Josh Pitts: Building National LED Through Sales Leadership and Grit

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Josh Pitts, founder and CEO of National LED, a Houston based commercial lighting company that has grown from a startup into an eight figure national business, serving commercial clients across the country. A graduate of the University of Houston’s Wolff Center for entrepreneurship, Josh built his company from the ground up through grit, sales, discipline and an obsession with delivering. Or, excuse me, developing people. Early in his career, he spent nights bartending while cold calling during the day. We’re going to talk about that. You guys are learning firsthand that sales is one of the most powerful, life changing skill sets a person can develop. Today, national LED has grown to approximately 30 employees with ambitious expansion plans ahead, including acquisitions in the electrical and infrastructure space. Josh is deeply passionate about building ultra high performing sales teams, mentoring future entrepreneurs through the Wolf Center, and helping people realize that top sales performance can completely transform their careers and their lives. Josh, welcome to the show.

Joshua Pitts: Thank you. Trisha. Thank you for having me and great introduction.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I’m so excited about having this conversation with you. And I spoke before, like sales is the core of so many things. And I, I really want to dig into that. But first, tell us a little bit more about you.

Joshua Pitts: Yeah, I’m a native of Louisville, Kentucky. I grew up right down the street from Churchill Downs, and I didn’t have a good arrow or direction of where I wanted to be. You know, in high school, I remember sitting in a conference hall and there’s a thousand seniors and they’re announcing where everyone’s going to college. And I knew I wanted to be successful, but I heard Yale and Harvard and University of Kentucky and Tennessee, and I didn’t know what my future was going to be. I had some family in Houston, Texas. Luckily, they invited me to come down and stay with them, and I was so fortunate to be able to work in Houston. I learned how to work in extreme weather conditions when it was really hot. And then I met my best friend. He was a year older than me. He wanted to go to the University of Houston. He was ambitious. He had told me about this Wolff Center for entrepreneurship. I applied to the program and was rejected, but I was a true entrepreneur at the age of 19 and 20 years old when I applied. I went back to them and I said, you have to let me in. Here’s my business. Here’s what I’m doing. Here is my future plans. And they ended up accepting me. I was one of 30 students that was accepted for the graduate class of 2011 and graduated from the University of Houston’s Wolff Center for entrepreneurship.

Joshua Pitts: And to this day, out of those 30 students, I think I was a real, uh, I think I’m one of the real entrepreneurs that was in the class. I think as a student, you learn, but as a someone who goes out and actually commits to entrepreneurship, risk it, you know, starts a business. I was maybe one of about three students in that class who actually started a successful business. I, I’m self-funded, have never taken a loan out. And that was because I worked for a company for one year. The company name was National Signs. I saw how they did purchase orders, invoices, how they presented proposals. My mentor taught me what the sales process was, who Roger Dawson was, how negotiating techniques can be applied, how to get the customer to trust you, your product, then the company, and then you present the proposal. And from there, that one year the company national signs was in his in business or excuse me, the one year I was at National Signs, I sold the largest deal in their 25 year history at 21 years old. And I knew when I had sold that deal, it was time for me to go on. So I didn’t get the commission from the deal because I quit right after I made the company’s largest sale in 25 years. And that was the birth of national led.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow, that is fantastic. Okay, so let’s dig into that a little bit because in your intro, uh, I talked about you believing that sales can be a life changing skill set. So why do you believe that sales is such a powerful foundation, regardless of the industry or career path that you’re on?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. And it’s because you use it every day. You know, my biggest teaching when people are new and I’m trying to give them relatable items is sales is like dating. You don’t want to go up to somebody and just say, hi, I’m Josh, do you want to go out to dinner? You know, when you start dating, you gotta introduce yourself. You have to find mutual likes, uh, mutual acquaintances, and you want to find what you have in common with that person. And you have to get them to trust you. And then once you start to build that rapport and build that trust, then you can, you know, move on to the next step, which is dinner. And then once you get the person you know to start dating you, then you can commit to marriage. And that’s what the business process is. It’s dating. It’s, um, you know, sales is a skill you’ll use when you’re buying your furniture, when you’re buying your first home or any of your homes, you’ll use it in everyday life. And to me, it’s just been so powerful because it’s changed who I was as a person. I came from humble beginnings. I never had, you know, anything that was super fancy given to me. Um, my family wasn’t extremely wealthy on the front end. And so for me, I’m able to take care of my family. I’m able to take care of myself. Um, you know, it put me in a subset of peers that I want to be with. So, you know, I’m still selling myself today to, to clients. Um, I’m still selling myself to networking groups. Why they should allow me in, you know, and I’m always trying to push to go to that next tier, uh, national LEDs doing eight figures in business, but there’s networking groups out there where you have to hit $100 million, nine figures in order to be a part of it. And so I’m trying to sell myself to that next echelon. And that’s how you upgrade yourself, your business and those around you is by being a salesperson.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So it takes some grit to get out there. And, uh, you worked at night and we’re cold calling during the day. So I, the way you described it, like building a relationship, we don’t want to ask them to get married in the first place. So I know a lot of people listening are like, oh gosh, thank goodness. I can just ask them out for coffee first and then ask them out on a date. But there’s some grit and some attitude and some mental fortitude and mindset that comes along with the networking and the cold calling. Talk a bit about how you get yourself into that space where you can go out and ask people for coffee in the first place.

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. And one of the most important items that I had early on was a mentor. And my mentor really guided the way for me. This is your cheat code to success is somebody that’s done it before you, whether we’re talking about buying a home, whether we’re talking about dating, whether we’re talking about sales or starting a business, when somebody has done it once or twice or multiple times, they can lead the way and they can help you carve out your path. And so whenever people apply to work at national LED, I always tell them, hey, I’m going to mentor you. You’re going to have a senior sales director that’s going to mentor you and that’s going to accelerate your growth in the company. I think anything that you do, having that mentor give you that path will, will give you the confidence to move forward. You know, when I quit my job, I was working with my mentor, and he was the one who told me. He said, hey, do you trust me? And I said, yeah, absolutely. And he said, okay, quit your job and go get a job bartending at night. And I thought, okay, this guy is now crazy. But I trusted the process and he didn’t give me the entire business plan that day. He said, tell me when you get a job bartending. So I came back and I said, hey, I got a job bartending. He said, okay, work, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday through Friday, you know, 1 to 5 or 8 a.m.

Joshua Pitts: to 5 p.m., you’re going to get in your car and you’re going to drive around business to business, and you’re going to knock on the doors and you’re just going to introduce yourself. And after you introduce yourself, you’re going to ask, you know, can I come back another time to introduce my company? And after you introduce your company, then you’re going to come back another time and introduce the product that you want to sell. And so these high dollar sales that national LED does are typically $100,000 or more, you know, RGB lighting for major skylines. You’re talking about upgrading a Major League baseball stadiums, sports lighting. Those are 100, 300, $500,000. And so you have to sell that in multiple steps where you’re selling your yourself first. So they trust you. Then you’re selling your company. So they trust your company. Then you’re selling the product or solution. So it’s, it’s a, you know, call it a minimum, a three step process, which takes multiple touch points. I tell everyone that I work with, hey, if you’re selling something big or if you really want to sell, you need to have a minimum. You hear seven touch points. I like to bump it up to ten. And that can include a text message, an email, a phone call, a written letter, which is very, very important in today’s society because it’s so rare. And that’s how you build that confidence is by having that path and understanding how to get to the end result.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh. So I heard a lot of tips in there. And my next question for you is what separates the top 10% of those ultra high performing salespeople from everyone else.

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. And it’s it’s really about understanding what you’re doing. So if you’re in sales, you need to look at the godfathers of, uh, of, of sales, right? So you’ve got your motivation experts, which is going to be Tony Robbins, you got your negotiation experts, which is going to be Roger Dawson, and then you’ve got all the individuals that have the different selling processes or sales management processes and being able to recite those. If you walk into a sales team, whether it’s ten people or 1000 people, and you say, hey, for this sales team at this company, tell me who your favorite salesperson is and tell me the top five sales tactics that they recommend. You know, I would say about three out of ten people are going to be able to, to spit something off quickly, and they’re going to be able to elaborate on it very, very in depth. And that’s the difference between high performer and a rookie is being able to recite sales EQ by Jeb Blount, being able to recite the higher authority techniques by Roger Dawson and understanding those and then utilizing them, implementing them. And that’s why at a very successful company, you’ll role play often, and then you’ll repeat what you read or what you listened to in an audible or a podcast that applies to your sales industry or your specific industry.

Trisha Stetzel: I love it. Okay, so you said something that made my heart full, which is role play. I know there are people listening today, Joshua, that think role play is horrible. They don’t want to do it. It’s something corny. It’s not going to get them anywhere. Can you talk a little bit about your experience, uh, being on either side of that role play and why it’s so important?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah, role play is super corny and it’s super awkward, but it works. It it works. It’s it’s the equivalent of practicing. When you’re in the NBA, you have to practice. And the people who practice more. Michael Jordan, you know, he was always at practice. He was there early and he was there late. The people who practice get really good in your industry, you’re going to get about three typical rejections, and you’re going to get those same rejections over and over and over, just in some sort of variation. And you’re not getting the rejection because the person doesn’t want to meet you or doesn’t want what you’re selling or doesn’t need it, you’re going to get it because that’s an auto response. That’s just how we’re trained. You walk into a department store, you see that person coming towards you. You already know, hey, no thanks, I’m just looking. That’s your auto response. But guess what? You’re there to buy a pair of shoes. You’re really there to get a sport coat for a big meeting. And so you’ve got to learn as a salesperson what that immediate response is going to be that you’re going to get, and then how you’re going to reply to that, how you’re going to get around to it. So as you’re walking up to somebody and they’re going to say they’re getting ready to say, hey, no thanks, I’m just looking.

Joshua Pitts: You’re going to ask them, yeah, you’re about five, eight. Are you a medium or a large in a sport coat? Oh, I see you look like you wear about a size 9 or 10 shoe. Which one is correct. And you’ve got to learn how to ask those questions. So you get a response. And then you have your next question you’re going to ask. So mentally knowing how that question process, question and answer response is going to work and being prepared for that is key. I took, um, another individual with me to a podcast that I did, and we both did the same podcast. I did 20 minutes and he did 20 minutes. The difference between us was I did the podcast in my head mentally 3 or 4 times before I went on. I knew what questions the person was going to ask me. And then I knew my responses and I knew what I was going to say to initiate conversation. Then the junior salesperson went on to the podcast. They stuttered. They said the word, um. They looked insecure. They looked around and they, they were sweating because they didn’t mentally rehearse the podcast in their head. That’s the difference between a rookie and an ultra high performer. And you’ll see it every time in sales.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. All right, Joshua, I think people are already wanting to connect with you or even learn more about national LED. What is the best way to connect with you?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to national.com and you fill out any of the inquiry forms on the website, those automatically go to me and I see all of those. My email is J Pitts, my name Josh Pitts, Jay pitts@national.com. And I answer my emails 24 over seven, and I keep a very close eye on them.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Fantastic. Um, Okay. I want to dive into developing talent. Uh, I know you talked about mentorship earlier, and I want to circle around to that in a minute, but first, why, why are you so passionate about developing talent and how is investing in people helped national led scale to where you are now?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. What we’ve really realized is that we don’t want junior or rookie salespeople on our team. We only want the ultra high performers. And so there’s a couple thing that comes along with that. When we’re looking at interviewing somebody, we know immediately when they say work from home or when they say work life balance, that they’re not a good fit for us. And it’s not that we slave people and they work, you know, 9 to 9 like you would as if you’re at Tesla. But we want people who are committed and when they commit to national led or they commit to themselves, we commit to them. And so we’re we put in work as the senior leaders of National led myself as the CEO. It takes time. And time is money to commit to mentoring somebody. But they are dedicated. We will dedicate ourselves to them and in return they will make money for the company, which will help the company grow. But we will help the people that work for us. Every person that works at national LED will make more than their previous role. By year two, they will double what they made at their last role. So if they were making $100,000, they will make $200,000 their second year with us.

Joshua Pitts: And that’s been a promise I’ve made to everyone because we invest so much in technology and AI and training resources. You know, when you hear of a lighting company, you typically think of old school, blue collar elecTrishan. And that’s been the case. And that still is somewhat of the case, but what I did to flip the industry on its head was I went with the Tesla Model. I sell direct to the customer, so there’s no middleman and there’s no distribution. And then I also have a full IT marketing, graphic design and lead generation team. We spend tens of thousands of dollars every single month to get leads into our system from whether it’s Google, Bing, ChatGPT, anywhere on the internet. If somebody is looking for lighting, you will run across national LED on the top page of any search engine or MLM language learning model like ChatGPT or cloud or AI. And that information, if you submit through there, will then flow to national LED. And we’ll go back to the sales people. And so we’re investing and we expect people to invest with us.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. I love how much you’ve invested in people and you tell them what to expect. If they come in and they become these ultra high performers inside of your business. So, um, I know, and, and in your intro talked about the acquisitions and scaling of your business and moving from being the founder, doing everything and even being the sales guy, hustling for every deal to building a larger, larger leadership organization. So can you talk a little bit about the transition you’ve had, moving from that founder doing anything and everything to where you’re at today?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big things that was kind of the aha moment for me is we have an extremely large, um, payroll for subcontractors. And these subcontractors are generally very specialized. Some of them will stand up poles that are ten zero zero 0 pounds and 70 foot tall. Some of them will do specific niches in the electrical industry. And what I saw was, wow, these people are working for us 80% of the time. And so what I did as CEO is I said, you know what, let me go and acquire these companies so that they can take stuff off of my plate so that they can be in charge of the entire electrical division so that I can grow it. So we’re real heavy on one, making acquisitions, implementing them. And it works out great for the founders or the person in charge, the CEO at the electrical company. And what I’m doing is I am growing the company, but I am not trying to be the lead salesperson, which was really hard for me to do, to not be the lead salesperson took so many years for me to get it off of my plate, and if I could go back, I would have done sales for the first year, and then I would have just hired people and then trained them on the sales process. But I was stubborn. I was slow to scale, and I’ve learned my lesson. So now we have several managers. We’ve got one over the electrical division, one over the sales team, one over the IT marketing and lead generation team. And those people now are fully autonomous and in charge of their specific groups. And that’s allowed me to be in charge of things that I think are really important, which is interviewing, which I’ll eventually give up as well. Strategy for the company, and then watching over the finances and making sure that our cash flow is good.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations. Sometimes we do get in our own way. We can’t help ourselves.

Joshua Pitts: That’s, you know, if you if you’re doing some coaching or you’re working with a client, that is probably the biggest thing you will hear. And I’m sure you know that is that. Oh, you know, I can’t let anybody else do sales because I know everything. And I built this business from the ground up and that was me. But the kicker is you just need somebody that does 80% as good as you. And then what you’ll figure out is you’ll find people who are actually better at your sales position than you were. And that’s how you grow a company is by continuing to interview, hire, and fire up to grow your organization. You have to get rid of those bad apples immediately.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh yeah, I love to hear you say that. So talk a little bit more about that. I think many of us as founders, owners, CEOs are reluctant to get rid of what we think might break our company when we have a bad Apple. Talk more about that.

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. So I’ll give you two good examples. Number one is I had an individual that had a large book of business came on board, but after about a year and it really took a year for this to happen. The individual started to become toxic to our culture, talking down to other people, um, bringing drama to the office. And it just, it just turned out to be that this person’s book of business, that was $1 million or more was not worth tearing down our company culture. And so we ended up letting this person go. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made. And I would do it again, whether their book was, you know, 1 million, 5 million or more, because that affects the entire team and it spreads like wildfire. So toxicity is a immediate no allowed rule. It’s immediate termination. If there’s toxicity with um an individual. The other is, you know, when people start to become unreliable, you’ve got to immediately terminate them. And the best part is when you go to terminate them, which as a CEO is the biggest fear, you know, oh gosh, I got to gotta wake up and do this tomorrow. You’ll notice when you terminate people that are, that are toxic or they’re unreliable, they won’t they won’t fight you on it. They won’t be the crazy person that screams, I can’t believe this. They’ll simply look at you and they’ll say, okay, no hard feelings, thank you. And they’ll walk out the door and you’ll think, I should have done that a month ago. That was so easy. You know, the firing thing was so hard for me as a CEO. And then I realized throughout the last 3 to 5 people that I’ve let go, they knew it was coming. They knew they had a problem. I’ve seen drug problems. I’ve seen toxicity problems. I’ve seen being unreliable. I’ve seen not caring. And these people know that they are that way and they know to expect what’s coming.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah they do. They absolutely do. I love this conversation. All right. I want to as we get to the end here, I want to circle back to something that we started with that’s very important to you, which is mentoring. Uh, you came through the Wolff Center for entrepreneurship and you now give back in that space. Why is it so important for you to now give back as a mentor?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah, you know, for 15 years, I’ve actually wanted to be a mentor at the Wolff Center for entrepreneurship. Dave Cook runs an extremely good program over there. You know, I tried right when I graduated to come back and be a mentor. And for me, it was almost like a sense of, uh, a sense of like pride, like, wow, I get to give back. Like, here’s the program that I graduated and now I’m here. It’s a full circle. And I had mentors when I was there. Mentors were extremely instrumental in my path. And I’ll tell you, if you’ve got $1 million mentor, good chance you’ll become a millionaire. If you’ve got a billionaire mentor, good chance you’ll probably become a billionaire. It really is a shortcut to whatever path you’re looking for and I still want mentors, I still want to be part of, um, you know, the networking groups where there’s individuals in there who are doing more in revenue than I am, you know, I, I like to go to other companies in my same business and talk to the sales people there and ask them to mentor me on how their sales process works. I like to go to the CEOs and say, hey, I know we’re competitors, but I don’t see it that way. You know, I see you as somebody I can do business with and I can learn from. And when you take that route, you’ll have a much better and a much easier life.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Last question. What’s next for national LED?

Joshua Pitts: Yeah. National LED is working on 100 employees and $100 million in revenue. That’s our current goal. We’re quickly getting there. We’re interviewing multiple people every day. Um, again, beautiful thing is the company self-funded by myself. We’ve never taken a loan. We’re extremely cash flow positive and we are really excited for the future. The world is changing with RGB lighting on buildings, LEDs at sports stadiums. You know, if you go to Shanghai or if you go over to Hong Kong, you’ll see a completely different skyline than what you see here in Texas. However we are and the US. We are getting to making our buildings prettier. National LEDs leading the way in this color changing lighting for skyscrapers, for large buildings. And it’s completely changing how a building looks. So if you’re a developer and you’re putting up a building. National LED will completely change how people perceive the building that you’re constructing. And I’m really looking forward to the future. 100 employees and $100 million in revenue.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Josh, thanks so much for spending time with me today. I really appreciate it.

Joshua Pitts: Absolutely. Trisha, a great job on the podcast and interviewing. And, you know, I highly recommend focal point coaching and results extreme to anybody who’s out there listening.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. All right, you guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Josh and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. And be sure to follow, rate and review the show. Of course, it helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Joshua Pitts: Thanks, Trisha.