Get down…but don’t let it take you down

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If you find yourself wising you’d started sooner or done differently you’ll want to check out yesterday’s post & podcast 

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There’s no question we all have our down moments. Hip hop artist Jeezy was supposed to be on Beyonce’s song, Drunk in Love. Jeezy normally prepares for studio sessions, but when he got the call, he just showed up and freestyled his lyrics.

When the song was released, he wasn’t on it. “Sorry, I couldn’t use it, ” came the words from Jay Z.

“I missed my shot,” thought Jeezy.

Did he get down? “No. Actually it woke me up,” he said.

Jeezy realized he’d gotten comfortable and gotten away from the techniques that created his success. He wasn’t taking it as serious as he once did and because he was hanging out with the legends of the industry, he’d thought he’d arrived and could just wing it.

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Negative moments can get you down…or they can wake you up.

You can get down…just don’t let them weigh you down.

Because what starts off as a moment of failing becomes a monument of failure.

The down moments should be mile markers in your life-checkpoints to adjust your pace, not millstones to weigh you down.

Things are going to get you down, but don’t let them take you down.

In reality the moments are doing you a favor-they call you out, wake you & shake you up.

When the customer-the one you’ve sold their whole family to comes back in and buys, but it’s not from you-as a matter of fact, they didn’t even ask for you. You can get mad, pissed off, throw things, burn off, and threaten to quit…

Or you can use it as a wake up call because you deep down you know you haven’t been maintaining the relationship and staying top of mind. It’s not  your customers’ job to remember you, it’s your job to make sure they never forget you.

These moments are trying to wake you up to say that you’ve got to tighten up.

When you look how far you’ve slipped it can get overwhelming. “Where do I start,” you ask.

You start.

Instead of wasting days to trying to get over it, use the moments to learn and grow through it.

Heart attacks are wake up calls. \

Injuries are wake up calls.

Bankruptcy is a wake up call.

A breakup from BooBoo is wake up call.

COVID-19, demotion, and termination are all wake up calls.

I had a buddy of mine swing by my office the other day. Come to find out, he’d been terminated due to the COVID crises. Initially he was pissed off, but after he cooled down, he used the moment as a wake up call. The owner did him a favor. No longer was he stuck, he could pursue something he’d been delaying for years.

Down moments are a part of life.

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Do you want to win or succeed? Most say they want to win, but I’d rather succeed. Because winning is one outcome, but what happens when I pour my all into something and I don’t win? If my only option was to win, then I’d probably quit.

I’d rather succeed because success has multiple scenarios. In those scenarios are wins, losses, blow ups, near misses wake ups, and shakeups, but collectively I’ll succeed.

See, I won’t always win, but I can ultimately succeed.

Here’s your TSL action item of the day.

1. Name a moment that was very tough for you. Maybe you haven’t even gotten over it.
2. How will you use it as a wake up call? This is tough because it takes ownership, but it’s necessary to grow forward.
3. Email me @ thesaleslife1@gmail.com

You can get down, just don’t let it take you down.

**Note these are the show notes, but I riff more on the podcast. Check it out by searching The Sales Life Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Tendencies take you down

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Show notes for episode #489 “Tendencies take you down.” Listen right here.

On Episode #488, we talked about details. The more professional you are, the more detailed, you should be, but usually it’s the other way around. The more professional we consider ourselves to be, the less detailed, we actually are.

Instead of using your experience to prepare, you instead use your experience to wing it.

NFL Hall of Fame defensive back Deion Sanders kept detailed information on every player he faced. Sanders kept details on every player he played against-from the rookies to future Hall of Famers.

You know what Sanders was looking for? Tendencies. From the way a player broke the huddle to the positioning of  his feet.

Sanders would use your tendencies to beat you.

Tendencies take you down.

Others aren’t beating you, you’re beating you…through your tendencies. Josh from Covington Louisiana, emailed me (& you can too @ thesaleslife1@gmail.com),

 “Marsh I’m three years into sales and no matter what I do, I always seem to sell the same amount of vehicles. Even if I start off hot, I end up in the same boat. How can I break free of this?’

Josh, asked a perfect question for today’s podcast. We’ve all found ourselves stuck a time or ten thousand…

Your growth is in your tendencies. You can’t have different by doing the old. Know your tendencies. Your tendencies are your natural default settings that you revert back to without even thinking.

When an environment is conducive to your tendencies, then your tendencies will kick in without your realization. It’s as if you’re floating in an inner-tube down a lazy river (of tendencies)…and the waterfall is just ahead.

When Josh gets rolling, maybe his tendency is to psychologically pull up, thinking, “I did it,” but the problem is he’s no longer doing it.

Maybe he’s lost his sense of urgency.  That’s why I say that you should work as if you broke & sell as if you’re rich. But when you achieve a little success, you tend to be dyslexic in thought.  You work as if you’re rich & sell as if you’re broke.

With an arrived mentality, you start coming in a little later and not as fierce as you started, plus you’re selling as if you’re broke- rejections mount up…deals don’t bounce your way, customers buy elsewhere, to the point where you begin to personalize the losses and feel sorry for yourself.

The world’s not picking on you. The world is showing your tendencies.

Tendencies take you down.

To conserve energy, your mind is always looking for patterns. It spots a pattern and boom, your defaults kick in.

If there is no trigger, there are no tendencies.

You have to disrupt your patterns by knowing your tendencies.

Bring your tendencies to an awareness, but this will take complete ownership on your part because you can’t blame your tendencies away, but you can bring them to an awareness.

You can begin spotting the times you start to veer off course. You have to disrupt your tendencies before the tendencies disrupt you.

Tendencies are small yet powerfully destructive. Where you sit…where and how you stand…the phone you use at work…the actions you take when when a customer buys or doesn’t buy. When they buy, do you hide to celebrate or do you look for the next opportunity? When a customer doesn’t buy do you spend 45 minutes recapping to others who were glad it was you and not them?  What do you say to yourself at certain times? Do you take the same route to and from work? When you’re having a bad month do you push yourself to come in earlier and stay later or do you fold to your feelings?

Many people write me and say that they are going to start getting up earlier, but they might as well sleep in because when they wake, they have the tendency to pick up their cell phone and look at social media instead of using the earlier time to make an impact in their own lives.

My tendency lately, has been to come home, grab something to eat, and sit down to relax. On the way home I vowed to go workout but the minute I sit down, I cave and promise to hit it hard tomorrow. I now see the tendency and that tendency can take me down. So I have to disrupt the pattern by changing clothes and  immediately getting the workout in…because I know my tendencies once I sit down.

So here’s your TSL never settle action item for today:

1. What are one or two tendencies that are taking you down? (Be honest. If you’re shrugging it off, it’s probably a destructive tendency.)
2. What have you traditionally done in the past?
3.  What will you do different?

Email me your answers @ thesaleslife1@gmail.com.

Subscribe to nearly 500 episodes. Search for The Sales Life on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

 

 

 

Why you’ve lost your confidence

Watch this post on YouTube!

“Confidence comes from competence,” Dan Lok.

When you’ve lost your confidence it’s because you either:

🔥Lack awareness

🔥 You lack competence

Competence is a collection of your S.K.E.s

Skills

Knowledge

Experience

If you KNOW you have the skills, knowledge, & experience- I mean you’re banging away at your SKE’s daily, then you lack awareness.

You lack awareness because you’re waiting on customers to remind you of your confidence (I.e. Making a sale), but if you’re only successfully making a sale 40% of the time, you’re not gonna be reminded very often.

Even if you’re not in sales, you lack awareness because you’re putting all your stock in a specific outcome, decision, or result & when you don’t get it, you doubt yourself.

You may also lack confidence because you’re deficient in 1, 2, or all of what makes up competence.

You lack Skills: That’s your ability amplified daily. Professional athletes are all talented, but they’re maniacal about developing better skills.

You lack Knowledge: Do you know what you’re doing? Do you know what your talking about? Do you know your product?

You lack Experience: CURRENT EXPERIENCE. Don’t give me that, “I was in HR for 37.237 years…I’ve been going this for 20 yrs & 11 months (with a neck roll). Do you have current experience- meaning, even if you are not winning right now, are you still getting out there and working to make it happen?

If you’ve lost your confidence you either lack the awareness or you lack the competence. In either case fix it.

Stay in The Sales Life 💪

Action cures all…

Are you procrastinating picking up the phone and calling the customer because you may just get rejected (again)?

🔥Action cures all…

Afraid to ask for the sale because you don’t want to come across pushy?

🔥Action cures all…

Should I or shouldn’t I go to the gym…have the difficult conversation…or ask her out?

🔥Action cures all.

Today’s thought is simple: If you’re scared, frightened, or just plain lazy…

Take action because…

🔥Action cures all…

Thanks for being a part of The Sales 💪ife.

(Thanks to Tom Bilyeu for the idea 💡)

Hear 5 min podcast 👉https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-life-with-marsh-buice/id1292788623?i=1000453965493

Stop if’ing around

Oh you don’t lack for If’s…

…if you had $ for the number of if’s you told yourself, you’d have problems, but money wouldn’t be one of them.

If I was a different race.

If I was taller.

If I was a starter.

If I was a baller.

If I was running a store.

If I was the CEO.

If I could get the loan.

If I could start my business.

If I wouldn’t have married him or had children with her.

Oh we If ourselves to death…

When what you need to do is how yourself to life.

if is all bullshit anyway.

Because you can’t, if you’re self taller.

You can’t if yourself a different skin color.

You can’t if yourself to have wealthy parents, nor be first cousins to Warren Buffett, or be Kim Kardashian’s sister.

When if kicks in, slap it down with a how…

How can I use what I have right now?

Because how is all you’ve got.

You have unique advantages, but you’re so fixated on other people’s advantages that you’re blinded with if’s.

You say, “If I could have what they have, I’d be better off.”

It’s all bullshit.

Just ask yourself how…

How can I use what I’ve got, leverage it, & then grow it.

Start with what you have.

Use it.

And then begin to leverage it.

And if you don’t know how to leverage it…if you don’t know how to position your current advantages…

Then see Step 1…

Just use what you’ve got…

& along the way, you’ll figure out how to position it…then grow it.

Compound it by developing the skills, techniques, and education that you need to grow and evolve.

Educate yourself…be a sponge…ask questions…volunteer for the grunt work…

It doesn’t have to come from a classroom.

People do that…

They stall so they don’t have to take action (& probably fail)…

They rack up the loans thinking they have to sit idly in a classroom & have someone pour information into them.

You don’t need money…you need commitment.

Stop if’ing around & start how’ing.

How can I use what I have, leverage it, and then start growing that shit.

~become your own action figure. Stop waiting for perfect or thinking it’s too late. You got to-day so get started.

Stay in The Sales Life (400+ podcast episodes like this can be found on iTunes or your favorite podcast app)

The dues are in the do

Poker players will tell you the only way to learn poker, is to play poker.

You can read all of the books…& even watch hours and hours of video…

…but you won’t learn the game until you sit at the table and play the game.

That’s the only way you can pay your dues…

…is when you push off and do.

You want to start working out?

Dues are in the do…

Lose weight?

Dues are in the do…

Start a podcast?

Dues are in the do…

Write a book?

Dues are in the do…

Start a business, become a better salesperson, have thriving relationship…

Turn your whole fucking life around?

Dues are in the do…

You gotta pay your dues.

And the only currency that is accepted is in the do.

No more books. No more Somedays, Mondays, starting next month, or January 1rst…

The rent’s due…now.

Pay yourself…

Do.

~Stay in The Sales 💪ife.

Find 400+ podcast episodes of The Sales Life on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Carry your own canteen

There’s an old saying that says, “Sometimes you have to carry your own canteen,” meaning you have to carry and handle your own situation, your own struggles… & handle your own slumps.

And it’s not that it’s you against the world, but it’s you against you…of old.

If you want a new you…

then you’ve got to stop letting others carry your burdens and give you a victim pass.

Now you have to figure it out…shoulder your own load…carry your own canteen.

And don’t be mad at others…nor yourself….

Woulda…shoulda is powerless…

Gonna is the question.

What are you gonna do?

People can help you along the way, but they can no longer do it or excuse it for you.

The only way out is through…you.

~Be your own action figure. Stay in The Sales Life.

Subscribe to The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

“Work your land”

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Tim Storey’s advice on work ethic and success begins with a proverb…

 He who chases fantasies will lack wisdom, but he who works his land will have abundance.

When people come up to Storey, frustrated that it’s not happening fast enough…

…feel that they’re stuck in life…

or that the Too’s are kicking in…

Too old…

Too young…

Too soon…

or that it’s Too late,

Storey tells them simply,

 “Go work your land.”

Your land is what’s right in front of you.

Whether you’re in junior high, a janitor, a salesperson, or a bottom rung manager, go work your land.

You wouldn’t look out over 50 acres expecting to see corn knowing that you didn’t plant any…

You can’t expect your seeds to take root without busting up the ground…

It’s in the digging-turning what’s been packed down for years…

It’s in planting not knowing precisely when it’s going to sprout…

It’s in the watering.

Watering for you is the reps…

In his book, Arnold Schwarzenegger said the secret to his massive success is reps, reps, reps.

You won’t get any better until you first get worse.

Reps, reps, reps…

Every day you’re showing up…

Reps…watering… reps… digging…rep…plowing…planting…weeding…

Reps… working your land…

Working to become a pro…

Then one day…

You’ll see the harvest.

When is not your concern.

You’ve just got to go work your land…

Whatever land you got, go work the hell out of it.

Until…

Until you get a harvest.

And when you do, your harvest is going to be so abundant that you’re going to need more land.

Have an amazing day & life.

Stay in The Sales Life!

~Marsh

Catch 400+ episodes of The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

“No one has…”

You can probably look over your extended family & be able to use the words,

No one has,

& then fill in the blank.

No one has gone to college, moved away, made six figures, been an entrepreneur, built their own house, earned a scholarship, etc.

No one has...

Those two words have chained generations of your family down.

When you try to challenge the status quo, no one has quickly snuffs your flame asking you, “Out of all the others that came before you…what makes you so special…

… any different…

…what makes you the one?”

No one has commands you to fall in line…

Just do your job…

Don’t ask questions…

No one has whispers permission to stay the same & just be grateful.

No one has is an excuse…

But it’s also a reason.

No one has is an excuse to act, think, speak, & believe the same way the family always has…

Or no one has is the only reason you need.

No one has, so if somebody is, it might as well be me.

I hear all why’s, but step out & ask why not?

And it’ll be hard, because not only will you be fighting the obstacles in front of you, but you’ll be fighting all of the limitations dragging behind you too.

So to do this, you’re gonna have to cut some family members off…not explain…go off the radar and just do.

& get ready for, “You think you’re better than everyone else, huh?”

Don’t explain…just do.

Because you’re better than the man you were yesterday & that’s the only score that matters right now.

Those family members don’t mean to hold you down, they just don’t understand, because…

…no one has.

But if you’re going to pass something down from one generation to another…

when no one has bubbles up, confidently whisper, “No one has…until someone did.”

Have an amazing day & life.

Stay in The Sales 💪ife!

~Marsh

You knew me, but you don’t know me

It can be really tough to put your best work out there…

…you finally worked up enough courage to publish your art -whether it’s a blog, book, writing, podcast, video, teaching a how-to skill, or starting your new business & somebody trolls along and instantly rips your hardest work to shreds with a thumbs down, shitty comments, or 1 star rating.

That shit hurts. You think to yourself, “All I’m trying to do is help…express…or share my struggles so others can work through their struggles too!

And in seconds they torch you…

When Gary Veynerchuk was asked how he deals with the haters (& he’s got plenty), he simply answers, “They don’t know me…”

Anyone can come at him on social media; anyone can say something mean, hurtful and negative. They can mock him & make videos about him.

And how does he deal with them?

He doesn’t…

Why put any weight into what other people say?

Why invest emotional currency into other people’s opinion of you?

Because the truth is, it’s got nothing to do with you…

And it’s got everything to do with them.

Their judgments say more about them and less about you.

You’re just a reflection of their unhappiness …

They see that you refused to accept that this is all there is in life…

They notice that you want demand something bigger from life…

Not only will you take your share but your unfair share because not everyone is bold enough to step to life’s table and expect more.

They see that you have grabbed life by the balls, and are willing to get out there and even get back up after you’ve stumbled.

People notice what you’re doing and see what they’re not.

Judging’s easy…doing is hard..

They don’t want to do the hard…

So they do what’s easy…

They judge you…

It’s easy to react at what you’re doing so as not to examine what they’re not.

They’re too busy finding your flaws instead of strengthening their faults.

Oh, and they give all kinds of excuses…

“Oh, he didn’t have to struggle like I did…

He didn’t come from the same rough neighborhood as I did…

He he didn’t have to deal with the same sort of issues that I did…

My mom and dad were never there-I had to raise myself & my siblings…

I don’t have that color skin, education, nor privileged life like they do..

There are many excuses why they can’t, when they only need one reason why they can…

You should be the example, but instead you’re their excuse.

They should look at you- even if they don’t all the way line up with everything that you say or do…

Hell, I don’t line up with everything Gary Vee says, but I admire what he’s doing. I admire that he’s willing to just keep coming at it. I admire that he’s willing to keep showing up.

Respect…

Respect the fact that you keep showing up & putting your shit out there…

& if they don’t respect it you should…

It’s got nothing to do with you, remember?

They don’t know you..

Because you barely even know yourself. (And I’m being generous here.)

You barely know you, so how in the hell can anybody else know you well enough to judge you?

Even your family members don’t even know you…

Your mom probably doesn’t know you, because you barely know you.

You’re discovering new things, capabilities, & capacities about yourself all the time.

And most of them aren’t discovered until you’ve failed!

Oh but people are quick to call you out on that, right?

They know things about you, but they don’t truly know you.

They’re trying to size you up…but how do you size anything up that’s not a finished product.

You’re a work in progress not regress…

So when somebody you know or don’t know comes along & tries to resurrect something that’s already happened…

Trent Shelton in his new book, The Greatest You, says when people come at him and they try to bring up his past he says,

You knew me, but you don’t know me.

Oh, all that you’re saying? That’s what you knew about me…

But that’s not what you know…

All they’re doing is rereading old, bad chapters aloud.

Those old chapters have no power over me because I own those chapters…

It’s only when you don’t own your old chapters will they have any power over you…

We’ve all got a past…

We’ve all got old chapters….

“But it was the old, bad chapters that led directly to the new chapters in my life,” Shelton said.

So when people come by, and they sit there and they try to reread the old chapters of your life..

Own it.

Yeah, that was me.

Use your old chapters as a measurement as to how far you’ve come.

Chapters in your ongoing narrative of life.

People stop writing their chapters because they fear being judged.

So they let others hold their pen.

Even if you worked a 9-5 job, stayed to yourself, worked & came straight home they’d still judge you.

So if they’re gonna judge no matter what, why not give them something massive to judge you by?

REALLY give them something to talk about.

Play big today and for the rest of your life.

Play so big & make such an impact that they’ll talk about you now and long after you’re gone.

Stay in The Sales Life 💪

~Marsh

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