Jose Vargas
Joe Wanner is not your average sales leader—he’s a force forged through fire. From crushing setbacks to monumental comebacks, his journey is one of grit, growth, and an unwavering commitment to helping others find their voice in the world of sales. Known for his deep insight into cold calling and his ability to turn rejection into resilience, Joe has built a legacy not just on numbers, but on lives changed.
In this exclusive Hollywood Times interview, Joe shares the pivotal experiences that shaped him, his raw truths about adversity, and the mission that drives his work forward.
Exclusive Interview with Joe Wanner
1. Your life story is truly inspiring. Can you share a pivotal moment in your journey that shaped your resilience and determination in sales?
A very pivotal moment in my resilience was tested in 2023. I just had the most successful couple years of my sales career (5 promotions within 3 years) and had done so well, many companies started reaching out to me to either lead or help run sales teams. One company in particular wanted me to lead their entire enterprise division. Although initially hesitant, I negotiated with the CEO at the time and completely left an entire book of business I had built in commercial insurance for what I thought would be this once in a lifetime opportunity. That was short-lived as only a couple weeks into the new gig, they dissolve the new division they were building and wanted me to run, COMPLETELY pulling the rug out from under me. They gave me options to stay with the company, but I felt dejected, confused, and quite frankly embarrassed how I could be so blind, especially after negotiating the highest base salary I had ever received. There was a sense of panic, not necessarily that I wouldn’t be able to make it because I had sold in at least 12-13 industries by this point (between full-time jobs and side businesses I had at the time) and had decent success in quite a few, but just a sense of how do I tell my wife at the time and having to completely start over. Keep in mind during this time the position I had BUILT at my previous company had been replaced and filled during my absence, so there was no going back on my decision. Weighing all the options, I decided to bet on myself and go back to the company I had success with before, started as a newbie sales rep all in on rebuilding a book of commercial insurance business from absolutely ZERO. So determined, I was making 200 cold calls on Saturday mornings on top of what I was already doing within the week. Within a couple months building my book to $1million premium, they promoted me to management and relocated me out to Phoenix, AZ to help run their west coast headquarters. Within a year, on top of managing an office averaging 30-40 reps, directly coaching and training a couple of the lower performing reps helping them cross into the top 25 of 130 agents, I also rebuilt my own book back to just under $5million premium, an accomplishment only a few other reps had that year, and none of them were managing an office at the same time.
2. You mention facing extreme life adversity while achieving success in sales. How have those challenges influenced your approach to teaching others?
I never had a coach who I felt truly took the time to understand my life perspectives, the pain and hurt I had felt from feeling discounted, dismissed, and dejected for so long, and what I considered to feel alone most of my life. Yes, I had some family and some close friends who were critical in me not following through on taking my own life. As far as coaches or mentors though? It would always seem to be sooner rather than later that I would discover an ulterior motive or them jumping to conclusions before understanding how best to help me. For a while I transparently played the victim mentality, but it drove me to also play hero in my own life. I made it my new mission to strive to be the coach and mentor for others that I never had myself. It has the tendency to sound like a cheesy, watered down saying… to seek to understand first… but I find so few actually do this. Considering I am the most qualified to help who I used to once be…that mantra has helped me identify who I can truly help as a past version of myself.
3. In your upcoming book, what key lessons do you aim to convey about resilience and overcoming obstacles?
Significance in life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s what happens THROUGH you and who you BECOME in the process of pursuing what YOU consider to be a worthwhile goal. It can’t be someone else’s goal or purpose, and I find so many people stop there. They embrace a mentor’s goal for them, the goal of their company, a desire their parents had for them… I believe that until you can truly distinguish YOUR goals and YOUR purpose as being your own, I find it very hard for people to have the resilience to overcome the obstacles they face. They just don’t have the same depth of understanding of the why and purpose behind overcoming the struggles… but how could they if it was never their own dream or goal in the first place vs. vicariously living out someone else’s. The key to resilience is first identifying what personal goals and achievements are important to YOU and ONLY YOU first. Then if it fits into the goals of others as a bigger vision, then great. But don’t lose sight of your own.
4. How did you develop your expertise in cold calling, and what do you believe sets you apart as one of the top experts in this field?
Up until the writing of this article, I have yet to have someone set appointments for me or call on my behalf. Everything I have learned and developed has been on the merit of my own experiences of cold calling and cold prospecting, and more recently enhanced by many great coaches that have specialized in human psychology and behavior. I truly believe I honed in my craft of coaching tens of thousands of reps across 160+ industries for a 9-figure sales training firm that has become recognized in the Top 10 sales training companies globally. This experience on top of cold prospecting myself has helped me build the systems and expertise I share today – over the last 14 years across now 18 industries (between side businesses and full-time sales jobs) with 100,000+ cold calls, 1,000+ B2B door knocks, and over 3,000 cold networking in person approaches in network marketing under my belt.
5. You’ve spoken on stage alongside some big names. What has been your most memorable speaking engagement, and why did it resonate with you?
The first one, simply because it symbolized all the work I had done since I was 19, visualizing that one day I would speak in front of hundreds and thousands of people. So much so that the hosts of the event and the other big name speakers asked me what I do to be able to train on stage like that. And for them to be shocked when I shared it was my first time on stage…I surprisingly wasn’t sweating much or that nervous. I had fun, remained composed, and I just found a new ability to connect with a large audience from a stage in what felt like a surprisingly natural environment. Of course there were initial nerves and jitters, but everything I had learned and grinded for over the prior decade, all the late nights, the hours no one saw in my darkest of life times… it all came to light seemingly effortlessly on that first run. I know for a fact it was due to the decade of silence and hard work that built that capacity for me on a stage environment.
Success at anything happens when opportunity AND preparedness meet. We don’t know when our moment will be, and unfortunately, I find many people feel and act like they have all the time in the world to prepare, when in reality we need to prepare EVERY day like our window of opportunity is coming TOMORROW. And because I can truly say I’ve lived my life this way since I was at least 19 years old, if not younger, I’m working as hard as I can to be ready for my moment, whatever and whenever that might be. Always stay ready.
6. As a minority in America, how have your experiences shaped your perspective on success in the business world, and what advice would you give to others facing similar challenges?
What I’ve noticed in America as a minority, is the blessing we have to pursue an equal opportunity to become unequal. I have talked to THOUSANDS of people and immigrants from other countries over the years, and the most common thread I hear is that America still TO THIS DAY is the country where you can come from ANY socioeconomic status and make a name and legacy for yourself. Even in the polarizing country we might have at times, we STILL have always had that opportunity.
Does that mean it’s easy? Does that mean some don’t have an easier start than others? Absolutely not. But for every excuse you have, there’s an immigrant who came to this country with 10x less resources and connections than you have, yet built something 100x greater than anything you’ve ever accomplished. And I think that’s such an incredible system of free market entrepreneurship we live in. Too often I see people confuse having a great opportunity for a life being handed to you, an easier life, a life with less struggle. Not so. What America promises is an OPPORTUNITY to become unequal and thrive financially and build freedom. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to come easy or that anything is a guarantee, ESPECIALLY without sacrifice, discipline, or hard work. I couldn’t be more grateful to be in a country where this truth has stood the test of time.
7. What are some common misconceptions people have about sales that you aim to address in your training sessions?
There is some truth to sales being a numbers game ONLY in as far as getting a baseline of a skill. But once we have a baseline dataset (meaning for cold calls for example, the ratios we convert calls to pickups, pickups to conversations, conversations to meetings), our focus should be KNOWING OUR NUMBERS, knowing our conversion stats. Professional athletes know their stats. Want to be a professional in sales and business? Know your individual stats. Because once we do, any monetary or sales goal we set is simply a reverse-engineered math equation that only improves as our SKILLS get better.
Sales is a SKILLS game.
In addition, one of my FAVORITE things I have learned from who I consider the current GOAT of selling, Jeremy Miner, is that we need to turn the ABC’s (Always Be Closing) of selling to the ABD’s (Always be DISARMING). Trust in salespeople is at an ALL TIME low, and ever since Covid and this overwhelming online information boom from everyone adjusting to remote work, it condensed the number of bad experiences prospects had with sales people in shorter periods of time, driving trust even lower. So our methods have to change. When we understand it all comes down to our skill and our ability to disarm, sales becomes a fun sport vs a drudging survival of the fittest.
8. Can you discuss a specific strategy or technique you teach that helps sales professionals build resilience in the face of rejection or setbacks?
“What’s In It For Me?” is the question every prospect, customer, networking relationship has in the back of their head SUBCONSCIOUSLY when they interact with us. Because people think MOST about themselves. I teach people how to convert all the “jargon” in what they sell to simple, easy-to-understand, almost 3rd grade reading level like language, so people hear stories, can visualize and picture concepts in their mind, so they can see clearer of what could be in it for them should they choose to engage. They do this on a subconscious level – why they stay on a cold call more than the average 30 seconds, why they choose to meet with you, why they choose to do business with you. When we truly take our eyes off ourselves (which sounds SO easy to do yet actually much harder to do in practice for many people I find), think of selling as serving people, and helping them recognize problems they didn’t even realize they had, it CHANGES the way we see people saying no. It’s nothing personal, we don’t even see it much as a setback vs what did I as the salesperson miscommunicate in my words, tone, or body language where they just couldn’t see the better future that I saw for them. It allows us to take EXTREME ownership over our own process, which builds the resilience muscle 10x faster than just pounding the pavement with the same mantra and techniques that salespeople have been using since the 70s and 80s, which unfortunately, is still taught by so many sales trainers today…
9. How do you balance the pressures of being a top speaker and sales trainer with your personal life, especially given your background?
I personally don’t believe you ever achieve balance when you’re striving to build or create something great, yet alone MULTIPLE great things such as a great business, great physique, AND great family life simultaneously. However, I DO believe that there are rhythms and a baseline energy you must sustain to play the long game and not burn out in the process. Those are different for everyone, and as simple as it might sound, you can truly pour energy into possibly 1-3 areas of your life at any given moment in time while the rest of the areas you sustain at a maintenance level. Think similar to how all pistons of even the strongest V8 engines don’t all fire 100% at once, otherwise the engine explodes. We burn out (which can set us back by months or years) when our hypothetical engine “explodes” from all the “pistons” of life in overdrive, not understanding the rhythms and purpose of rest and recovery. Daily energy is finite, and knowing what has to give and take up more of our energy during a specific season of our life, that’s the art. It keeps life exciting and purpose-filled without burnout when we learn that synergy.
10. In your opinion, what role does mindset play in achieving success in sales and life, and how can individuals cultivate a resilient mindset?
It’s not just a role it plays, it’s 90-95% of the equation. I’ve seen some of the most skilled people in the world of sales and business get in their own head and lose the mental game and never seem to achieve that “breakthrough”. And I’ve also seen some of the least skilled with an incredible mindset and belief in themselves achieve results and do things that NO ONE expected.
Resilience comes in two forms. One form comes with how you SEE, not just handle, adversity. If you see adversity and life circumstances as a mountain in your way, your perception of overcoming the adversity will be much harder. If you see it as a molehill because you understand your purpose is that much greater, you recover and bounce back quicker.
The other form of resilience comes from PURPOSEFULLY bringing challenges into your life (i.e. building a business, sales, art, any skill requiring tremendous effort and fine-tuning to become a professional). This builds a life muscle that allows you to condense wisdom and life experience in a matter of a couple years compared to what most take a LIFETIME to learn, because of your ability to bounce from chosen adversity to chosen adversity without losing your enthusiasm or purpose.
11. How do you plan to do book presentation?
Some advice on how to answer this question? Not sure what is meant by this.
12. Looking ahead, what are your goals for the next few years in terms of your career, and how do you hope to impact the lives of others through your work?
I see myself teaching people how to turn their own victim mentality into playing the hero in their own life. I claimed victim to SO many things in my early 20s, but also recognized that it fueled the story I told myself to then play the hero that could get me out of the situations and life circumstances I was in – from almost being homeless and choosing to go hungry most days for 6 months while I was in college, to almost getting expelled from a prestigious university and college program because of being misunderstood in a simple sales email exchange, to giving EVERY part of my waking hours outside of work to a network marketing business for 8.5 years that never brought the financial fruits. I claimed victim and “woe is me” to so many of these situations as I describe in my “Built for the Cold” podcast. To finally recognize that I was in control of how I responded became the most empowering mantra that I hope hundreds of thousands of more people embrace. And I have not seen an opportunity better than sales for people to embrace that chip on their shoulder from their past, the people they’re striving to prove wrong, and to ultimately prove to themselves how great they truly are. In addition to teaching people how to turn their cold call reluctance (scared to pick up the phone) and resistance into cold call RESILIENCE, I plan to continue raising the value of my network through what I do, connecting businesses and people who align, and aim to inspire the everyday average Joe to discover that he’s more than average, that he was built for greatness.
Follow Joe Wanner’s journey as he continues to inspire a new generation of resilient sales professionals. His story is not just about success—it’s a masterclass in how to bounce back stronger, speak louder, and live bolder.
