all they’ve got are sticks and rocks, and they’re going to go against the guys with swords and cannons, right? And they all ride off and get killed. But it’s that inspirational thing you want to write that just and it’s this long, convoluted process, and you write the whole thing, and then you go back with a red marker, and you start taking out all the filler that you don’t need, and then you rewrite it. And you do that process again and again and again until it has you want to make sure you got some tempo to it so it’s kind of running along if you’re saying it out loud and you’re getting tongue twisted on.
Certain things that is not what you want in there. Get rid of it. Replace it. You want to make it flow. But when it all comes down to it, the script is just to keep you on pace. Right? For new folks, it’s your it’s your treasure map. We start at the open. The only thing that I have my folks scripted on word for word is my opening, because the call is won and lost at the open. If you open it wrong, and you get to the end and they got to think about it, pray about it, sleep on and talk to someone else about it, you opened your call improperly. You didn’t make the connection. Yeah. I mean, I had an old trend. Old sales guy was telling one of my young reps, oh, don’t. Small talks a waste of time. I was like, Oh no, that’s a 30% increase in your close rate. Like, if you’re not spending a few minutes warming it up and getting to connect with somebody, don’t get on the call. You’re not going to get what you want out of it anyways. Yeah, right. Nobody wants to be transactioned. Yeah, that’s so true. You have let it no baby, you know, you hear. You’re bleeding for this thing. Let them hear and feel that from you. You know,
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. There’s, yeah. There’s like, five ways I want to go with that, but I want to be disciplined here. I have a question that I’m very interested to see what you have to say. It’s same question I saw my guests, but I’m going to ask a view here, and that is, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Todd Schuchart
You know, there’s, there’s so many, there’s so many little micro channels that that could be answered from right? It’s but I think that 99% of whatever you’re struggling with right now as an entrepreneur is fear based, and fear in today’s world really doesn’t have a whole lot of room. You know, you’re not going to get eaten by a lion anymore. You know, when’s the last time one of your friends got struck by lightning? I mean, just, you know? And for the one out there that did, I apologize. But for the most part, it’s a pretty, pretty, you know, chill, kind of existence. So fear is the biggest thing, and we self inflict our fear, and it keeps us from, from putting ourselves out there. It keeps doing things like this, right? Like nobody wakes up one day and goes, I’m awesome in interviews. No, you got to get out there, and you got to do it, and you got to sweat and cotton mouth and all the things that. But you got to let the fear go, yeah, because that will absolutely hinder your growth, and not just your business, but your personal all of it, it’s everything. Everything comes down to fear, in my opinion, right?
Fear and fear and value. So you are a value because you’re here, and that’s just how it is. And you don’t have to be afraid, because there’s really nothing you’re going to do that’s going to end what you’re doing. You might have a clunky video. So up put it. I put a video out one time, and it said, and halfway through, I went, Oh, take two. You know, many people reached out to me. They’re like, I love that. You left that in there. I was like, Oh, I forgot. I didn’t edit it. So, and it’s not the no fear thing, like an idiot running into, you know, off a cliff without a parachute, but, you know, it’s just those, those little self doubts that you have. They’re yours, and we all have them, and the only way to get out of them is to get uncomfortable and to do it, and then two or three times later, you forget that you’re even afraid of it, and great things happen on the other side of it.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. Todd, I know there’s some folks listening and love to hear more. We’ve only just scratched the surface of this. Where Can folks who are listening today find out more about the work that you do?
Todd Schuchart
So I’ve launched sales chowder. You can come see us there. You can find me on this is the part I’m the worst at. You can find me on LinkedIn. Come hang out with us. Love to see you. We got lots of things launching, and we’re always kind of playing around in the space. So good stuff, but yeah, come see me. I’m in Facebook. You can find me there. You can find me on LinkedIn, saleschowder.com, I’m kind of kind of floating around everywhere these days, so.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. I love it. Todd, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for sharing. With us here today. It was just a brilliant conversation, and it really was a privilege having you on the show. I appreciate it for those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Todd Schuchart
Todd Schuchart is an expert in life insurance sales and lead generation, leading Razor Ridge Leads. With a deep understanding of the industry, he focuses on developing innovative solutions for agents, including conversational sales training and AI-driven CRM tools, to help life insurance professionals streamline their processes, improve client connections, and boost conversions. Todd is known for his commitment to simplifying the sales process, his levity to everyday situations, and his agent-first approach, creating high-quality resources that empower agents to succeed in a competitive market.
Want to learn more about Todd Schuchart’s work at Razor Ridge Leads? Check out his website at https://razorridge.com/
Connect with Todd through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddcharles/
Check out his Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/razorridgeleads
Check out his other work at Sales Chowder at https://saleschowder.com/