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This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson:
Hey everybody. Today we're going to be taking a look at, we are at Season 7, Episode 8, looking into a really interesting process that we spend an awful lot of time with that I want to kind of debunk. When we first get started in any business, we were told that the most important thing is you got to know your why, right? You got to know what drives you to be successful. And some of us believe that success is really about maybe where you grew up, maybe it's your parents, the background, your dialect, how smart you are, what school you went to or you graduated from. I'm going to tell you flat out. None of that has to do anything with your ability to be successful. Yeah, it may get you the game a little quicker, but when you show up, you don't got the stuff, you're done. So when we look at it, don't turn around and look at somebody else saying, oh, he's lucky or she's lucky because they have a better natural market or their dialect is stronger. They have the ability to use language and much bigger, stronger words than I can. And therefore I can't be successful. We all know that's hopefully not true by now. Your success or what school you go to or your parents have almost zero to do with your ability to be successful.
It's a proven fact that the school you graduate from has no direct proportion to the amount of success you will have later in life, meaning that someone can graduate from a community college and just be as successful as a business owner or someone who graduated from Harvard. Now, when we look at this and our backgrounds, A lot of us are taught to focus in on the old why we want to be successful. Why are you doing this? And we need that.
The why is what pulls you through the dirt. But your why for some people is maybe getting out of debt. Maybe you have credit card, you have college debt, you have kids debt, you have medical debt. You just have debt because you made a dumb, dumb decision on something. But you got debt. Maybe you want a new car. Maybe you're driving down the street saying, man, I would love to have that. Or I’m willing to fight like hell to get that type of car. That's fine. Maybe they're kind of an individual that says, maybe it's not debt. Maybe it's not a new car. Maybe it's something as easy as just getting out of my house. Maybe you're young and you want to move out. You want to get to the next area of your own life. Maybe you want to buy your own home. Maybe you're looking to actually get married, have kids. So some of us have these things that we're looking to do. And so maybe you may have been married for a while and you're looking at private school or colleges. And that's insane, the amount of money it's going to take to put kids through college, right?
Right now, if you have a baby being born, you're looking at 400 grand to put them through a state school by the time they get to college. And I just told you where they go to college has no direct proportion to their level of success, by the way. So we all have these things that we're looking to do and what we want money for and what motivates us. You got to remember there's only about six motivational factors. Either it's reward or incentive. That means you're going to, I want to get X, so therefore I'm willing to do Y. Maybe it's achievement. Maybe it's you're driven by the recognition, the status, the awards, the trips, the top producer clubs, being on stage, right? Walking at the annual with your lanyards, running through your feet because they're so long and you have all these great credentials. Maybe that's what juices you up. Maybe it's a fear of consequences. Maybe what motivates you is avoiding loss or avoiding embarrassment, letting your family down, letting your spouse down, missing bills. Maybe your fear is that I’m going to look myself in the mirror and I'm putting my family into the poorhouse just because I’m not doing my job. Maybe it's power. Everyone thinks this one's rooted in evil.
It's not.
Glenn Mattson:
Power is wanting to feel strong, wanting to feel in control during your meetings and during your interactions with people. So power is usually the motivation for many when they're rooted in having a feeling of powerlessness. It is not arrogance. It's not being rude. It's not being a type A personality with two baseball bats. I find power to be an exceedingly strong motivational factor for many, many people who are tired of being afraid. They're tired of looking at the mirror and saying, I coulda, I shoulda, why didn't I? The power is you look yourself in the mirror, regardless of your outcome and say, I did it right. And I do not feel powerless. I think in a lot of frameworks, many people are power motivated if we could change the word a little bit. But the reality is, is that most people are just sick and tired. I feel no one wants to go home feeling like dirt. No one wants to go home feeling unmotivated and embarrassed and uncomfortable and looking themselves in the mirror and saying, oh, no one looks for that.
No one needs to be remotely motivated by that. But that feeling can drive you to take the actions you need to do so you never have those feelings again. That's power. Maybe it's social, right? Social motivation is you want to belong to a group. You want to have the ability to participate in certain areas, a club, a level, a community that recognizes you as being part of it. I've been in some offices where they get together every single month and they're in an amphitheater. And all the big boys and girls sit in the first three rows. And it slowly goes all the way up to the top. And the top are more of the home office operations or brand new people. So basically, it's a hierarchy. The closer you sit to the front, the more production you do. And I found it to be very interesting when I was there to speak. They actually moved. It's called the moving up ceremony where they moved people up in rows. And they actually moved people back in rows, too. So that was a very, very interesting social situation to drive for some motivation.
The last growth motivation or the motivation that you need to have is called growth. And growth motivation is honestly, I find it to be very rare. I had one of my clients just literally a year ago sell his business for an enormous amount of money, about 450 million. He personally is going to bank about 200 million. Four days later after he sold it, he called me up and goes, all right, I'm done with that one. What's next? He literally started a brand new business up. It's been fantastic. Growth mindset isn't about what you can accomplish at the end of the day. It's not about all the toys you have. It's not about how many homes you can have and how much money you can have. That's not necessarily what's growth motivation. Growth motivation is someone who internally has a massive desire to identify.
Glenn Mattson:
How good can I really be? If I can do X amount of dollars in 12 months, can I do the same or even more in 11 months? If I can do that in 11 months, why can't I actually do another 20%? And then, so their mindset always is, hey, congratulations, but now what can we do better? What can we do different? And they're always in a quest to be better. So those individuals are ones that you will see grow and grow and grow. They don't have comfort zones. They're not the ones that even when they’re successful, you're saying, why does that person still work as hard as they do? Look at all that stuff they have. Look at all the money that they have. Look at all the accolades they have, because that's not what motivates them. Those are byproducts. What motivates them is growth. They really want to know how good they can be.
So when you look at your own growth motivations, there's some things that you need to take a look at because goal setting is really important. You've heard me talk about the statistics that 80% of the people walking planet Earth have zero idea of what they want in life. That's scary. They wake up, they have a cup of coffee, they go to work, they come home, they go for a walk, go to the gym, play with the kids, and they go to bed. Rinse and repeat. 80%. 14% of the population have a concept of what they would like. They drive around and say, man, I would like to have this. I would like to have that. Now, granted, they don't have many plans for it, but at least they have ideas of what they want. 4% of the population. 4%. 4% of the population. Look at your office. You're driving home. Look at everyone you're looking at. Only 4% of the people fit into this bucket. 4% have a plan. 4% have a goal. 4% have an idea and they have somewhat of a track record, i.e. how am I going to get there? 4%. Those are the ones that are inconsistent, right? They have highs and lows. They're really hot for three months, not so hot for a couple of months, but those are the 4%. Your 1% team, they have goals. They have a plan. They follow the plan. Not when they feel it, they follow it if they don't even feel it. They do it regardless. And very important is they share it with others.
And another key factor is not only do they share it with others, they revisit it. Meaning that most people do goals and they never look at it again for the remainder of their year. The 1% club look at it, if not every other week, every week or every month saying, okay, what do I have to do from an adjustment standpoint? Here's something I want you all to get. Remember 80%, nothing. 14% concept. 4% have an idea and a plan. 1% have an idea, a plan, a follow-up, accountability. They tell people and they revisit their plan. The 4% people, do you realize that their success in life is typically four times greater than the 80% group?
Glenn Mattson:
So those that have an idea of what they want, those that have a plan of how to get there, four times more successful of a lifetime than 80% of the population. The 1% group, here's the coolest thing I've ever heard in my life, right? That 1% group, they out-earn. Out-earn in their lifetime. They out-earn in their lifetime 10 times the amount of growth, the amount of self-worth, etc., as the 80% group. So clearly having goals are critically important. I'm not saying they're not. What I'm going to tell you is having a dream board, having goals, sitting down and doing goal setting, your cookbook, whatever it may be, isn't the only thing that makes it successful. I want to give you the magic sauce. The magic sauce, a lot of people, I don't think many people talk about it at all. The magic sauce is not what you want. The magic sauce is what are you willing to give up to get it?
See, when we look at desire, desire is, I would like to have that. Right behind desire is called commitment. Limited commitment means, oh yeah, I want that only if I don't have to talk to this. Only if I don't have to work weird hours. Only if I don't have to impact my nine hours of sleep every day. Only if I don't have to feel uncomfortable when I'm doing it. So there's no only ifs. Either you're committed or you're not. Either you're in the pool or you're not. Either you're going to get it done or you're not. So when we look at... individuals that are highly motivated by goals, I'm going to share with you, it's not the goals that are going to make the difference. You got to get very clear with yourself on what you're willing to give up to get the goals. Let me give this to you again. If you want something new to come into you, into your psyche, into your toolbox, reality is you got to give something up to get it. So when we look at what you have to do. Here's some of the things that you're going to have to give up.
Here's some of the things that I think are going to impact a lot of us. And we have to ask ourselves this simple question. I have it in my office. I ask every single one of my coaching clients for 30 years, the same question when we start to work together. Sure. We go, we do goal setting, but once I have the goals up now, I still really start to get to work. And what I mean by getting to work is I challenge the living daylights of the client on how bad do they want these goals. Do not put something down that says it'd be nice to have. This is, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Write this down, put it in your darn car, put it in your office, have it as your screensaver, plop it up on a three by five card, have it everywhere if you have to. I'd love for you to tattoo it between your index finger and your ring finger. And just put in there, willing to do whatever it takes to get to where I need to go. Now that's legally, morally, and ethically. Let's make sure we're on the same page.
So legally and morally and ethically, are you willing to do what's necessary to achieve the goals you've written down? See, most people do dream boards because it's nice. Oh, man, I really would like to have that. That's not what I'm talking about. What I’m talking about is what are you willing to give up to get it? But what do you mean? Well, are you willing to give up security? Are you willing to put yourself out there and take a risk? Are you willing to embarrass yourself in front of other people? Are you willing to try? Are you willing to fail? If you think failure is a negative thing, man, you're going to run like hell from failure. How are you supposed to grow? How are you supposed to get any better? How are you supposed to get to where you want to go if you can't fail? What about comfort? Are you willing to give up comfort? Many of you are listening in right now. You have a sales process. You have a process, accountability process, etc. that you know. It doesn't mean it works, but you know it. So are you willing to let go of what you've always done to learn something new?
Glenn Mattson:
Are you willing to let go of your comfort? We spent a lot of time in the last couple of podcasts talking about stretch zones. So I always find it very interesting that people say they want to have goals, yet when it's time to do the activity of what the goals call for, it's not in their comfort zone. So when it's not in a comfort zone, next thing you know, they're making excuses on why it’s not getting done. It's not how the world works, man. You want it. What are you willing to give up to get it? So when I look at comfort, that means you're going to have to get uncomfortable to learn how to be better than you are right now. That means you have to take risks. You're going to have to fail.
That means you're going to have to learn from failure. So you have to give up comfort. Comfort is sitting in front of someone knowing what you should do. And your brain is screaming in your head to say it. And the other part of your brain is screaming in your head to not do it. And the not do it one is the one that's in your comfort zone. And the one that's screaming for you to do it is living in your stretch zone. So you will have these battles all day long. And those that wimp out and choose the wrong way have not defined what they're willing to give up to get it.
Because now they make excuses on why it didn't make sense to do it. So living in your stretch zone is really part of goal setting. When we talk about this stuff, here's what I'm gonna share with you. You gotta ask yourself, what do you have to give up to get to where you wanna go? Are you gonna have to give up talking to the same people that you know their problems and you know their solutions, but those people aren't gonna get you where you wanna go? Are you willing to get uncomfortable and start asking for referrals that are upstream? Are you gonna start to learn how to ask the right questions to people that make more money than maybe the people you're talking to now? Are you gonna be ready to be uncomfortable to... to your clients about referrals and the flywheel and cross-selling? How come we're comfortable with one type of person to ask those questions with, yet we take a different person, usually it's either personality or their income, and that makes you uncomfortable? How come some of us can sell people who are really nice, but aggressive people, we can't do that?
Aggressive people, the most easy ones to sell in the world. So what are you willing to give up? Is it comfort? Your habits? The same way that you've always sold? Same questions you've always asked? The same mindset of procrastination and wimping out, making excuses? You have to write down on your piece of paper, no one else sees this. You've got to be brutally honest with yourself. It's called confronting your fears. You've got to know your limitations. Understand what the trap is. Where are you going to wimp out? And we all know it. I know every single one of you listening to me right now, you're looking at your phone or you're looking at your car going, I wimp out when someone asked me about how long I've been in the business. I wimp out when someone says, so how much is this? I wimp out when someone says, hey, I'm really happy where I am right now. We all have wimp factors. So having the ability to understand what you're willing to give up is going to help you figure out how successful you're going to be.
Glenn Mattson:
The big one. The big one that most people my age understand and younger groups have fighting with it. And I get it. It's time. What are you willing to give up in your life currently that takes time? Because that's the one thing you can’t manipulate. So you have to be ultra efficient or in the beginning, since you're not efficient, you have to spend a lot of time learning how to be efficient. So what are you willing to give up that impacts where you spend your time now?
You've gone to the gym for 10 years every day right after work. But let's suppose you're going to have to change that. Let's suppose to get to where you have to go, you have to take some of that time right after work for something else. It doesn't mean you don't have to work out. It just means you have to work out maybe at eight or five in the morning.
How about having dinner at home, going to work at a certain time? At what point do you want to pay the ferryman to have the life that you want? So if you have to find yourself dedicating to put time into this, and that time is going to help you get to where you want to be, as long as you do the right thing, so it's not forever, then you have to give up some personal time to get the business where it needs to get to. Maybe you have to change what time you get up in the morning. Maybe getting up at eight isn't working. Maybe you have to get up at five and you need to say to yourself, that's early. Yeah. A lot of people get up at five. So what are you willing to give up? And by the way, your body will always adjust. When you give something up, it's like sucking water.
When I was a kid, we had a boat. It wasn't very strong. Quite honestly, it was a piece of junk. We had to start it manually almost every single time. But that's what we could afford. And when we water skied, the boat wasn't strong enough to pull us instantly up on plane. So it would drag us a little bit. And as you drag, the water hits your skis. The ski goes up over your skis, the water, and hits you right in the face. It's like being waterboarded for goodness sakes. But you got to hold on to that puppy for 30 seconds or so before he got pulled up. So some of my friends could do it. Most of my friends would give up. Me and my brothers got up okay. We just had to suck the water. It's interesting. Once you stand up, sucking the water wasn't so bad. It's the fear of how long do I have to suck this without knowing what's going to happen next. You just let go. You wimp out. So when you're sitting there looking at your dream board, you're looking at your goals, you're looking at all the things you wanted to accomplish this year, wherever you are right now, I want you to ask yourself, you've got a handful of months left to get this stuff done.
Pick the things you're going to do, pick the things you have to do, and ask yourself, what am I willing to give up to get here? So every time you can go home, you can look yourself in the mirror and never say, I should have said this, I could have said this, and never blame time as the reason you're not successful. Times not your problem. It's where you spend your time that's the problem. So as you start to look forward to the end of this year, even better, most of you are going to be doing some goal setting this quarter for next year. After you spend all that time looking at what you want and doing your dream boards and putting down dates and plans and all that fun stuff, which is needed, I get it, you better sit down with yourself and anyone else on your team, plop that document on the ground and say, okay, I’m going to ask you a simple question. What are you willing to give up to get this?
Glenn Mattson:
Put that down. Document it just as much as your goals. Track it just as much as your goals. Actually have a scorecard so you can see that if I invested X and I went to the gym at 5 a.m., what does it look like? It's going to take me about a week or so to get into my habit again. But because you are facing your fear, sure, it's going to be scary as a get-go. But I got to tell you, you're going to go home feeling great about yourself. You're going to look at yourself in the mirror. And you're not going to say to yourself, I wish I said this. I wish I had the courage to say that. One of the things that helped me through tons and tons of dirt was a simple one-liner. And it was simple. I'm a pretty simple guy. If you're going to lose, lose right. If you're going to lose, lose right. Which means when I look myself in the mirror, it wasn't. You should have. You could have. Why didn't you? Do what you're supposed to do the right way to get the right results.
People also look at successful people and say, hey, man, well, if I had their money, then I would take their risk. You don't understand, man, the risks is what got them the money. The ability to take the risks got them the money. The ability to face thrown fears and be knocked down and get back up is what got her the money. The personal attributes don't come after the money. The personal attributes is what gets you the success. So as you start to look at what you're going to put in for the end of this year. Whatever you have to do, growth you have to get to, makeup you had to get to, anything, ask yourself a simple question before you start putting your plan together, or you better do it right after you put the plan together is, am I willing 100% committed to do the behaviors and the activities and the actions that are sitting in front of me? Am I willing to do it? No, I should try. Then you got to ask yourself is what do I have to give up to get it? That's comfort, it's feelings, it's emotions, it's risk. It is 100% time.
I know everyone believes that you can be super successful and only work six or seven hours a day. Good luck. You got to put the time in it. You got to put the time into it. You got to put the energy into it. You got to put the effort into it. Time, energy, and effort. As you start to move forward in your career, remember, ask yourself the simple question, super simple. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your objectives legally, morally, and ethically? Put yourself in the right position, the right motivation, and the right plan. You've got to have the right mindset to get there.
Join me on another call of the Building Blocks of Success as we talk about the salesperson's bill of rights next. Enjoy.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
