I sat down with Dan Smyth: sales coach, co-founder of Born to Close, and one of the few people in this space who’ll tell you the truth about what it actually takes to build a career in high-ticket sales.
We talked about how to get started with zero experience, why the offer matters more than the skill, and what Kobe Bryant understood about speed that most salespeople never will.
Q: If you were starting from zero today (no experience, no network, no money) what would you actually do?
Dan:
I’d go on YouTube first.
I’d find the coaches who aren’t making it sound easy.
Because it’s not easy.
There’s a lot of people out there selling the dream of sipping coconuts on a beach.
I’d avoid their content entirely.
The ones worth studying are the ones who are a bit more real about what this actually takes.
Then before I ever applied for a role, I’d spend a month training.
Six to eight hours a day.
Role playing.
Treating it like a full-time job.
But here’s what most people skip:
Alongside that, I’d be analyzing my own belief system.
Because if your beliefs are off, it’s going to be very hard to sell certain people.
State and skill come before the offer. Not after.
Q: How do you get a closing role when you have no experience? What’s the actual play?
Dan:
It’s all about framing.
If you’re worried about having no experience, that’s going to project.
The hiring manager feels it.
And then they think exactly what you’re afraid of: why would I hire someone with no track record?
But if you come in and frame yourself around your potential: where you came from, your work ethic, your coachability.
Now you’re a horse they want to bet on.
Sales managers don’t always go for the most experienced rep.
They bet on the person they believe in.
My actual strategy:
1. Get clear on which companies you want to work for.
2. Then reverse engineer it.
3. Find the sales manager. Find a closer who works there.
4. Get into their vicinity before there’s even an opening.
When I was trying to land at Vshreed, I messaged the top closer two months before I got the role.
I told her I was coming to beat her.
We became friends.
She was going to refer me before someone else did first.
The role was mine before it was even available.
Q: Once you’re in a role, how do you actually get good… fast?
First, find a process that makes sense to your brain.
Seventh Level. Objection Box. It doesn’t matter which one.
Pick one and commit to it.
Then learn it in phases.
Don’t try to absorb the whole thing at once.
1. Master the logic phase.
2. Then move to deep pain.
3. Then future pace.
4. Then consequence.
Study and comprehend.
Then role play.
Then analyze what happened when you tried it live, because sometimes it’s different in the real game.
It’s like learning a language.
You can’t just listen all day.
You have to speak it, make mistakes, get corrected, and tighten the loop.
The fastest improvers are the ones who tighten their feedback loops the most.
Q: A lot of people feel guilty leaving an offer for a better one. How do you think about that?
Dan:
Keep applying for better roles.
Always.
Even when you’re in a decent position.
Even when you like the offer owner.
Here’s the frame I use:
if someone genuinely cares about you, they should be happy when you move to something better for yourself.
If they’re upset that you’re growing, they don’t actually care about you.
My parents have never been envious or pissed off when I levelled up.
They’re just happy because it’s good for me.
That’s what real care looks like.
The only reason someone takes a bad role is because they’re prioritizing having a role over having a good role.
And that slows everything down.
Q: You sell differently from a lot of coaches out there. What’s the core of your philosophy?
Dan:
I don’t try to get people to believe in something external.
Think about fitness.
If I’m selling you on why my program is better than the last five programs you tried, I’m telling you the same story you’ve already heard.
And it hasn’t worked.
So your belief in external solutions is already fractured.
But if I bring it back to you?
Now it’s an internal conversation.
Now the choice is yours.
You can’t argue with yourself.
That’s why I always try to redirect the conversation.
If someone asks about testimonials, I’m not there to defend the testimonials.
I’m there to address what’s actually underneath it:
They don’t believe in themselves enough to take the leap.
Selling to someone’s self-belief is almost always a stronger frame than selling to your mechanism.
Q: You’ve mentioned Kobe as a big influence. What have you actually taken from studying him?
Dan: A few things.
But the one that changed how I worked early on was simple math.
Kobe made a list of people better than him.
Then he figured out that if he trained four hours a day and they trained one, by the end of a year he’d have 1,460 hours and they’d have 365.
The compounding effect of volume in a short time frame means you can catch people who are years ahead of you.
That’s why I made money fast in sales.
I didn’t get lucky.
I just did the same hours as someone with two years of experience — in four months.
It wasn’t fast results. It was compressed time.
The other thing is his later years.
He stopped being obsessed with just being the best himself and started pouring everything into teaching others his way of seeing the world.
Greatness isn’t just how good you are at one thing.
It’s whether you can inspire it in others.
That’s the only thing that stays when you’re gone.
Q: What’s your actual advice for someone who wants to build in this space long-term?
Dan: Take extreme ownership.
Audit every belief you hold and only keep the ones that serve you.
Then take action.
It’s normal to fall on your face.
The people where you want to be have just been willing to fall and get back up more times than you have.
Follow the same suit.
Fall.
Stand back up.
Keep going.
Eventually, you get where they went.
Dan Smyth is the creator of Born to Close: a training community for high-ticket sales reps who want to build real skill, find better offers, and close at the highest level.
Join here: https://www.skool.com/borntoclose
Check Dan’s Youtube Channel here