There is a certain euphoric state that washes over you when you win something big. Those who either play sports or compete for wins that cause survival or failure in business know what I am talking about. You put so much thought, effort and preparation into big competitions that you really set yourself up for a monumental feeling if you win or utter depression if you were to lose.

Recently, my company won a very large piece of business that will give us an even larger base to grow and advance our future success from. It was an amazing win that took several months from the start to finish. And even after the in-person presentation, there still was almost a month’s worth of wait time until we had a final decision. It was a tremendous win for our team and one that will be remembered for quite a long period of time. We don’t win all the time, but for the things that we really want to win – those that we really go hard after – we are able to win them a lot of the time. I’m lucky enough to be the leader of the company both in spirit and legally on paper and I think that people oftentimes don’t know what happens in these big presentations (or advertising agency pitches, as we call them) that sets us up for such success. It isn’t anything that I do, or the team members in the presentation do, that is the single cause for a win, but a combination of what happens throughout a process.

The real winning comes from a couple of different areas:

First, it takes the self-discipline to set aside your own time and the time of others to adequately prepare for something you are trying to win. Paul Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi had similar sayings, and to paraphrase from each of them it’s that “you don’t have to just have the will to win, you have to have the will to prepare to win.” And there couldn’t be a more accurate statement.  You have to prepare yourself mentally for your competition before you ever get to your competition. Then, you have to prepare yourself mentally that you are going to win your competition, as people can tell winners from losers just by looking at them. Don’t get me wrong on this subject, either. I have lost just as many things as I have won when it comes to pitching new business in my career, and without fail, I can track back 90 percent of the losses to not taking the time to prepare for a winning outcome. Not taking the time to instruct other people what needed to happen to prepare for a winning outcome. And frankly, just not believing in being a winner enough to have a winning outcome. If you invest the time to prepare to win and create a belief system that you can win, then you have already won in the most critical area of the process.

Next, you must have a point of differentiation of what you do different and why you do it differently that is beneficial for the person you are trying to win over if you want to be the clearly-defined winner. This is what sets you apart when you are in a setting like a new business pitch. It is your point of differentiation, your value proposition, the very essence of what you can do and provide that others cannot. Also, be quick to understand that it isn’t all about being the lowest price, either. There are certain people that will go “bargain shopping” when they are looking for a product or service, but that is only one segment of the population. There are a lot more people who, in buying a great product or service with a great brand name, know it will take care of them for quite a long time. This is also where you cannot get so busy talking about yourself when pitching a new piece of business that you leave out the “what’s in it for the customer” moments. You have to go into a hell of a lot of detail with what I call “Simple Speak.” Simple Speak just means that you have to talk to people and present ideas in ways that they understand. You cannot talk over their heads or allow them to glaze over. To win, you have to show and describe in great detail why you are the right choice and why you should be crowned as the winner. And all while you do this, you must do it with total confidence and zero doubt. People will see right through it.

Bringing it home, the fact of whether you are competing to win or lose something in business really comes down to what type of value you can get the customer to see. There is always an ending point when you are in competition for a certain win where you make your final run at why someone should do business with you and why you are the winner. This is the single greatest element in the personal presentation part of a competition. This is a testament to your preparation, your points of differentiation and finally, what your summation or bottom line assessment is as to why someone should choose you as the winner.

But wait, we are not done yet. What lies last is what can be the single greatest element that is overlooked by many competitors (and I thank them every day for it and pray they never get any smarter and learn from what I do), and that is the follow-up.

My father taught me early on in my career that deals are won and lost most of the time in the follow-up phase. You have to be the one who follows up with the most information and does it the most often to secure your place at the top of the podium as the one who provides the most value. One time in a follow-up after a pitch for new business, someone told me that they knew from all of my emails that I definitely knew how to conduct a spam campaign. But your manner of follow-up must show value and you must show that you can continue to deliver value each and every time that you reach back out in an effort to win. Follow-up is the key to success in winning any competition that isn’t a time-sanctioned event. The one who follows up the most usually has the best chance of winning.

In closing, I didn’t write this blog to talk about myself as a winner.  I wrote this blog for those who read it to see that it truly is a set of steps that begins with the phase of preparation and ends with intense follow-up. It’s not about who dresses the flashiest or says all the right things but rather more about who is a diligent practitioner in following the steps necessary to win.

My personality is defined as that of an architect, which makes my main strength the ability to formulate or create a plan. I have a constantly evolving vision, and it outweighs the need to connect with others. I may appear outgoing, but there are usually so many things in my head at any given moment that it drowns out social interactions. It is never acceptable for me to be caught off-guard, and usually the outcome from an off-guard moment is not good. I focus as much time and attention as needed to prepare for meetings, presentations or even discussions and will run through scenarios many times over in my head before engaging in these forums.

Compartmentalization is a key ingredient in my DNA. When at work, it’s all work. When at home, it’s all home. When doing anything else, I do I have to compartmentalize; otherwise, trying to exist in two places at once makes me less effective. If at home and there are emails I am reading or calls I am taking, it is almost like I am not home at all. Or, if I am thinking about something and someone tries to talk to me, I rarely can hold a conversation.

My internal motor turns very fast, and if I am not trying to juggle multiple things at a time, then it is very boring. I have an absolute love for the details and an eye for anything that looks incorrect. Putting detail into meeting notes, documents, or even finding a speck of paint on a baseboard where it should not be are things I pay attention to. Also, I have an expectation that everyone is supposed to do what is asked of them 100 percent of the time. 

I live with a deeply-rooted hatred for math, yet I love to look at numbers and can remember almost any number that is of any importance to me or represents a special date or time.  I do not believe in taking a lunch break, and skipping lunch most days in my career has, on average, allowed me five more hours of productivity a week x 50 weeks a year x 15 years is over 3,500 hours. I read a quote years ago that said, “No one will outwork me.” That fits.

Outside of work, there is spending time with my family. And other than having a couple of beers with friends and occasionally bird or turkey hunting, my life is pretty simple. I don’t dress up much, don’t go out to eat much, never go to movies, concerts, football games, or anything that is going to chew up a bunch of my time. I prefer sitting back and entertaining my wife and kids when not around or consumed with work.

My tombstone should read my favorite quote: “There are three types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who stand around and wonder what the hell just happened.” I have tried to live – ever since I heard that when I was 18 years old – as a person who can make things happen. 

Lastly, here are things that will make my head explode: having to tell somebody something twice, being late to a meeting or phone call, making excuses, not owning a mistake, bad attitudes, spreading rumors, discontent, complacency, and blaming others. Stay away from these actions, traits, and characteristics, and we will get along just fine.

I write this post while flying back from Boston to Birmingham after spending five days at the esteemed Harvard Business School, finishing up a four-year program that earned me a Certificate of Management through an executive education program. It gets shown in our agency’s morning announcements each day that “JPS @ Harvard” and I can only imagine what the office chatter is about with people asking what I am doing there. 

To give some background, a colleague who runs another kind of professional service firm told me about this program when he attended in 2015 and said, “Man, you’ve got to do this.” Reluctantly, (because I swore I would never go back to school) I did the program the first time in the summer of 2016. It was such an amazing time, and I got so much out of the program I went back for another program the following year until I realized that two more course selections would make me eligible to get a certificate of management.

So, why did I keep going back?  Well, it is certainly not from a lack of things to do and having enough time in my schedule. It was a lot of sacrifice, not only on my time but also because every other course I have taken was in the summer, which ate into the time of my family vacations. Amy had a lot of patience the last few years because, in lieu of nice week-long trips, we pretty much did family vacations in a couple of days plus a weekend so there would be time for me to go to these sessions.  But each time I went, there were always ah-ha moments, and there were plenty of them. I took very detailed notes each time and would always type them up after the classes to have something I can always refer back to as I go forward in my career. But, that still doesn’t answer the biggest part of why I kept going back: to be in a room and hear lectures and stories from guys who ran companies like JP Morgan Chase, Dell Computers, Bain Capital, Honeywell and others who were 5 Star Military Generals who also had Ph.D.s, and those who had spent their whole lives in academia based on running and operating companies like mine was priceless. (Well, actually not; it was expensive, but worth every minute and every penny).

So, what did I get out of it? I got a real sense of accomplishment because hearing what other companies do and struggle with and seeing what Strong Automotive Merchandising does on a daily basis has me flying back with a real sense of accomplishment. Is everything I or the agency does perfect?  Not by any means. But are we doing things right where they really matter?  The answer is yes.

This week, I spent a little bit of time at the office where we mine and print our direct mail and equity letters.

For those not familiar with the automotive business, this is a highly detailed form of marketing that is most often done through direct mail and email.  It is also a company that we had used as a vendor for a long time but had the option at the end of 2017 to purchase and operate as our own business.

In the very beginning, it felt like you were jumping into a time warp just based on the executions and equipment that were in this company, as the previous owners had not paid it much attention, nor would they ever spend any money and invest in their people and their infrastructure. 

This week, though, I walked in as we are on the tail end of an office renovation and have a couple of new team members in the organization who are breathing new signs of life into the place. It felt very good to see what has transpired in the short 15 months since taking it over, where the normal monthly work used to average around 70,000 pieces of mail to a total last month of over 350,000 pieces of mail. The speed and energy of the place has been jolted and felt vibrant as I spent a couple of days there. While it is far from perfect and still in very humble beginnings, it is a place that has a ton of momentum behind it and is starting to really develop a set of legs all on its own.

It’s really quite refreshing. I stood back in a makeshift loading garage where we are currently running all the printers while we complete the last stages of the renovation, and I looked at it in awe of all that had been accomplished.

I smiled for a minute when I thought about all of the people (even some of our own employees from the agency who had seen this operation before I bought it) who told me how it was “never going to work” and “was not a good investment.” Not that I am a person who feels they have to be right all the time, but do think of myself as an optimist who has a keen sense of seeing opportunity. 

Sometimes the brightest and shiniest of all objects are best when they come from humble beginnings.

From very early on, the only time I use to read growing up was when I had to. Either at night before going to bed as a little kid, or during the summer for school assignments, the only time I was reading was when someone was making me do it.

Fast forward to present day and I got back into reading (again when I was forced to prepare for my upcoming Harvard classes). But the last five years have been filled with reading books about business and successful people to learn from what they did and how they did it. While I found myself doing more reading, usually motivational or work-related, I decided this year to take a different tactic.

Instead of reading about work-related things, I have started a quest to read about things that have nothing to do with work. Books about history or fiction that can give me a different perspective and take me in a different direction mentally with my reading. The goal for the year is 12 books, so 1 per month. As it is mid-March right now, I am finding myself midway through my 3^rd book, so one would at least think that I am right on schedule.

The overall benefit of reading recently has truly been a sense of relaxation.  Usually, I read at night right before bed, and I find that it is a much better experience while going to sleep if the final waking minutes of my day are spent learning about something that is totally unrelated to everyday business.

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes taught to me by a very infamous man named Charlie Weldon. Charlie wasn’t anyone of big stature and certainly not of fame or fortune, but Charlie was one of those really rare people in life that was happy all the time. I never recall seeing him angry or upset with anyone over anything. Charlie worked for my dad on our family’s farm while I was growing up and was a frequent member around the camp house and fireplace before and after hunts.

When I was growing up, my older brother was a great hunter and a very good shot with a rifle. I was not a very good hunter (mainly because I would get bored too easily) and definitely not a good shot with a rifle. But, Charlie saw my early frustrations in life and coached me all the time by saying, “You can’t win if you don’t enter.”

Time and time again he would use these words to make me feel better after taking a shot and not hitting either my target or the deer I was trying to take. He would also use this a great reminder when I was looking to find an excuse not to go hunting and to do something lazy like watch TV or ride a 4-wheeler.  The memory of this phrase sits with me constantly as even now, a good 30 years after I met Charlie for the first time, I still echo this phrase to myself a couple of times a day.

It was this phrase that helped me navigate a tough situation professionally that happened to me last week. Our company had been prospecting, recruited, and finally hired a very high caliber guy who had been the #2 guy in marketing for a very large automotive dealer group. This individual left the group and wanted to come with us after a short stint at a nonautomotive marketing job because of his love for our industry. We already have a tremendous senior level team but this guy would have been the icing and the cherry on top of an already impressive cake.

So, he came on board and we set our sights on even more aggressive growth. Then, a month in, the phone rang and his old boss came calling.

I will leave this person anonymous, but he is a very large name in racing and car dealerships. And while our new team member passed on the first couple attempts to pry him away, eventually we lost out and he went back to the organization he knew and was comfortable with (plus a lot of money and lot of perks).

I found out all this was happening on a Friday afternoon, hours before leaving to go celebrate a good friends 40^th birthday and thought to myself,  “I can either get over this or let this ruin my day.”

That old phrase, “You can’t win if you don’t enter” came to mind over and over as I thought to myself that I was glad I took the shot at hiring this guy rather than sitting by and doing nothing. Even if I shot and missed, I still entered the game and there is a lot to be said for people who spend their lives doing that.