Mark D was the ultimate strength coach. He was also every athlete’s worst nightmare. Six feet tall and built like a refrigerator, his goatee accentuated the stern look that he wore all year long and as far as I could tell he didn’t seem to own a shirt with sleeves. Even in the winter. On my very first day in the weight room he handed out t-shirts with a single quote written across the back. “Pain...
I never wanted to be in sales. The only subject I enjoyed in university was philosophy. It was the only class where I found myself re-reading our textbooks for fun…on the weekends. It was also the only class I actually went to. So that helped. After graduation, however, I came to realize that there wasn’t great demand for “philosophers” in the workforce and so, like most other students, I found...
For some reason I always think of B.F. Skinner’s rat experiments, where the rats get an electric shock every time the scientist wants them to perform a specific action. That’s what life was like when I had all my notifications turned on. Work email, personal email, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter…all of them. Ping. Ping. Buzz. Ping. Do all these notifications make me better? More productive? More...
I spent the first 20 years of my life playing soccer, and the last 15 years playing sales. What do soccer and sales have to do with each other you might ask? It turns out quite a lot. At least that was my first impression when I made the decision to hang-up my cleats and pick-up the phone. On the first day of my first sales job I was put into a team with about 10 other teammates, given a target...
Questions can change the world. I was at a team dinner about a month ago when, out of the blue, a colleague turned to me and asked a question. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” No context, no heads up, just a question. You can imagine my surprise as I looked up from my ravioli. It felt like someone had pulled the pin from a grenade and dropped it in my lap. What would you do if you...
Consider two statistics. Statistic #1: The average person spends 90,000 hours of their life at work. Statistic #2: 80% of working professionals are dissatisfied with their job (according to Deloitte’s Shift Index survey). Put another way, our plight looks something like this: (A lot of time doing something) x (Not enjoying doing that something) = L L is our life. It seems we can do two things to...
I like carrots. When they’re in my salad they provide a rich source of antioxidants, and when they’re in my business they provide a great incentive to keep our sales teams motivated. Or do they? In the early days of my sales career I experienced the ultimate carrot. At the end of the year, anyone who achieved their quota earned time in “the money machine.” The higher your achievement, the more...
John wakes up every day and goes to work for money. He clocks in, clocks out, and collects his paycheck. Susan wakes up every day and goes to work because she wants to be great at what she does. She’s extremely talented and working toward mastery of her profession. Brian wakes up every day and goes to work because he wants to change the world in some way big or small. He is relentless in his...
I love questions. I’ve spent the entirety of my professional life in sales, and the entirety of my personal life in philosophy. Two pastimes deeply rooted in questions. Questions challenge. And questions help us get to the core. Salesmen and philosophers alike need to do both. The difference between a good salesman and a great salesman is not their ability to sell, but their ability to ask the...
Throughout the course of my career there have been days when I’ve found myself sitting at my desk asking the question, “What the hell am I doing here?” Days when I’ve lost any sense of purpose or meaning in what I’m doing. Have you ever had days like that? Those are tough days. My motivation is at an all-time low on those days. Coming out of school with a major in Philosophy it’s safe to say that...
There’s a story in psychology circles about a man who was deathly afraid of riding in a car. He had been to a number of psychiatrists and no one could find a way to help. They tried probing with powerful questions, digging into his past, looking for reasons why the phobia was there, recommending books, psychotherapy — the whole lot. Until he came to his final psychiatrist. After...
