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This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Building Blocks of Success. We're in season seven. Today is episode five. What we are going through this season is the process of the growth curve. When we've talked about it in the past, you have the ability to get outside your stretch zone. And that's getting into your stretching area. That's getting out of your comfort zone and you're going to hit some stuff. We've talked about the growth curve as a four-step process, getting yourself prepared to enter into and stay in the stretch zone longer than the average bear.
Now, if you remember the growth curve has four steps to it. And the easiest way of understanding it is before you actually do something that's going to be uncomfortable is imagine if you're walking up to a pool in someone's backyard or at your town pool. As you walk up to the pool, that's going to be uncomfortable. When you first get into the water, that's resistance. After you learn how to adapt and being in the water for a while, that's level three, that's called adaptation. And then eventually you'll get comfortable in the pool and that becomes step four, which is stagnation.
Last couple of sessions, we've talked about the uncomfortability, the awareness piece. We ran through, you got to have goals. You got to understand your why. Got to be personal. It's going to be able to pull you through the woods, right? And help. It's also that you have to own your fear, which means don't be someone that makes something bigger out of something than it really is. Let's be real about what's happening here. And let's be real about what you’re really afraid of and own it and make sure you can name it. Don't ever forget that. It's a very successful little technique. Along with owning it, you got to visualize it. Visualize it means that your brain does not know the difference between real and not real. That's why some dreams are so vivid in our head. We just don't know the difference.
So visualization is having the ability to experience and see in your brain and see the pictorials of what success looks like and what's going to happen when you are successful and what's going to happen whenever you do whatever you want to do to get to where you want to go. What does it look like? But you also have to share with everybody. You also have to realize is that you don't know the difference between real and not real. So having pictures of it everywhere, believe it or not, starts to have your brain expect to have it. Expect to have it. Then we talked about the buddy system. Buddy system, I cannot tell you how important a buddy system is. Having an awesome peer with you who's going to go through the same trials and tribulations is phenomenal. What's also great is having a mentor.
Now, we didn't spend a lot of time on mentors last time, but mentors are immensely important in a buddy system because they've already been through it. They know what you're experiencing, but they're also not going to, look, they're going to hear what you say, but they're not going to listen to it. And what I mean by that is, yes, I'm going to shake my head and say, I understand that you're terrified of picking up the telephone. I understand that you're uncomfortable. I understand. I understand. I understand. I don't care, but I understand. And the reason I don't care is I get it. I've experienced it, but she's got to get work through it. So one of the neat things about a mentee into a mentor is they've experienced all the things you're going through and they’ve made it to the other side. So mentors are awesome. You have one, thank your P's and Q's.
Glenn Mattson:
If you don't, go find someone who would be a great mentor for you. And if you've ever had a mentor, go find a mentee that may need some help. Now, when you jump into the water, jump into the pool, that's the first time you start trying stuff new. You're insane to think that you're going to do great at it and always do great at it and continue to do great at it. It's just not the way it's going to be. You got to have practice. You got to get better at it. So I want to enter in for this conversation for today is really in what happens when we have the resistance.
Resistance is, again, the pushback of going back to the way that was normal. And I want to walk you through a handful of things that I have found that are exceedingly successful. The first is, you've already heard me talk about it, failure. You got to stop running from failure. I can't say this enough. Failure is the fastest way to understand how to be successful. If you fail often and you fail a lot, you will be successful. The question is, is don't run from failure. Don't hide from it. Why would you ever run away from criticism is beyond me. All failure is, is an outcome that you weren't hoping for. All you have to do is ask yourself, what do I have to do better, different, more, lesser start doing that I didn't do next time. So it's actually, it's a great area for improvement. The first thing is mean you gotta, you gotta eradicate failure. It’s one of the biggest things that we work on here in coaching with clients is having them is unwrite that rule that they have that failure is a bad thing.
Just think about it for a second. Just think about it for a second. I want all of you just to pause and think, what would your life be like if you were not afraid? What would life be like if you weren't afraid to pick up the telephone and call someone? If you weren't afraid to ask for referrals? If you weren't afraid to plant your feet during negotiating? You weren't afraid to ask for the right dollar amount. Seriously, what would actually happen in your professional career if someone just poked your brain and took out that little part inside of you that has to do with failure? We all fail at stuff. Remember, we all fail at things. None of us are a failure because of things. So then we talked about micro successors. Big one, big one. Micro successors are probably one of my favorite topics. How do you do big stuff and bite-sized pieces?
The next two I want to talk to you about is going to be socialization. Socialization is understanding when we go into a demographic or we go into an area from a sales standpoint. Socialization is if you look at a client base, for instance, and the client base is based on the title of the person's role, could be their demographics, and it could be income. i.e. you're fantastic, very comfortable talking to people making two to three hundred thousand. You're making someone makes a hundred, uh you know a million, you just all of a sudden you have marbles in your mouth. Or you're really comfortable talking to teachers but now all of a sudden now you have to talk to the director of curriculum or you have to talk to you know the head of the entire school system, right, superintendent and then all of a sudden you have marbles in your mouth. So when you talk with people, prospects, do you get more or less nervous based on the title that they have, the tenure they have, or the income they earn? That's socialization.
Glenn Mattson:
See, socialization is learning that other people are no different than you. How come when you sit in front of someone and you're pretty comfortable making $200,000 and $300,000, you sit in front of someone making a million, it's really not much of a difference four times or not the person. It's just how much money they make. Yet we act differently just because of how much money they make. It's called EBS, equal business stature. We give individuals, we give prospects more power, more influence just because of the income they make or the title they have.
I remember back, my gosh, when I first got started in sales, I remember I came back and Mark was my mentor at the time. And I was so excited with Mark, right? Because back then it was a lot of networking and you'd go into a big hall, like a hundred people there. And you grab a cup of coffee and you start walking around mingling to people, talking and having conversations and trying to book appointments.
It was a networking meeting. I remember coming back and I was all excited because I had four cards and they were from two different banks. And the four cards had VP of sales in all four of them. I said, oh, Mark, Mark, you need to come with me on these because these are VPs. I can't make it on those. That was new. And he starts laughing. He goes, do you know anything about banking? I'm like, no, because Glenn, everyone's a VP. They give everyone that title, regardless of where you are. Everyone's the VP. I'm like, you kidding me? He goes, no, it makes them feel good about themselves. So all of a sudden I was super nervous after speaking with someone which I had a great conversation with, but just because of the title, I felt uncomfortable. Just because of the title, I felt nervous. See, it's something that's interesting.
And I don't know if he did it on purpose or not, but Mark loved to play golf and was very big on pay time and no pay time. So we were not, or he was not big on taking, you know, the middle of an afternoon and playing golf. So we would have Friday morning, first tee time. So it's like 5.30, 6:00 in the morning. You'd be done by 10 AM, you'd be back in the office. And I remember the rule was you had to do your behavior and you had to do the results for two weeks. And then we were allowed to go golf that Friday part, kind of like a good job kid. And Mark's two partners that were good friends of his ever since growing up. So like, you know, literally elementary friends. And Jeff and Larry were the two guys. And we played maybe six, seven rounds of golf. And I come from, right, three brothers, very sarcastic family. So, you know, taking abuse and giving abuse was pretty easy.
Glenn Mattson:
So we were having a bunch of fun, the four of us playing golf, you know, five or six times. And then at one point I'm putting, I can still remember vividly, just like it happened yesterday. I’m bending over to put my ball into the grass to hit my drive. And I can hear Jeff ask Larry, so where are you at now? And Larry gets loud and he's upset and he starts getting, you can tell he's very emotional. He's getting quite angry. And what he's getting angry at is how much money he was spending in his kitchen, not building a new house, just redoing the kitchen. Okay. Remember this is 30 some odd years ago. 32 years ago. And Jeff turns around and goes, I can't believe, excuse me, yep, I cannot believe that I'm over $100,000.
So he was sharing with the rest of us that he spent more than 100 grand redoing his kitchen 30 some odd years ago. Team, I just spent $140,000 on my new house, you know, six months before that. So I'm literally looking at Mark, who's my mentor, and I'm looking at him. And he winks at me. And I hit my drive. I go over and I talk to him. He goes, it's a lot of money for a kitchen, isn't it? I said, Mark, that's almost what I spent on my house. And he goes, yeah, but does it make Jeff any different? I was like, dang, it doesn't. It's still Jeff. He still drips coffee on himself when he has a coffee every time I talk to him. He always, when he eats a bagel or has a donut, he will always bite it and the jelly will always hit him right on the shirt. Every single time I met the guy. But he still spent a hundred grand in his kitchen.
So, socialization is getting to learn how to act, how to socialize with other people in different demographics. And when you start to learn something pretty fast, there really is no difference in people. Sure. There's always going to be jerks and there's always gonna be nice people. But for the most part, socialization makes you realize that there really isn't anything different besides the fact that that person is probably paying in taxes maybe what I earn. That's it. So socialization is really powerful.
The second one to help you in resistance is practice. I know you're saying, are you serious? You just told us that you got to do practice to get better? Duh. Yeah, I do. It's got to be relentless practice. And I can't stress this enough. It just drives me bonkers that in sports and in life and in training people and coaching people, I don't get it why people will practice until they get it right. And then they stop. I got it right. You just did it 15 times. You got it right once. Why the hell are you stopping? Right? You don't practice until you get it right. No, you practice until you never get it wrong. There's a huge difference in how you practice. I don't care how good you are. I don't care how much production you do. I don't care how much money you make, man. There's always areas for improvement. And if you really want to make sure that you're going to be able to break resistance, you cannot go into this with an arrogant attitude of no problem. I don't need to get ready for this. I don't need to go do some practice swings. I can hit a home run when it's time. Can't be that arrogant.
Glenn Mattson:
Got to make sure that you practice and practice till you don't think about it. You go to fighter pilot school, you know, they practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice. They practice until your eyes pop out of your head. They practice so much that when it’s time to actually go out and have a dogfight, you're not thinking. You think you're dead. So when I take a look at practice, practice breaks resistance. Resistance is the mind saying, I'm not sure I can do this. That's why your brain says to you to create doubt. You sure about this? You don't know this. Why are you trying this? You're embarrassing yourself. So owning the script, having competency in your script, having conviction in your script builds confidence. Confidence is what gives you courage. So you've got to understand how the game works. You got to practice this thing until you look yourself in the mirror and you can say, I can do this. I can do this with conviction means you get courage. So to break resistance, you got to practice and practice a boatload. And part of that, if you don't have the Sandler AI coach, you're insane. It gives you the availability of role playing just as you would with a real human, multiple times, multiple different types of personalities. And so many different directions that you can practice and practice and practice until you have complete ownership without ever wasting an opportunity. So practice and practice.
Now, the other thing about resistance that happens that I got to make sure that we're chit-chatting about for a second is flow control. Got to remember, man, when you're stressed out and you're in your stretch zone, you're uncomfortable. You're trying new things. Sometimes you do it well and sometimes you don't. But within that, you have an ebb and flow. And what I mean by that is if you look at an athlete, they have game day. They will go play in a game, they rest the next day, then they have a walk through the second day. And then you get into a 50 or an 80% practice, then you're all out for two days and then you have a rest and you have a game day again.
Why do you relax? Why do you rest the day after a game? How come when you go to the gym and you do legs day, you only do legs once a week? You don't do legs every day, every single time. Why? You need time for recovery. See, when you go to the gym and you lift, you're ripping muscles. The recovery is giving you the availability of the muscles to rebuild between the rips. That's how you get growth. So recovery is key. Some call it the rhythmic flow. Rhythmic flow, without getting too knee deep into it, is the ability for you to go into comfort, recover, and then go back out into your stretch. It's like seeing a boxer in the middle of a fight. They get a second. Everyone get in your corner. Everyone get in your corner. You go in your corner, have a little water, right? The corner man fixes you up, puts you all back together, throws some more Vaseline on your face and kicks you back out there. But that minute and a half is recovery.
The same thing happens with entrepreneurs. Think about it. You're 24-7. You're never turning it off. You're thinking about work constantly. When do you have a chance to reduce the stress? When do you have a chance to recover? And it's not going home and having a drink or throwing in a gummy bear or looking at Instagram for seven hours and vegging out. It's not what it means. It means that you have a process to control the flow psychologically and emotionally. Now, the pros will tell you that there's better ways of doing this than others. The pros will tell you, for instance, giving is one of the best ways to recover. Soup kitchens, working at some charitable locations, get it. I think it's awesome. You know what else breaks it? Going to the gym and working out to the point where you're sweating. If you go to the gym and you come home and you don't need to take a shower. You didn't go to the gym.
Glenn Mattson:
Meditation is huge. Cold plunges, saunas. It's a way for your brain to break the normality so it can recover. I mean, God bless you if you can do cold plunges, right? I've got one of my clients that does a sauna, walks from a sauna right into a cold plunge, does that for two minutes, goes back into the sauna for 10 minutes, back into the cold plunge. Look, I got the sauna part, but any of you doing cold plunges, God bless you. It'll rock your world. But same thing, you got to flush it out.
Then we have something called an AB journal. An AB journal is a tool that we have, a tool that we use. All you got to do is give us a call 631-Sandler. 631-726-3537. Just tell us, I want the attitude behavioral journal. It is a tool that you use every morning and every evening. First thing you walk into the office that day, you give me two goals. One goal is for the inside of you and one goal is for the outside of you. At the end of the day, I want to know how you did and then you got to rate yourself. Your inside goal is something that has to do with your internals, right? That's your feelings. An outside goal is your activities. So the AB journal helps you separate the differences between how you feel and what you do, which there is a huge separation. Having the ability to recover from stress is vitally important.
I remember one of my mentors, Bill, would always tell me about every four months for him, He would, he loves fly fishing. So he would take a fly fishing trip. Disappear for a week. In my head, I'm like, my God, that's a whole month out of a year. Nevermind all the other vacations he's taking. That's a lot of time. And Bill would always tell me that. When he came back from his trips is when he was most productive. In my mind, wasting a day or a week, a week fly fishing is insane. How can you come back relaxed? Aren't you like all stressed out because the amount of work you got to catch up on? So I used to go on the fly trips with him. And sure enough, first two days, I wanted to kill anything that was next to me. Because you're stressed out. The fly is not doing what it should be doing. I'm not getting the mojo. It's just frustration. By day three or four, it's like paradise. And of course, the next day, you start thinking about what you have to go back to work to.
So having the ability to separate yourself is enormous. So what are you doing to separate yourself? What are you doing to reduce your stress? Even as an old guy, until recently, I played lacrosse two or three times a week. You're having a tough time at work or you're having a bad day or whatever you want. There's nothing better than running around the field or the big old lacrosse deck beating the hell out of somebody, right? So figure out how do you de-stress? What's your way for rhythmic flow? You got to understand how to break the resistance.
Next time we get together, we're going to be talking about the third piece, which is adaptation. Adaptation is once the things you're practicing, once the things that you're putting a lot of time and energy and practicing on, a lot of the things that you're getting failure on, what happens when they start to work? What happens when we start to get success with them? That'll be our next conversation on the Building Blocks of Success as we look at the third phase of breaking out of your comfort zone and staying outside your comfort zone called the adaptation phase. And that's where we build confidence. Talk to you soon.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
