21: Work Your Ass Off!

what's up everybody it's john barrows j barrows consulting make it happen mondays hope you all had a great weekend and are ready to kick off the week strong and crush it this week as usual um today i wanted to chat a little bit about uh work ethic and i'll tell you a reason why but as always if you have questions feel free to uh chime in at any time i will talk about anything but like to pick themes here that are on my mind and things that i think um we can all learn from so work ethic to me is becoming something i'm being acutely i'm acutely aware of these days and it came up the other day because i do a lot of trainings obviously on site and you know usually they're i don't know 8 30 to 4 30 something like that and then i hang out afterwards and talk to some of the reps and then um you know maybe i'll check up on some of my emails before i head back to the airport or something like that and inevitably i usually leave the i stay in the conference room for a little while and i leave the office around i don't know six o'clock something like that 5 30 6 o'clock and i cannot tell you the last time i went into an organization did a training and left at six o'clock and there was more than one or two people still left in the office and and that's been a trend that i've been noticing as far as people you know out like five o'clock it's a ghost town right and but it it actually hit me recently when i was talking about how to you know when we were doing prospecting and some tips on things you can do and all that other stuff and one of the things that i usually recommend is during your downtime weekends or something like that have a list of your top accounts in a spreadsheet kind of poke around on their websites when you're watching the news or something you know watching football or whatever or a dumb movie and just doing mindless activities you can just kind of poke around and prep for the week or spending sunday night preparing for the week or um you know just doing off hours shit and and what struck me is as i was suggesting these i felt uncomfortable i felt uncomfortable telling people that they had to work off hours because of the feedback and the or i guess based on just what i've been seeing out there and talking to other managers about and it was kind of like i i felt guilty about telling reps that you have to work off hours you have to do that to be successful and i and i so i paused when i was saying that and it and it really disappointed me that i had to pause because i didn't want to offend people to to let them know that really in order to be successful you got to work your ass off um you know i have a i have 12 guidelines to success you know i got my 12 guiding principles right here and literally the first one is work smart and hard you know everybody talks about working smart and all that other stuff which is fine but really the key to success is is legitimately working your ass off i mean people ask me all the time hey john you've gotten to a really good um point in your career and it looks like you've been super successful what's the secret man and literally i tell them every single time um working your ass off that's it i i'm not the smartest kid out there by any stretch of the imagination you know and and i don't know a ton but i i i work my ass off and that's how i've gotten to where i am um i remember when i was my first company was acquired and we were going through this process with this new organization it was this leadership training and all this stuff and they asked you to hey you know write down what drive you know what are your guidelines and effectively it was my 12 guidelines to success or my 12 guiding principles and you know and i saw and i already had them so the exercise was like three or four of us and we were going that i was walking reps the the people through okay here's what i my guidelines what my guidelines are and this is what i share with my team not to say that they have to do these it's just they when they get feedback from me this is where it comes from and i think it's a very valuable exercise for any manager to go through and literally the first one on the list is work smart smart and hard and so they asked me to present in front of the entire group on those those guidelines are great so as i'm going through the first one comes out i said work smart and hard you know show up early stay late and a woman reaches and she's like oh you can't ask people to do that you can't ask them to work you know coming early into the office and stay late and you know never mind that that was more of a mentality the rather than an actuality i didn't say you have to show up at six o'clock in the morning and you have to stay until eight o'clock at night i said mentally show up early and stay late now however you do that that's fine with me but she was really like you can't ask people to do that and i'm like why not and she's like well because though you know they get paid and do this and i'm like well yeah but how do you expect somebody to be successful in their careers if you don't push them to be better than you know what they currently are and how do you expect to get better than what you are without putting in that type of effort and when i tell you i want to say 80 of the people and now mind you this was a huge corporation that was very stodgy and and and kind of had their own ways of doing things and probably a lot of hourly workers there as well so i understand that um but i mean 80 of the people there would just shred me absolutely shred me like within two months of us being acquired i'm pretty much telling everybody all these managers and executives that they're wrong and they're they're stupid and having a full-blown argument about this because i fundamentally believe that you have to put in the effort in order to be successful in anything all right um and so that's why i talk about show up early stay late when i was my first job well my first company thrive networks i was the vp of sale i was 24 years old i was a vp of sales and marketing and i literally i didn't know much but i knew that i could work harder than everybody else and so what i did was that's what i did i made more phone calls than everybody else i went to more events than everybody else i went on more meetings than everybody else and to me that was the one thing i could control i could control my efforts you know you've heard about me talk about this before you know i'm working with my daughter here to to figure out hey what can we control focus on what you can control and we came up with the acronym eat effort attitude and how you treat people right and effort is the number one thing there because that's what you can control you can't control what the client does you can't control what the market's doing you can't can't even control how your boss treats you what you can control is how hard you work and so i want to kind of share that i know there's a lot of people out there who are working their asses off but i want to share my frustration and a huge frustration um of a lot of the managers that i'm seeing out there of the work ethic that is lacking these days and also the expectation of if you just put in the basics that you're going to get to the next level that's why i personally hate tenure and those type of bullshit things where you get the the pay raises based on how long you've worked at a company to me that's absolutely ridiculous you shouldn't get a pay raise unless you're better than you were previously so this whole idea of these merit raises once a year pisses me off so you you can control how hard you work and you can control the effort and your attitude that you put into that work there's um i was doing a little bit of research and prep before this of um you know there's malcolm gladwell who wrote outliers and he talks about the 10 000 hour rule and how you you know in order to be an expert at anything you have to put 10 000 hours of practice into it now i know that has been debunked by a whole bunch of different people um and i was reading here how he says it's been misconstrued he said the point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest which i agree with now 10 000 hours whatever i pick a number um the other book that i it brought me to which i'm going to read now because i was i've been reading it right before this uh make it up on monday session is is one by cal newport called so good they can't ignore you and i absolutely love this one it's just even just reading some of the summary here and it was he talks about like you know don't just follow your passion that's a terrible uh thing to tell anybody find your passion because i i don't know about you i i wasn't really i didn't know what i was passionate about when i was 20 in my 20s i mean sure you know partying with my friends drinking beer that type of stuff but i didn't know what i was passionate about so for me to follow my passion i probably would have gone and been an artist and been you know poor on the streets at this point or whatever but it was it's find your passion and become he talks here about become a have a craftsman mindset so instead of having a passion mindset have a craftsman mindset and that's where you focus relentlessly on what value you're offering the world and it says this stands in direct contrast to the much more common passion mindset which is as you focus on what the value the world is offering you i couldn't agree with that more so that's why i'm buying this book and i'm reading it because the whole idea of so good they can't ignore you that's the idea from a management standpoint that i look for which is have that rep instead of hey when am i going to get a promotion work your ass off to the point where that they look at you and say i can't ignore this kid this kid's gotta we gotta push this kid to the next level and so i don't know i i wanted to share that because i do i i really am concerned right now with a lot of people's mentality about um what it takes to be successful and you know the search for this work-life balance bullshit like i'm sorry if you think about the reason i think the work-life balance is bullshit is because by saying work-life balance that you say that you work and then you live so if you think about it we work at least a third of our lives um we sleep probably about a third of our lives uh maybe a little less but general numbers so that means you're saying by talking about the work-life balance that you really only live a third of your life and to me that's horribly uh depressing so for me that's why work and life have to be equal and that's why you have to find out what you are passionate about and then go all in on it that's the reason i think that a lot of people aren't working their asses off aren't staying late is because they just don't care about what they're doing and therefore if they don't care about what they're doing they're not passionate about it so they don't put the effort to be great and they're into self-fulfilling prophecy and then kids job hunt you know hop and try to look for that perfect job and it just is not out there you have to work and you have to put in the effort and so i am going to stay out there work a little bit later stay a little bit later in the office come in a little bit earlier um put the effort in and go work off hours go out and you know if you if you have a busy day coming up the next day spend an hour the night before prepping for it you know do some homework so to your day hours when you're in the office are meant for execution as opposed to any type of research or preparation or anything like that instead of your lunch hour going off and working you know hanging out with your friends and having coffee and talking about stuff why not sit down at your desk and sorry about that not sure what happened there um that cut out for no apparent reason so take two on facebook live hopefully you all uh are still on here who's ever following me here but um but anyways um as i was going with john daly right just he's got all the talent in the world but he doesn't take it seriously so that's why nobody else really takes him seriously the the greatest golfers on the planet practice every day they they put in the effort they they go for it and that's what i'm asking you all to do if you really want to be successful with this um again i always i say to this day you know i'm not dumb but i'm not the smartest i'm not like mit or harvard smart um but i got through school by working my ass off and i did pretty well um as far as jobs i love sales because you're you you you have it within your own ability to be great at sales and all you have to do is have a conscious mindset of practicing purposeful practice so for instance i recommend as you go out there and and in your day-to-day you don't even have to take time out of your day to do this you can practice sales everywhere you go you can every time you go to a restaurant you know see if you can get uh you know free dessert or something like that every time you go buy something see if you can get a discount or an upgrade or whatever it is to practice have that thoughtful practice out there when it's really no harm no foul right but then when it actually goes to apply you can say okay when the time when it's time to make money on it you can say all right now i'm much more confident in my approach so so with that you know i'm going to open up some questions again i apologize for the little interruption there um you know there's a there's a question here from instagram there's somebody saying you know how long have i been a sales trader um a i don't really consider myself a sales trainer i consider myself a sales guy who happen to be all right uh who happens to be all right sharing information i pray i sell every day i would never um be just a trainer my passion is sales and i happen to be okay and and and i found a training by the way the basho training i found a training that really worked for me and i love sharing it with people i love sharing things that work but technically i've been a sales trainer for about 10 years at this point so it's uh let's see i'm for yeah i'm 41 years old i sold my company back uh when i was 31 and um then there was a basho then kensei then j barrows and it's been about 10 years now and i've been learning stuff every day uh that i've been a sales trainer if you will if you if you want to put that title on me um but i'm trying to evolve every day and work my ass off every day to learn something new another question is uh do you have a chance to did you have a chance to ask gary v anything what did you ask him uh i asked gary v so i did sit down so for those of you who don't know who gary vayner chuck is probably hopefully you do but look him up gary v um i love his message about hustle and everything else and pretty much everything he says i i tend to agree with in some way shape or form mostly about working your ass off and the hustle side of it but the question i asked him was more about artificial intelligence and the impact and and his thoughts on where things are going you know gary's uh a little frustrated when i asked him the question because gary's one of those ones that has a very direct opinion and he jumps right in on your question so before you're even finished answering it so a little part of me had a frustration of like i'm not done answering my question dude wait until i i'm sorry i'm not done asking my question so can i get an answer when i'm done but his brain works at a different level i realized because my fear was that artificial you know one of the things i brought up was artificial intelligence in my industry and how i'm training kids on something that i see in the next three to five years is going to be obsolete because of artificial intelligence you've heard me talk about shakespeare.ai on this program on a lot of stuff they've actually taken down that website for various reasons i'm talking to them on the back end about re-upping it and potentially acquiring it myself but you know i look at artificial intelligence and this writing emails better than i could and i've been training this for 10 years and so i you know my question to gary was like well what does that mean and how do i look ahead and how do we prepare reps to deal with that and he again interrupted me before i was able to able to answer my question but he said you know what run with it be the person that that looks at the ai emails and critiques them puts the human flavor on top of them before they go out and at first i'm like well that's kind of okay but he's right i mean at the end of the day there's always going to be a little bit of context left for sales reps or for humans to um to add value right and and to make that real connection and so it's all about leveraging these tools and understanding them and then figuring out where the human element is involved and necessary because there is always going to be a human element well i won't say always because who knows what's going to happen but for the foreseeable future there's always going to be that necessary human element involves a quick example here um i i'm going back and forth we're trying to schedule a meeting with this client and he's got an artificial intelligent assistant and at first i actually didn't know that it was an assistant because she hits me back she's like looking forward to me you know trying to schedule a meeting with so and so and you know does this time work for you and i was like no and again i use um time trade which is you know here's my link to my calendar and you can pick a time or whatever so i just sent her that i said just pick one of those times because again i didn't think she was an artificial i thought she was a regular secretary or a regular assistant she's like sorry i didn't understand your previous email could you please and i went and i'm like ah so i looked at it she can't go click on links so i was like all right it's an artificial intelligence thing and so i went directly back first of all i was a little bit annoyed i got i got duped second of all i went back to the guy who's you know directly to him and i said hey could you turn off the artificial intelligence and pick a time here i travel way too much to go back and forth 15 times trying to find a time here and uh he's like sure and you can film i guess there's a tagline that he puts in there to turn off the ai thing which is call off the dogs or something but she just hit me up three times again today saying hey you know what's your cell phone number what these things and it's just annoying to me so i think right now artificial intelligence is still in this weird world um but there's always going to be that human involvement in it and that's really what gary was trying to articulate which is use it leverage it and find out where the human piece is so that's kind of what i got out of it and the biggest thing i got out of that whole session by the way is to really clarify your why about why do you do what you do and this leads back to working your ass off like ask yourself that question why are you working right why are you at the company what what's your why and once you clarify what that is and what you're trying to achieve then everything tends to fall in line and you then can work towards that why you know i talk all the time about goal setting i don't i can't believe not more you know more people don't set goals on a regular basis because that's what your driving force is that that's what helps you get to wherever you want to go if you're not setting goals you're just along for the ride and somebody else is dictating the path but once you set those goals and really understand your why and your purpose then everything falls in line behind that so go through a goal setting exercise look out five years where do you want to be why are you doing what you're doing and once you answer those questions then you can find out the positions and the opportunities that open up that that you can then apply your passions to and become an expert in all right another question here um logan being at an office hours we've always been one of my uh let's see being at an office for hours has always been one of my hot points and so many reps will just sit so it looks like they're yeah that they're staying late working hard when they could have been working harder during the day when everyone else's work i do i couldn't agree more like there's there's perception reality right i mean if you're sitting at the office just to show your boss that you're there at six o'clock seven o'clock at night shame on you that's a waste of time and yeah if you're not applying yourself during the during the normal hours then you know i don't see what the point is you're obviously avoiding something or just playing this weird game when i when i go back to that book be so good they can't ignore you look if you've gotten all your shit done and you're prepared for the week and your next day and all that going on when i don't care when you work i really don't it's just have that mindset that it's not just a nine to five thing it's not just a my job and then i go do my thing it's like if you take your career seriously you'll go home and you'll read that book about sales you'll you'll take that course that you weren't told to take you know you'll go online and you'll spend a few extra dollars on something that'll help you improve your skills even though your company won't invest in it you know those are the things i'm talking about here right um because if you don't do those type of things and you're just kind of showing up and doing what you're told to do you're gonna follow a predictable path that everybody else is on board and you'll be one of the sheet that everybody else um that yeah one of the sheet that really just goes through the motions my belief and i'll probably get railed for this but i say it all the time i believe 80 of this world are people looking to be told what to do and there's 20 of this world that tell people what to do and and not tell people what to do but go out and get it and therefore people follow i personally want to be one of those i don't want to wait for it i want to go get it i don't want somebody else to give it to me i don't feel like i'm entitled to anything i earn every single thing if you guys have followed me over in vegas i was in vegas two weeks ago you know and there's a reason i gamble uh i suck at gambling i lose shit loads of money when i gamble but there's a reason i do it other than just to blow off some steam and whatever is to remind myself that i ain't lucky i'm not i i mean i prove it every time i gamble i am not lucky i earn absolutely everything that i have and so it's a nice reminder for me every once in a while once a quarter to play a few scratch tickets go to the casino something like that to remind myself that i gotta work for every penny that i've earned and i like that again i don't want to i'm not entitled to or i nobody owes me anything this world doesn't owe you anything um you gotta go out and get what you want so phil uh what is your schedule typically what does my schedule typically look like are you constantly looking for new clients or do you have a few lengthy contracts you're constant working on um my schedule disgusting um i uh i usually travel and train tuesdays wednesdays thursdays like this week i'm going to toronto tonight i'll be toronto on tuesday uh chicago on wednesday and san francisco on thursday i take a red eye home thursday to come home friday morning and then i get a full set of meetings all day on friday um i you know i got a couple of clients salesforce is my biggest one they're probably my most consistent but you know i've never been a major account seller i've never been i've never sold a multi-million dollar deal most of my deals the average deal size is 50 60 g's um you know and i try to stay consistent with my clients to help support them but i i i prefer having a lot of different types of clients because it keeps me interested as opposed to one or two that i milk so um because i there's also something i learned early in my career that i never wanted one client to be more than 20 percent of my revenues because then that client pretty much owns you and you end up focusing most of your time and effort on that client and away from others because you're so nervous about losing them and it tends to put you in a pretty bad spot so yeah salesforce is around you know give or take 20 percent maybe even a little bit less at this point than my revenues and i actively manage uh i'd say about 40 uh companies on a regular basis that i'm working with uh through either direct training or support or follow-up uh so i typically work with that and so you'll see on my mondays and my fridays every once in a while you follow me on snap i'll take a snap of my uh of my calendar and you'll see usually it's back to back to back to back to back to back meetings because mondays and fridays are the only times i actually have to talk to anybody clients prospects whoever so i have half hour meetings pretty much back to back all day starting at nine o'clock in the morning going till six o'clock at night something like that and so that's why i have to be as structured as i am that's why personally i have to you know work off hours i work and usually what my schedule looks like is i wake up at six o'clock in the morning i do a little bit of exercise and keep my fat ass in shape um i then you know around 7 30 really start getting into checking my emails prepping that type of stuff hammer out meetings throughout the whole day until five uh about six six thirty then go hang out with my wife and daughter um dinner stuff like that try to really be focused on that then when my daughter goes to bed around eight eight eight thirty nine o'clock something like that laptop comes back up i start preparing for the next day and hammering through whatever emails and follow-up that i missed throughout the day and so um you know i try to shut it down on fridays around five o'clock so i can just mentally you know check out for a little bit and have some fun on saturdays if you follow me on snap and those type of things you'll know that and then um uh you know sundays i'm back at it around nine o'clock prepping for the week so to me again that's been the mentality since i was in business um is is i don't look at the work-life balance i don't look at things of okay you know i put in my work and now it's time to go play uh work hard play hard it's been a mentality for me my whole life and earning every fucking dollar has been as well so you know we'll um we'll wrap up here i do have i have another uh webinar i have to put on here right at one o'clock for a client that i'm working with and doing some remote training for but just in summary show up early stay late and again i don't mean that physically you don't have to necessarily be the first one in the office and be the last one out unless you're doing meaningful stuff and you truly care about what you do but mentally commit to your career and become that expert that people can't ignore you know i'll finish with the again so good that i'm going to read this book um so good they can't ignore you you know when you have that craftsman mindset of understanding of looking for and trying to be an expert in sales there's so many areas that you can look to perfect and look to well you can't perfect any of it but look to improve on you know your qualification skills your your cold calling you're dealing with objections your gatekeepers your managing deal cycles your closing skills there's all these different areas that you can focus on and try to improve on and learn about and practice that you should constantly have that mindset of becoming that craftsman so that then you can start to figure out where your passion lies and apply it and run with it you know for me i didn't really find out my passions until i was well into my 30s as far as what i was passionate about right and then i dove all in on it and training is a part of that you know i forgot who asked the question earlier but you know how long have i been a trainer um this is yeah this is from instagram one um you know i never thought i wanted to be a trainer but then because i was i was so focused on being successful in sales and whatever i did and and then learned that i really enjoyed managing and training and working with people and helping them develop based on my experience when the opportunity to train came up it was like it was like a fish to water i just ran with it i mean i vividly remember opening up a book i was like ah you know i don't know if i want to be a trainer i had the opportunity to be a trainer i'm like ah most trainers i know suck you know they're either fail sales professionals or professional presenters so i didn't want to have anything to do with it but i you know i liked the training so i was passionate about the training it worked for me and i remember calling my mom and asking my mom she's been a career counselor forever and i remember calling her up and saying hey ma you know i got this opportunity to be a trainer and i was just wanting to kind of get your thoughts on it and she i remember she just started laughing and she was like you know what john michael she's that's the only person that calls me john michael um she goes i never wanted to tell you what to do with your career but if there's anybody that i thought would be a fab fantastic trainer or or teacher she's like i thought it was you and i was really struck by that because my mom's usually got a pretty good beat on me and uh so when i had to train when i had their interview for the job they wanted me to train them on something give me really little guidance so i went to the bookstore and i got up literally training for dummies and there was 10 characteristics there on on what you need to be successful in training and literally every one of them was spot on with my personality and what i love to do and so after that i was like well shit apparently i should be a trainer so again i didn't and i didn't but i didn't find that out until i was in my 30s but i found that out by being a master craftsman at my profession which was sales which is why i took all the different trainings i searched for what worked and what didn't work i try to apply it in every aspect of my life because i loved doing it so in closing work your ass off if you really truly want to be successful work your ass off don't follow your passion find it and make it happen all right have a great week everybody go crush it and always feel free to hit me up on snap on instagram on any of that stuff um i'm happy to answer whatever questions y'all have anytime you need all right make it a great week bye you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you