Hall of Fame NFL football player Micheal Strahan was on a radio talk show & found himself being humiliated by the host while on the air. Strahan was so embarrassed that he vowed to never come back on that show, but as fate would have it, the two met face to face again on a different show.
Strahan, matter of factly, set the record straight. “You can’t do what I do…” he told the shock jock. “I can do what you do…but you can’t do what I do. Like you, I can have a conversation on radio and tv in front of the lights & audience…but you can’t put on the pads and be one of the best in the world…”
From that point on, when others piss or try to put Strahan down, he psychologically frees himself up by whispering to himself, “You can’t do what I do…”
I worked with a guy like that…
For nearly two decades we worked together. He wore custom suits, Presidential Rolex, $300 dress shirts, drove baller cars…& always seemed to squirm his way out of his double life being found out.
He was in the room when I got demoted…
I remember the smirk he had on his face when I looked at him with tears in my eyes.
Back on the bottom rung he avoided all contact with me. While I struggled to relearn a department I’d left 17 yrs ago, he’d flaunted and gloated the fact that he was untouchable while I sank lower & lower.
My turning point came one night when we were closing up-everyone had left for the night & it was just him & me. “Lock me in because I still have to clean these deals up I told him…”
Right then that was my mantra, “You can’t do what I do…”
His identity was in his title & things he possessed. Me?…I’d been stripped of everything. I lost my family, home, income, and a position I’d given my all to possess.
I realized he couldn’t lose it all & be strong enough to climb out & up. Had he gone what I’d been through, he’d probably put a bullet in his mouth.
That’s what freed me up…”You can’t do what I do.”
Though tragic, I now had the unique advantage of being able to work every department in sales. Don’t get me wrong, even though I had decades of experience, I performed like a rookie because I had to relearn everything in that department again.
I was determined to take every deal…work long after others left to figure it all out and not only survive but excel. What others didn’t want to do, I took on.
As I got myself back together spiritually, emotionally, & physically, the same smirk he gave me when I got demoted, was the same smirk I gave him as I passed him in the hallway & in life.
He was playing to a title…I was playing to another level.
The people who try to keep you down- who flaunt, gloat, & are fooling everyone EXCEPT you?
Let them be…
“You can’t do what I do…”
Eventually everything caught up to that guy & he ended up getting fired.
I’d long let him go- not for him, but for me.
Those kinds of people aren’t the ones holding you down…you’re the one holding you down, because you’re holding on to them.
Free yourself up. Wink & grow while they gloat because…
“You can’t do what I do.”
Stay in The Sales Life 💪
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