15: John's 12 Guiding Principles

here we go happy monday it is a fantastic monday i'm in a fantastic mood for multiple reasons one is because my celtics pulled off a ridiculous upset yesterday against the calves isaiah thomas wasn't in their number one player and they played like a team and they came back against lebron who had smoked them in the first two rounds i don't know if you're any all paying attention to this but they literally embarrassed worst loss in playoff history for the celtics on friday night i mean couldn't even watch it and and so and then you know the first game was just just as bad so needless to say last night nobody gave him a chance nobody gave him a chance and uh i gotta be honest i didn't even give him a chance i had him on in the background but i really wasn't paying attention to him and all of a sudden around fourth quarter i hear defense and they're in cleveland i'm like why the hell are they cheering defense i look over and they're up on tide so needless to say they pulled it out it was fantastic um and the other reason i'm in a fantastic mood is because um i take off on wednesday for italy and i'm headed out for two and a half weeks where i am taking my phone i'm throwing it well i'm not throwing it in the ocean but i'm taking my laptop i'm not taking my laptop i'm not getting connected i'm not checking emails the only thing i will be doing and this is how it ties to today's session but today's episode is i'm bringing my phone and i'm gonna be snapping and doing a whole bunch of shit on instagram because i'm launching instagram today so you can check it out it's john m as michael barrows all one word same handle as my snapchat same handle as um uh as twitter and everything else all right so check that out because i'm gonna be hitting italy i'm gonna be hitting rome the amalfi coast and then uh sicily i'll be taking pictures the whole time and snapping the hell out of it and trying to figure out snapchat or i'm sorry uh instagramming the hell out of it and uh trying to figure out instagram along the way so hopefully you can join me along the way uh engage a little bit see if we can have some fun with that but that's really you know what got me thinking the reason i'm on instagram or the reason i'm launching instagram is for obvious reasons i gotta be there but you know i'm trying to take things one step at a time and um you know i started snapchat a little while ago started figuring that out doing facebook live now now instagram and then you know figure out what's next but with that you know i want to kind of back up a little bit here i think some of you who have been following me um noticed that i did a session with gary vaynerchuk so gary v has this 4d session you know i actually looked at gary to uh to do some of my marketing or vayner media to do some my marketing stuff and uh i got a quote from it was like half a million dollars a year just to get started i'm like yeah not not yet um but they have these one days where it's called the 4d where it's a deep dive where you can go into vayner media and sit down with all their department heads and go through you know all their strategies and everything else and also um get a chance to meet with gary and one of the things i'd say probably the biggest takeaway for me was it just got me rethinking about my vision my mission and why i'm doing it right there was a creative piece where they brought you through kind of defining your why and by the way i'm going to write a blog post on this on and put it out there on thursday um so some of the same stuff here but you know it was about understanding why you're doing what you're doing which i think is a really powerful question to ask in general but ask yourself every once in a while why are you doing what you're doing which is effectively and they call it your brand unifying vision or your brand unifying reason for being um a lot of people call it mission vision that type of stuff so it really made me take a step back and and again reset why am i doing what i'm doing and what i came up with was you know i really because i started with what i was doing but but i had to back up and say why and my after thinking it through for a little bit you know i really came to you know i believe sales is the greatest profession in the world when done right and it's the worst one but it's the worst one done wrong and i want to help reps do it right i want to do it right um and and i want to help reps do it right all right so that's kind of why and i also think that sales is one of those professions that just allows you to create your own world if you want you know the the beauty of sales is the harder you work usually the more you get paid and so it's directly relevant to your effort as opposed to a lot of other professions where you get salaried and those type of things so i think it's really going to be a profession that most people will see coming out of college is actually if you don't even think the other thing is you don't even get a degree in it so if you don't want to lowest barrier to entry and with all the crazy shit that's going on right now in the world i think sales is going to be one of the professions that helps us adapt if you will so like if artificial comes in intelligence comes in and wipes out an entire industry well then if you're if you're good at sales you just go to a different industry right so i think it's actually going to help us going to be one of the best professions moving forward even right so that's my why and then they talked about these pillars of behavior like what are these pillars behavior that support that why and then creating content around that stuff so it all follows through and so i put those together but what it got me thinking was i had done an exercise a while back and and i forget where i had learned it it was either from reading a book um or going to a training or something like that and it talked about understanding effectively your your principles your guiding principles and and that's so i came i sat down and after going through a bunch of iterations i came up with 12 guiding principles early on in my career of of the foundation of how i make my decisions okay and so and what it was it was great because i put it up on my i have it right here um i put it up on my cube i also use this as a way to you know when i was managing when i would bring on a new rep i would give them these 12 guiding principles and i would say hey you know what um as a matter of fact here they're not sure hold on i would be like hey look um i just want to let you know this is how i live my life i'm not expecting you to have these guiding principles or for you to follow these but when feedback comes from me or when you get a reaction from me it's usually based on one of these all right so it was a really good way i felt at least of unifying my team and also giving them a sense of where i was coming from so i thought i'd share with you guys i really think it's a good exercise for y'all to go through here it's kind of that guiding light so when you get off track you can kind of come back and say hey am i still living my values am i still living my my principles if you will and am i and are they still supporting my vision or where i want to go so step one for you takeaways is and i talked about this in previous episodes is you know pick five years out i used to roll my eyes at the five year hey what do you want to be when you're you know in five years and you know it would be a manager which is bullshit but but now i actually think it's a really important the older you get actually the more important that question becomes and when i say five years forget about your company i mean where do you want to be in your life five years from now like what kind of job you know like what kind of lifestyle forget about money or anything like what kind of lifestyle do you want to be living right do you want to be super rich and have a bunch of cool things do you want to travel all over the place do you want to have a family do you you know what is it do you want a house you want what does that lifestyle look like for you and then based on that lifestyle how much is it going to cost to support that lifestyle and then from there what do you need to do to get there all right so what kind of jobs and those type of things do you need to do for your career to be able to get to that point all right so that i think is super important to do on a regular basis kind of reset those goals go for them set daily weekly and monthly goals um but also those principles again those underlying things that that drive you to do what you do i think it's worth sitting down and at least trying to come up with some of them right so that so that you can look yourself in the mirror every single day and say am i living my values all right so i'm gonna walk through mine just to give you some feedback and by the way feel free to ask questions as always um you know i'm always happy to jump in and pop off an answer or two um that's really what these are for but it looks like they've gotten turned more into just a quick little video podcast or broadcast if you will um with questions afterwards so that's cool of me too but that said um let me dive into them so the first one i got 12 of them i'm going to try to rip through some of these pretty quick but just give you some context around each one of them so you understand um why i chose them and one of the first ones work hard and smart um or work smart and hard you know everybody talks about working smart working more efficiently working yeah that's fine but you got to work your ass off too you know i really i really do say you know people people ask me all the time john what's the secret to success and i've said it before i'll say it again it's working your fucking ass off you know it i'm not that bright i mean i'm a i'm a decent uh i was a decent student you know but i'm not harvard mit brainiac type thing like i gotta work my ass up in school you know but so so i'm not the brightest bulb out there but i'm definitely like i'll work you i know it right and so that's like will smith he said you know it's about a trip some quote about a treadmill saying you know i'll either die on the treadmill or beat you there's no other option there okay and that's where i think a lot of people i will say millennials by the way let's get a lot of shit for a lot of different things as far as you know you know entitled and all that you know and some of it's valid some of it's not every every generation has their problems but i think the one thing i'm noticing a lot and it's not really millennials it's just probably that's the focal point is work ethic man work ethic has has fallen through the floor you know i mean i'm getting snaps from some of y'all saying hey it's friday afternoon i'm trying to close out a deal and i'm the last one here at the office and that's five o'clock it's like really everybody's boning out of the office that fast on a friday so my point is is that you know i follow gary a hundred percent of gary vaynerchuk on a hundred percent on this one as far as hustle right i mean people say i don't have time bullshit you don't have time you just got to stop watching those reruns or those binge watching on whatever thing you want to catch up on or whatever it is or wasting time watching dumb shit you know we all have the time it's just we're super inefficient with it so my point is on that work hard and smart or work smart and hard but yeah be intelligent make sure you find optimization throughout the way but still work your fucking ass off show up early stay late right just and just work right that's number one for me is work ethic two is earn everything earn everything you know um and when i say this i mean earn the right to make a cold call by doing a little bit of homework on somebody right you blast them through lists and sending out generic template emails that doesn't earn anything um earn the right for the promotion you know people say oh i just did my job when am i going to get promoted what going back to number one why don't you work your job why don't you kick ass at your job put your fucking head down and go do the job and excel at it and then when you do that then the promotion is going to come right you don't have to ask for it um earn the customer's attention by adding value right earn uh earn the the insight from the client like the real insight by asking better questions and do again going homework so it's just about earning everything i don't expect anything so this is so for you aes out there for instance um you know a lot of aes i come across they get the leads given to them either by marketing or by um an sdr bdr right and i'm sorry i'm not going to rely on any sdr bdr or marketing engine to fill my funnel in any way shape or form i'm going to go out there and prospect and do my thing to fill up my funnel and earn my commissions and hey anything that comes on top of that that's just icing on the cake all right so so that's why i got to figure out how to earn every single dollar uh so i can i can look back and say yep that's mine nobody gave me shit all right kind of falls into something that i i don't believe in luck all right because luck if you believe in luck that means you believe in bad luck and if you believe in bad luck then to me bad luck's an excuse when you say no that was unlucky that's to me that's an excuse luck you make your own luck all right um now was i fortunate to be born where i was and in this situation that i was absolutely but do i consider that luck it's debatable but luck is a scary thing right so for me actually i go gambling once a quarter um pretty heavy and i prove to myself that i'm not lucky because i suck at gambling especially the lucky games i buy a scratch-off ticket once a once a month one of those twenty dollars scratch-off tickets i buy one of those once a month nobody loses all the time on those twenty dollar ones except with this guy i don't i never win it i mean maybe i'll win five dollars or something like that so that's why i just remind myself i gotta earn everything i do um let's see confidence i like this one confidence overcomes shortcomings um except for an ego confidence overcomes most shortcomings except for an ego if you got an ego gross if you got confidence there's a fine line between ego and confidence but there is a huge difference all right um confidence people gravitate towards ego people repel against so just make sure that you're confident in your approach and how do you build confidence by by trying different shit out by practicing stuff um by by practicing i've talked before about how you tear out first of all sales you practice sales everywhere you go negotiate for everything out there every time you buy some clothes or go to a restaurant you know whatever it is try to negotiate for it because it's harmless right and then tear out your accounts tier one tier two tier three create average crap and and practice on those tier threes so every time you know if you're having a hard time delivering pricing well list your tier threes and go after all your tier threes with hey look this is our price and we don't discount see what happens build your confidence there because nine times out of ten how you present whatever it is and the confidence you have it sometimes pretty much answers the questions right from people's like if you present it in that well or they're going to ask questions because you're unsure if you present in a confident way specifically pricing a lot of people just be like okay cool all right so get that confidence build it by practicing and learning and getting better at what you do all right uh find this one i love find your passion or find something else to do all right if you are not passionate about what you do go find something else to do um sales i've said you know sales the hardest profession on the planet it's a thousand times harder when you don't believe in what you do when you believe in what you do i'm not saying it's easy but man is it easier right and that's why some i told i've said this where you know one of my favorite quotes is sales is the transfer of enthusiasm you know i like that because i believe that strongly in what i do that that if you even come close to fit in that profile my job is to just transfer a little bit of my enthusiasm over to you right and it makes it so much more interesting you know that's why if you are selling something that you don't believe in right now go find something else to do and i say that and if you by the way if you ever come across anybody in sales who's just selling for the commission check and they literally don't believe in what they're selling and they just don't give a shit go tell them to get out of this fucking profession because they're the ones who are giving us a bad name those are the ones who are sitting out there you know just selling shit just because right and and doing sneaky things just to get clients to buy when they don't really care those are the ones that are killing this profession all right so ask them politely to get out and go find something else to do um and for you if you don't believe in what you do go find somebody at your company talk to the founders talk to the you know talk to your customers about how you know the value that your product or service or whatever brings to the table and try to understand that that drive that passion that you know why why people invest why did you start why they start the company right because you have to have that belief so you can transfer that enthusiasm and uh and you believe in what you're doing um notice i didn't say follow your passion right i think that's one of the worst pieces of advice anybody can give kids these days is follow your passion somebody told me to follow my passion when i was in college or in high school i'd be smoking weed doing art on the on the sidewalk for crying out loud like that's that's what i'd be you know follow my passion you're looking at me i'm an artist i'm a mediocre artist at best and i don't think pot smoking something that uh you should be making a career out of okay so but find your passion that's now something that you should go do and i don't really think honestly i don't think you find it until your late 20s early 30s about what you're truly passionate about um so take some time in your 20s to figure it out and then try to hone in on it and then go all in on it once you do all right uh always ask for feedback number five is always ask for feedback from everybody right from your from your employees from your customers um i talk about this one where i talk about the walkaway close uh where when you lose a deal you go back to the client you say hey you know what was the real reason you know now that we've lost whatever you know now hey i totally understand you went in a different direction could you help me understand the real reason why you decided to go with somebody else that i've done that a handful of times in my career and i'd say probably 20 percent of people will say sure john let me tell you that those um conversations and that insight was better than any deal i could have closed i get you go look at the best advice i've ever gotten in business go look it up it was uh it's called go j barrows um what's the risk that was the blog post what's the risk go look at that that was i used the walkaway close to ask for feedback after i got fired from staples and it was the best hour of business i've ever spent and i still to this day j baitler if you're out there watching man thank you um go check it out six to set smart smart goals high but attainable uh and then hold yourself accountable to them so smart specific measurable attainable realistic and timely this goes back to that vision i was talking about setting that five year out and then backing into it goal setting is one of the most underrated things that you can do to help drive your own career again if you're not setting goals somebody else is dictating the path and you're just along for the ride set daily weekly monthly and annual goals and push it five years out and back into those i set goals on a daily basis i have a whiteboard right here where i write down all my goals all right uh seven is be open and honest with everybody especially yourself don't try to fool yourself that's why goal setting is so good because you can actually write down those goals and then look at them and i said when i say right going back to six write down your goals okay um because you all like crossing something off a list right something oddly satisfying about crossing something off a list no matter how mundane it might be right woke up this morning check put on my pants check feels good make yourself feel good so write down goals and that drives the honesty factor because at the end of the day when you look at those goals and if you accomplished them great you did a good job if you didn't you could have done better um but really just be as direct i i think transparency is is is one of the most important things that you can have with customers when it's not the right fit just be open with them can't tell you how many times that's come back to me um in a positive way um so just be just be honest don't don't you don't have to say the whole truth um but you just don't lie please don't lie don't do any that's why i love you know people talks about tips and tricks right love tips hate tricks stop tricking people on shit do it the right way uh eight don't think you're better than anybody else but know that nobody's better than you this goes back to kind of an ego confidence thing ego puts yourself in a position where i think i'm better than you right confidence is i don't think i'm better than you i just know that you ain't better than me all right and so that's why i'm just i think that's a good mindset to have because there's too many people i've come across that think they're smarter better whatever and that's an immediate turnoff right i don't need you don't need to be smarter you don't need to be better you just need to do your thing and do it as well as you can that's why i don't i got no problems talking to a ceo of a fortune 1000 company we all put our pants on the same way i got my i got my you know you know pros and cons and so do you all right we all got problems but we're all good at something so we all put our pants on the same way and we should treat each other that way nine is what goes around comes around just realize i i can't tell you how many times this is in my life has come true which is i have you know can't tell you where where i've turned down an opportunity even though i probably could have made it happen but i gave the person some advice instead and said look i'm probably not the right fit here and then back around they either referred me to somebody else or whatever um you know you you help somebody out it comes back around the world the universe is a weird thing that way and i believe in all of that karma i believe in all of that 100 percent uh 10 is you can learn something from everyone in every situation so a lot of times we kind of disregard um some of the smaller people if you will in organizations like end users or gatekeepers or something like that i look to learn from absolutely everything so when i was selling power tools for dewalt you know a lot of people what what we would do is a lot of the other sales reps would go straight to the foreman and try to pitch the foreman on the coolest newest tool whatever it was and i didn't because i knew how to use power tools obviously but i didn't i didn't know this the ins and outs of them and you know dewalt showed us the ins and outs but i didn't know how they were used like really in the field so the first few months of me working at dewalt i just went on site to construction sites and sat down next to construction workers i was like hey what's up man like hey i see you're using that makita mikita drill you know you ever tried the dewalt version of that no why hey you know what mind trying this thing out and tell me what you think the differences are and and how you use it mind if i just sit here and show for a little bit and just watch how you're using this thing no problem right whatever they would give me more insight on how that tool why it was better why it was worse i'd come back like a week later they'd give me a download really be appreciative of me letting them use it and then i'd come i'd take that knowledge and i'd go to the foreman and say hey you know what i was just out there talking your reps they're having a you know your workers and they're having a real hard time with this and this tool does that i thought it might be worth at least taking a look next time you go and purchase and my order skyrocketed compared to the other reps who just went straight in so just realize that you can learn something from anybody somebody on the side of the street you can learn something from life another last thing i'll mention on this one and it's something i don't do enough of is you know older people and i'm getting there myself i'm 41 but i can't tell you how many people have have parents of friends have um passed away and and you know i look at their obituary and i'm like damn they did that you know they were entrepreneur they were they started companies and and you know as a kid i never really goes ago yeah that's so-and-so's dad man if i could go back and just sit down and pick the brains of some of the parents and grandparents and just talk about their experiences i'd be a lot better for it so um go do that um 11 actually i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna do 11 is make sure you can live with worst case scenario worst case scenario is i used to have this one as always have a plan b so because i got when i got fired from staples i didn't have a plan b and i was kind of panicking and i was like oh shit what am i supposed to do here so i said oh no you gotta have a plan b i disagree with that one now because i think having a plan b takes your focus away from plan a if you know there's a default then you're like all right well i don't have to push too hard to get to a so that's why i forget about having a plan b but what you should be cool with whenever you make a decision at least the way i look at it there's whenever i make a decision no matter what that decision is i gotta be cool with worst case scenario literally worst case scenario where the client will hang up on me mid-sentence i'll lose the deal um i'll i'll miss out on the opportunity or i'll lose a bunch of you know if i'm going to invest a few hundred thousand or a couple thousand dollars in something like that you know am i okay with losing that money and it's not working out whatever that is just be okay with worst case scenario it's kind of like gambling right is like i the idea is you should go to the casino with the amount of money you're willing to lose um i would seem to find a way to to lose more than that but whatever that that's the mentality is that make sure you are okay with worst case scenario for instance if you are aggravated with your boss or the direction of your company or something like that if you go to your boss and you have a conversation about your frustrations with a mapped out plan with solutions and all that stuff don't just be a complainer but you got to be cool with them firing you right there right and that's another one go back again like i said um biggest learning lesson of my career that that j babler blog post i was telling you about um what the what's the risk go take a look at that one because i should have applied that when i was at staples what's the risk worst case scenario all right and then last but not least here is get one percent better every single day i learned this one by reading the book uh ken blanchard's book um uh raving fans it talks about three things know you who you are know what your customer expects of you make sure that those line up and then just do one percent better every day and i try to live my life by that every day where i'm i'm really trying to go you know one percent every day like did i do better this goes back to goal setting so i can say hey you know what did i get better today than i was yesterday even if it's you know can you make one more cold call can you stay five minutes later you know can you do one extra thing you know because if i tell you to make 50 if you got to be 50 percent better than you are today you know in 50 days you'd look at me sideways right like are you out of your mind but if i said hey tomorrow could you be one percent better than you are today sure right well in 50 days later guess what all right so anyways those are my 12 there's a question here from bob hey what's up bob thanks man for chiming in hey john i'm doing a demo presentation for a job i applied for any advice on my approach it differently so a demo presentation for a job so i did this at basho um you know this is um i think do your prep obviously you know treat it like you would do a presentation with a client man you know do your homework on the client under you know understand what their priorities are what their things are and then develop your presentation but here's my tip on demos any type of demo you're not going to be able to demo their um solution better than they can right so i wouldn't try i would make sure that you have the slide deck you have the pitch down but the way i would mix it up a little bit was i would spend the i would send an agenda hey i'm looking forward to meeting you guys tomorrow here's a few things that i want to make sure that we talk about what else would you like make sure that we address right so i call it my shared agenda right it's usually three points and then i leave three bullet points blank to have you fill it in and then when i start the conversation of the demo instead of just droning through my presentation right which you know press play on a fucking slide deck type of thing um and and that's probably what they're expecting by the way so take my advice advice for what it's worth but my approach would be to spend the first five to ten minutes going around and getting a quick introduction from everybody in the room and saying hey thanks so much for coming in today quick little agenda here i want to just go around and quick introduction from everybody and just ask what you're trying to get out of today's presentation because you know i have about you know 15 slides here that i can go through and kind of go through the whole thing or i can stay focused on the stuff that's most important to you which i'd rather rather do so you know quick intro role and what you're looking to get out of today i'd really appreciate it and then go through your presentation and pause at the points that that people came up with it say hey this is really important to me pause at those points and say hey you know what you had said earlier that hey sarah you had said earlier that this was one of your top you know priorities or whatever in today's presentation this is the aspect of our solution that really addresses that um could let me ask you how does this compare to what you're doing right now or or how could you explain to me how you could see this fitting into your existing workflow because the way they explain it or or or give you an example that tells you how engaged or insightful they are in the presentation instead of saying stuff like does that make sense so do your homework man on the people obviously i mean come up with relevant questions to ask them start with a preface of what do you want to get out of this and then go you through your presentation and tag them up and prioritize some of the stuff that um that they are looking to get out of the presentation all right so hopefully that that helps um if you got some more you can hit me up on on snapchat or on uh uh direct email john at j barrows i can give you some more tips based you know a little bit more context around that one so hopefully that helps that's kind of that's what i did when i when i interviewed at basho by the way i had never uh basho was the training organization like after i sold my company to staples and then got fired and then jay baitler biggest learning lesson go look at that blog um you know i was basho the training company was looking to hire me but i had to do a presentation i'd never done a training presentation before so i just picked up training for dummies and then kind of put together a presentation but i was just a little bit i was more conversational with it than i was okay let me make sure that i go through the whole slide deck um and it and it impressed them enough to hire me so uh try that out all right um i don't know if you're presenting for them about their product itself or something that they allowed you to choose um hopefully it's something that allowed you to choose and um and you can have some fun with it all right so hopefully that helps bob good luck with that and let me know if there's anything else i can do to help there all right so if there's any other questions out there i know we're coming up on the top of the hour here um appreciate you appreciate you all for chiming in here um i will say i am take a do me a favor i i need some help getting getting this up getting my facebook live stuff up but also uh instagram i'm popping that off today go check it out john m as michael barrows b-a-r-r-o-w-s all one word that's the handle i'm gonna put it in the comment section down here go check it out i'm gonna be posting uh some seeding it with a few posts getting started today and then i'll be hitting it pretty hard while i'm out there in italy so you can see some really cool shit from the amalfi coast uh and um i'm having some fun with it but i'd love to get the instagram following up quite a bit i'm also going to be putting stuff out there like my 12 guiding principles i'm going to be putting that out there on the blog post um next week and uh putting an ebook around it and also creating these little postcards where you can buy them stick them up i'm a big fan of putting postcards up just sort of motivational things and just reminders stuff like that all right so help me spread the word if you like what you heard today um i'd really appreciate any likes shares or whatever else you can do okay and let me know what anything else i can do to help you all get better and execute at a higher level let's like i said earlier to start this whole thing up my guiding uh brand unifying reason for being is so it's the greatest profession in the world when done right it's the worst one done wrong let's do it right all right let's do it right all right make it a great week everybody and let's make it happen cheers you you you you you you you you you you you Thank you.