161: Colin Nanka On Resilience In Sales

What's going on, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with the one and only John Barrows of JB Sales. This episode is brought to you by our partners, Sales Loft, Gong, Vanilla Soft, Vidyard, Proposify, Owler, Sendoso, Out of the Box, and Zoom Info. Today, we're going to be talking with Colin Nanka, Senior Director of Sales Enablement and Leadership Development at Salesforce. Colin's going to speak with us about mindset, self-awareness, seeing crisis as an opportunity, intention, and routines. And then he's going to dive into mentorship and what it means. This is a jam-packed episode, so let's pass it over to John and Colin to make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody.

This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. I am finally back from my two-week vacation, RVing across the country, which was a rather interesting experience. But I'm racking the fold here, ready to get going. And I am super excited to have Colin Nanka over at Salesforce. Colin, you're the Senior Director of Sales Enablement and Leadership over there, right? Yeah, I head up Commercial Sales Enablement. Awesome. And how long have we known each other? Because, I mean, I think I've been working with Salesforce for like 12 years now, but we've known each other. At least a decade. I mean, I remember you visiting back in my days in Toronto, you know, now in New York City.

But we worked together for quite a long time. Yeah, it's definitely been a while, so I appreciate you coming on here. And also, what I didn't know about you was this 10x ultramarathoner stuff, man. Like, that's some real shit, right? So, and for everybody out there, what we're going to do here is we're going to talk about mindfulness and just the mentality of getting through the mess that we're in right now. And so, Colin, do you want to kind of, we were talking right before this, do you want to give us that background of kind of, you set the stage early with 2008 and what happened there. So, can we kind of back up to that and give us some context for this conversation? Yeah, so I made a transition.

I was at Xerox Corporation for nine years and then I made a switch to Salesforce in 2005 when Salesforce wasn't known as well as it is now. And I felt in my early days, like, wow, you know, Mark and our leadership, like, I think they've really got something here, but it's going to take a few years for me to figure out where we're going. And I had a couple exceptional years in 06 and 07. And then when the market crashed in 2008, I finished 50% of my number. And coming down from being, you know, a top producer to being, you know, one of the lower total people on the team was really crushing mentally for me. And in 2009, it actually wasn't getting much better for me. And so, I needed to step away from the business.

And I actually did a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro and a mentor of mine said, hey, like, I've been through this too. Like, step away from the business, you know, go do something hard, you know, connect to nature and then give back. And so, that's what I did. I climbed Kilimanjaro, the hardest thing I'd done till that point in my life. And I almost quit three times. I got sick going halfway up. And I just took it one step at a time, you know, gridded my way to the top, went on a safari, saw the line in the Great Five, which was the Big Five, which was amazing. And then I went and gave back a local school and I raised money for them. And that trifecta, that secret sauce for me, you know, inspired me to come back in 2009 and finish the year off the best I could.

I still came just short of my number, 97% of my number. But you know what? That felt like 130% to me. And so, I learned something there that I needed to, you know, have a purpose larger than myself and that pushed me into ultramarathoning in 2011, where I ran my first race in the Sahara Desert, which, by the way, was a giant failure as well. Six days, 160 miles, up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. And halfway through the race, I felt just mentally overcome and just didn't feel like I had the capacity to go on. But being the life learner in me, I knew that there was an opportunity for me to learn more about myself if I stuck around and helped my team volunteer. And so, what I saw in those next few days, including a day where a couple of my mentors ran 60 miles or 90 kilometers in one day, you know, in a 24-hour stretch, was this, you know, courage, this grit, this resilience, the ability to bounce back.

And so, when I saw that, at least I knew what my North Star was. And I came back with, you know, a fire of redemption, both into the office, but also personally, to see if I could right the ship and make the next race in 2012, which I did in China. I made that race. And then from there on, I've finished every race that I've done since then. And so, what I found is what I have done outside the office has fueled what I've done inside the office. And, you know, it's meant for interesting conversation, especially if you're in sales. People wanted to learn more about that. And that was really a turning point in my career, John. Wow. So, let me back up for a second. Like, this ultramarathon thing is bananas to me.

Like, the human body, it's the mind over matter type of stuff that you have that, you know, I always hear about that second gear, that third gear, that fifth gear, if you will. Were you a runner before you started these things? Like, let's talk about Kilimanjaro for a second. Sure. Were you, like, super active and an outdoorsy person and rather healthy beforehand? So, you just realized you had to train for this or was this something where you were just like, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm not, I've never done anything like this before in my life, even jogged more than a mile. Because, like, for me, for instance, my cardio sucks. Like, I go to the gym a little bit, right? But, you know, me running a couple of miles, I'd probably pass out.

I did a hike in Yellowstone recently for seven miles and I was okay with the hike. But me running for, like, three, four, five miles, not a shot in hell at this point, right? So, were you somewhat conditioned to do that or was this a light switch? Okay. I was, but I would say it was a little bit of both. I mean, when I was younger, you know, I've run since I've been six or seven years old. I ran track. I hated running long distance when I was younger, which is odd. And I didn't run my first marathon until I was 28. I started to run longer distance for the meditative approach and running for myself versus running, to compete. And it wasn't until 35 that I took on Kilimanjaro and in the last 10 years, I'm 46 now, that I've really taken on this adventure.

So, I'd say I'm a late bloomer. Maybe not a late bloomer in this sport, but it wasn't until I needed a change in my life that I really, you know, looked for these types of adventure. And some people in the beginning may have said, what are you running away from? And I think at that time, maybe that was true. And then as I developed some expertise, I think I was running towards these things. And so, it was a mindset shift for me. But the life experience has just been incredible. What is it like? I mean, what is, I mean, I got to imagine running 60 miles, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Yes, physically. But you mentioned a few times, mentally, it's, there's got to be some like, how do you get through that?

I can't do this anymore. You know what I mean? Like, this is, I've reached my quote unquote breaking point, but, but it sounds like you've broken through in a few cases. Is there a, is there something either a mentor told you or something that happened with you that helped you kind of break through that limiting belief, if you will, in your head of, of I can't do this, or that just seems too ridiculous for me? Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, getting, we talk a lot in sales about getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. And when you're in a very rugged environment and you really have no choice, but to push forward and you're with a bunch of like-minded people out there, the mistake I made in my first race is I tried to run it myself.

And what I learned in my second race was the camaraderie each day I would partner with people not too different from working with a team in sales and holding, having that cross accountability. I mean, in 2012, I finished this race in China, but I traveled with three other people the whole time. And we promised each other that if any of us felt like quitting, the other people would hold them accountable to not quitting and just to push through that uncomfort. And there's times during that trip that I absolutely wanted to quit. And I just had peers who would not let me quit. And so I think that's a lesson in life and a lesson in sales. I also developed a mantra for a couple of my later races, and it was a direct report on my team, a sales guy, and his name is Wes.

And he was a former 5,000 meter runner, top ranked in the world. And so before I went on this race, I was his manager. And he said, what's your mantra? And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, I've used a mantra as I've trained for my races to great success. And so I developed a mantra with my coach. I've had a coach for over 10 years, another accountability layer. And mine was strong, relaxed, and grateful. So strong for strength of character, relaxed. When you're at your best, you're relaxed. And then gratitude. It's hard to be anxious or frustrated or angry when you're grateful. And so that mantra, I have used that mantra for years. Going into meetings, it's a reset for me to make sure I'm at my best in every interaction.

I love that. So let's talk about the gratitude. How do you practice gratitude? Because I think there are people who are grateful for what they have, but they aren't conscious about it in a lot of ways. Do you daily, do you say, you know what I mean? Like, is there something that you go through on a daily basis to remind you of gratitude? Yeah, I was doing it for a few years every morning. And then I think in the last couple years, I got away from it. And mostly because I felt like I had graduated to the 201 version of myself. But then you hit this pandemic and you're like, wow, like I got to go back to like recentering myself every day. So a few questions I ask myself every morning during a little task list in my, you know, iPhone along with my vision and values and my approach for the year is what am I happy about?

What am I excited about? What can I create today? And what are the obstacles in my way? And in that, you're getting into that gratitude moment to reducing anxiety in the morning. When you're creating, you're in the front of the brain and science shows when you ask yourself good questions and you're resourceful like that, you know, you're going to perform better. And then the last one is calling out the obstacles. One of the biggest things I learned in these races was accepting the crappy set of circumstances that you're about to entail, visualizing your way through them. And then when you hit them, you've already halfway to your goal. So in one of the races, we ran over 10 miles of large stones, which were pure ankle breakers.

And one of my mentors said, if you make friends with those stones and see them as the path to the finish line, you will make it. If you don't like friends of his, uh, had not, you'll be out after day one. And that was very impactful for me. And I take that into the way that I approach the work day. And then I close the day with two things I'm grateful for. Often mine is my daughter, my two-year-old daughter, Tess. We talked about this earlier, my wife, uh, our family. And then I always ask myself, what's one thing that I could improve today that if I did it better, uh, would make me do it better tomorrow. Beginner's mindset and just trying to improve one to 2% every day. So that is my daily routine routine every single day.

Love that. I kind of have that same 1% mentality. I think I read a book a while about called, uh, raving fans. Right. And then it talks about, you know, Ken Blanchard, right? Know who you are and know what your customer expects. And then every day do 1% better. So every day I asked myself that question, like, Hey, was I 1% better today? I don't say, what can I do 1% better? I actually, that's the morning. Like I try to work myself through, but then I reflect on the day and say, all right, am I better today than I was yesterday? Right. And even if it was just making that one extra call shit, doing that one extra pushup, you know what I mean? Something like that. Um, I feel like, all right, cool.

I'm at least moving in the right direction. Yeah, that's great. Do you, you mentioned values. Um, when did that come into your life where you were, where you actually thought about your values versus just kind of knowing your, I think a lot of people seem to think they know their values, whatever, but I think it's a very healthy exercise to go through and really define your values. And again, I think if I reflect on this, uh, think and grow rich, right. Napoleon Hill or whatever in there, he says, you know, go write down what your core values are. And I did that early in my career and it's been a guiding light for me as far as decision making. When for you, did you really start to really understand your values and, and, and solidify them?

I think I've had two big influences on values and you're right. When you, when you really write them down and tighten them up and share them with other people and get feedback. I think that's when, you know, you've got it right. So two influences for me, you know, I mentioned my coach, I've had a coach for 10 years. So we worked on my values when I was an individual contributor, but also a sales leader that really helped me. And then Mark Benioff, obviously, you know, our leader at Salesforce, he's got his V2 mom vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures. And we measure ourselves in the business with that, but he's also inspired all of us to create our own personal V2 mom. And so that's really reinforced my own values.

I share them with my team, minor exploration, lifelong learning and trust. And the exploration obviously comes from a lot of the things that I do outside, but I'm also exploring the mind, you know, lifelong learning. If I'm learning one to 2% every day and then trust building one-to-one trusted relationships over time has proved to be valuable for me and just, you know, helped win as a team. Could you, V2 mom, could you explain that again? And I want to make sure people get that again, because I understand. I just want to make sure that people, because it is something that Benioff has put together that is, I think, a great framework. Could you go into a little bit more detail on that? Yeah, absolutely.

We've used that for a long time at Salesforce. Every employee at Salesforce writes their own V2 mom. So they write a business one. It's the vision of where we're heading, you know, as a business unit, each individual person, your values at Salesforce. And so I have Salesforce values and I also have my own personal values. And then the methods is, you know, what are we going to do? And then what are the, what's the, oh, the obstacles. So I talked about the obstacles before accepting those obstacles. When you lay out what is in your way, you can often, often think your way through them. And then the M is for measure. So obviously we have to measure everything we do. And, um, that has been, you know, something that's been very helpful in my life.

Those obstacles. Let's, let's get that to a sales, uh, analogy here. I, I, I love the analogy of you, you look at those rocks, right. That you're running over and you could either look at them as, oh my God, that's a, that's a nightmare, I'm probably going to break my ankles and probably you will versus, all right, these are going to help me get to my end. Right. So, so in sales, what are some of those obstacles that you help your team, uh, visualize and come to accept, if you will, so that when they hit them, right. Is it, is it stuff like, uh, missing your quota? Is it stuff like the client being mad at you? Like, what are some of those obstacles that you try to help your team and yourself visualize so that you can, you know, once you hit them, you can accept and excel through them?

Yeah. I think, I think two examples come to mind that the first is, you know, simple prospecting. And we've talked about this over the years, John is, um, you know, I go back to my Xerox days. We had an old moniker that it did. It took 19 nos to get a yes. Right. And once you hit 19 nos, be thankful for that. Cause the next one is likely a yes. So in some degree it's numbers, right. And you need to be, you know, really customized. You need to be effective. You need to understand the customer's external factors that are affecting them in the market, the pain points, um, you know, what their peers are doing in the marketplace. Um, there's so much information out there right now about, um, you know, the blogs that people are writing and if you truly, you know, write up a customized email or, you know, a nice, um, uh, a message that you convey by phone, good salespeople or executives love to be sold to I'm one of them.

I get a lot of bad approaches. And then the ones that I do, even if I'm not interested in the solution, I will write them back and say, that is great. I don't have a need for that service, but keep going. Right. And so I think giving people your perspective from being in sales for a lot of years, they, uh, the highs and lows of the job. And I often say, don't ride the rollercoaster too high, right. Don't ride so high and don't ride so low. Try and ride in the middle. And so you play the long game for the year. That's one piece of advice that, uh, that I would give. And then you mentioned challenging conversations when you learn to have tough conversations, whether it's, uh, in the business sense at home, uh, or with peers, right.

That's where the gold is. And when you can meet a person where they're at, and I often say, when you, when you go into a challenging situation, um, try and understand what that person's values are, right. It goes back to values. And when you can ask a person about their values, or you can ask them what success looks like for them this year, you really open them up and you really get curious. And that's advice that I often give to, uh, our sales folks. Nice. Yeah. I think that, you know, uh, it kind of, again, go that, that value center helps, helps align. I mean, I, I, I do, I'd say that if, you know, if you and I have this similar core values, right, then you and I can discuss or debate and even argue, uh, to a logical conclusion, to a positive conclusion.

But if your values are different than mine, then it's going to be really hard for us to agree on anything and be constructive in any way. Yeah. And this goes with clients, this goes with employees, this goes with everything. And, and I think this is where I want to go with this, which is, you know, there's a lot of sales reps right now who are, I mean, the stress right now is brutal, right? Because you might've, some reps might've gotten laid off, right? Through no fault of their own. But then there's other reps who are left and there's almost this imposter syndrome or this like, why didn't I get fired? And when's that shoe going to drop? And, and it's like this self like defeating thing where there's a panic set in of, oh my God, I got to do my job and, and also I have to stay true to this job, even though I might not like it or I might, my management might not be supporting me or whatever it is.

And I'm afraid to just leave and go find another job because there's 8 million sales reps right now looking for jobs. So how do you, what, what are some of the advice you give to those sales reps right now that are kind of freaking out in this moment? I mean, there, I think there are some that have that mentality of fuck it. I don't care what's happening right now. I'm going to go forward and, and I'm going to do everything I can to be successful. I'm going to try to stay positive as much as I can. And they just have that internal drive and motivation and positivity, but it happens to the best of us, man. I mean, I mean, I got, I got a, I had a friend early on on this as an entrepreneur sales rep myself.

I had a, uh, somebody on my podcast to, for me, it was like my own, it was my own, uh, therapy session, like I got up on board and I was like, you know, Sags is a good, Mike Sagerport. He's a good friend of mine. And he's like, he taught, he talks a lot about the sports mentality, about the mindset of winners and all that other stuff. And I said, I'm starting to freak out. Right. So, you know, and I usually try to stay pretty positive about a lot of stuff and grind through things and who gives a shit. Like you can't control what you can't control. Let's move forward here. But what are, what are you telling some of those kids right now that are having a hard time dealing with the external and internal influences of them, you know, even maintaining and being marginally successful at their job at this point?

Yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the things that we talked about earlier, you know, as you talk about, um, you know, defeating average, you know, that's a, it's a moniker that I've taken on. And because I know how much I got at whipsawed in 2008, I've been going around to sales teams inside Salesforce and into our ecosystem, talking to the younger sales professional and trying to help them figure out how they can unlock resilience or bounce back from difficulties and also build that mindset to be focused, effective, and self-aware. It's the state you bring, right? First thing I think about every morning is, am I breathing, am I dreaming, and am I moving? And by breathing for me is mindfulness.

And a lot of people have said, Hey, I can't do that. People in the sessions I've had have said, you know, what is 40% more, which I, you know, as I've explained in these ultra marathons, and by the way, we're all in an ultra marathon right now, we're all carrying a 10 pound bag of rocks, right? It's hard. And when they say, well, what does 40% more look like right now or in the office, it's being mindful and sitting with yourself and being aware of how you're feeling. So if you're not willing to start with one minute of mindfulness a day, or, you know, 10 to 13 breaths, which is typically one minute for me, you're not moving into that 40%. It sounds simple, but for some people, it's really hard.

So, you know, I started meditating many, many years ago. I started at two minutes a day, then I moved to five, and now it's a full 20 to 30 minutes for me. And it helps me exercise the demons first thing in the morning and bring that anxiety down and really get me centered. And then when I say dreaming, like that goes back to my vision and values. But what is my intention for the day? So I'll write down a few words and it may be a crate. I want to create something today. I want to create a good experience with you today. I may be coached. There's people on my team that I'm going to coach today. It's family. It's support. I write down four or five words and science shows that when you do that, that impact sticks with you, you know, for a week to two weeks and then move when you're working out, you tap into the creative part of the brain versus the fight or flight in the back.

And those three things, if you can spend that 30 minutes in the morning or 40 minutes, some people may call that a power hour that gets you into the right state to be more thoughtful about how you're going to approach all those obstacles. So I think you got to get yourself right, right? It's like you get on a flight, you put your, the oxygen mask on first before you put it on a family member. That's, that's it. Like that's it right there. And everything else becomes easier after you do that. It kind of goes back to the old, like you can't love anybody else until you love yourself. Right. That type of scenario. Yeah. You talk a lot about the long game, right? I mean, you know, see talking about crisis as an opportunity in the long haul, like trying to have that big picture focus.

What's your thought on, you know, Gary V talks about clouds and dirt. You know, I talk about having a vision, but then daily execution. And one of the, you know, kind of tips or tricks that I do to, to help myself get out of negative mindsets is I look for the positive, right? I start looking for the small little wins. And because usually when, when you're in this negative tailspin, it it's momentum, right? It kind of builds and builds and builds and you have to stop it. And I remember a friend of mine was having a really, really hard time. This was a few years back. And I said to her and she, everything was negative. Absolutely. Everything was negative. And so I said, Hey, do me a favor. Um, take, uh, take a notebook here.

And today I want you to write down every positive thing that happens. And I don't care how small somebody opened the door for you. You hit a green light on your way to work. Uh, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Okay. Write it down and come back to me at the end of the day. And let's have this conversation about what happened. Right. And she came back to me at the end of that day and she was just like, Oh my God, I had the best day I've ever had in, you know, in the past two years and dah, dah, dah, dah. And, and she's like, I got five pages of notes, like so-and-so. And I go, do you think today was really any different than yesterday? Or do you think today you just changed your lens? And so that those small things, right.

To put yourself back on the winning track. So how do you balance kind of long-term right with today? Like what do I do today and how do I balance that? Yeah, it's, it's right on, John. One of the things I'm just going to hold up there here for you as a whiteboard, right? It's, uh, uh, I either write this in my, my, my notepad daily or on the whiteboard is what does success look like today? And so for that is my intention. One of the things that I've noticed for myself, and it goes back to exactly what you said, John, is about journaling. When you're journaling in the morning and it can just be a few minutes or journaling at the end of the day, it brings you to be more self-aware of what makes a great day and doesn't make a great day.

And so for on my whiteboard, I'm also writing, I have a, something on the right-hand side of the 10 things that bring me joy. And so I, uh, sprinkle that into my week, right? And when I have those things to look forward to, right? Like that's the carrot after maybe you're doing that tough prospecting in the morning, or you have a tough customer meeting or tough customer service conversation, but you know, you have that to hang on to and look forward to. And it is about daily chunking it out. I have, you know, little metrics that I look at is, you know, how much I learn, am I learning in a day? How much time do I spend meditating? How much time do I spend coaching other people? And that awareness is helping me sharpen the saw to make the best day possible every day.

And Hey, in the first month of this pandemic, my days were a solid five out of 10, right? But now, and I'm even putting numbers beside them. Like, is my day an eight out of 10? Is it a nine out of 10? Is it a 9.2? That usually happens on a weekend when I'm spending a lot of time with my family. So having that awareness exactly to your point can get you out of the tailspin. Yeah, I think, and I think that's what people are stuck in right now. There's, there's so many things to worry about. I mean, I, it's funny, you know, taking this two week vacation, it was the first time in my, in my professional career that I did not check email. I did not check Facebook and I did not check the news and that mental clarity alone, I didn't realize, well, I, I think I did inherently, but I, I kind of was, well, no, I got to stay up to date on what's happening in the news.

You know, I got to stay with what's going on in my emails and stuff like that. Um, so for two weeks I didn't do that. And, and I, I don't know whether it's because I'm 44, right. And I've been working my ass off for 25 years at this point. And I don't know if it was just finally a like, fuck it. I just don't care right now. Like I need to just stop caring about those things that I can't control. And it was, it was really, I'd say that was probably the best part of the vacation. I mean, it was fantastic, obviously to be out there with my family and, you know, nature and all that other stuff. But I think just the, the release of I, that stuff's not really that important at the end of the day and it's stuff I can't control.

So how much do you like, what are, what are some of those things that, that, again, you suggest to people that, that they let go of that are unnecessarily impacting their mental clarity, their health, their, you know, like those types of things. Is it friends? Is it news? Is it like tactical stuff that you could say, look, that's just stuff. Stop, like control that in some way, shape or form. Cause it, cause otherwise it's going to control you. Yeah. I think of it of, of a, you know, kind of like a graph of, you know, capacity down one access and time on the other and you, how you build that annuity stream over time. I think earlier in my career, I was very inefficient. I was had sporadic energy shifts to your point about leveraging momentum.

I was not leveraging momentum. So you can start fresh every single day. A lot of, you know, very successful and senior leaders to talk about beginner's mindset and begin again every day. And so I think even if you're in a tailspin, you have that opportunity to begin again the next day. I mean, I'm taking a vacation next week. This is my last day before vacation. And I'm looking to achieve exactly what you did. It is about taking the negativity out of your day. There's been people in our lives that it's like, we're going to spend less time with right now in the pandemic because, you know, they bring negativity into a conversation. Social, I get wrapped around the Twitter axle on a regular basis.

And so I've shifted from, you know, spending 30 or 45 minutes looking at that kind of stuff a day to 10 minutes. Or I'll look at it in the middle of the day and I won't look at it before I go to bed because I sleep a lot better. So it's making those adjustments. And if you make those micro adjustments every day, every week, you can really shift yourself from a negative place into a positive place. And frankly, not being tied to the email anchor, right, which I'm looking forward to next week. It makes a huge difference. And it helps you come back with a more creative approach to the challenges that you're probably experiencing. So I'm right there. We're aligned, John. And you mentioned something that I actually have a hard time with, but I've been doing more and more of, you know, you hear a lot of leaders of, hey, surround yourself with other successful people, get rid of the toxic people in your lives.

But at the end of the day, there's, you know, there's some friends that you, you know, that I grew up with in high school and that type of stuff that are actually dear friends of mine, but are just negative. You know what I mean? They're just straight negative. So I'm not going to get to say, fuck off. I don't want you in my life anymore. It's just, I've, I've significantly limited the interactions and also really try anytime anybody brings drama to the scenario. I just removed myself from this situation because I found myself being so caught up. With other people's negativity that it was, even if I tried to stay positive, they were dragging me down. Have you had to like make some tough decisions in your life about the people that you hang around with?

Yeah. I think, you know, what I was thinking about as you talked about that is a lot of people spend too much time managing their time, but they not, they don't manage their energy, right? You manage your energy, not your time. And so if you reduce negative impact around you, that just gives you more space. You know, I've been in meetings where there's negative influences and you can see the space it takes from other people and the energy drain within a meeting or within a customer interaction. So, yeah, I have either a limited the, the impact that we, or connection points we have with other people in our lives about that. Me and my wife are both of that same mindset and you tend to gravitate as you move to be really focusing on more positive energy.

You tend to gravitate more to people that are more like-minded. And so you're not going to completely lose touch with other people, but you have a conscious choice about how you feel and who you spend time with. And I, I do think about that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, even for me, I, you know, unfortunately today I got caught up into it a little bit with, uh, with social, right. And, and trolls on social, right. I mean, I put a bunch of posts out there obviously, and, and I got these people that inherently are trolling me. Right. And they just, I know they're just poking me just to get a, and for a while there I was like, Nope, absolutely not. Like I don't get like a, for a while I got deep into it and I would go back and forth and fire off and blah, blah, blah.

And then I was like, what, what am I doing here? Right. And so I would stop, but then just today, some, the same, one of these trolls came back and hit me on my thing. And I just, he just nudged me just the wrong way. And I was like, yes. And I, and I found myself getting back into that rabbit hole and I just stopped. I remember I was, I was, it happened this morning. I was typing this fiery, like, you know, response to try to embarrass him because he tried to call me out on something. And I was like, you know, there's a hundred thousand people on this thread that I was doing. And I'm like, Oh, I'm going to make this guy look like an asshole. Cause he is. And halfway through, I'm like, no, it's, it's just not worth it.

You know what I mean? Like I'm, I'm giving oxygen to this. Yeah. Why should I, you know what I mean? Like there's why, why that, that again, the negative energy that I'm putting out there is doing nothing but manifesting into my own personal mental anguish here that is doing nothing to benefit me in any way, shape, or form or the audience in any way. I'm right. I'm right. I'm right along there with you. I think we, I think we've all been there. I've done a couple of energy assessments, uh, lately. I mean, it sounds kind of woo. It's, it's not like to that degree, but it's with, um, you know, with a couple of coaches I work on and in this environment, it's been super helpful. And there's an acronym pack, pause, acknowledge, and then choose.

Right. And I was thinking about it as you said it, cause I've so been there. And when you, when you really feel that, you know, in your, in your chest of just, you know, pausing and the space between the notes, the, the, the space between when you go react, acknowledge how you're feeling, and then you have the ability to choose how you're going to react. Sometimes it feels good to do that. Exactly what you said. Other times, you know, you know, you're like, I'm going to do it, but that's actually not going to be good in the long run. So, you know, I'm going to take a deep breath breath in and I'm going to choose a different way to go. So, you know, I've been teaching leader and coaching and development for a long time and I'm still working on this every single day.

It's funny, almost every time. And, and I, I really try to, I almost wanted to create this little, um, this little timer, like an egg timer that was the, like the 10 minute angry email timer. So if you're angry in any way of like, before you send the email, like foot, write it, delete the person's name. Right. So you don't hit send, but write the email, like write it as pissed off as you are, write that email, but then put the egg timer on for at least 10 minutes, go grab a coffee, walk around the block a little bit, come back and read that email. And if you're still think that like, at least give yourself that type of break. Cause I swear almost every single time I've written a pissy email to an existing client, to an, a prospect, to an employee, to anybody, almost as soon as I hit send, I regret it.

You know what I mean? Like I, it felt good writing it, but when I hit send and that satisfaction, that endorphin hit, when I hit it literally like five seconds later, I'm like, God, I shouldn't have done that, you know what I mean? Like, or their response to it immediately highlighted why I shouldn't have done that. Right. And so it's, it, I think that pause is such a, I mean, and let's talk tactically here. I mean, that, that's one of the same things with dealing with, you know, we're talking about, you know, the mentality and the championship mindset and those types of things, but even dealing with customers and objections, you know, I mean, there is data that suggests that the best sales reps, when given an actual objection, the one thing like Gong has some data on this, that the best sales reps pause five times longer than average sales reps when responding.

And it's really just that, and it's not like five seconds, it's not 10, it's literally two seconds. When somebody fires an objection at you, you, then you, and then, and instead of responding, you ask a question, right? So it's just kind of that, that mental, we, I think we all need some mental, uh, guidelines or, or, or things and structure to get us to stay consistent with that stuff. Right. You're right on. It's, it's getting, instead of being upset, this is being curious and being like, oh, I wonder why they've said that. I wonder what the challenge is on their side. And then I think in those anxious moments, you know, for yourself, a question often comes to me, and this question came to me in the middle of the desert through a lot of anxiousness is what's the learning opportunity here, right?

That goes back to your earlier point about playing the long game. You're going to have a lot of sales professionals this year that may have a very challenging year. Hey, I had a really challenging year and a failure in 2008, you know, but I'm still here. You know, I rose out of the ashes and had a, I've had a very successful career. I think you, you want to look back at the end of the year and just be up on the step and look back to 2020 and ask yourself how you showed up this year. And did you end this year with no regrets? And then you can be at peace however you finish. Um, but we're, we're all playing a long game. We're all on a journey. We're all carrying extra weight this year. And I think people need to be gentle with themselves and also, you know, build their daily practice and try as, as hard as they can.

And I think that that daily practice, that daily routine, those, those affirmations, I mean, writing things down, the journaling of stuff, the gratitude, like all this stuff is as, as little as some people think it might be, or in some ways as tedious as some people think it might be. Cause I remember there was a while I'm like, Oh, do I really, should I really write down goals every day? Like, come on, man? Like I got this, like I'm in good shape, but then, but when I stop and then I find myself getting into a tailspin and, and, and not getting better every day. Right. So, um, you know, I think a lot of people listening and probably like, Oh, come on. Really? Like John, every day you write down a little goal every day, you say what you're grateful for every day calling, you know, that type of stuff.

It's like, yeah, as a matter of fact, every day, every day. Yeah. I mean, I'll give you an example on the weekend. I mean, you know, we work at a pretty high paced company and so I've got to do a little bit of work on, on the weekends, but every Saturday morning, that's typically when I'll get some work done. Um, but I have learned over time, I have this energy Saturday morning to, to go and get stuff done and I just go shooting in five different directions and get five things done, but that may not be the most best use of my time. And I may not be choosing the right thing. So I actually spend a good 45 minutes every Saturday morning deciding what I'm going to work on. And I'm really patient about it until I get to those one, two or three things that are going to be the highest value for my work, for my family, for the outside work that I do, my passion projects.

And then I go do it and it feels more rewarding that way. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've done something. So today, right, we're actually recording this on Friday. Um, I, I had to implement cause when, when COVID hit real hard, I, it was a panic for me. I mean, 70% of my revenues got ripped away from me. Right. So I'm like, holy shit. I got now seven employees that I got to figure out how to make sure that they can still feed their families and everything. So I'm like, okay, I'm saying yes to everything. You know what I mean? Any client that wanted to do anything and would pay me for stuff, you know, whatever I was running around and I was finding that, you know, I would be going, but, and this was also, I was doing trainings, uh, in APAC, EMEA and U S and I had all those scheduled out like March and April were all EMEA, APAC.

Right. And so I flipped all those to remote. And so now I'm six o'clock in the morning for APAC all the way to about 10 o'clock at night. I'm doing trainings, right? Five days a week for four or five, six weeks. And then it was the weekend. And because I was so busy during the week, that's when the family stuff. So I realized that I didn't really have any, I didn't feel like I had any control of my time. I was just reacting to everything and doing everything. And I was, I was going crazy. I was legitimately, that's when I called my friend, Mike Sager, you know, just said, Hey, I need a therapy session. Let's just do this on a podcast. Um, so I implemented, uh, Friday, I call my days. So Fridays, I call my days and I made it, I blocked it so that there's no, you can't proactively schedule a meeting on my calendar on Fridays, any other day of the week, Mondays, Tuesday, when you have my calendar link, anybody can get on it.

If there's a blank spot, we'll have that conversation. But Fridays with a one day that not that I don't work on Fridays, obviously I'm here having this conversation with you, but I choose to do what I want to do on Fridays. And that mental, that, that reprieve of that one day that was mine, that I could choose what I wanted to do. That's when I would go, you know, to the dentist, you know, my appointments and those type of things, but it was my choice. And it was such a healthy thing for me that I implemented across the board for my team. I sent them an email one day, an invite one day for Fridays and called my days and they were, it was, they were like, what's this? I'm like, just accept it.

Trust me, you'll, you'll, you'll like it. And on a Monday I told him, I go, look, I don't expect you to work on Fridays. You can work on Fridays. I'm just letting you know that nobody here will control your calendar on that day. You control your calendar on that day and everybody's taken great advantage of it. And it's been a huge kind of breath of, of fresh air. Cause now it almost feels like we have four day work weeks. So it's like Thursday night, last night I had this cool, I'm looking forward to Friday, not because it's Friday, because it's my day. Yeah. It's a, I mean, it reminds me of, you know, how professional athletes push in six week increment increments. And then they take, you know, at least a week or two of downtime and they, they refresh and they recharge the body.

I mean, we can do that on a weekly basis. And that sounds like an awesome way to do it. Cool, man. One more point on this. Cause you, you talk about leveraging mentors a lot. Uh, you talk about the team or, and you have, what's your, what's your mentality on mentors? Cause I, I don't know if you get it, but I get a lot of people saying, Hey, John, will you mentor me? And I think that's a dangerous question to ask because there's a lot of, in that there, there seems to be a lot of responsibility, uh, on the mentor to coach and, you know what I mean? Like it just feels like, Oh God, like I, I, I don't have time to mentor you right now. I have time to give you advice. I have time to answer questions for you, but what is your mentality around mentorship and how reps should be looking at mentors and approaching mentors?

It's a good question. I thought about this a lot. I think earlier in my life, I was pretty scrappy at getting mentorship and it was because I worked incredibly hard. I had some people who were a little bit senior to me and they would look down and go, Oh, like Colin's newer to Xerox, for example, and he's working incredibly hard. And maybe they, maybe I reminded them a little bit of, you know, themselves earlier. So they would offer to help. And so you need to be aware when someone comes over and said, Hey, like that was a good call. Let me offer you a couple of pieces of advice. And that's, that's often someone who's willing to help you. I was really a firm believer early on that you found your own mentors.

As I get older, I think people like you and me who've been doing this for a while, John, we go find the people we want to mentor. And sometimes it could be a random person reaches out, but often it's someone that we get to know because we see them really earning and honoring the right to be mentored. I had a good analogy from when I played squash when I was younger, squash, the little black ball that you chase around could be racquetball, it could be tennis. But my squash pro said, you know, if you want to get better at squash, you need to play at least three times a week. Play with someone who's better than you because they'll stretch you. Play with someone who's equal to you because you'll bang that ball around and be really competitive.

And then play with someone who's not as good as you, that will allow you to master your craft. And so I took that into the profession. And frankly, I have a good, you know, 10 or 20 people that I would consider mentors. There's many in Salesforce. There's thought leaders outside the company that I connect with on a regular basis. There's younger people that I coach. Maybe I used to be their sales leader. And I often learn as much, I often walk away from those interactions with younger people saying, I think I learned more today than I might have offered, than I might have offered to you. And then the fourth dimension is there's so much great knowledge in books and podcasts and YouTube. Like you can learn most of what you need to learn about people.

So you got to be resourceful to go and figure out a lot of things that are readily available to you. And I think that's a great point because, you know, it's just like, you know, let's bring it back to prospecting. Like there's so much information out about our clients. Don't just walk in with a blank slate and say, tell me about your business. Tell me about your priorities. Do the homework. It's the same thing with me. It's like, I get a little frustrated sometimes when people reach out to me for mentorship and they ask me these questions that I've answered a million times before on a video, on a blog, on a podcast, on something like that. And I'm just like, ugh, like if you had just done, you know, an hour's worth of homework and ask that question to yourself or Googled it for crying out loud or like you would have been able to get a bad answer.

And then you would have a much more thoughtful question to ask when we, when, when our time was the time that we had, you know what I mean? Like that's, I think what frustrates, you know, prospects a lot. It frustrates, you know, leadership a lot is when you don't do that homework before you come into that engagement and you don't respect it, right? Cause that, that's kind of jaded me a little bit. It's like, God, I, I'm happy to have this conversation, but please don't be fucking lazy with this conversation. Like the info is out there for crying out loud, but people are just not willing. I don't know if it's people aren't just willing to do it or there's a laziness factor or there's just this, you know, cause I, again, I bring it to prospecting.

I bring it a lot of stuff. Do you, what do you think the main reason is that people don't search? Like they search for somebody else to give them the answer as opposed to going and looking for the answer first, before they ask. It's, it's the willingness to do the work, right? We talked about that, you know, that extra 40%. When I was a younger rep in my career, I would spend hours while I was watching football on the weekend, scouring my account lists and looking up people and looking at their profiles to see what the, the, the thing that I could be, you know, to use, to, to get a hook in with them to like write that customized approach. And so, you know, if you think about the iceberg theory, you know, above the water, below the lot line, you can be sitting in the bullpen or the virtual bullpen now with a lot of your peers and they could be more successful than you, but you don't see what they're doing, the work they're doing underneath underneath the waterline to be successful.

And so if you're not getting the responses that you're looking for one, you know, you've got to be patient. You're with yourself. You've got to keep at it, but also go talk to your peers, go talk to a senior sales person and get really curious and ask about their approaches. And you're likely to uncover some things that you hadn't thought about. And then just to tie off on the mentorship piece, you know, I've mentored some folks in the past that really didn't honor the time. And so, you know, I've offloaded them as people that I've been mentoring. And one of the best ways that, you know, mentees can honor a mentor. And I heard this in another book, I can't remember which one is, but summarize what you talked about, right, and then send it back to them as value.

It's like a customer, you're providing value to the customer. And that for me is super valuable, because it helps me know what's landing. And then I can go share that with other people. I mean, it's funny, it's, it's, there's so many similarities across the board of like customer engagement, people engagement internally, like have an agenda for a call, show in person why you've done a little bit of homework, come with thoughtful questions, do a summary afterwards to show them what you talked about, hold people accountable, you know, agree to next steps, like, all this stuff is life is business is customers is all that. And if you and if you take that approach, not just to professional life, but to personal life, it starts to just become what you do on a on a, you know, it becomes that that that natural flow that that stays in, you know, in those structural pieces to help you get there along the way.

So yeah, yeah, I'm with you earlier in your career. It's about figuring out the, the functions or the pieces of sales. And as you get older, and you get it, it's a way of being. And then you can just show up to a situation prepared, and be willing to engage with someone as opposed to coming with a method. Yeah, and trying too hard, right? And I can hear it's, it's funny, I kind of, I always break it down into 20s, 30s and 40s, right? In your 20s, you don't know what you don't know. So you're always kind of looking up for permission, and you think you're screwing up and whatever it is. So you don't, right? So you might be fake confident, but you still know you don't know shit. 40s, you kind of start to get into this, okay, I think I'm good at what I do, but I still am not sure.

So I'm still kind of looking for a little bit of a permission. I don't know about you, but when I hit 40, just purely based on doing this for 20 years and that type of stuff, like the stuff that I was saying, people in their 20s would be like, oh, that's genius, right? And I'd be like, what? Like that. And so you kind of like, there was this, this comfort level when I hit in my 40s of maybe I know what the time is, right? You put your 20,000 hours in, like, you know, and so it gives you the confidence that you know what you're doing. I feel the same way. I think it was a little bit of ego early in my career. Like it was, my ego carried me. Now it's way more confidence because I know that I'm not the smartest kid in the room, but I know I can figure shit out and those type of things.

And that fine line of ego and confidence is a hard one to make sure you manage there. I agree. Awesome. Well, Colin, it's been a great conversation. Look, I know you're coming out with, you got a blog coming out. You got some, is it a blog or is it a series? Talk to me a little bit about that. I've been writing a blog for just talking about the daily mindset for almost 10 years. I was writing it daily. And then as our daughter came around, I needed to pick some priorities. So it goes out three times a week. That goes out, it's at colinnanka.com. So if you want to sign up for the blog there, you can look there. And I'm really focused right now. I've always focused on high performance approaches, but right now I'm really writing about how to meet this crisis and see it as an opportunity and focus on resilience and mindset.

So if you're looking for some daily bumps in the morning in the inbox, that's a great place. Also, we filmed our adventure race in Patagonia in 2017. We created a 10 minute mini documentary about it. It's been in a few small mountain film festivals and we're going to launch it in September. You know, John's got some sample videos for the trailers and the show notes that he can share. And if you like it, share it around and, you know, welcome everyone to join us in September. Love it. All right. And just for everybody out there listening, it's Colin Nanka, N-A-N-K-A, right? Correct. So C-O-L-I-N-N-A-N-K-A.com. That's the site. So check it out. And yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that video.

That'll be super fun. And what was your, you said your daughter's name was Tess? Tess, yes. Tess, right. Send me, do me a favor. Send me an email with your address. I'll have my daughter autograph one of those. I want to be in sales when I grow up books for her. We love it. We'd love to get a copy of that book. Yeah, send me an email. Like I said, I'll have my daughter sign it for you. All right. Colin, thank you so much for joining us here, man. Any last parting words for everybody else as far as what you're thinking about? You know, stick with it. Play the long game. Focus on building your daily practice. You'd be surprised how much you can build that daily practice in the next 30 days. If you're going to commit to one thing, you know, focus on that.

And, you know, by fall, I think you'll be in better shape. For some of those who are having challenges, you'll be in better shape than you are now. Absolutely. Cool, man. Well, I appreciate it. And for everybody else, hopefully you got as much value out of this as I did. And as I always say at the end of all these podcasts, look, even if you are having a shitty day, go out there and make somebody smile. Because if you make somebody smile, you know you had a great day. And we need a lot more of that these days. All right. Thanks, Colin, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great week. All right. Let's make it happen. All right. Let's make it happen.