Millennial Sales

Have you ever met someone that’s so stubborn, so stuck in their ways, that they’re difficult to reason with?  They wouldn’t consider new ideas because “this is how they’ve always done it”? These people are everywhere.  Maybe you work with them. Maybe you are one of them in a certain area of life. It’s understandable.  Once we gain familiarity or mastery in a subject matter, we gain confidence.  The pianist that has played for 15 years has a deep belief in her ability that only comes from hard work.    But sometimes that deep belief makes us set in our old ways.  There is a concept in Zen Buddhism, called shoshin, or Beginner’s Mind.   Shoshin is the opposite of being stuck in your old ways.  It means that your mind is a blank canvas, with each day’s information creating a brand-new portrait of wisdom.  More concretely, it means you’re willing to learn from others. You know there’s always a chance to improve and that, in some way, everyone knows more than you.  Shoshin is the executive that uses our current global climate to take a class.  It prompts the busy father to learn a new skill, instead of binge Netflix.  It gives the young “prodigy” enough humility to ask for help when it’s needed.   Approach today with a Beginner’s Mind, and take note of how much you still have to learn.  This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

Tomorrow starts a new month and the 2nd quarter of the year.  Can you believe we’re 25% through 2020?   Some people will spend today doing their normal things.  They’ll work, exercise, eat dinner, watch TV and go to bed.  They’ll wake up tomorrow without a plan and go through their next month in a daze, with no plan and no strategy.  The top 1% will approach this differently.  They’ll spend some time today reviewing the past month and quarter and plan for the next (if they haven’t already). My process has been effective and easy to follow.  Each quarter, I’ll set up goals for myself in each of my main life “buckets”: financial, professional, creative, relationship, health, and learning.   Then each month, I’ll break that large goal into a sub-goal that will help me get there. And then each week, I will set an even smaller, more achievable goal that follows this same path.   It may look something like this:    Professional:  Q2 Goal – Have sales team sell 120% to quota  April – Have all training planned for the quarter  Week 1 – Set up discussion with each member on the team to talk through the game plan for the quarter    The main goal is challenging, attainable and trackable.  I can watch my progress and change course if needed. The monthly and weekly goals are leading indicators to the #1 main goal.  If I accomplish these smaller goals, I’m more likely to achieve my main goal.   This works for all of my buckets.  It can translate to finances, relationships, anything.  The key is to only pick 1 main goal for each bucket.  Maintain a laser focus and don’t get bogged down with priorities 2-5.   Don’t sleepwalk through life.  Live intentionally and watch how much you’re able to accomplish.  This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

In one of his articles for The Player Tribune, Kobe Bryant opened up about his competitive relationship with Allen Iverson.  Iverson had a hot start in the league, as Bryant was struggling to make a name for himself.  In 1999, Iverson scored 41 points and dropped 10 assists in a game where Bryant was guarding him.  Bryant was mortified.  He became obsessed, fixated on anything he could find to help him learn about Iverson’s game: books, articles, news segments, anything.   Bryant got an opportunity to enact revenge the next year.  At halftime, Lakers coach Phil Jackson told Kobe to guard Iverson.  The Lakers won and Iverson didn’t score a single point the rest of the game.   While revenge was sweet, it taught Bryant a valuable lesson that he took with him the rest of his career: he needed to treat every matchup like life or death.  Nobody would be able to have mind control over him like Iverson had for years.   “I swore, from that point on, to approach every matchup as a matter of life and death. No one was going to have that kind of control over my focus ever again. I will choose who I want to target and lock-in.  I will choose whether or not your goals for the upcoming season compromise where I want to be in 20 years. If they don’t, happy hunting to you. But if they do….I will hunt you obsessively. It’s only natural.” Are you treating your adversity with Bryant-like intensity?  Get after it today. This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

I write a lot about gratitude, optimism and staying positive.  Some days (or weeks or months) are tougher than others to stay positive.  I recently came across the below quote from musician Michael Franti.   Maybe we should all take a few gratitude “free throws” today :).  “It’s hard to be grateful all the time, you know?  And some days I wake up and I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the bed and I can’t appreciate everything that happens around me.  But I believe in practicing gratitude in the same way you practice free throws, or anything else. You can consciously choose to focus on what you’re thankful for, rather than what frustrates you.  And if you have positive thoughts, positive words, a positive mental attitude, and positive actions, then eventually it becomes easier and easier to be positive.” – Michael Franti   This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

JT McCormick has overcome a lot of obstacles. I mean, a LOT of obstacles.  His mother was an orphan. His father was a pimp and drug dealer. Upon being deserted, JT was forced to live with his father’s prostitutes for years, taking care of his younger step-siblings at the tender age of 8-years-old.  JT received his High School diploma from the janitor during summer school. At one point, he was homeless and lived on a park bench.  Your day doesn’t seem so bad right now, does it? JT got into sales. He was the lowest paid employee and became the President of the company in 2 years.  He is now the President & CEO of Scribe. He is business partners with bestselling writer Tucker Max.  How did he do it? How did the overcome the odds and become an inspiration to everyone he comes from? “Life truly is mindset and choices”  — JT McCormick It seems so simple, right?   It is.  But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Though his mindset is strong, JT’s actions separate him from the pack. He didn’t become this way through luck; it was through old-fashioned hard work.  In this interview, he illustrates that his day starts at 3:45 am. He spends the early morning time reading and studying past entrepreneurs and businesses to learn from their paths.  Then he gets a workout in. Once his family is awake, he spends time with them and is off to work.   He’s already learned, exercises and spent time with his family before his “workday” really begins.  Life is full of choices and sometimes that requires sacrifice.  “You have to sacrifice. Don’t run from it — everyone has to sacrifice something”. Take a page from JT’s book. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.  Maybe you CAN change your life after all.   Mindset, choices. This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to mind the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time.”   – Anne Frank  Morning routines have been all the rage the past few years.  Wake up at 3:07 am. Jump in your cold plunge, take a hot shower, meditate, pray, read a whole book, run a half marathon and eat only raw fruit and vegetables.  Four hours later, you’re finally ready to begin your day.   All of the morning routine hype has led evening routines to be highly underrated.  But I think we can tap into our evening routine today.  And it doesn’t have to be complicated.   Maybe we just take five minutes and follow Anne Frank’s guide above.  Open up a notebook and write down what happened today. Did you accomplish what you set out to?  Did you move even 1% closer to your goals? Did you spend time with those that you care about? Did you stick to your new diet?  If we do this enough times, we begin to pick up trends.  And understanding those can help us to better understand ourselves and improve.   At the end of the day today, take 2 minutes and review what happened: the good, the bad and the ugly.   Celebrate the wins and learn from the losses.  Do better tomorrow.   This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here .

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”  – Mark Twain Last week, I gave some tips from NYT writer Aaron Orendorff on how to get people to read what you write at work.  Here’s a similar tip that can help with writing, public speaking, and presentations.   There is common advice given to novice public speakers: Be brief.  Be brilliant. Be gone.   A lot comes across in those six words, and that’s exactly the point.  The goal is to get your point across so succinctly, so precisely, and to do it in as few words as possible.   If you’re writing an email, it’s 5 or fewer sentences.  If you’re leaving a voicemail, it’s 20 seconds or less. Have you ever done a full presentation with no words on your slide deck?  Sometimes we try to outsmart ourselves.  We think that the six-paragraph email of rambling ideas makes it look like we gave it a lot of thought.  In fact, you can (and should) spend more time crafting the exact words you want to say to someone in just a few sentences.  Two scrolls on an iPhone. Anything more than that, and you’ve lost them.  Maybe George Costanza was right when he tried to leave every meeting on a high note after he landed a joke.  Brevity is key.  Brilliance is underestimated.  Distance creates anticipation. This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”  – Sun Tzu  The world is abundant.  There is an infinite amount of opportunities flowing through The Universe at any given point.  Money flowing, jobs being offered, people walking the streets that can change your fortune.  Maybe you don’t see it that way.  There are no jobs. The economy is down so nobody is going to buy my product.  My network is worthless and there’s no way to improve it.   Now, I don’t want to be insensitive… but that’s bullshit, right?  The GDP in the US alone is over $13 Trillion.  Over 130 million people in the country were fully employed last year.  Everyone has circumstances, and those definitely contribute to where you are.  And we’re obviously going through weird times in the world right now. But don’t get it twisted: the opportunities are out there.  If there weren’t, if the future couldn’t be better than the past, then what’s the point of even carrying on? The issue is that we’re looking for the big win.  The one customer that puts us on the map. Instead, we should be stacking up mini-wins.  Gain some momentum. Get 1% better each day.  Why?  Because as Sun Tzu noted, the more we seize opportunities, the more are created.  A big customer win turns into another referral which turns into an introduction to an investor which turns into a major funding round down the line.  But that doesn’t happen overnight.  You need that first win in order to get the second.   In the 40-Year-Old-Virgin, Steve Carrell comically asks his friend “Is it true that if you don’t use it, you…lose it?” It’s kind of like that.  Find a way to get a win today, and keep compounding over time.  That’s how you find opportunities that change your life. This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.

On Friday, March 20th, I put out a video challenge.  The idea is simple. Despite the craziness going on, I’m seeing a lot of good happening in this world and people rising up to shine a light. I want to spread that positivity. Here’s how it works: 1) Leave a review (or dm me) a bright side you’ve seen in the current situation. 2) Each person = $1 donation from me to a charity in need 3) Ongoing blog post with updates on the good news being shared at MillennialMomentum.net. A rising tide lifts all boats. Let’s make positivity louder. What’s the silver lining you’ve seen in the world?  

“If you believe it, the mind can achieve it”  — Ronnie Lott Belief is one of the most powerful drugs in the world. You need to believe in yourself. Believe that you can accomplish your goals. Believe that you are a good person. Believe that you can change the world. Alongside self-belief, being around others who believe in you is vital for success.  This what I heard when I interviewed Jordan Burroughs, US Olympic Gold Medalist Wrestler. Before Burroughs won a Gold Medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, he was an unknown.  He was an underdog. He described himself as “just a small, black kid from the United States”. This isn’t how his coach Mark Manning viewed him, however. Manning viewed him as the greatest wrestler in the world. They would watch tape together before the Olympics and scout the world’s top wrestlers. Manning would tell Burroughs “you can beat these guys”.  Maybe you’ve had a coach, teacher or parent that promoted this thinking within you too.  The significance of these figures in our lives can’t be overstated.  Perhaps even you can return the favor. Confucius once noted that the man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.  Burroughs’ self-belief, alongside Manning’s coaching, led him to become one of the best American wrestlers of all time.  Don’t underestimate the power of your beliefs and a relentless work ethic.  This post is from our new series, Daily Momentum.  Each morning, we send a short, inspirational post via email, blog and podcast.  You can get it directly to your email here.  You can subscribe on iTunes here.