Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Bank Robber to Sales Success: Luke Lunkenheimer's Journey of Redemption and Resilience
Tue, 18 Feb 2025
Meet Luke Lunkenheimer, a seasoned salesperson with an extraordinary story of resilience and triumph. From the small town of Cato, New York, Luke takes us on his inspiring journey from humble beginnings to entrepreneurial success. He explores the timeless debate of nature versus nurture in sales, revealing how his unique background and personal challenges have shaped his approach to achieving greatness. With a mix of humor and sincerity, Luke shares invaluable insights for anyone looking to sharpen their sales skills or seeking motivation to rise above life's obstacles. Embrace the rollercoaster ride through Luke's life, from his early days in the car sales industry to his outrageous and often hilarious experiences with customers. He doesn't shy away from discussing the raw realities of addiction, candidly sharing his struggles and the pivotal moments that led him to redemption and recovery. Luke's compelling narrative underscores the perseverance required to rebuild one's life, offering hope and inspiration for those battling similar demons. Unearth the secrets behind Luke's remarkable sales achievements as he dissects the transformative power of confidence and the art of negotiation. Discover his effective sales strategies, from mastering emotional intelligence to the finesse of persuasive communication. As we celebrate authenticity and the importance of personal branding, Luke's anecdotes serve as a testament to the power of supreme confidence and its role in achieving sales success. For those seeking to elevate their sales abilities or simply captivated by stories of resilience and triumph, Luke's journey promises to inspire and motivate. CHAPTERS (00:00) - Overcoming Adversity (02:15) - Small Town Success Story (08:21) - Car Salesman's Crash Course (17:50) - Car Salesman's Wild Stories (25:40) - Addiction (31:53) - Addiction's Destructive Grip (37:20) - Toxic Friendship and Overdose Rescue (46:24) - Successful Bank Robbery Attempt (48:47) - Bank Robbery, Prison, and Redemption (54:22) - From Bank Robber to Car Dealer (01:00:47) - Effective Sales Training Techniques (01:11:54) - Confidence in Sales Success (01:16:24) - Legendary Car Salesman Mike Zaga 💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space. ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company. ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages. ************* ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media: Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford Facebook ▶️ / gafford2 🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283 ************* #escapingthedrift #lukelunkenheimer #sales #resilience #triumph #entrepreneurialsuccess #naturevsnurture #humblebeginnings #motivation #rollercoasterride #authenticity #personalbranding #confidence #negotiation #emotionalintelligence #addiction #overcomingadversity #smalltown #carsales #wildstories #toxicfriendship #bankrobbery #prison #redemption #effectivesalesstrategies #trainingtechniques #confidenceinsales #legendarycarsalesman #personalbrand #socialmedia #luxurycars
Chapter 1: How did Luke Lunkenheimer overcome adversity?
So here's my favorite car story from business. And this is a little terrible, all right? I'm going to preface this by saying this story is terrible.
But it must be told.
Chapter 2: What is Luke's small town success story?
But it must be told. And it might get me canceled. I hope it won't get me canceled, but it's a terrible story. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness.
So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Welcome back to the program, everybody. As it said in the opening, man, the podcast, it gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in studio, I got a dude. I mean, this is a dude when it comes to selling stuff, dude.
If you are somebody that is in sales at all, you're going to want to listen to this because this guy is one of the best out there at not just selling stuff, but teaching how to do it. And he's also got a cool story of overcoming some serious adversity that I think that, uh, If you hear this, you're going to be like, whoa, because I was kind of like, whoa, when I just heard it.
So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program in studio today. This... is Luke Lunkenheimer. Luke.
What's up, brother?
Look at that. Lunkenheimer. I nailed it.
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Chapter 3: What experiences shaped Luke's early career in car sales?
Nailed it.
Nailed that thing. I was a little stressed out about it. Not going to lie. Lunkenheimer.
I mess it up sometimes.
I know. I was a little stressed out about it. So, bro, thanks for coming in, man. It's good to see you. I know these Vegas podcast tours can get a little arduous. And what conversation are you on right now with May? How many have you had in the last 48 hours?
Oh, goodness. Not as many as last tour, but enough to make me run out of breath.
Yeah, it's a lot, dude. There's too many of us in Vegas. No, but see, here's the thing, though. If I was in like Des Moines, Iowa, yeah, you're coming to Des Moines, Iowa.
That's very true.
It's an easy sell when it's like, come here, go to the Bellagio, go to STK for dinner. It's an easy sell.
It is.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Luke face with addiction?
Yeah. I got a bone to pick with that.
Okay.
Yeah. Dude, literally. I just told this in another podcast, but I was randomly, somebody posted, you know, sometimes you get on those holes on the internet.
Yes.
Somebody randomly posted like my ninth grade yearbook, but in a digital format where you could go back and see it.
Yeah.
And this was where I went to. I was also from a small town. Okay. And where I went to school, like ninth grade wasn't in high school. It was in junior high.
Okay.
So like if you were the ninth graders, we were the kings of junior high. getting ready to go to high school. It was like high school in my town was 10, 11, 12. And so when they had the superlatives of my ninth grade yearbook, I got most accident prone. And I'm thinking, and so then, no, this is the whole thing going. And I look at the dude that they said most likely to succeed.
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Chapter 5: How did a toxic friendship lead to a life-changing overdose?
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.
It wasn't pretty, and I ended up getting sent home for the day to play Nintendo and come back to school.
So my question is, does the coach of the wrestling team come to you the next day and like, hey, buddy, might want to join the team? I mean, if you take out the captain, I mean, his job is to get the best kid in the seat, right?
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.
They didn't have the credit to co-sign to get me through college. I was stuck.
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
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: What led to Luke's decision to commit a bank robbery?
Oh, really?
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.
Chapter 7: What pivotal moments led Luke to redemption?
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.
Oh, this was in high school. This was in high school, yeah.
This was how I was gonna get to college.
So they rescinded your offers, essentially.
100%.
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.
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.
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.
So let's see. So I appreciate the car business so much because when I left, I used to be in the bar and restaurant business many years ago. And when I got the news from my Essentially, my doctor and my bleeding ulcers at 27 based on my lifestyle. Wow. He said, yeah, you're going to need a life change. That's what he told me. So I was like, oh, shit. So I called one of my buddies.
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Chapter 8: What are effective sales training techniques Luke recommends?
And he said, you need a life change. And I called my buddy at WorldCom who was a vice president. I said, everybody has always said I should be in sales, give me a job in sales. And he goes, man, I can't give you a job off the streets, you know, selling telecom. I can't do, you got to go get some experience.
Okay.
I said, what should I do? And he goes, you got two choices. I said, what's that? He goes, you can go sell Kirby vacuum cleaners or you can go sell cars. He goes, either way in 90 days, you'll have a PhD in sales.
Okay.
I was like, there's no way.
I would agree with that logic.
I was like, there's just no way. There was one more. It might've been,
copiers maybe ibm or copiers or something but but there was just no way i was going to go sell kirby vacuum cleaners door to door man i was like all right i'll go sell cars so that's where i also learn how to cut my teeth uh doing that which was funny and we'll tell some stories about that bro it's a crash so so your so your experience with cars this is going to be good stories
So tell me about that first week. Obviously, you grew up in it. So you've been around the dealership because dad was there. So you had a little bit of foresight here.
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Chapter 9: How does confidence contribute to sales success?
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure that's everywhere.
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.
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.
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
and running my own stuff. So it was always very amicable. You know, everything was always about like, you know, when you're doing schedules for staff, it was just like, oh, we'll make sure everybody gets even, you know, everybody's happy. You try to accommodate as many of their requests you can when you're handling your staff.
That was the first place I ever worked where it was like, yeah, dude, we don't care. We really don't care. Like there's no such thing. You want fair? It's down there. They sell cotton candy and there's a fair. So this ain't here. This is go get it. And you're right. You're 100% right. Because in my situation, there was a couple of dudes, like this one dude, Feroz. He was of a person.
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.
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