Meet Van Oakes | Entrepreneur & International Speaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Van Oakes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Van, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
My people skills. hear me out. coming from a very lower middle class family of 9, money was never something we had. money for sports, money for nice clothes, money for absolutely everything but the bare minimums. I learned from the time i was very young that i needed to learn to make friends with the kids who had all the cool things, and the popular things. Making friends never came natural to me. it was something that i actually had to study. i read the book “how to win friends and influence people” by dale carnagie over 10 times. I credit that book for almost everything i have. i taught me how to become friends with anyone… but not just fake it, how to listen and how to understand someone else’s point of view and ultimately become friends with this person. You see in my family growing up “money” or economics was never discussed, because honestly we didnt have any. So i started searching for those people in my life that did.

You are the sum of you 5 closest friends, and i surrounded myself by the most successful people that i could and became best friends with them. and ultimately worked with most of them in the following years. This provided me unlimited knowledge and capital to learn sales and online marketing at a speed that i could have never accomplished on my own.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
i learned at a very young age that if i ever wanted anything, i was going to have to work harder than everyone else. i was the smallest kid in school (literally, even smaller than the girls) until i was a jr. in high school. So nothing came easy. everything was earned. – honor roll graduate with a 3.8 GPA. This came with all the challenges. I am miserable at math and spelling. Still am. But like i said earlier, i made friends with the smart kids and would ask to study with them
– Top 1% in the door to door industry. There is not a single other thing that id suggest someone who wants to be successful does more than 2 years of direct sales experience. The non verbal and meta verbal communications skills that become second nature to a salesman will aid you for the rest of your life. Life is a series of negations, from dating, to getting hired for your next job, to rising your next round of funding for your business… you must know how to talk to people and convince them of your way of thinking.
– Top 1% advertiser in the world. This was a lot of trial and error. the amount of times that i failed far surpass the times i’ve won. But I knew i could lean into my work ethic and find a way to win. So i figured out how to produce more content than everyone else. How to could produce more product than everyone else. How to get more influencers involved than anyone else. Which ultimately led to taking dieselpowergear.com and increasing their revenue by 5 times in 4 years

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This is my specialty! I love creating experiences for people.

Id pick them up in the airport in my Rolls Royce and make them feel extremely special. Then wed head to Diesel Power Gear where i could have them meet up with my friends. We’d take a helicopter ride over the mountains of utah. Then wed head to my home town of midway where they could come to my house and meet my family. Then wed take a side by side UTV though the mountains behind my house to get the heart rate up a bit, then wed pull the boat out on the lake next to my house where we could surf and watch the sun set behind the mountains. Then we shower up and head to dinner at Valters, my favorite Italian restaurant, where all the pasta is hand made fresh everyday to end the night.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This list is endless. Seriously. But if i had to pin point a few i would say: – Carmen Oakes. my grandma who took me in at 16 years old when i needed a safe place to live, and made me work for every penny i had and set high expectations for me.
– Micheal Fleming. The best man at my wedding but also the first person to give me a chance to prove myself in the door to door industry. He is still my closest mentor.
– Dave Sparks. Founder of Diesel Power Gear and TV personality. He hired me at dieselpowergear.com not knowing what my job would be but he just knew he wanted me on board. This ultimately lead to a CMO role and to the skillset that i now am known for.
– Kimberly Oakes. Last but not least, my rock and my everything. my wife. Who tirelessly has watched and been understanding of my entrepreneurial career… all the ups, and all the downs, she has never been anything but supportive and amazing.

Website: www.vanoakes.co

Instagram: itsyourboyvan

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanoakes/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vanoakes

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/van.oakes/