The content of this recording is copyrighted by Sandler Systems, LLC. All rights reserved.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Building Blocks of Success, Season 7, Episode 6. Today, we're going to be taking a look at and addressing really what's going to be happening when you get in that comfort zone, you start practicing, you start getting some success. What happens when the things start going well for you? And that's called adaptation. That's the third phase of the growth curve.
If you remember the growth curve has four steps to it. It's the first step is you got to realize before you do anything that's new and unusual to you, when you're trying something for the first time, you got to enter into the game knowing it's going to be uncomfortable. And by being uncomfortable, you really got to make sure to reduce the uncomfortability. It's always going to be there, but to reduce it. Got to have a strong why. So when you get knocked off the chair really hard, you know why you're getting back up. You got to own that fear. Let's not make this worse than it really needs to be. And it's going to be hard. So don't make it something that's not there. Don't make it bigger than it is. Got to own your fear. Everyone's going to have them. But with that, you also have to understand and truly have a good buddy system.
Having a peer of yours that's just as dedicated to their successes as you are to yours. Having a mentor if you're ,if you're really lucky enough to have a mentor that wants to spend the time and energy with you is phenomenal. They've been through the curve. They've been through the hell. They've been through it and survived and they're on the other side. So not necessarily they're going to give you guidance where they're going to sit on the curb and suck the thumb with you, but they're going to tell you, hey, I understand. I've been there. I felt the pain, but you got to keep moving. You got to keep going. So buddies are awesome. Don't do not underestimate the power of visualization.
If you listened to the last podcast, we may do more on that later, but visualization is insanely wildly successful. So make sure that you spend some time visualizing what you're trying to create, visualizing what the end game looks like, feels like, etc.
Now, once you're in the pool, you have resistance and resistance. It's going to happen. I don't know why people are so surprised when they try something new and within a week they're questioning themselves. Should they keep doing it? I said, of course, you're going to have some questions about that. That's why you have to deal with failure. So the resistance, one of the biggest areas to break resistance is changing your perception of what failure means. If you're like everyone else that grew up, failure means you're a loser. Failure means you didn't do it. Failure is not what you're hoping for, right? So failure is just an outcome that you were not hoping for, plain and simple. It doesn't mean you're a loser. It just means I got an outcome that's not what I wanted. So the question becomes, what do I have to do differently to get a different outcome? Why would you run from failure? My gosh, run towards failure. The more you fail, the faster you can fix that junk, right?
Glenn Mattson:
So then you have micro successor. Micro successor is the old saying, you can't eat an elephant in one bite, right? So if you have this big goal, what are baby steps that you want to have? You know, one of the best micro successors I think is, is going for the no. You know, it's much easier to get a no than it is a yes. If it takes you six no's to get one yes, but you need two yeses every single month, just go get 12 no's. If you go get 12 people who will tell you no by just mere process, just my mere output, you're going to get two people going to say yes to you. So why focus on the negative stuff? Go attack the good stuff, right? Within that, and I think, by the way, another great micro successor we've had wild success with at our coaching is 10% growth in their average case size. Man, you want to grow by 150% just to every 60 days, change your average case size by 10 points. That's it. Scary, right? Micro successes.
Then we talked about how to make sure you practice. You never practice until you get it right. You always practice until you never get it wrong. And because, especially depending on how stretched out you are, right, how much of the stretch zone you're in, you do have to have some type of ability to turn it off. That's meditation. Having the ability to close your eyes, separate your brain so that you can control rhythmic flow. Now for today, we're talking about what happens when you do practice and you start to get successful. What happens when, for instance, if you're part of Sandler, you're doing a 30-second commercial, it’s really starting to work. Or you're doing the upfront contract. You're like, this is amazing. Or getting pain, right?
So this next section has to do with adaptation. And adaptation is when confidence kicks in. That means that what you've been practicing is working. And what's working is becoming part of your new habit. It's becoming part of your new DNA. And I want to share with you, here's a couple of things that happen when this occurs. It's kind of important.
The first is what I call the journey. The journey is really important to realize this when you start having successes while you're in the stretch zone. And it's super important to hear what I’m about to tell you. The reason it's important to realize this is everyone wants to have the output, right? Everyone wants to have the goals, the objective, the win. That's what everyone wants. Oh, I want the win. Whatever it may be, new car, new house, right? More money, less stress, etc. I want the win. But what builds your confidence, really important for your notes, what builds confidence isn't the win. It isn't getting the goal. It isn't getting the tchotchke, right? It isn't getting whatever you were hoping for at the end of that. That's not what builds confidence. What builds confidence is the amount of hell you had to go through to get it. That's what builds your confidence.
You got to make sure you realize the journey is where everything is, not the destination. Why aren't you making the destination the journey? See, the journey is when you have to make choices. The journey is when you have what I call wimp junctions. Wimp junction is when you know you're supposed to make a decision. To the left is easy. To the left is what you used to do. To the right is hard. There may be some roadblocks. There's definitely going to be some issues. But every wimp junction you have, and we have probably 50 to 100 every day. By the way, you know what your first wimp junction is every day? Your damn snooze button. If it goes off at six o'clock, you're getting up at six o'clock for you snoozing it. That's your first WIMP junction for the day. Stop using the snooze button.
Glenn Mattson:
So when you're looking at success, you got to understand and look back and really, really take stock. And be humble about it, but you got to accept it. Don't think it's no big deal. Focus on the choices that you made that made you win. Look back at the choices. Look back when it was exhausted. You came home late from a flight. You went to sleep. You only got four hours of sleep, yet you're supposed to get up to go to the gym. Your brain, your body, everything is screaming, don't do it. You deserve it. Stay in bed. It's okay. I'm not going to tell anyone. One day won't make a difference. But you get up, you go to the gym, and you have your workout. After your done with your workout, you shower, now you're heading to the office. It's not the feel that you have after being in the gym that I want you to be excited about. It's the choice that you made while lying in your bed that your body was convincing you to stay and sleep, but you decided to get up and go to the gym anyways.
That's the choice that made you a winner. It's not the fact that going to the gym over 365 days made you look the way you do. I'm sure everyone who has a six pack ab is very proud of it, but I will probably guarantee you that the majority of them are proud of it because the amount of work they had to do to get it. And it’s more of a symbolism or a symbolic gesture of how hard it was to get there. So adaptation is focusing in on, please, not the results. I don't care how many more sales you made. I don't care the type of clients you had. I don't care about your ratios. I don't care about how you increase. Yeah, of course I care, but I don't. It's good that you accomplish those things. But what I do care most about is the journey and more importantly, the choices that you had to make during the journey to get to those results. The results aren't what builds confidence. What builds confidence is the struggle, the sacrificing, the choices you had to make on getting there.
So the journey is everything. And you got to realize the journey creates some psychological triggers in you too. The journey is what creates the three stages of psychological conviction. If you want, just write them down. It's three simple words. Can, will, am. Can, will, am. I can, I will, I am. The first phase is I can. I can is having belief that you can do it. That's why practice is so important. That's why getting rid of failure is so important so that we can have this first belief. I can do this. You know what? The difference between excitement and trepidation before a game is? Before an activity? Before speaking?
I remember my coach said, Glenn, you know what the difference between being massively excited about getting up and doing a talk and almost wanting to vomit in a garbage can Complete trepidation, immobilization. You know what the major difference, besides a few psychological, right? But you know what the major difference is between those two states? Ultra excitement and ultra fear. You know what it was? Or is? Preparation. Preparation is what gives us the ability to say I can do it because we believe that we can. So realize once you get to I can phase, the I will phase is right behind it.
Glenn Mattson:
The I will is I'm going to do it. That's courage. I can is confidence. So once you know you can do it, you will make a choice to do it, which is I will. And after making a few I will choices, you're at the third phase, which is I am doing it. It's not that big of a deal anymore. So as you start to have successes in the stretch zone, please focus on the choices that you make. Some of the smallest choices are some of the most impactful and some of the most important.
You're out grocery shopping. You know you're supposed to be eating healthy. You know that they have strawberry ice cream on sale. And man, do you love strawberry ice cream. But you also know that you're absolutely awful at self-control. So it's going to be a Thursday night, time for bed, not feeling the best spot, maybe feeling awesome, who knows? And you open up the freezer and there's your strawberry ice cream. You're going to take out some ice cream. You're going to eat it.
But you also know deep down inside, oh, I should only have half a scoop. Three scoops later, like, all right, the bowl can handle one more. I'll put another one in there. So if you can't make the right decisions in the wrong areas, don’t put yourself in the wrong area. i.e. don't buy the ice cream. So please, please, please, the journey, be aware of the journey. Don't discount the journey. The second one that starts to happen with the adaptation, because the journey is really important. Because when you get out of your stretch zone and the first time you get out of your stretch zone and you make it, that gives you confidence to say, it's time to go back into the stretch zone.
So at least in all the coaching we do here with lots and lots of people, we've done over 15,000 business owners, helping them become better business owners, better entrepreneurs, grow their business, get it to a point where they have people working for them. They become the CEO. And ultimately for some of them is to succession, to sell it. Nevermind the 250,000 salespeople that we've helped over here. You got to make sure you realize the choices you make, the wimp junctions are everything. The choices you make will make the next choice easier. As you start to make those choices, getting up, eating right, you're going to start to see the results, which reinforces the choices you're making.
Second thing I wanted to share with you as we start to go through this is what I call moving up the staircase. See, moving up the staircase is something naturally that happens to all of us when we start having confidence. And moving up the staircase is something where, for instance, your average case size, let's just take it for easy math, is $500. Then all of a sudden you make it to $550. Then all of a sudden it's $610. At some point, you're going to say to yourself, you know what? Why can't I go to $700? After you've done that for a bit of time, you yourself will turn around and say, man, why am I not doing 770? So moving up the staircase is you, yourself, saying, I got this spot. I got this case size. I got this type of client. I got this type of process down. I wonder if. So moving up the staircase is taking off the lid, the lid that we all have on our head of what's possible, the lid of what we can and can't do. It is one of the coolest things, man.
Glenn Mattson:
I honestly, being a coach, some of the stuff that I love the most about being a coach is this phase. When my clients had a goal to put a plan together, they worked like hell to get through the plan. They didn't even realize the amount of wimp junctions they were having on a daily basis. When they start to get the success and they come back to me and they say, Glenn, you know, I've been wondering, I love that line. You know, I've been wondering, what if I did this? I've been wondering, why wouldn't I do that? I've been wondering, well, if I could do that, why can't I do this? And those are the best things in the world. If I could ask for three referrals, why can't I ask for four? If I can get three introductions at that level, why can't I get introductions at this level? See that why not me and why not now is purely our brain expanding, saying what makes someone else different than me? Nothing.
So having the ability to take the lid off is so cool because you're not comparing yourself against what you thought was success or what other people thought was success. Now you're thinking about, well, hell, if I can do all that… There's a gentleman I had and he wanted to climb up a ladder to get certain income levels. So we were doing some production. He would turn around and say, my gosh, if I could do that, imagine, I wonder if I could do this. I said, okay, well, let's give it a shot. Put together a plan. We put it all together. He held accountable like he always does. Then it was, man, I brought in 40 million this year. Think I could do 60 million? Well, that year he brought in 80 million. The next year, it was more, then more, then more. More doesn’t always having to be better. It was him. He's the one that decided.
I have a woman that she didn't want to earn more money. She wanted more freedom, more free time, more mental space, the ability to go away and not be working even when she's away. So for her, we started off with taking every Friday off. Then every Friday became, well, why can't we take off October or not August? Why she picked those two months, who knows, but that's what she wanted. So she works four days a week. She takes off all of August and all of October.
Then she turned around and says, well, if I can do that, why can't I do this? And she wanted to disappear for a sabbatical for three months and still have her business run. So we created the business to run without her for three months. So the really neat thing about adaptation with confidence is you start thinking with inside of a mold. You stop thinking like everyone else inside your office or at your BD or someplace that you know. You don't think about others and what you can do to be like them. You start thinking to yourself, what can I really do? Where can I really sell to? Who can I really be with and who can I impact? So when you take your lid off, it's just awesome sauce. And that's a very unique moment to put more gas on the fuel. So as you start to become successful, pat yourself on the back, man.
I call it alligator arms, right? You know, the people you bring out with you that are friends of yours and you want to go out to dinner and they never seem to pick up the damn bill, right? They always got those alligator arms. They only stick out like a foot. They can't go across the table to get the bill. I want the same thing, right? When you're out there and you're growing and you’re doing the things you need to do. And don't have alligator arms, man. Have enormous super stretchers. Everything is possible.
So when you're moving upstream, take that lid off your head. Remember the journey. Remember the things you had to do to get to where you want to go. Don’t remember the fact that you can walk. I want you to remember the fact of how many times you had a fall on your butt and you got back up. You got back up and you fell and you cried. You got back up. Then you learned how to walk. Don't ever forget your journey. The journey is what makes you who you are.
Isn't it interesting when you talk to one of your buddies and they tell you how they had a really stressful day. Oh, my day was like hell on water. It was crazy. Let me tell you what I had to do today. And they go on for like half an hour telling you how bad of a day they had. And in your mind, you're like, man, I had worse of a day between 9:00 and 9:30. So everything's perception.
Glenn Mattson:
What people can handle is perception. Stress is perception. So is your success and what you can handle. So that's why the journey is so powerful because fear isn't going to go away. You can just handle more fear. Failure never goes away. You can just handle more failure. Stress never goes away. You can just handle more stress. So when we look at this, the journey teaches you how to manage the path on the way to the result. That's why I can, I will, I am is so powerful.
So for all of you out there who are looking at yourself, looking at your numbers, looking at your results, saying to yourself, I got to do something different. Get yourself prepared to be uncomfortable. Then be prepared for resistance, which means the second you start getting outside your comfort zone, boy, your brain's going to tell you to go back the way it used to be. How to fight that off. And then once you start having success, how do you put gas on fire? The growth curve will always help you get to the next level of your professional career. Over here at Mattson Enterprises, we've been doing it for 30 years, exceedingly successful. It's the reason we created it.
So as you go through your journey and as you go through your path of success, remember there's areas and things to do to keep your brain straight and focused as you’re being uncomfortable. And eventually you’re going to learn to be comfortable while being uncomfortable. And you're going to start to find out that when you're not uncomfortable for more than two or three days, something's not right at work. We're not growing at the level we should be growing at. We're not stretching as much as we should be stretching. And embrace your wimp junctions. At the end of the day, David Sandler always told me this. If you knock down one wimp junction per day, it won't take you that long to be successful. Because not many of us have thousands of wimp junctions. What he basically was saying to me is it shouldn't take you years to be successful.
Enjoy everybody. I'll talk to you on the next episode of Building Blocks of Success. Talk to you soon.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
