As I go through life in living day-to-day, it’s starting to become real that people come and go in all areas of your life. Some you’re really happy to see enter your life. You’re happy to be around them. You enjoy their company, the friendship, the relationship, the caring and compassion that they share with you and vice versa. Then sometimes, people leave and you miss that.

They leave for whatever reason. Either your paths grow apart, or your interests no longer align. Sometimes, people leave simply because they don’t like you or something that you’ve done, or maybe how you run your company or live your life. As I was thinking about this over the week, it seems like, with every flip of the calendar, the amount of people who enter and exit my life always seems amplified. While up early this morning, reflecting on the day and the week I’ve had, I started thinking that sometimes your life may just feel like a Southwest Airlines plane.

Southwest has a great motto that says they put passengers on and off a plane faster than any airline in the industry. They fly from city to city picking up and dropping off people. They do it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As I reflect on recent people both entering and now exiting my life, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself this morning that I’m almost like a Southwest Airlines plane. Moving around at a very fast rate of speed, taking people on, letting people off, but smiling and loving life throughout the process.

As I fly across the country tonight, I reflect back and think about my day – a random Tuesday in January, which use to be such a slow time in my life. Things never got busy until the big months, the March-August times when things use to be just wide open and every day seemed like a fire drill. Now, as I cross over millions of homes relaxing, I am still working. It is what I call “running with the blinders on.” I do not have a care in the world about what is happening on the ground under me but just like a racehorse runs without a clear vision of what is in front of them – I am drowning out the noise of the world and moving as fast-paced as I can from day-to-day.

Days use to get measured as “today was a win” or “today was a tough one – let’s start over tomorrow.” But the emotions seem to be compounded where literally every day seems like there are multiple victories and also going along with it are multiple upsets. It really is fine. I guess that things are moving at a much more rapid pace than even I have ever felt before, but I think that just is a sign that there is more going on each day. There seems to be less time to enjoy a win because there always seems to be a challenge lurking around the corner. Though, I think that if I am being totally honest, I enjoy the challenge just as much as I enjoy the wins. When you have the blinders on, you really don’t let either one of them (wins/losses) get in your way. You are simply moving as fast as possible to everything and anything to elevate your level of play.

Then there is the people aspect of winning and losing. You feel compelled to share the wins with everyone around you – everyone who had a hand in fostering the win. But the losses you want to keep under the rug or tucked away in a corner where no one ever has to deal with them but you. This is probably not the best idea for my long-term sanity, but it seems to work and really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did 10 years ago. Wanting to praise people for the victories and wanting to shield people from the fear of loss/defeat in my mind means I never want anyone to have to experience some of the agonies that I deal with and endure. Sometimes, I think to myself that I wish people around me knew the real beauty of what it is like to run with the blinders on – it can sure make life a whole lot more enjoyable.

Then there are the people who want to talk down about you – yet they never or have never had the guts to talk about anything to you. These are the people that are secretly rooting for your failure. They are the ones, some even who act like friends but deep down inside want to see you blow up into a million pieces because they are so amazed at how miserable at life they have become. They have no problem bashing you to other people or publicly cheering on others who are pitting themselves against you. This is where the blinders go into overdrive. If someone is so upset by what you say and what you do that it consumes them – then they have clearly lost control of their own life, just like a racehorse that never was able to get out of the starting gate.

Running with the blinders on is truly a beautiful way to go through life.  You only care about 2 things: running faster and getting to the finish line.

The more I think about my role and responsibility in my company and in my personal life, one phrase really starts to come to mind. And that is being in the driver’s seat.

Like a race team where you have a team full of people working on a car to make the car be as fast and as competitive as possible, there still can only be one person in the driver’s seat. Being in the driver’s seat for me has always been fun. It’s always been the limelight. It’s always been where all the excitement, fear, anxiety, and success all culminate into one place. That has always been what’s driven me in my career.

But what I’m starting to see in a different light is not just all the things that culminate to the person sitting in the driver’s seat, but the responsibility that comes from all the race team, mechanics, pit crew, everybody relying on the decisions you make to be able to win the race.

Just like a driver is the one who is crowned the race winner, given the checkered flag, and a large trophy to hoist up, the driver doesn’t get there without everybody who makes the car what it is. Those who put the car in a position where it can win a race.

Therefore, it’s up to the driver to properly drive the car and to find ways around the competition, ways to shave time off their lap time, ways to be better, ways to be more effective, and most importantly find ways to not be in a position where you make bad decisions.

As the new year begins, as we’re looking to do bigger and better things than we’ve ever done before as an organization, my mindset has really transpired into what it truly means to be in the driver’s seat and all the responsibility that comes with that.

I used to never, ever set yearly goals. I didn’t set them for myself, for the company, for anything. I just always worked as hard as I could and figured if I did everything I could, things would turn out okay. And for the most part, for many years they did.

It wasn’t until about four years ago that I actually started setting goals for myself. I follow what is probably a very different goal-setting practice than most people. Here are a few things that will give you insight into how I have evolved to set my own goals.

1. Never try to have them ready on the first day of the year. In most businesses, especially ours, you’re doing so many things right up until the very end of the year that you don’t really have time to think much about the next year. I always give myself through the 10th or 15th of January to have my goals laid out on paper.
2. Try not to make them too complicated. Keep them simple. Each year, I write down five to seven specific goals that I want to achieve. None are super simple, but none are also over-the-top hard, but they make me have things I have to push and strive for to achieve.
3. Keep them short. Each one of my goals is no more than one sentence. In fact, most of the sentences can fit on one line on a piece of paper so that I don’t have to have long, lengthy things to read.
4. Put them on a piece of paper. I keep mine on a small card in my briefcase, and I look at them at least three to four times per week. It’s a great way to reflect while traveling, to look at first thing in the morning, to remind you what you are trying to accomplish for the year.
5. Tell other people. I find others who can help me stay accountable for my goals so that I have a realistic way to achieve them.

That is how I’ve set goals and become successful each year ever since I began this process.

As I think more and more about the day-to-day decisions I have to make, I go back to something an old friend and someone who helped me greatly in business named Jack Griffis sent me this summer. It was sent via text message and his quote was, “This mission statement reeks of you!” Now, while I won’t take the credit for the following mission statement, it was taken from a company that started from scratch in the 1970s and became one of the leading global brands today. This was their original mission statement, and you can find the name after you read all the way through the 10 points. This is the best way that I can define my mindset at the current time.

1. Our business is change.
2. We’re on offense. All the time.
3. Perfect results count – not a perfect process.
4. This is as much about battle as it is business.
5. Assume nothing. Make sure people keep their promises. Push yourselves. Push others. Stretch the possible.
6. Live off the land.
7. Your job isn’t done until the job is done.
8. Dangers:
   1. Bureaucracy
   2. Personal ambition
   3. Energy takers vs. energy givers
   4. Knowing our weaknesses
   5. Don’t get too many things on the platter

9. It won’t be pretty.
10. If we do the right things we’ll make money damn near automatic.

The company that wrote these was Nike.

It really doesn’t even feel like work at all. I find myself saying this to myself a couple of times a day. While the demands of my job and stress can sometimes be overwhelming, those are simply moments in time and it soon passes.

But on days like today where I am getting to meet with clients that I truly enjoy, and work alongside with people who are looking out for your best interest, and get to do it while traveling across the country getting to go to places all over – it really doesn’t even feel like a job or work.

I have heard people use the saying that “if you love what you do, then you will never work a day in your life.” And while I have never used this saying, I believe it to be very true.  

Flying around from place to place, staying in nice hotels, and eating out for just about every meal may be a lifestyle some people dread. But for me, it is more of a way of life. I certainly miss time at home and with my family, but you learn so much about your clients’ business while traveling to see them. And you learn so much about yourself when you have time alone. For me, it makes me a better and happier person.

Every day can be a vacation if you let it.

Years ago, I read a book called “The Energy Bus.” It was given to me by a good friend and client, Pat McGrath.  Pat was always great at giving little nuggets of motivational advice, and I always simply felt better when I was in his presence. After reading this book, things were no different. Even though I read it years ago, the most important lesson of the book came back to me this week.

Monday started like any normal Monday for me. Moving fast, a slight bit of tension about all that was about to happen in the week in front of me and several important things that I needed to get accomplished early.

That is when the glass broke. Like someone through a brick through my window. I got hit with some very disturbing news about several people who I have the utmost respect for and have devoted quite a bit of time to helping them develop their careers. The news wasn’t what one may deem as catastrophic like ill health or having a severe accident, but it was the kind of blow that just hits you in the stomach when you realize not only were people not sticking to their core values but also they were acting in a true sense of undermining me and my mission.

This ate at me for about 12 hours. Then, while flying from one city to another, I looked out the window and noticed how beautiful the mountains looked going up and down the East Coast and thought about a key topic from the book “The Energy Bus,” which was called Energy Vampires.  Meaning you let all the problems suck out all your energy rather than focus on things and people that you can actually do something productive to make better.

I cracked a smile and thought back to what the book talked about and how you have to devise a plan to make it out of energy-sucking circumstances and focus your time and energy on things that you can actually do something about.

Now that my plane is starting to descend, I find myself eagerly ready to turn on my phone and call anyone but one of these energy vampires and get them off my mind and out of my life.

Years ago, when I was first getting my career going, my father gave me a profound piece of advice. He said, “If you’re going to do great things, you’ve got to get ready to take a lot of criticism. Because people who go try and do a lot of great things are always going to get criticized more than anybody else around.”

Over the past couple of weeks, in talking with a few very close friends, I’ve heard a lot of this and now know exactly what my father meant.

When I talk about big-picture ideas, I think there’s only a general percent of the people around me who probably believe they are capable. But, there are those who want to be naysayers, yet there are those who flourish in the success and the ideas that come out of big-picture thinking.

If you’re going to do great things, you’re going to fail. You’re going to try, try, try again. And you’re not always going to be successful. But if you try enough things for a long enough period of time, you’re going to find things that work well. And I think that’s what makes some people so furious and enjoy talking about other people so much. And as for people who chase after success, the general public just wants to see them fail. They’ll talk about them until they’re blue in the face because they’re not trying to do anything on their own. So, as I reflect back over the last few weeks and a time when I’m trying more new things than I’ve ever done in my career, it is both humbling and very reminding of that great quote: “If you’re going to try to do great things, you will receive an enormous amount of criticism for it.”

Maybe the longest title of any blog I’ve written, but this thought has been on my mind a lot lately as the schedule of meetings has picked back up and we are seeing more new prospects than we have all year. The great thing about what I get to do for my career is that everyone has an opinion. When you think about an ad you see or something that stimulates interest, you either have a favorable liking to it or you don’t like it at all. That is what makes everybody an expert in the field I’m in – they think that their opinions matter.

Not to sound like I have too much of an ego, but I have been working in the same area for 18 years and have a pretty damn good idea of what will work and what will not work. But you never get a new account or win that many friends if you go around all the time when someone second-guesses you or questions you by blatantly calling them out. You have to develop a subtle art for letting people be wrong and still getting the outcome that you want.

If it sounds easy, let me correct you in the most eloquent and amazing way (see what I just did there). But, you have to be able to use your distinct knowledge of the topic at hand to get your point across and get your way, even if it takes more of your time to work on a person. In my experience, nobody likes to be wrong about something, but very few people are confident enough in what they do to do it with such conviction that it will be successful.

There is an art to being able to be subtle enough to tell people that they are wrong and confident enough to do what you do and know that it will be successful. Part of the art is having the diligence to make so many attempts to prove your point or get your way that you eventually tire the other party out completely and boom…. you’ve won.

Many things in business are a battle.  A battle against competition, against naysayers, against people who don’t believe or are just envious. But to win the battle, you have to be relentless in your ability to let people think they may be getting their way even when they are not.

Running a sales-oriented business, I will always reflect on the era before Covid-19 and the era after Covid-19 as when I really changed my outlook on how I sold and communicated to others.

And no, it has nothing to do with one’s health and safety concerns, but purely about how valuable I’ve realized it is to have time in front of clients and potential clients. For the better part of this year, it all had to be done through Zoom calls.

First, let’s talk about my style of selling before Covid-19. I rarely used a hard close and mostly sold what we offered our clients based on results, case studies, and a formulated needs assessment. It was very much relationship selling at its finest, and I don’t want to bash it because my sales/closing/growth of annual sales increases were all pretty spectacular for a long period of time.

Most of this was done in person, and if someone told me “let me think about it,” I generally said, “okay, I will check back with you in a couple of days and see where we go from here.” It never was too aggressive and was more on the side of being as much a friend to someone as it was being a salesman. In fact, it took someone a long time to convince me that I actually was a salesperson and not more of a practitioner.

Then, Covid-19 happened and I got to watch from one month to the next a revenue drop of 55% with very little that I could do about it.

So now let’s talk about my approach to selling since we have been living with the virus. It is truly a take-no-prisoners approach, and don’t worry about saying something if you mean it, even if it costs you not to make the sale. I sell with even more conviction because I see what we do works and know how effective it would be for the other party.

I still wouldn’t classify my selling as a hard-sell, but it’s a lot more cutting to the chase of “if I can only tell this person one more thing for as long as I live, what is it going to be?”. And if they happen to tell me no, then that is just the starting point. I read a series of quotes recently from Nike in the early days that said their mission was to “be on offense all the time,” and I instantly adopted that mindset. It is with this new approach that I go into every situation thinking, what do I need to do to make this happen.

And I am absolutely amazed at how well it is working.