Get Focused on Selling and Marketing: Coach Carroll & Keith Kalfas

Small business owners love to complicate things. They chase new tactics, new tools, new shortcuts — anything that helps them avoid the truth. And the truth is simple: if you can’t stay focused, you can’t sell. And if you can’t sell, you don’t have a business. You have stress disguised as work.

In my conversation with Keith Kalfas on Get Focused on Selling and Marketing, we didn’t pretend success is mysterious or reserved for special people. We talked about the real reasons entrepreneurs get stuck, stay stuck, and sabotage their own growth. And it almost always comes down to the same thing: they can’t focus long enough to make the decisions that matter.

Success doesn’t happen because you have better luck or better genetics.

Success happens because at some point, you decide you’re done playing small. Keith said it perfectly: you’re one decision away from a better life — or a worse one. Every major shift I’ve made in my business started with a moment where I got brutally honest with myself and decided to stop tolerating the excuses I had been clinging to.

And that’s the funny thing: most people don’t struggle because of a lack of information. They struggle because they refuse to communicate clearly — with their customers, with their team, and with themselves. Sales isn’t magic. It isn’t manipulation. It isn’t pressure. Sales is communication. It’s the ability to help someone understand what they really need, help them feel seen, and guide them toward a decision that benefits them. If you can learn to communicate with clarity and confidence, you can sell. And if you can’t communicate, it doesn’t matter how “busy” you stay — your business is going to feel like a treadmill you can’t get off of.

Here’s a simple tool I use constantly: the STuD method. Every interaction, whether it’s a team meeting, a sales call, or a conversation with a client, has to end with a clear next step, a takeaway, urgency, and a deadline. If it doesn’t, nothing actually moves. Most small businesses operate in a cloud of uncertainty because no one ever lands the plane. Everyone walks away from conversations thinking something different, and then they wonder why their team is stuck and nothing improves. Clarity isn’t a luxury — it is the foundation of execution.

Even clarity won’t save you if you’re working from a broken identity.

This is where Keith and I went deeper. Too many entrepreneurs see themselves as “just” something — just a contractor, just an insurance agent, just a guy with a truck, just someone trying to get by. They don’t realize their income, their opportunities, their ambition, and their entire future are capped by what they believe they are capable of. Your business will never outperform your identity. You cannot behave like the old version of yourself and expect new results. When you upgrade who you believe you are, your decisions change, your habits change, and your results change. Identity is the real root of success.

Your environment is also extremely crucial. It will always shape you faster than you can shape yourself. If you surround yourself with people who settle, complain, blame, and stay small, you will eventually do the same. You can’t build a successful business while swimming in a culture of mediocrity. To grow, you need to be around people who stretch you, challenge you, and remind you of the standard you want to live by.

And speaking of standards — most entrepreneurs don’t have money problems. They think they do, but they don’t. They have sales problems. Every financial challenge you’re experiencing — cash flow issues, stress about payroll, lack of growth — can be traced back to not selling enough, not charging enough, or not prioritizing the activities that actually generate revenue. You don’t fix business problems by thinking about them. You fix them by making more sales, raising your prices, and delivering more value. That’s it.

Raising prices is something too many people avoid because they’re scared.

They’re afraid people will be upset. They’re afraid they’ll lose jobs. They’re afraid someone else will undercut them. But the truth is, staying cheap is what keeps you exhausted. Staying underpriced is what keeps you resentful. Staying afraid is what keeps you broke. If you want to build something real — something that lasts — you have to charge enough to support the level of excellence you say you want to deliver.

All of this comes back to focus. Focus is the real superpower. People think their biggest challenge is time. It’s not. It’s their inability to sit still, shut out the noise, and actually do the work that moves the needle. Most people spend their day bouncing between notifications, reacting to everything, and accomplishing nothing. If your phone controls your attention, your business will always control you. Focus is a skill — and the most valuable one you can develop.

But none of this matters if you’re waiting for the perfect moment to start. Successful people aren’t the ones who felt ready. They’re the ones who acted before they were. They made the call when they were nervous. They shot the video when it felt awkward. They raised their prices when it scared them. They pushed forward when it was uncomfortable. That’s the difference. Action creates confidence — not the other way around.

In this episode, Keith and I also touched on something deeper: the need to become dangerous again. Not reckless — dangerous. Dangerous in your discipline, dangerous in your ambition, dangerous in the standard you hold for yourself. Most people lose because they stop challenging themselves. They get soft mentally, emotionally, and financially. Entrepreneurs win when they sharpen themselves, push themselves, and build the kind of internal strength that makes them unshakeable.

This episode was a wake-up call for anyone who has been coasting, distracted, overwhelmed, or stuck in survival mode. There is no hack. There is no shortcut. There is no cheat code. There is only clarity, discipline, communication, identity, and action.

If you can get those right?
You can build anything you want.

— Coach Carroll