13: Focus on What You Can Control

all right everybody hey what's up it's john barrows with uh j barrows consulting and welcome to make it happen mondays uh we're on episode 13 right now so lucky number 13 hopefully some of y'all chiming in here um ask whatever questions as usual um uh today any topic is up for discussion so feel free to hit me up um and today's topic is focused on what you can control right because for me i got i got so much shit going on right now it's it's bananas um you know i'm i've come up on from a business standpoint some really important decisions i got to make as far as the direction of my company and where i'm going to take this because some recent actions that uh have happened that i can't really talk about but you will find out a lot more about here in the next uh few months um which has really got me super excited but it's obviously going to add a whole host of shit to my plate uh that uh is one of those things where i was like i don't know if i can add any more um but uh but it's all good and and it's all about kind of the future and the direction and what i want to be doing and and how i want to be um driving things forward here so i got that i got a busier schedule now than i've ever had in my life i just came back from australia last week for a week in australia doing some awesome training for some clients i'm going to vegas tomorrow for a day less than a day so i can't get in too much trouble thankfully um and then i got another booked week next week and then i'm actually finally taking a vacation so just as a heads up y'all uh i am taking off from may 4th may 24th to june 9th i'm going to italy for three weeks and and fucking fuck off everything right i'm going to take my phone and throw it into the water and not respond to a damn thing so if you need something from me in those three weeks tough shit and i ain't gonna be doing facebook we don't make it happen well maybe i will who knows maybe it'll be interesting but we'll see what happens but my point is there's a ton of shit going on right now and i'm also paying more and more attention to where things are going and this is why i wanted this topic to be um focused on what you can control because you know i read yet another article over the weekend about oxford now predicting about you know 26 of the jobs here in the next 10 years are going to be you know completely irrelevant um because of artificial intelligence and those type of things and it's it's talking about how we're moving into a world where you know there's going to be like what happens when there's 20 30 percent unemployment right like what does that do to a society and everything else and so you know i'm not sitting here no i am i i'm i'm i'm sounding the alarm bells here for us because and the reason i do this is because my daughter right she's six and a half years old and my wife and i are having a challenging time talking about her education where do we want her to go and part of me is like i don't give a shit about education i want critical thinking skills i want the ability to adapt and those type of things because who the fuck knows what's going to happen here in the next 10 to 20 years by the time she gets out of college so so and i'm doing the same thing for us in our careers and in our industries and stuff like that and i just continue to beg people to stop just going through the motions right stop just going through the motions and doing what you're supposed to do and and pay attention and put yourself in a position where when things shift you can adjust and that's why i think sales is such a fantastic career if done right um and i add that to you know this kind of freak out factor that i'm having with artificial intelligence and those type of things to you know just something that happened on friday last or thursday or friday last week when a kid snapped me a question and he was like look john i've been i've been crushing my numbers here for 10 quarter 10 10 months in a row i've been crushing my numbers i missed my numbers once one month and now i'm on pip right now i'm on performance improvement plan he's like is this normal he's like i'm super aggravated about this and and um you know what should i do and without enough context my feedback to him was look that does suck like if you've been crushing it for 10 months and then one month and you're on pip like there's something off there but the question you got to kind of take a step back and look around like is it only you that that's happening to um because if it is they might be picking on you but if they're picking on you then it's got to be about some other reason than your numbers right it's got to be something about um you know it might be your attitude in the office this might be your influence on other people there might be a vendetta you know there's some there's got to be some underlying reason if if if it's just about you and not everybody else but it might also be about everybody else too like there might just be a policy in place so why don't you go instead of reacting to hey i'm really mad like i don't deserve to be treated like this why don't you take a step back and look at a bit of a bit of a bigger picture here and he came back he's like you know what dude you're right i i asked around and this is actually a company policy and he had gone so far i was reaching out to his executive and scheduling a meeting to talk about it and you know where he was at the gonna you know ask why and all this other stuff but he flipped it and he said you know what fuck it you're right he's like i'm just going to focus on what i can control i'm going to go into that meeting trying to figure out how i can improve how i can get better how i can get off of this pip and forget about the negative side of this and blaming anybody and just realize what i can do right because it was a policy he's like thankfully i realized it was a policy in the company it wasn't just about me you know so so adding that because i think a lot of us get sucked into that vortex of oh what the fuck this isn't fair and and blah blah blah and you know what to a certain degree yeah it's not but life isn't fucking fair and sometimes you just got to stop bitching about shit and start really moving forward and saying okay look i'm just going to put my best effort forward if my best effort isn't good enough then i got to go find another place where i can excel or i got to figure out a way to get better at what i do and that's the same thing i tie that to the evolution and where things are going from a from a artificial intelligence standpoint because it's the same thing it's like we can sit here and and fight it and say okay oh you know whatever and and try to try to avoid the situation or we can figure out how to leverage it and how to evolve with it you know my my mentality right now sales reps is you know the the image that i have in my head right now for sales reps moving forward is the kind of a switchboard operator remember the you know the old school switchboard operators where you kind of plug one out and you connect people and those type of things i think that's actually going to be where sales um reps still have a significant impact or or what their what our job is going to be specifically at the front end of the funnel um moving forward where it's we're going to use these tools and these techniques and all this information that artificial intelligence is sharing with us or allowing us to gain insights into and then putting it together in contact strategies figuring out how to you know surround our clients with that message and and connect with them um and if we're not paying attention to those things we're in trouble you know i just got off the phone literally just off before this call before this make it happen monday is with a friend of mine who's in the legal industry and he's realizing that you know his lawyers got to go out there and find business but they don't want to do it because usually they're they're relationship driven and he's like look i'm 60 um i could probably ride this out for the next five to ten years on the relationships that i've already developed but these 30 somethings you know 20 somethings coming into my industries like they don't have a book of business they don't have a reputation they have to go out there and make it happen and i'm a little worried because lawyers aren't typically bred that way you know they're not hunters they're not sales people in a lot of ways but um but you don't have to be a sales person as a title to to go out there and sell right sales is about you know find somebody with a need making a connection and making sure there's a right fit there right so needless to say i you know the the whole focus on what you can control you know a lot of us like i said take a step back and realize what can what can i control of this scenario here i talked to my daughter a lot with uh we came up with an acronym to help her because she was actually she's six and a half and uh she was actually having a hard time uh dealing with this election i think it was obviously because my wife and i um were bitching and moaning about a lot of different things but um you know she was like wow this is that's unfair that doesn't and i'm like okay like let's let's take a step back here let's focus on the world we can control and what is that and i came up with the acronym eat effort attitude and how we treat people right so you can control your effort you can control your attitude and you can control how you treat people there's not much else you can control in this world right you can't control how other people treat you um you can't control really to a certain i mean i guess you can but to a certain extent you can't control of other people's perception of you what you can't control is you working your ass off and doing the right things for the right reasons right so that's why showing up early staying late for work um you know doing right by a customer um you know having the right attitude when going into your day and instead of going in on mondays fuck mondays no let's make it that's why it's make it happen mondays like mondays are great if you if you're coming into mondays saying fuck mondays i hate them yeah they're gonna suck and then tuesday's you know maybe gonna get better and if you're working for the weekends you're not in the right job right if you're praying for friday to come right now you're in a lot of trouble in my opinion so make the best of what you got all right and and i'm also going to highlight the the whole goal setting i bring that up time and time and time again what are you trying to where are you going if you're not setting goals then you're just along for the ride somebody else is dictating the path if you are setting goals you got something to strive for and and you can go for it and and every decision kind of backs that up otherwise you're just kind of like i said going through the motions um one thing is i just got before that call the lawyer previous call um i know a lot of you've been following me i've been uh i was over at vayner media for their 4d session which is they do a deep dive it's a one day deep dive session with all the department heads over at vayner media and they talk about creative and and uh you know the social channels and brand building and all these different things and then gary came in at the end for about an hour and a half to uh two hours actually to do a q a with everybody which was fantastic um uh you know there wasn't a big aha moment there that said oh there's something i'm pulling out of this but but what it did help me realize was how important kind of that vision the goals were and also why you do what you do and so actually there's an exercise i'm gonna bring this up here i'm gonna there's an exercise that they had i was doing um i do it on my whiteboard here of you know coming up with your vision let's see if this stretches here uh coming up with your vision about what's your what's you know what's your why whoops there's what's your why about why you're doing and then what are the pillars of stuff that you're doing to support that why and the reason i'm doing what i do and i went through this exercise which i thought was really valuable um the reason i do what i'm doing is because i really do genuinely think that sales is the best profession in the world when done right and it's the worst one done wrong and my pillars to help support that are you know work your ass off earn everything what goes around comes around um and then what are the other ones yeah believe in what you do right those things are my guiding principles to help me figure out why i'm doing what i'm doing and then creating content and making my decisions based on those things that support my principles and so that's why what you're hearing with make it happen mondays and and all these different things that i'm doing here it all works to support that driving why i do what i do which is actually supporting my ultimate goal of what i want to do personally in the lifestyle that i want to live so you know i guess the point of this i know i'm all over the place with this one just because i got so much shit going on inside my head right now it's bananas um but i think the the main point of today's make it happen mondays is is really again focus on you focus on what you can control and and really do everything you can to put yourself in a position to to be successful but whatever success means to you right people think you know some people think it's monetary things or success that's that's fine you know dollar figures definitely but shit if you're making 35 grand a year living a happy life and and living the life that you want then you win right it's it's you if compared to somebody that's making 20 million a year and a miserable son of a bitch i'd rather be the 30 000 a year person living with a nice family and enjoying my life than the two 20 million dollar person who's just a miserable prick so define what success means for you and then set those goals about where you want to be lifestyle standpoint wise like really really you know think five years out where do you want to be lifestyle you know what kind of car what kind of house those type of things and then what's your guiding principle of how you're going to get there and then what are goals and activities you're going to do to help support that um because too much too many of us get bogged down by things we can't control um what other people think of those i ultimately i don't give a shit what other people think of it of me i do things for the right reasons and if you don't like me you don't like me that's why i don't really care about negative comments i mean i do i want to make sure that i'm not ultimately offending somebody or whatever um but at the end of the day if my intentions are pure and i'm doing things for the right reason if you don't like me i don't fucking care um i want to find those kids that do like me right um and really i don't know i can't i can't stress how important this is because i see so many people get stuck stuck in the in the weeds if you will and and expend so much energy on the negative side of what's happening to them of stuff they really have no control over and if they were to just switch their mentality and say fuck it i'm just going for it and uh you know if you don't whatever happens happens you'd be amazed at how much um things turn around right i i there was a time my first startup uh with thrive we there was such emotional baggage in that company where we would you know at a certain stage of the company when we got to 30 40 50 people there was more shit going on about internal politics and and things that were happening and you know how people were upset about something and we had to meet about it and all this other stuff the amount of time that i look back and say we wasted on emotionally dumb shit was what really held us back now don't get me wrong we crushed it and and we we really excelled just because we were working our asses off but man we could have been 10 times better if we had cut through the bullshit and said look you know let's let's focus on what we can control let's have some structure in place to be able to address what we can't um but just everybody put their head down and go and that's what my recommendation everybody here is is just put your head down and go uh you do not know what's going to happen tomorrow you do not know what you do know is that things are going to change what you do know is that something's going to happen that's out of your control so let's focus on what we can't and it makes you a lot happier person i think one of my uh this is actually one of my favorite um little let's see uh one of my favorite little uh cartoons here it says everybody wants to be liked and accepted except for john john doesn't give a fuck and it's this little i don't know if you can see it there but it's this little cartoon where he's just up there and it's like this i'm not saying fuck off everybody i'm just saying fuck off to the people that that that are the haters out there the trolls out there um or the the people within organizations that are trying to bring you down or always uh or or limit you you know what i mean if you're working at a company and you're working your ass off and and you you know you're asking for feedback and you're doing the right things and you gotta by the way you have to put that mirror up there that says yes i am you know i'm genuinely doing everything i can here if you're doing that and you're still not getting supported if you're still not um feeling like it's an environment that you can succeed in then go find something else to do i i mean one of my guiding principles is find your passion or find something else to do if you do not believe in what you do or you do not believe you're in a location that can help you thrive to to become your best go find something else to do um sales specifically is a brutal fucking profession it's absolutely brutal um it and it's 10 times harder when you don't believe in what you do or you don't feel passion for the company or the product or the service or or what you're doing when you believe in it who it makes a difference it makes a difference all the way so um yeah i mean again i don't know if there's any questions out there we tend to get a big long tail on these things uh from make it happen mondays you know we get a lot of questions after the fact um but if you have any questions hit me up now like i said i'm always open for chatting about anything related to sales um i'm going to start playing around with different formats here um friday afternoons different timelines i think i'll probably wait until after my vacation to to play around with a bunch of different things here but um pay attention all right pay attention to what's happening out there please i want to see some kid asked me recently last week when i was doing the training they asked hey john you know you train all these tech companies and on a lot of the same content right i don't really i customize some you know i customize a little bit of my content for every client um but for the most part the foundational stuff is is it's the same so she was like you know what um you train everybody so you know everybody's got the same techniques everybody's got the same stuff um what makes people different how can you elevate if everybody's got the same tools like well you know everybody can go out and buy a big berth of driver doesn't mean everybody's going to be hitting it 350 yards down the middle of the fairway and and you know hitting it straight to me it's about what you do with the content and this is true and this is my challenge to everybody out there there's a there's a whole discussion around the distribution of talent or the bell curve of talent which effectively in general says that you got your a players your b players and your c players right you got your great average and crap and there's probably about 10 to 20 percent a's in every organization there's about 60 to 70 percent b's um and then there's 10 to 20 percent c's and my experience it holds pretty true you know if you got if you got 10 team if you got 10 people on a team there's usually a couple that are rock stars there's about six or seven that are good and there's about three or four that suck um and those are the ones that are always complaining and that type of thing and so that's what i said about training too so from a training standpoint um you know that when i train reps 10 to 20 percent of the reps are going to take what i do and run with it and it's going to make a difference 60 to 70 percent of the reps are going to do something different you know maybe take a nugget or two and then 10 to 20 percent of the reps are going to do absolutely nothing different so my challenge to everybody who takes my trainings is be that top 10 to 20 percent don't be the other you know 80 percent of people that just barely do something different if you're going to a training you're there to learn something learn it execute it apply it run with it so it's all about what you do with the content not the content itself okay it's all about the effort and the attitude and how you treat people all right so we do have a couple of questions there's one coming in from connor what's up man uh just read the article in forbes so you made 400 dials a day seems like you were coming a long way from that uh with all the customization but what's the hook and the body of the normal let's see what's what was the hook and body normally of those callbacks that thrive good i didn't get many callbacks man i was making so my equation for those you don't know so yes thanks for the heads up on the on the forbes article they did an article for me that went out um it was just uh my story uh which was very humbling um to be put out there and the feedback so thanks to everybody for uh whoever gave me feedback on that article it was cool but yeah i mean i talked about how you know early on in my days at thrive specifically um i didn't know i was 24 years old so i didn't know what i was doing and the only thing i felt like i could control at that point in my life was um my effort right because i didn't know any better i didn't have any real skills uh from a sales standpoint so but i knew i could work hard and so i figured out what my equation was my equation was 1600 a month got me eight meetings a month got me four proposals got me two pieces of closed business as an average deal size is 3500 and that's why i believe we all need to know our equation right actually i wrote a blog post on this type in j barrows know your equation and i've thrown a spreadsheet there i'll help you figure out what your equation is but how many dials like so and i figured out so it was literally 1600 a month 400 dials a week got me eight meetings a month you know i did that for five years and um and i thought back then it was all about the elevator pitch it was all about coming up with that perfect message that was uh you know that would get people to call me back and i'll prove it to you here by the way connor check this out so here's uh here's my voicemail here's here's my elevator pitch here's the exact voicemail that i left 399 times a year 399 times a week for five years and i'm like this by the way i promise you i am not reading this hi this is john barrows with thrive networks we do outsourced it support for small to mid-sized companies in the boston area and we take a really unique approach to manage your it infrastructure by combining the best what people and technology have to offer we tie our network operation center and our managed services to your environment so we can take care of all the small things on a proactive basis when the engineers come on site they can take care of the higher level more strategic initiatives help drive your business forward i'd love to talk to you about your it support needs if you could call me back at 617-529-7271 i'd really appreciate it this is john barrows with thrive network 617-529-7271 who was i proud of that i would leave that voicemail i'd be like what's up nailed it again pitch tone everything was perfect on that one right and then all of a sudden i started looking at my numbers i was i wasn't getting a damn callback i i would get more callbacks when i would screw up a voicemail than what then i would nail the perfect one every time right so i did uh i did this one by mistake once i was like hi this is john barrows with thrive networks we do outsourced it support from small to mid-sized oh shit you know what i'm sorry i was trying a new pitch there that was a disaster look we fix computers you got problems with your computers call me back here 617-529-7271 i got more callbacks with that approach then then hands down so i started doing it on purpose and so back then it was to me it was a volume game um now the volume still needs to be there all right that's why a lot of you is like oh man 50 dials like make your fucking 50 dials right if you're being told to do it do it um but do it in a more intelligent way than i did it i just made my ears bleed think about it you've heard me say this before all the time you know my my number one recommendation for everybody out there is a b split test everything you do literally a b split test so if you have one persona cios in the healthcare industry come up with two different messages to them uh make 20 phone calls with this approach make 20 phone calls with that approach see which one yields a higher response rate um gatekeepers when dealing gatekeepers come up with two different approaches to deal with gatekeepers make 20 phone calls with this 20 phone calls with that see what happens that way you start to figure out what works because what works for me is going to be different than what works for you you know i'm john barrows from boston massachusetts like yeah you know i'd take a pretty direct and in your face approach to selling that might not fit with some of y'all personality styles and stuff like that so and i'm not saying my approach is the best approach i'm just saying it works for me so let's put some foundational things in place here and let's start tweaking our message now connor to go back to your question here i'm much more of the quality quality oriented approach these days where i go do homework and you know make a relevant connection but i'm also realizing that the amount of noise that's out there right now it's really hard to break through and what i've really shifted my training towards is is more telling your story so so a contact strategy so instead of it being the first you know just one email or one voicemail or something like that and hoping that that is going to be the best it's about the story we tell because you know i've read study after study that talks about how many touches it takes to get in touch with somebody right like five touches ten touches whatever regardless i've never seen a study that says one one touch right so this is why by the way it is not worth spending a half an hour writing one email to an account it's just not um but that story five six seven touches and what's the first one that's why i sit down when i do my prospecting i sit down i pick an account and i look for four five six different things to say to them all at the same time so i can tell my story there right so i'll sit down and say okay let me do a bunch of research let me see if i can find a bunch of different things here let's add some stuff in here okay so my first touch is going to be about this and then schedule touch two three four five and six and and because i've already done the research i take that content i put it in those activities so now i know what i'm going to say when that activity comes up and i can tie them together so that there is a story to tell here actually i don't make my just a fyi i don't make my first touch my best touch anymore it used to be now it's not um i i usually wait until the third or fourth one because stats show that those are the highest response rates so um but the hook man of connor there was no hook it was just i i spent i spent six years i mean i've been working probably six days a week uh on average for the past 20 years of my life but man was i was a thrive i was going to four five networking meetings on a i'm sorry like networking group meetings on a weekly basis and going to four or five different um networking events at night while making 400 dials a week and going on eight meetings a month and driving all over massachusetts and um you know i think that that that attributed a lot to my success because like i said i wasn't the brightest kid coming out of college i drank my way through four years of college you know i mean i got my degree in marketing but whatever um not i'm not saying i'm dumb i'm just saying i'm not like harvard or mit type of smart right um but i know i can work hard you know it's like one of my favorite quotes with uh will smith he's like you know when you get on a treadmill he talks about like i'll die on a treadmill it's like you'll you're either gonna you're either gonna i'm either gonna outlast you or i'm gonna die on the treadmill treadmill because you ain't gonna beat me just because i'm giving up here and that's kind of my mentality about everything that i'm doing here so we're up on the hour here i gotta bounce for another 15 calls this afternoon uh hopefully y'all got some value out of this again keep the questions coming hit me up on snapchat uh john m as m barrows all one word um also you know linkedin twitter all those different avenues i i spent an hour this morning with a kid who reached out to me so looking for some advice and i gave him you know just free consultant there just because i want to make sure that the sales is done right all right that's that guiding principle i was telling you about here so go out there again focus on what you can control eat effort attitude and how you treat people and go make it happen all right everybody make it a great day cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers