Luke Lunkenheimer
Appearances
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, I think so, too.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That's hilarious.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Listen, man, people watch podcasts for entertainment. That's a good story. There's a, you know, at any...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That's very true.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
car dealership experience where you work there's always going to be stories like that i've got a hundred like that i could tell just what's the craziest thing you ever happened to you at a car dealership craziest thing that ever happened to me at a car dealership um well i had i was on a test drive with a stripper and we got talking about stripper and all respect to my wife nikki i love her to death and she's the reason i'm here today so we'll preface this story with that for the haters out there
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But this was 20 years ago. Sure. And it was a little French blue Ford Focus. And she gets in the car and we're driving. And she's like, do you mind if I take it to my house and make sure it fits in the driveway? I'm like, yeah, sure. So we go to her house and she's like, okay, well, I'm going to go in real quick and grab something to eat. Do you want to come in? And I'm like, I got to get back.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I am so naive, brother. I'm not thinking anything.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm just thinking.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I can't prove her income. How am I going to get her approved? She's got cash tips. That's where my head was at, right? So let's just say that I ingressed the establishment, this little double-wad trailer on Byron Road in New York.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It is.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Oh, we're there, bro. We're there. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Well, for those that know anything about – yeah, yeah. There's a club in Fulton, New York called the Woosah Lounge. And a common joke if you see a dastardly, unattractive, overweight, non-becoming woman is to say something like, oh, she probably works at the Woosah. So that gives you any indication. Although I will say this. For this young lady, she was put together. She was a good-looking girl.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
She was Latina. She was 8 out of 10. She was certainly overqualified for the Woosah. So I go in there, and she's like, okay – classic line brother i'm going to just put on something a little more comfortable Okay, walks away. I'm sitting on the couch.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
She had grabbed me a Gatorade or something, and there's a pit bull sitting next to me, and this dog is just eyes are trained on me, kind of almost like someone's been here before, and he's seen this movie play out before, and he's watching me like, how are you going to handle this situation?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Bro, it's just a thing. Like, you don't get a poodle. You got a pit bull, right? And five-inch clear high heels, too, is the thing. So she comes back out, and she's in a white lace negligee, And there's conveniently a bed in the living room, just a mattress and a box spring on the floor. Yeah, this is that side of town.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And dude, she just posed herself on the couch and asked me if I would like to join. And we'll leave the remainder of that story to another day. But as a young guy in the car business...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That wasn't real clear.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I had a good story to come back to at the dealership. And you know what the best part about it was? It was one of the first experiences I had with telling something that you know is the absolute truth, but nobody believes it. Everybody says you're full of shit, but you still feel okay about it. And you don't care if they do or don't believe you because you just know that it's grounded in truth.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Not a single soul in that dealership believed that that transpired the way it did, but it didn't. That's tattooed and scarred my soul forever.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
little luke and how you became either either the the super villain story or the superhero story well there's a little bit of both man so uh i i you know i i had a decent upbringing you know mom and dad very very small town mind very simplistic very minimalistic scarcity kind of where uh cato new york so yeah if you were to go to syracuse and watch an su football game you would go about 20 minutes north and another 10 minutes west and you'd hit cato
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
i'm laughing so hard because it's so true no and that's okay you had to tell her she didn't qualify i'm glad you plugged that back in because i you're absolutely right so i'm sitting in the cubicle and you know we're you know fit as a fiddle at this point talking have a conversation and i go back and doug crest the business manager who's a legend in the local car business he goes uh skywalker you know he goes what they call me i'm like yeah he's like you ain't got a prayer bro she's like a 489 hasn't paid anybody she's behind on her capital one card right now and
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Exactly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So anyways, I have to come back out and then. I came, you know, it came to fruition that I realized that the escapade that I just went through, she had done to ensure that the automobile was going to be hers. Right. So it was not a kind parting of ways.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yes, sir. It was. Or any credit. She just wanted credit. So, you know, that was, I was 18 and a half years old, something like that. And that was, uh, one of the earlier wild stories of the car business, but I think it probably provides the most entertainment value.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Actually had a guy drive the car through the front of the dealership too. People say, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to drive my car through the front of the dealership. Somebody actually actually did it. Yep. Now the funny part was it was on accident.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So he came in, gave the pitch, the speech, you know, I'm going to drive my car to the front of the dealership, went to leave, did one of these things, put his arm around the armrest, turned around, look back out the car and then drove to the front of the dealership. Yep. So,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Honestly, brother, we didn't move. We all just kind of, it happened. It came in and pushed the wall in. It was like one of those lower like metal with the upper glass and just kind of bent everything in. And the guy looked up, looked at both of us or three of us, put his car back in park and reverse and drove out of there.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah. And I think probably somewhere on the way home, he had a little bit of validation about the fact that he actually did what he threatened he was going to do, but I don't think he was happy about it. Oh, geez. All right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, man. Doing well.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So, within a week or two. There was one guy that was, his name's Roy Heath. Hope he hears this. Pay him the appropriate homage, but he's a real good car. So, he's in the business as a salesman to this day. Has his own podium in the corner. Doesn't even work out of an office. Just a runner. And we kind of went back and forth for the top spot. And, you know, that segues kind of into...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
where I later found out that I had a love for sales was a thing that happened between me and Roy, but it got very dark very quickly, you know, just, just to kind of move the story along. I, the, the dynamic at this dealership, like I told you, it was a big group of guys that were just, they called it liquid lunch. They would go and they would drink at lunch.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
They would come back half of me wiping their nose. They'd go out every night and, and I kind of slipped into that dynamic, and it was augmented by the fact that I wanted to go back and play football. The car business for me was a means to an end. I knew I could do it. I wanted to go in. I wanted to make a few bucks. I wanted to get my surgery.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I wanted to go back to playing football because I wanted to go to college. I wanted that experience, and I wanted a degree. To this day, I'm glad everything worked out the way it did, but at that point in my life, that was the... But, dude, I get it, though, man, because it really does.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Do you think that's sales in general? Or do you... With teams? No. Or do you think that's a car thing?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Brother, for context, there are 82 people in my graduating class. So it's one of those towns where everybody knows everybody in a good way, and everybody knows everybody in that not-so-good way, too. So very difficult to get away with anything in Cato, New York. So just... Man, I grew up at a pretty good upbringing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Just occurs.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I think I would tend to agree with that. I think I would tend to agree with that. I also, you know, with a longer sale, there tends to be more,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
self-contained apparatus meaning more research more time spent in the cubicle more time spent prospecting i think there's a lot of ancillary activities that pull away from that kind of tribalism and i also feel like you know on a slow short day at a car dealership it's a slow short crappy day for everybody whereas in a long sale i think there's more room for people to be having varying you know weeks or months or who's experiencing what at what time so i agree wholeheartedly with what you said so
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, that and there was addiction that ran rampant in my family. Dad was an alcoholic. Mom was a speed freak. Their parents were addicts. It was something that I should have been educated about when I was a kid. Now, that's one thing that I have to pick with the school system is they educate.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
The dare guy comes in, and I don't know if you guys have that out here, but they have drug abuse resistance education in New York. Yeah. They tell you what hot looks like and smells like. They tell you what cocaine looks like and smells like. They tell you what a drug dealer looks like.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I do remember them showing us what marijuana smelled like and having the drug sniffing dog in there. They put it in a locker and the dog found it and stuff. But what they don't do is they don't educate you about addiction. You know,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Certain traits that you may have or behaviors that you may exude that should show you that you have a propensity towards addiction so you can take the appropriate safeguards.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You mean as far as the kids being addicted to the device? Yes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
There's neck conditions that are coming to light now that kids have because they're constantly like this. Their shoulders are hunched over and their head's down. It's sad. You know, smartphones are kind of a double-edged sword because the access to information and resources that kids have now and the things that they can accomplish and do at a young age, like
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
my kid the other day i mean he's editing a video in cap cut and putting this little montage together i'm like dude that's badass how'd you figure out how to do that oh i went on youtube i watched a tutorial and then he figured it out all on his own and then hindsight makes you go when i was a kid if i had access to these tools you know what could i have done differently with my life but it's a double-edged sword because it's like i watch my son and there's days where i'm like bro you got to get away from that thing right and we limit their time and we've created you know
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Just it wasn't, you know, you come to a place like Vegas and you meet people and this guy's dad is a multimillionaire real estate broker and this guy's dad invented some app and this guy's dad and he's young. What do you mean by kid? Right. You know, these kids are growing up and they're affluent and they have, you know, access to a lot.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
times and schedules that they can do it and so on and so forth. But it's very easy to see how a kid could just, especially a kid with a rough upbringing could get lost in that. And then it take it a step further.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And you talk about VR, excuse me, virtual reality and AI and the Oculus glasses and these meta environments where these kids can literally become white skin, blue veins, skinny, ribsy, malnourished,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
bots that are just living in this virtual reality world so it is crazy but just on the addiction thing man i i you know if i had been educated about addiction and understood what to look for and knew that because it ran rampant in my family that there was a high likelihood that i was going to go down that path obviously would have made some different choices but i just remember me i'll never forget i was at work and i had had you know i had a shoulder surgery i got a good insurance policy i was very excited i was on a waiting list for the uh
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Surgery with a really good doctor. Doctor told me, when we're done with you, Luke, 95% of what you had you're going to have back. And I could throw a football. I mean, I can't cite for you the yardage now. It's been a long time. But it was almost as far as I recall Donovan McNabb threw the football in the carrier dome at the combine.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So just to give you an understanding, I had one hell of a cannon for a skinny country kid. And that was about it. I was fast and I could jump high. But there was nothing to me. So I was going to make a great division two quarterback. They had me convinced of that. And that's where my mind stayed. So I got the surgery done. And after the surgery, man, it was pain pills.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You know, it was a pain pump and pain pills. And I remember, you know, today, if you get a significant injury, you're hard pressed to have a doctor write a prescription for five to 10 pills for follow-up pain therapy. We're talking in 2005, I believe it was, brother. They gave me two separate prescriptions.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
One was for five milligrams of Oxycontin, okay, which is a smaller dose, but they gave me 160 pills for the month. And then they gave me a bottle of 10 milligram hydrocodone which is, I think that, yeah, Lortab, it's like the strongest dose you can get of that with a small Tylenol equivalent. And it was like 120, 160 of those. I literally had four or five of each of those to take a day.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Bro, there are stage three cancer patients that don't have that kind of pain therapy, you know? So I recall one day, I just, you know, What it did for me, you know, if I'm being honest, is it really numbed the emotional pain of, you know, rough childhood. It numbed the fact that I was no longer on this trajectory to be this great athlete.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It numbed the fact that if you had a bad day in sales, that's okay, we'll go get drunk. you wake up the next morning, the hangover goes away in 30 minutes when you take a couple of Lortabs. Like it was just, it was just a miracle drug for me, man. And it was too good to be true. You know, and when I took the drug, I would be just this incredibly talkative, confident salesperson.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You know, there wasn't that social awkwardness or anxiety when you're talking to a customer. It was just, it was incredible. And I remember at one point I had, I heard something in a book somewhere about addicts have a romance with their drug. And I thought to myself, I had, it was like an epiphany moment. I'm like, wow, that's, I thought about them.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I sneak away from the family gatherings and I spend time with drugs. You know, I hide in the corner and I do my drugs and I have my little drugs that I keep a secret from everybody else. The day of reckoning for me when I realized there was an issue, I was walking through the washroom. How long did this go on?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
In Cato, New York, you have access to maybe a car when you're 16 if you're lucky and your dad's one of the wealthier people in town. My father made $75,000 a year. We lived in a $68,000 house, and we were one of the better off people in Cato. What did dad do? Dad was a used car, well, excuse me, not a used car dealer.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
This epiphany that I had was six months in, but the addiction itself was a decade, brother. It was 10 years, and it ended with one hell of an exclamation point.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I graduated to heroin at one point, but it was only because I couldn't get pills. Truth be told, man, the whole way through, I thought street drugs were disgusting. Oh, dude. I knew they were made in a nasty redneck lab in some double-wide somewhere in some, you know,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
hood apartment with needles laying or i just knew that and i didn't want any part of it but when you get so ruthlessly addicted to a substance that if you don't have it you can't be physically well yeah don't call it right so i'm walking through the wash bay and benny green this big he called him big montana just this big you know burly country boy and i'm like dude i feel like absolute dog shit and he's like oh you're not feeling well i'm like yeah he's like we'll just pop a couple of your hydros man you'll feel great i'm like no dude that's that's the thing man i can't even do that i don't have any he's like
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
What? I said, I ran out like two days ago. He's like, and you're sick? I go, yeah. He's like, and you think that's a coincidence? I said, what are you talking about? He goes, bro, you're dope sick. I said, bro, I don't do dope. There's no way you can be dope sick if you don't do dope. He goes, man, what do you think Oxycontin and Hydroco and all that stuff is? That's how naive I was, man.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So that's what I mean when I'm just shoving these narcotics into my body in copious amounts because I feel good. having no idea that the repercussions that laid on the other side of it. Now, truth be told, if I'd have known that, would I have acted any differently? Probably not. When I experienced that high, it probably would have gone the same way.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But I just remember in that moment, it was like this darkness fell over me. And I was like, I'm addicted to drugs because in my head I went, I can't get off these. I don't want to get off these. I sell too well. I do too well. And at that time it was incredibly inexpensive. We had a plug. We could get them for a dollar a pill.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You know, you sell one good car a week and your drug habits taken care of. And I was certainly selling plenty of cars. So that moment for me was like, okay, I have a problem. And then every day from then for the next 10 years was keep the problem hidden away from people, continue to try to act like nothing's wrong and maintain my life. And bro, I bought a house. I got a good credit score.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I bought a new Mustang. I bought a crotch rocker.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
very high functioning to the point where I was doing more, far more than anybody else my age, and even people that were five, 10 years my senior, but I still had this crazy habit. And the people around me that were close to me knew what was going on. And everybody would just tell me, you know, this is a means to an end. You're going to crash. This cannot sustain.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's going to be more and more and more. And, of course, me being the arrogant best schmoozer in the yearbook, I'm like, dude, I'll figure out a way.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So it graduated from doctor giving me pills, me taking some pills, selling some pills, to me taking all the pills, to me taking some pills, buying more pills, selling the pills for a profit to cover my pills, to eventually I got tied in with a guy that was a wholesale distributor for a kidney drugs warehouse for the VA and talked him into expiring pills early to give me the overages to wholesale them and piece them back.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He worked for a new Ford franchise for a company called Piro Brothers, which kind of followed in the footsteps of my grandfather, who had Lunkenheimer Ford in Hannibal, New York, which is another one-horse town. So my tale kind of goes like this, man. Was a good honor roll student. Was a good athlete. Good. When I say good, I stress the word good.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
At one point, bro, I was moving through thousands of pills on a monthly basis. Good Lord. Having no idea that when you put 80, 120, 160 milligrams of Oxycontin in your body at one time, you're just putting your tolerance level to a fact that when finally the drug is absent and the system is vacant.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You are toast, bro.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
If it's a piece of the action, the piece has got to be there.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Wasn't really exemplary at anything until I got kind of into high school. And you know how you get your senior superlatives most likely to succeed, most likely to stay in town? Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That's all. That's how it starts, man. And what happens is it's, it's very terrifying. I'll tell you a quick story. And this is just so the audience can understand the danger of this type of thing. So the guy that I was telling you about the wholesaler that I was able to get the copious amounts of pills from, I met his, I used to wake weekly stops at his house.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And the way we met is somebody plugged me to him and, And I walked by him one day, dropped a business card, winked at him that had my number on it, you know, and caught the connection. And we're meeting on a weekly basis. And he's opening this sentry, those sentry fire safes, the deep. He opens it up and I'm looking at this thing and it's like.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's like when, you know, the guy gets to the end of the search and they open up the box and the thing glows gold in his face, right? Exactly. And I'm like, holy shit, it's the Mecca. So I'm like, all right, well, what do you like? A dollar a pill, whatever you want, as many as you want.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And brother, for people that have acumen in this area, we're talking methadone, oxycontin, suboxone, buprenorphine. Dilaudid, fentanyl. I mean, it was the entire pharmacy in as much volume as you wanted. It was heaven for a drug addict. So I'm like, well, how much for the whole thing? And he goes, I'm not giving you the whole thing. I said, why?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He goes, because I know you take these things and you'll die. So there's no way. So long story short, we're doing our thing. Then it kind of became a friendship as a lot of times things will happen in business. And obviously it's a weird business to be in, but then stop by, we'd get high, we'd smoke a joint, eat some pills, play some PlayStation, whatever.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I became very good friends with him and his three-year-old, two-year-old daughter who would walk around while we're doing drugs and his wife who's sniffing Coke off the counter while the kid's there. You know, at this point in my life, man, you're not realizing what's going on. You're not going, oh, my God, we're doing narcotics and there's a kid here. You're like, I'm here with my friends.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It was just the culture of what you did. You know, it's a very messed up point that you can get to in your life. So I'm sitting there and he pulls out this little zipper bag. Like it looks like a little, you know, barber's toolkit or something like that. And he opens it up and I look and he's like, dude, you want to get real high? And I'm like, yeah, sure. What do you got in there?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm thinking he's got a big pill or something. And he opens it and there's a spoon. There's a syringe. There's a rubber band and, you know, just a whole.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah. They call it a rig. And I'm like, he's like, that's it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Apparently that's a good thing. You don't know what that is. So, uh, I'm like, what do you, what are you doing? Are you crushing up a pill and shoot? And he's like, no, bro. And he pulls out these two little wax bag and they've got this cute little cartoon stamp on them. I said, is that heroin? And he goes, yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I remember, John, in that moment just thinking, I felt so dirty being next to this person. That's my thing. I'm like, you inject this into your veins? Like, you disgusting excuse for a man. He looks at me and goes, bro.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He goes, you go into 7-Eleven and you crush up pills on the back of a urinal that other people have splashed piss all over and you snort them directly up your nose, which goes through your mucous membrane into your bloodstream. And I'm like, Dan, you're a good salesman. But I watched the ritual. I watched him tie himself off, fix up the rig, shoot him.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I mean, bro, it was the most disgusting but also eerily erotic thing that I'd ever seen. Just the romance that this guy had with this ritual and just the look of glory that was on his face knowing what was about to transpire. And I'll never forget. He pulled back, and I saw blood under the plunger, and he pushed.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And the next thing I know, he tips forward, whacks his head on the air conditioner, and boom, he's down on the ground. And I said, Elena, he just passed out. He whacked his head. She goes, oh, no, no, no. Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. I'm like, okay. You want to give me some context here? That didn't look good. She goes, he's on the nod. And I'm like, what's that?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
She goes, well, when you're on heroin, you nod. You kind of nod out, and you come back, and you nod. She's like, trust me, he's enjoying himself. And I'm thinking to myself, what is possibly enjoyable about this? When I would do pills, I'd get the talkies. I'd go play basketball. I'd go to the casino, gamble, play poker. It was like a super drunk for me. But this guy's laying on the floor.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I start to feel a little responsible. The little girl's running around. Daddy's on the floor. I'm not feeling right about this anymore. It's a dirty needle laying there.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yes. this is what movies are made out of is what I'm thinking. I'm like, okay. So I propped him up on the couch and I can't, he's like a limp stuffed animal. Every time I prop him up, he flops over a problem. And I'm like, this is not okay. And as I'm looking at him, you know, skin is getting whiter. Veins are turning blue colors, leaving the face. Lips are turning purple. And I said, Elena.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He goes, yeah. I said, he's dead. He's dying right now. And she's like, no, he's not. And then I licked my finger and I put it right up to his nose. There was nothing. Put my hand on his chest. Nothing. Felt his pulse. Faintest pulse. So for whatever reason, man, I just responded. I said, call 911. And she goes, I'm not calling 911. I said, your kid's father's dying right here.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And she goes, he's not. He's going to be fine. So I picked up the phone. I called 911. I told the operator, I said, we have a drug overdose. We need somebody dispatched immediately. She'll give you the directions. And I handed her the phone and she was pissed, bro.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I remember thinking to myself in that moment, like, I need to stop this because if somebody's upset that I'm calling the ambulance to save a dying husband, this is not okay. So, I just kind of surveyed the situation, and I realized unless air got into his lungs, because he was experiencing respiratory depression, that's what happens when you do opiates, he was going to die.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I took a deep breath, and for the first time ever, I started giving a grown man mouth-to-mouth.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It was the last time, too. Well, I'm still alive, so you never know. We'll get that in. But I'll never forget, bro, the atrocious smell of his breath. It just... In that moment, you go, what the fuck am I doing? What has this come to? I gave the guy CPR. I gave him chest compressions. I gave him air for probably three or four minutes. The first responder shows up, and I'll never forget.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He cracked the door open. He comes in. I knew the guy. He was a mechanic. That was a volunteer. And he's like, what are you doing here, bro? Right. And I'm just like, oh, just he goes, keep doing what you're doing. I said, that's your job. He goes, man, if you're doing it and it's working, just keep doing what you're doing. The medics will be here soon.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So the ambulance showed up and they're all nonchalant about it. And the one guy looks at the other guy goes, what do you think? One or two? Yeah, probably to Narcan rise and shine off to the hospital. Doctor told me that he'd be dead without me. He gave me a hug, cried when he hugged me, held me for a minute while he cried all over me. Thank you so much for saving my life, my poor little baby.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Wife told me later, two, three years later, I saw her at a rehab. And he was gone. I said, how's Josh doing? Oh, no, he was still alive. But she left him because after I left on their way home from the hospital, he asked her to stop at the dope spot so he could fix up. Because he was still sick from the Narcan.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So that just gives you some context on how evil the addiction can be and what it can cause you to do. And you would think, man, at that moment, I'd have been done with it and walked away from it. And I tried. But the addiction was so physical, man.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Bank robbery. is the easy answer all right so walk me through the bank robbery point let's see this is okay here we go bank robbery so this is now probably seven years later okay and the the seven years was sales jobs doing well always a leader but just burning every bridge you know coming into the place like a whirlwind selling everything becoming the number one guy
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Month one, month two, month three, then month four, slip a little. Month five, slip a little more. Month six, get fired, move on to the next place. I was like a parasite and burning every bridge along the way. I got to the point where I had exhausted every option. I lost my driver's license. I got in a DWAI accident, lost my driver's license. So now my meal ticket was gone.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You can't even sell cars. Yep. So I started doing door-to-door and did very well at that. But I was able to manipulate the people into giving me cash for a discount. So I was just walking up to doors. selling them on a subscription, taking the cash, going and getting high, moving on to the next place. Hopefully they never called the number. Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So one day it's kind of like a snowball is building momentum behind you when you've done all these nefarious things and you know that it's going to break at some point. And there were warrants for my arrest from not showing up to court. There were women that were not happy with me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
There were just, you're waking up in the morning with your heart blasting through your chest with anxiety because number one, you know, you need drugs to calm down and get, you know, get right. Number two,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
any sound of anything striking anything that could resemble a door knock put your heart into your throat because you're afraid it's the police coming for you you're just in this constant state of panic at all times and unless you're not just high but really high and probably drunk you can't shake it so it just becomes this cyclical wake up steal get drugs get high get drunk go to sleep wake up do it again and
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And that's how people get. And I was there. So I had my girlfriend's car and I dropped her off at work and I was getting ready to go to the pawn shop and pawn her TV to get drugs to be able to go out and steal more that day. And I'd had enough with it. And, you know, I say when I tell this story, I say that at that time I didn't know it. But subconsciously, I was giving up. I was giving in.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I wanted to get caught. You wanted to get caught. Yes, sir, I did.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No, this was, hey, Google, how do you rob a bank? Oh, jeez. So I actually did some research.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I found out real quickly on the internet that there were certain things you could do to try to ensure some more success. I also found PDF security protocols available Online for the bank, I was looking to rob and discovered that if I didn't pose a threat of violence, that they're not calling the cops or anything until you leave. And if you demand the currency, they have to give it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
They're not supposed to be confrontational in any way. So I went and I went home. I got a sweatshirt and a matching tracksuit. Basically, I went to the gas station. I got a pair of sunglasses and a bandana.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
pulled the car you know there was some instrumental you know process to it i put the car a few blocks down i walked through the woods i wasn't seen on the cctv and i walked into the bank man and i to this day good afternoon ladies i think it's pretty obvious from my attire what's going on right now two of you please place the currency on the desk today's take no banded money no tracers no dye packs like they had those things at a credit union in new york and i thought it was daniel ocean at the time and i said get it out and i'll get out of your hair
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And then the panic struck because they didn't do anything. They just sat there and looked at me. And I kind of looked around. And this footage is on the internet.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No, I'm watching his podcast. No, I'm not. Anyway, back to your superlatives. Yeah, brother. So best schmoozer, because they couldn't use the words best, I don't know. Bullshit artist. Okay, good.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm like, maybe I should have brought a gun. Or maybe I should have never walked in in the first place. You had no weapon. Brother, I didn't have a Post-it note. Like, I had nothing. I walked in with a plastic grocery bag. So, you know, and in hindsight, there were so many things that could have gone terribly wrong. But it went exactly as you could have hoped it would. They didn't do anything.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I looked at them. And I kind of looked around. And I went.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And then he started moving. He took the money out. They found that out. Just as I asked, I put the currency in a plastic Wegmans grocery bag. I took it from the second lady. I wrapped it up. I put it in my sweatshirt, turned around, tripped over the little velvet rope that divides the aisles, which otherwise it would have been very smooth looking on camera.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Um, but that's the only flaw in the video. If you go look it up, cause it still exists out there. And I, you know, I, I egressed the bank and went out into the woods and ran to the car, got in the car. And what I had done was I had put in dress clothes, kind of like what I'm wearing now underneath the sweatsuit.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So when I got to the car, I took off the sweatsuit, stuffed that stuff in the trunk, and I was just a simple businessman in a polo leaving the parking lot. And I got away with it for just shy of a full week. It was about five and a half, six days later that, you know, I was on the way home from the laundromat.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I just, everybody asks that question and it's such a pain in the ass to admit, but it was no fault of mine. Okay. I did everything as good as you could possibly do it, likely by accident. It was the landlord of the home that we were renting. When I came home to switch into the robbery outfit, she was there. Excuse me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I didn't know she was there because her dogs weren't barking and her car wasn't in the driveway. but her car was in the shop that day and her dogs were getting primped and cut. So everything that would have indicated she was home was gone. I thought it was just me. So I walked out of the house and into the vehicle with the whole get up on. And that day she was like, well, that's kind of weird.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And not until the police released all the footage, she goes, holy shit, that's the guy living upstairs. And I will give it to her. She held it down for a couple days. But then finally, her boyfriend, who was a retired sheriff, was like, something's wrong here. You're not, like, what's up? And she's like, I think the guy living upstairs robbed a bank.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Just minding the rules of the pot. Yeah, BS-er. Basically best BS-er. It was me and this other girl, Paris Browne, who was also very good at getting herself out of trouble. Let's put it this way. I got into an altercation with the captain of the wrestling team, put his head through a trophy case.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
They put two and two together, and they watched the film and saw the car and her car, and they put it together.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yep.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You know what the most bittersweet thing was? Did you call your parents? I did not call my parents. Oh, okay. I went to the DMV that morning and paid with the robbery money to get my license back. So I had my license. I had my tickets arrived. I could go sell cars again. Stopped at the laundromat on the way home. How much did you get from the bank? 10 grand. Nothing crazy.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But it's more than you should get from a teller.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So get locked up. I don't call my parents. I call my girlfriend. And she knew. She knew I'd been acting funny. And she knew that I was ruthlessly addicted to drugs. And I'll never forget. They came to visit me. And her father, who I love to death. He's the nicest guy in the world. He comes in the visitor room. He sits down. He's just... looking at me like this. It's like a deer in the headlights.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I'm like, what's up, Ryan? He goes, did you do it? Tell me you didn't do it. Tell me you didn't do it, man. Tell me you didn't do it. I said, I've never lied to you and I'm not going to start today. Did it. I did it. And he goes, dude, you got balls of steel. He goes, that's fucking awesome. No, no, no, it's not awesome.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Then his, his, his daughter, my girlfriend at the time waxes, I go, dad, shut up. And I just, he just looks, he was the most immature, nicest teddy bear in the world. And I remember that moment being like, well, I'm glad I did your proud big guy, but yeah. So man, I went away to prison. I did some time upstate. I went through a shot camp. I got home only spent in that bid.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I had other times I was in jail, but in that bid, I only spent a year behind bars and, Came home, and that was what it took, man.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Correct. They originally tried to hit me with 7 to 14 years for that, but there was just— It was just robbery. None of the witnesses, and nobody would testify. It was cordial robbery. They're like, he was nice. We felt safe. He said we'd go home. There's no problem. Like, it was about as nice as you could be.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But it was the culmination of a decade of drug addiction getting to a point where I needed release. I needed out. I could not do it myself.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm rather clean as a whistle. I mean, when I was in jail, it was just withdrawals and just vomiting and defecating on your side. Just too colorful to admit, you know, to speak about on this show. But just imagine hell, pour some salt on it, and that's what it was. But when I got out, man, especially, and then there was kind of a blessing in disguise.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I got put into a shock camp, which most inmates would tell you is hell on earth. It's a paramilitary boot camp, and it's meant to get time off your sentence. But if you've been in there long enough and they just need somewhere to put you because they're overpopulated, they'll send low-security inmates, which I was because I was nonviolent. They'll send you to the shock camp.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It wasn't pretty, and I ended up getting sent home for the day to play Nintendo and come back to school.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I got sent to a shock camp to serve out my last six months. Basically, you go from sitting in a prison to hell, training, exactly, 5 o'clock in the morning, running, all that stuff. But I'm glad I did. It was kind of like the last little stretch of cleaning my body out, getting good blood pumping, fresh air into my lungs. And I went home, man, and it was all history after that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, I got home. I didn't want to. I had told myself that the evil was sales. Sales was the evil that got me into this mess, and I was never going to do it again. And what I later learned was sales had nothing to do with it. You could have been doing anything. Exactly. It was the behaviors that I associated with it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I went to work for a body shop, got fired from there because he found out I was a bank robber.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Your background came back. What makes it even worse, John, is I went and I asked him, I said, pull out my employee file because he's handing me my last check. And there's tears in his eyes because the best part was I had started working for him as a claims adjuster doing collision work and parlayed that into, I heard some of the other people like selling detail packages and paint protection film.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I just started up selling all the body shop customers. I was putting an additional $8,000 to $10,000 in the till every week. And he's like, dude, who the hell is this guy? He offered me a store. He had another location north of there that was kind of struggling. So you're five weeks out of a prison bid for bank robbery.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
and a guy's telling you i want to promote you to run one of my entire operations telling you that and then all of a sudden it's hey come in here yeah here's your walking papers and i'm like sam what the hell do you think your life was you think you were just some screwed in that moment when that happened you know honestly no because i didn't like the job and i didn't like the guy and something in me has always known that i can survive i can i'll move on to the next thing i'll figure it out i've always been that guy but it was very devastating that i had some cadence and some rhythm going in a job to go to money in my pocket
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And all of a sudden it was all pulled off from underneath me because I was trying to get my license back. That was, you know, I was back in that gamut again of needing my license. And I remember he pulls up my employee. If I goes, what do you want this for? I said, turn to the last page where you mark the last page. So see where it says, have you ever been convicted of a crime? What's that say?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
This is true. This is true. But, you know, at the height I was at, the height to weight ratio, I probably would have gotten whooped because I was a tall, skinny guy at that time. No resemblance to what I look like now. So my story goes, I knew that in order to get out of that town, my parents didn't have the money to put me through college.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
felony bank robbery. I said, yeah. He goes, well, I didn't see it and neither did such and such and it is what it is. I'm like, so I'm being punished for being honest to you and the fact that you didn't do your diligence. He didn't care. What it was was people were coming in recognizing me and saying, oh, you employ the bank robber and his ego couldn't take that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No. Um, what ended up happening is another individual who I knew who had a small town.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's not very difficult in Syracuse, even though it's a bigger city. It's, you know, this, we're not talking about in Cato suburbs. Yeah. And, um, There was an individual that I knew who I knew was an addict, who I knew was kind of a nefarious actor. But he had written me one of two people.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
The other, my girlfriend, wrote me while I was in prison, sent me some money, like was trying to keep the tie, which I later learned was because he had an agenda and he had started a used car dealership and he was failing miserably. And he knew that that was my area of expertise. So he reaches out to me, goes, hey, I heard you got fired from Sam's. why don't you partner with me in this car thing?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm like, dude, I don't have any money to partner. I'm broke. He goes, I'll put up all the money.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah. He goes, just basically you take my checkbook, you take the cars, you take the trailer, you do everything and we'll split it down the middle. So I chose to do that. Within about 11 months, I'd made us 360 grand, which in central New York was a decent living. Yeah. You know, we had to split it obviously, but I just, I was clicking now. I was back selling. I was doing it honestly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
We worked together. So he just knew. And he saw me in action. He just knew. Yes. And he saw that at, you know, for him, he came in, his company bought out my company that I worked for. And he came in and saw that there was a 21 year old guy sitting in the general manager seat. He's like, what the hell are you doing here? I said, I'm the general manager. He goes, no, that ain't going to last.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
After a couple of weeks, he's like, you're pretty good at this, man. And then we made a lot of money together. And then he would start, you know, there'd be a few deals that he couldn't close. And I'd say, I'm going to come in and TO this deal. You ain't TOing my deal. If I can't get it, you can't get it. Until one day I said, you don't have a choice. I'm your boss.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I've never thrown my weight like this before, but I'm doing it now because that's a fucking deal. I went out there, I closed the deal. We came back in and I looked at him and I was just messing with him. I crumpled up the four square and bounced it off his head. And I said, yeah, I suck, don't I? He jumped across the desk.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
We tussled and wrestled for about five minutes until somebody called the owner or the general, the, I guess, I don't know, general manager. It was the best friend of the owner's wife. And it was a weird dynamic, but she came in and read us both the riot act. But he, during that time, he had seen what I was capable of. He saw me appraise trades. He saw me buy inventory.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
They didn't have the credit to co-sign to get me through college. I was stuck.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So he knew I knew what I was doing. And he also knew I was in a bad spot. And I probably wasn't going to scrutinize the fact that he had a Winnebago trailer on a gravel parking lot in Oswego, New York. So, and he knew I needed the money. So I did it and we did very well for a while. And then it ended ugly. He told his boss off and decided to come back to work at the place.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
working at the local mill or selling used cars or something so i i decided to focus my energy on something and that was football i loved football i was the kid in the front yard tackling weighted garbage cans to try to toughen myself up and i just you know ran and did everything that you could imagine the the sequence in an action movie where the young kids coming up through the ranks would do to try where they're playing like the karate kid music and okay he's running the sunset and all this stuff yeah
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And the whole premise of the agreement was you and I can't work together. We're volatile. Just let me run the thing. Collect your paycheck once a week and call it a day. Well, his ego wouldn't let that happen. And he came in and he destroyed the whole thing. So, you know, it is what it is. But what what happened and what transpired because of that?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I went back to work for a guy who owned a Z-Bart franchise, which is a rust-proofing and vehicle protection company in central New York. And on his sales floor, I was very productive for him before. I had gotten fired for theft of services because I washed a few buddies' cars for pills. And he reached out. He was a friend of the family. He says, I hear you're doing okay now.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'd like to offer you your job back. Love that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
buck 60 buck 80 working for him so this was a welcome thing yeah sure so i said i'll be there as soon as i can start he goes get there monday so i started working for him and john what happened is well that's what the small town pays off though because you heard you were doing better right so there's everybody yep yeah that's better yeah do your thing so i tell you what man what you don't realize until you get to las vegas is it's very dry out here
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No, that's okay. I did a convention and I was giving away gifts. And they're like, dude, give away lip balm. I'm like, why would I give away lip balm? Oh, you know now. It's my week in Vegas. I know. So that's why the water goes with me everywhere. So he comes to me after about a week or two. No, no, excuse me. It was about a month and a half, month and a half, two months.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He comes in and he asks me kind of what the agreement that me and the last guy had. And he writes it down. And then he comes in the next day and he writes down some new figures that were a little bit more beneficial to me, draws an X and a line and pushes it across the desk to me. I said, what's that? He goes, you need to be a business owner. He goes, you should not be working for me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He goes, but I know you're in a position right now where you don't have a choice. So instead of letting you work for me, work you like a mule for 10%, he goes, I'm going to do what you're one day going to thank me for. which is stake you to open your own business and let you make 55%. And then one day, if I ever need to call upon you, kind of like, you know.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It'll be a favor. I'll call on you. So it was kind of like that, very much like that. If you knew this guy, you'd understand that that was pretty relevant, that movie for him. But let's just put it this way.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
if i didn't pay back the loan it would have been a bit of problem concrete shoes no question in my mind so i knew that but for once in my life john i knew that i could do it and i knew that i didn't have a vice and that business took off and if i was going to fail it was going to be because i wasn't capable i would know i would pay him back earnestly and i would move on but i didn't plan on so obviously that business took that became cny drives which is now a three-car auto dealer uh group in central new york that does primarily use cars and subprime credit it's a
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
very, it's, it's a nice little profitable company and it served me well.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
True. I would say maybe one up because that guy's usually about to get fired. You want some follow up.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And he's got plenty of time to spend with you.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
True. Definitely true.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Very true.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
They'll give a car away and they'll slam dunk themselves into a trade-in.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Cost of money.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
True. I see where you're going with that. True. The sales manager wants to say, no, screw you. Finance manager wants to get to that part.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So so I did that. And at seventh grade, I made the modified football team, which was kind of unheard of. It was eighth grade and up when I was in eighth grade. I made the ninth grade. I made the varsity team, which was also unheard of. So I was good. I was good. I was above average and I was very fast and I could jump very high.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, you're not going to get the full menu on that day. You're going to get maybe a warranty and that's it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He's going to say, sure, no problem. We'll start his truck and go.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Advice validated.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's really simple how it became. I realized eventually after several years of doing it that I was not a good car dealer. I was a mediocre car dealer, but I was incredibly effective at training salespeople. People would come into my store, vendors, and they would be like, bro, where did you find these people? I'm like, what are you talking about? Your sales staff, they're assassins.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Well, that guy came from Securitas. He was a mall security guard. That guy worked for Fryhoffers. He drove a bread truck. This girl over here was a stripper, oddly enough. Some synchronicity there. But there was no rhyme or reason to where these people came from.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I taught them a process that I call compassionate interrogation. And I teach them a process called the big three framework, which not to get into coin phrases and things like that, but very simply, it just means that you don't show a product and sell the product and then ask someone to buy the product and then overcome objections and then close the deal. The sale is not showcasing the product.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
The sale is an interrogation process to find out why is the customer here? What type of car are they looking for or problem are they looking to solve, depending on what a tangible asset or a service or whatever it is. go into a discovery exercise with this customer that, and we teach them a way to do it that pays a lot of respect to the human condition. So it's all about the customer.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's not interrogation. It's not, John, are you trading? It's EQ. It's conversational. It's EQ. And it's comfortable, okay? I would agree with you. And it's a way that the most important, or one of the most important things, I probably say the most important thing 100 times a day.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
One of the most important things is the fact that the salesperson remains abundantly confident because they're conversational. When you teach salespeople word tracks, they're the words of another human being. They're never going to say those words with the same tenacity and efficacy as they would their own natural conversation.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And when they believe they possess the ability to interrogate out of somebody all the components they need to put the deal together. They're extremely effective.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And when you get to the end of a sale and somebody can't say, well, I need to talk to my wife because you flush that out at the beginning, you use something that we call a time gate, which essentially incentivizes the customer to move sooner. And it's not about solving whether or not they can do it now or do it without their spouse. And that's a common misconception in sales, I think.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
We discovered in my senior year that I could throw the ball very well. So I became a quarterback. I got some looks from nothing crazy, a couple Division II schools, but enough to get my schooling paid for. Division II schools can't give an athletic scholarship, so the fact that I was a scholar-athlete and I was a good athlete, it was a good pairing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I'd be curious to see what your opinion is on this. But if your wife said, John, don't you dare, Buy a boat without going by me for, I want to know the payment. I want to know the color. You can do it, brother. You're getting divorced. Yeah. Are you going to buy a boat without her? No, of course not. Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But if you go out to a place to buy a boat and you're not a hundred percent sure you want that boat, or you can say to the guy, well, I need to talk to my wife about it. And no,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's not the real objection. The question I had was, if you don't like the boat, but you like the salesman, he's a nice guy, you don't want to say, dude, I don't like your boat, you're never going to see me again.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
what's that what's your pivot there you're talking about when that comes to fruition it's not going to happen because at the outset of the conversation i'm going to say to you john have you talked to your wife about this well it's not even have you talked to your wife it's like so are you going to be in the boat does the wife like to swim too you know we got nice bathing suits and jet skis oh yeah she loves the boat cool man so she just uh you guys are landing on a black one that's what she sent you out to buy it's an inferred statement right yeah and it's well no she hasn't oh so you guys even talked about it yet oh okay well she's probably going to want to be a part of the process you think
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I mean, yeah, eventually. Oh, geez, that's a bummer. Okay. Well, listen, let me ask you a question. Before I move forward, there's two ways I can quote you, okay? Right now, and then you create the urgency. Right now, we're having a three-day sale, and this is conveniently day three.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And I'm saying this now, John, because I don't want to say it at the end of the conversation because you're going to think it's some sales trick, right? I'm just honestly, at the outset of this conversation, letting you know there's two ways I can quote you today. I can quote you on that boat in stock with the deal that we have going on, that's knock your socks off. Or we can do it in four days.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You weave in the human condition. What most people are doing to get good deals right now, like the people that are walking out of here with the killer deals, that's what they're doing. But it's not going to make sense for me to do that if you need to talk to the wife, do it a month from now, whatever. So which way would you like me to quote you today? And you put the onus on the customer.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And it's called a time gate. And if the customer, like, they could do it. They don't need the wife. They want to know, like they're compelled. They want to know what that price is. They're so thirsty to know what lays behind door number one. They're going to give in and they're going to say, oh, you can, you can show me the sale pricing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And then you just reiterate, okay, well, I just, you did hear me say that's a decision that would need to happen today. Right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not pushing you to make a decision. I want you to make sure that you don't call me in a week and ask to see that, but no, no, no. And then you confirm, Oh, so if the planets align, then you could pull the trigger just out of curiosity?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Very quickly, when I got injured, got my shoulder dislocated in a game, which was my throwing shoulder, very quickly learned that the politics of Division II athletics, you can very easily get an athletic-esque academic scholarship there, but you can just as easily lose that even though it's an academic scholarship.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, I mean, I'd say, okay, good. Move on. Very nonchalant, very conversational versus want to buy it? Well, I got to talk to my wife. Well, why do you really need your wife? It isn't anything worth doing tomorrow, worth doing today. And does your wife love you? Does she want you to be better or more confident? Won't you be more confident with all that horse shit, man?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You can't do that conversational, right?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I agree with you wholeheartedly. So what you and I are talking about is very much the same thing, which is using your knowledge of what is about to be to stop it from happening before it happens. Like if you know that you're, for instance, you've got a customer and I keep it on the car business just because it's the easiest thing for me to iterate off the tongues.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I own three car dealerships, but customer comes and says, yeah, I'm looking to be, and here's the bane of my existence. I love when car salespeople do this. Well, what kind of monthly payment are you looking to be at?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
oh i want to be under 400 bucks a month great congratulations dickhead you just painted yourself into a corner go now spend the entire afternoon talking yourself out of that how are you going to ask somebody a question when if they give you an answer you don't like you're going to hold it against them yeah you know so it's not what kind of monthly payment are you looking to be around it's a price condition hey man generally these trucks run you know with no money down anywhere from 800 bucks a month up to 1200 bucks a month depending on rate and terms you want to keep looking
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Well, I mean, geez, I had no idea that one. OK, well, we can look at something cheaper, maybe like a compact pickup truck. Well, no, I need a truck like that. Well, there's things that will affect the payment. I mean, if you have a trade and you have some cash down, well, I'm putting some cash down. Oh, OK. So you're putting some cash down. That helps.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You know, other things, too, like, you know, credit worthiness and things like that. I've been 800 credit score. You'd be amazed what you can find out in a discovery process when you just do a conditioning exercise like that. So what we do with salespeople is we essentially, number one, we have something, you know, and you always have your coin terms so people can remember things, right?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
When you blow your shoulder apart. Oh, really? It's a tough phone call to their athletic director. Like, how can you take away my scholarship? Well, you know, geez, it's a combination. It's a constellation of things.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So we have the three Cs, content, confidence, and cadence. Would you agree that a salesperson cannot be effective to their potential unless they do a similar framework every time they sell?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
You have to have measurable results. If I'm using a different process on four different people, I don't know if I missed here, made there, or if my trajectory is upward.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And a fancy word like KPIs, key performance indicators, unless you're doing the same thing each time, it's like running a hose down different places with a concrete and trying to figure out where the water flows the best. It's got to be consistency, right? So that's content. So that's a framework. That's a sales framework. It's not...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
word tracks it's not one-liners it's not these are my brain-based questions to get the customer no it's not these are the rebuttals you use in the cut no it's a process number one why are you here yeah why are you here well i'm looking to buy a car everybody's looking to buy a car at a car dealership why are you here well because i need a truck right but why today you know the craziest thing ever most of us say when i walked out to a dude in the lot one day this is the only time i've ever been speechless in sales so be good
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So imagine you're this young kid who had his meal ticket, right, and you were going to get out, and you liked the school, and you were ready to go, and now all of a sudden it's just the rug's been pulled out from underneath you.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I was speechless. Dude, I love that. I was dead speechless. We train salespeople.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's not anything that's not believable, man. You get those people. And it's like, you ever notice this when you're in sales? You get those guys that feel like they have to arm themselves for the conversation. Yeah. Like you start walking towards them. They're like, it's like you see them sharpening a knife metaphorically. Yeah. And you come over and it's like, hey, man, how you doing?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm just looking, man. I'm just looking. It's like. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah, I could have, many times.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
The way I drive, she's already been thinking about it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
This was how I was gonna get to college.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Um, no, I don't. Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yep.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I love that. Something that we teach is the frequency of authenticity. You cannot read off a script. You cannot use a can statement. Nothing that you can do with predetermined language is ever going to come across authentically. It's the same way that you can watch Donald Trump speak. And when he shifts this way, you know he's looking at the starboard teleprompter.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And when he shifts that way, you know he's looking at the port teleprompter. And then we looked at the audience. He's talking. No, but really we've got the worst, the worst people doing the worst things. And we know, and we know what we're doing and we're going to do it. We're going to do it the best way. And frankly, frankly, we're going to do it the best way. And we're going to be huge.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And our administration served you for four years. It's like, Oh, he's back on the teleprompter. And it's obvious right now. It's not, And that's what kills me about the sales trainers that are out there. And I'm not vilifying anybody. These guys make lots of money. They help lots of people. But there's a difference between getting somebody from zero to 60 and zero to 100 or 60 to 100.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And if you want to take a salesperson and maximize their efficacy and get their potential out of them, they have to walk like you're I can tell you're a gangster. You can sell anything to anybody and you believe you can, don't you? Oh, yeah. For sure. 100%, right? It just reeks off of you. It does off of me, too.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And it was like my scholarship went for, it was like a $31,000 a year school. I had a 29.5 scholarship. I had to come up with like 1500 bucks. And it went to like a $6,000 scholarship. So directly out of reach.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And you're sitting here right now, and I bet you're like, I'll sell this motherfucker. How good is he? We're both doing it because that's what we do. Tell me I'm wrong.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No, I don't. We've already established that. We're a shoe-in, brother. It's Miami or Vegas. So the bottom line is when you have a salesperson who does not have that, like you're at the top of your food chain because you have that, okay, along with many other things, charisma. determination, and all the other things that make you you.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
When you can take a salesperson and you can give them intrinsic confidence, real true confidence, you bring their efficacy far higher than you ever could with word tracks or scripted rebuttals or practiced questions.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Because when somebody has an asset that came from somewhere else that they're using as a key to plug into a lock, it's like you go home and you got your key, you put it in the door, there's always the hesitancy, is the door going to open? Lock going to be froze? Did I bring the wrong key? Like you're not connected to it versus no lock being on the door. You just walk into the house.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And when somebody is supremely confident as a salesperson and they know they can handle themselves conversationally, no matter what somebody rebuts with, no matter what objection they give them. And when they know that at the outset of the conversation, they can solve for what we call the triple threat, time, money, third party. They know they can do that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Brother, just a level of their efficacy goes through the roof. And that's what we train people.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So at this point, you know, it's kind of like, you know, breaks and screeching halts and the record coming off the, or the pin coming off the record sound effects, just like this holy shit moment. So. I had to come up with a plan. The plan was I was going to go sell cars because that's what my family was known for, my family was good at. My father had experienced success doing that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's the supreme level of confidence. Quick, very funny 30-second story. A guy by the name of Mike Zaga, okay? And I don't want to do him any injustice, but I believe he's a Lebanese. His family's Lebanese, and he's a car salesman. Legend in the car business in central New York. And he... He's working at a car dealership.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's 20 here. When are you starting? Holy shit, right? So I moved. I'm starting there. And this dude used to, just to give you some backstory, he would come, I'd be sitting with a customer. He would come in with a pot of coffee and a towel over his arm, like a concierge or like a waiter. He'd pour everybody coffee sitting in there, and he'd act like he was my butler just for kicks, right? Sure.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Just because he enjoyed it. Just because it was funny. Guy comes in one day. He's like the typical dealership stroke we all have when the guy's in there once or twice a month just stroking everybody. He comes in. He's looking at a truck, and Mike comes over, and he's like, oh, hello, sir. How are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm pretty good. I had to deal with this weather.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
He goes, yes, I'll tickle your ass with a feather if you'd like. And the guy goes, huh? He goes, the weather was terrible. He goes, yeah. And he's like, yeah, okay. All right. Yeah. I'm looking for a truck. I need some. Yes, you can go fuck yourself. Right over here are the trucks. And dude, he did it for a solid hour. And the guy never, I mean, subconsciously he felt something was wrong.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
We're over it, holding ourselves, trying not to pee. We're laughing so hard. But it's just a perfect example of when you have that supreme level of confidence, you can convince somebody else that something that's not real is real, much like your guy with Dodge and your uncle's tractor.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So Instagram, so all the social medias, it's at Luke Lunk, L-U-K-E-L-U-N-K. YouTube, we're paid to persuade, paid the number to persuade. If they're interested in the sales training, it's paid to persuade.com, paid the number to persuade.com.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
One of the big things that I'm big on, a lot of sales trainers in this ecosystem, they put out clips hoping to go viral with cute one-liners and phrases and things and taking guys' shirts off and everything else every day, at least every day. The worst. Bro. The worst. I hate it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So I did the proverbial take a year off and figure it out, went into the car business and just really started doing well, started killing it selling cars.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
define just apologize now is there do i need to go to rehab is that is that i'm going to spend some time getting like i don't know i think they're here because they like it i don't know i do know ty ty i was talking to ty we're doing a podcast and i'm like ty you know like truth be told man candidly like i just i give tremendous amounts of value everybody that i train gets incredibly successful like but on social media i just never blow up he goes dude you're not pissing anybody off yeah
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And he goes, if you want to be famous on social media, he's like, I can show you how to get 600,000 people to love you, but you got to understand there's going to be 400,000 that are going to despise you.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That's right. You know, that's, I appreciate that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's always a good way to get home.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So, it's a ghost or a. Close. What's that calling it?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
No? I don't know any more roles. Wraith. Wraith. The other one they say in rap songs. Why didn't I guess it? Yeah, so Wraith.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Very nice. I rode in Brad's Ghost the other day and looked like an idiot coming back from the protein house because I couldn't figure out how to open the door. I drive a one-ton pickup truck with a big diesel motor and leather seats, bro.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
It's great.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Meeting the debauchery of the activities of the car business.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I would agree with that logic.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
So not only did I have foresight, I also had confidence. You know, I went into the dealership. Mind you, I was young. I was naive. I had blinders on. I hadn't experienced the world. So I'm like, I'm a Lunkinheimer. You know, Lunkinheimer Ford. John Lunkinheimer is the general manager.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'm a robot. I just go in here and turn the switch on and here we go. So I got to be honest with you and not to sound braggadocious, but that's exactly how it went. I mean, I walked in there and what I noticed immediately was the nature of a car dealership.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
There's one or two horses, guys that are just doing the job, working the program, doing what they know they need to do, following, sticking to the script and selling a lot of cars. Then there's the mix of the mediocrity, which are the people that are, you know, blowing lines in the bathroom, going out to liquid lunch. You know, this is central New York. So this is a thing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Pretty sure, too. That's what led me to my aforementioned question. But then I forgot you said you're in the bar business. So and then there's like the four or five guys that are just sitting around smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, doing nothing and getting no results. Go figure. So I was the tenacious young whippersnapper that came in and was taking all the ups.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
And then I started catching hell for taking all the ups. But then the manager started paying attention. And my closing ratio was better than the top guys. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
so they're telling these horses that have been around for 10 years like guys you can't bitch at the kid he's closing everything he touches so you know unless you see him do something in egregious violation of our policy you got competition yeah christmas i'll say that was my first experience in my working order because i don't i come from you know corporate restaurant businesses business into kind of my own stuff and doing my own deals
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But it must be told.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I love watching car guys tell car stories. You watch your eyes lift. You get into it. Your temperature rises. These are the real stories. I want to hear this.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
What's up, brother?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Nailed it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
But it must be told.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
For the audience listening, that is bowling a perfect game your first month.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I mess it up sometimes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
I'll never be there, but I'll pay all your bills.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
That's when they're happy is they're yelling at each other. 100%.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Oh, goodness. Not as many as last tour, but enough to make me run out of breath.