There is no one secret formula to doing amazing things – to achieving the impossible.  Timing, a lot of effort, and good old-fashion “luck” have a way of making what someone else has already done pretty hard to reproduce.

Which is why I have problems with a lot of the sales books I read.  They don’t tell the true story about what was the real cause of the success that happened.  Most of the time, it’s not a single, simple formula.  Like a giant game of Clue, you have to piece together a lot of different variables to make sense of what happened.  And if you do that right, usually you walk away with a couple of clues about how to do those couple of things right. A case study on what it takes to achieve the impossible.

Making big sales, running up the career ladder, being at the top of your class, winning the Tour de France 10 times — they are all possible.  You just need to know how.

Here are three clues that I have learned over the years:

1. Put in (massive) effort.

Big goals take massive effort.  Even small goals take big effort.  For some reason, we have decided that the 21st century is a place of “working smarter at all costs”.  We try to replace gut-busting, tired-as-heck effort with intellectual reasoning about project targeting and resource allocation.  There is nothing logical about working yourself to the bone to achieve the impossible.  So if you want to talk yourself out of it, it’s pretty easy.  Just don’t expect to achieve the impossible.

2. Always be different (in a big way).

Don’t try to compare yourself to the competition, your industry, or what the wonks say you should be doing.  Be different.  Lead.  Go the opposite direction.  As a matter of principle, you need to literally change course to polarize those around you.  Achieving the impossible starts with you being different.

3. Live with discipline.

You won’t conquer in a day (or two or three or four).  It will be the result of you practicing greatness for thousands of hours over many years of your life.  You can’t be sloppy and do that.  Discipline is demanded of you.  It keeps you headed toward your goal.  When you get tired and your body screams to give up, discipline keeps you doing the handful of things that you need to do to be successful.  Day after day.  Month after month.  Discipline is what separates you from your build-in mediocrity engine.

There are a lot of formulas that don’t work.  The days of selling vacuum cleaners door to door is over.  But these three clues seem to stand the test of time.

How you could you NOT achieve the impossible by putting in massive effort doing something different, and living with discipline?

I don’t think you can.

Try to prove me wrong.

There is no Easy Street.

Sure, growing up in Northern Virginia there was an actual road off Route 1 called Easy St. close to where I used to get my hair cut once a month. (Ironically — it was in the bad part of town.)

There is no easy way to do amazing things. If it’s easy to do then it can’t really be amazing. Those two things are as different as night and day.

“Easy” is the reward of mediocrity.

Having it easy is the reward you get for high-performance mediocrity. “Grade A” average showmanship.

It’s should scare you when you think you are doing something amazing and find it easy.  Outrageous success is the result of gut-busting, mind-blowing, patience-pushing effort…

You can’t get it any other way.

Think about running. (By now you know that I love running).

You can run a few miles here or there — casual “stay in shape” stuff. Or you can decide to run a 5K. With the 5K, you suddenly have peer pressure. People running beside you, ahead of you. People trying to beat you.

Once you master the 5K, there’s the 10K — twice as far, twice as hard. And then there’s the half-marathon. Tons more time on your feet, but still not as bad as a marathon.

The marathon is like overtime at the office.  Even if you’re good, it’s 3-4 hours of torture. You need to refuel along the way — stop for a bathroom break perhaps. It’s a whole strategy thing.

Still more challenging is an Ironman race, where you have 50 miles between you and the finish line.  It’s brutal.  And when you master one of those, you can try a Super Ironman — 100+ miles of pavement pounding. It’s a 24 hour dedication to peak physical performance.

If someone were to pay you $5 million dollars to run a Super Ironman right now, most of you would give it serious thought. You would spend a few minutes considering whether the deal was legit and whether you thought you had the “guts” to make it to the prize — that $5 million check.

In your mind, it’s a lot of of effort, but it appears possible. Somehow, someway you could pull it off. A lot of people might not be able to do it, but you could — especially for $5 million.

After all, almost 40,000 will people run the Boston Marathon this coming year.  This is just a little longer.

Let’s take it up a notch.

How about a running event like this one: The 14th Annual Self-Transcendence 3,100-Mile Race.

A race that only 11 people will run this year.

3,1000 miles in 52 days or less.

More specifically — 5,649 laps of a .5488-mile loop around the Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School in Jamaica, Queens in New York City.

52 days of the worst torture the human body could experience.  An experience only 25 people have ever finished in the history of the race.

This race is the perfect illustration for the effort and dedication that it takes to do amazing things. It’s not a lot. It’s a quantity so big you can’t even imagine it right now.

Could you run 2.5 marathons every day for the next 52 days?

It’s a lesson in why we break. We lose our passion. We just decide that we don’t have the will, the heart, the soul to make it to the finish line.

The same heart that could take you 100 miles, is the same heart that could lead you to the finish line 3000+ miles away. You haven’t changed (besides dropping a few calories along the way). The only thing that is different is the effort that you are willing to put towards your success.

And that realization is inspiring.

Because it means that you can accomplish anything as long as you are willing to put in the effort.  As long as you believe success is that important.

So, here’s the real question: what do you think is important?

Are you willing to put in the effort?

You were born a winner.  And life taught you how to be a loser.

Ironic isn’t it?

You beat the odds. From conception to nine months of pre-natal nurturing to emergence in a world full of dangers, you survived.

You thrived.

You explored the boundaries of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell…

• You screamed until you could talk. And then you wouldn’t stop.
• You pulled the table cloth off the top of the table so you could see what was on top of the table.
• You licked anything in site – the bathroom floor and the dirty window. Germs didn’t seem to bother you.
• You reached out to touch the hot stove even after your mom yelled at you 17 times that it would burn you.
• You smelled everything even when it made your nose bleed and eyes water.

And then you learned that you weren’t supposed to do that…

You were told that you needed to “learn from your experience” to “grow up” and “stop dreaming”.

Any of those sounds familiar to you?

At that moment, here is what began to happen:

“Fear started turning you into a loser.”

And from then until now, you have been fighting to get back into the winner’s circle.

Every effort, ever strategy, every tactic — everything has been been about limiting the effects of fear on your performance.

You fell like you aren’t winning as often as you want to, so you put in the effort to turn that around.

• You read more books.
• You go to conferences and listened to experts.
• You start scanning the the top 20 blogs by the leading gurus.
• You go to webinars to get the latest tips and tricks.
• You hire a coach to help you achieve your goals.
• You put in a little extra effort each day.
• You join a networking group to see what other people are doing.
• You start a “high achiever” group on LinkedIn.

And at the end of the day, you still feel like a loser.

Like too many times you are losing when you should be winning.

And the answer is pretty simple:

Fear is Making You a Loser.

Fear is crippling your performance. Undoing every dream you want for you. Destroying the advantages you gain by your extra effort.

It’s deep in your soul.

It’s the “I’m afraid I don’t know” reply that slips through when you get asked a question you might not have the answer to. It’s the “I’m afraid to ask” rebuttal you give when you are told that bad news awaits you. It’s the “I’m afraid you’re right” concession you give when the facts point to a different point of view than our own.

It’s fear. And it’s stealing your destiny.

The same senses that made you a winner as a young tyke get all twisted up by the time you get old enough to be reading articles like this one. It’s hard to know where you went wrong and to make it right.

Fear isn’t a school bully you can tackle or a plywood wall you can punch a hole in.   It’s in your soul — in your mind.

And here are some secrets you need to know:

1. Fear distorts your view of reality.

Most of the time what you see is what you get . But what you see may not be what is really there.

Fear is like a kaleidoscope.  Except with demons and monsters instead of funky colors and shapes.

When you are anxious, nervous, or scared, you start reacting rationally for the reality that you see.  Except what you see isn’t really happening.

Take off the “Fear Goggles”.  Ask someone you trust, “Does my perspective make sense”?

Do this a few times and you will start to see a pattern.  You ask like a crazy man when you are afraid.  It’s temporary insanity.

You can disarm fear by trusting that what you think is there, might not really be there at all.

2. Fear quiets the chants of your supporters.

Everybody has fans.  Even weirdos, wimps, and winos.  Someone somewhere loves you deeply and wants you to succeed.

It’s true.  You are a hero.  That you win is terribly important to someone else.  You need to really stop a minute and let that sink in.

When you are afraid, it’s easy to believe that you are all alone and that no one cares that you win.

Your supporters need you.  You need to know that they are there.

It’s strangely curious how after you come through the big storm  — hit the finish line — that you hear how loudly the crowd is cheering.

Guess what?  They were there the entire time.  You were just too afraid to notice them stomping their feet and waving their arms.

You were focused on you.  On not losing.

3. Fear makes you feel irrationally inadequate.

You have everything you need to be successful right now. You are capable of achieving every success you can ever imagine.

Fear drives you to think you might not be good enough.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

You were born a winner… Once upon a time, that’s all you knew how to do.  Do you fully understand that?

At one point in your life the only thing you knew how to do was to conquer life.  Sure you took it one breath at a time.  But it worked…  You won.  You won consistently.  You were all you needed to succeed.

The only thing that has changed is that the world has scared you into believing that you might not be enough, have enough to change the world.

And that notion is purely irrational.

Stop fear from making you a loser.

Stop working more and start being more.

Start being more courageous.

Here’s a harsh reality:  We‘re just not tough enough…

On my wall framed hangs the famous inspiration quotation from Vince Lombardi about football and winning and what it takes to be number one.  It’s been on the wall of my office for the past decade.  It’s my own mezuzah to excellence and always pushing the limits of what I think is possible.

Last week as I was working – somewhat puzzled over some frustrating issues – my eye flickered over the glass encased picture.  At the top of the picture underneath the title, in font that was bigger than the rest of the speech by Limbardi, the following words jumped out at me:

You’ve got to pay the price…

Simple words.  A big challenge.

All of a sudden it hit me.  I needed to toughen up a little.  I needed a little more mental discipline.  I was letting my fears destroy my vision.  It reminded me a of story I had been told about a soldier in World War II.

Apparently:

A team of soldiers were fighting inch by inch for a painfully embattled strip of island.  Day after day they fought — losing men and gaining little headway.  Each day their supplies ran lower  and several of the men started getting sick.  The classic symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting would be bad enough if enemy snipers and cleverly booby-trapped minefields weren’t even more dangerous.

Each night, a few brave soldiers would swim back to the battleship anchored two miles off shore to get more supplies and ammunition.  Many never made it back.

In the middle of this sad, miserable jungle, George fought side by side with his band of brothers.  While others became feverishly sick with dysentery, he raised morale with his wit and charisma.  Things seemed to be getting better.  The enemy was being pushed back and the team was alive.  And then things got tough for George.

He became ill.  Very ill.  George got so sick that he could barely move.  As the rockets and mortars crashing overhead as he lay in his foxhole, it seemed like a matter of time until one landed too close.  And then it happened.

George said that you could always tell by the sound of a mortar overhead how close away the round might be.  Your senses perked up when the difference between death and inches is just a few seconds and quick movement.  And in a weakened state, lying pathetically at the edge of a foxhole, George and his partner had little time to move.  The round crashed into the back of the foxhole where George’s partner sat huddled.  The shrapnel completely obliterated George’s partner and gouged deep flesh out of George’s back and buttocks and legs.

Blood soon mixed with diarrhea and infection set in.  George had to get back to the boat or die.  There was no other option.  No one was able to carry him back.  To live, he had to go it alone.

And so when darkness fell, he crawled from his foxhole to the beach and into the saltwater — salt ripping deep into open and raw wounds.  And the unbelievable happened.

George swam the 2 miles back to the boat and lived.  In spite of the odds, in spite of his weakened state, George made it.

And I’m glad he did.  George Waldschmidt was my grandfather.

What kept George alive is the same thing that will help you dominate — mental toughness.

There wasn’t a cheering section waving flags and rooting my grandpa on the last 200 yards.  There wasn’t a friend putting SuperPoke “You can do it” messages on his Facebook page.  And forget about any Tweets with the words “crush it”, “good job” or “best of luck”.

It was icy water, diarrhea and deep wounds, infectious fever, and a ravenous determination to live.

Mental toughness is a process of muscle growth like physical exercise.  There is NO magic potion.  You have to intensely focus on a few key repeatable exercises.  Here are a few of them:

1. Avoid the need to blame others for anything. — Mean, small-minded people know that they suck.  That’s why they are so cranky and eager to point out your mistakes.  They hope that by causing you to feel inadequate, everyone will forget about how woefully off-the-mark their own performance is.  Stop the habit of blaming anyone for any reason ever.  It’s a bad habit.
2. Stop working on things that just don’t matter. — Not everything needs to be done in place of sleep.  If you work for a boss, then you owe them solid time.  You can’t cut that out.  You can however cut out the television time, board meetings, and anything else that gets in the way of you staying focused on your destiny.  Replace entertainment with activity toward your goal.
3. Find the positive side of any circumstance.  It’s there. — Find a negative person and you’ve found a mentally weak person.  It takes no mental courage to say that something “won’t work.”  Frankly, that’s the easy route.  What does take mental effort (lots of it sometimes…) is to believe in something when you are the only one in your cheering section.  Make it a personal challenge to find the best in every situation.  And tell someone when you find it.
4. Refuse to let yourself wallow in self-doubt.  You’re alive to succeed. – Stop comparing your problems to your last 18 failures.  They are not the same.  You are not the same.  Here’s something to remember: Your entire life has been a training ground for you capturing your destiny right now.  Why would you doubt that?  Go conquer.  Stop whining.
5. Ask yourself “what can I do better next time?” and then do it next time. — Guess what?  Spend a decade or two earnestly trying to “be better”, and that’s exactly what will happen.  The next best thing to doing something amazing is not doing something that’s stupid.  So learn from your mistakes and use the lessons to dominate.
6. Actively take time to do things that fuel your passion. (e.g. exercise…) – Living in the moment requires you to live at peak performance.  A huge part of mental fitness is physical fitness.  So go fight someone. Or go running.  Mental motivation gets accelerated by physical activity.
7. Say thank-you for something that you have taken for granted in the past. — The exercise of gratitude is a powerful ignitor of creativity.  Selfishness limits our ability to work at peak performance.  When you think only of yourself, you miss out on the real key to world domination — help other people.
8. Apologize to yourself and those around you for having a bad attitude. — Do this once or twice and you’ll snap out of your funk pretty fast.  When you start having to genuinely apologize for being a bad influence on those around you, you learn to stop whining and start winning.

The quickest way to fail is to let your fears and doubts get in the way of your passion.  It’s what happens naturally.  If you want to dominate, control your thought, young Jedi.  You’ll find yourself conquering more.

We hate to be misunderstood. Better yet, we can’t stand over-hearing (in someone else’s casual conversation) that our motives or intention suck.

How many times have you been in a conversation with a bunch of people when you thought you heard your name spaced too close to an insult or some other negative nonsense?

Maybe a little something like this:

Crowd: That Dan guy….  <faded mumbles>…  what a moron!  I would never do something like that…..  idiot…. you’re telling me…  what a loser!

You: Hey, you guys talk’n to me?

Better yet (what you really want to say): “You guys talking about me?”

You’ve been there, haven’t you?  I know I have.

And for a guy who trained for an Ultimate Fighting competition, it can be hard to bite your lip and leave the area before it becomes the scene of a crime (that would be a bad intention).

Here’s the kicker:

Usually it’s our fault people challenge our intention….

Oh, sure, I know that really we can’t help what other people think or do.  We all get that.

What most of us still don’t understand is the idea of rephrasing our discussions around clearly stating our intention.

Get what I am saying?

Instead of explaining the 6 things that we are going to do; and then justifying the 19 sub-reasons why doing those things is the best way to accomplish our goal, many times it simply easier to state our intention.

Follow me?

Replace “I am going to…..” with “I intend to……”

Now don’t start throwing things at your computer screen (yet…).  You’re right.  It is a subtle shift.  It’s a small deal.  But it has strong psychological power…

People will take “pot-shots” at your actions all day long.  Frankly, it’s pretty easy to do.  Still further, you’ll find people who take what you think is a success and turn it into a “major failure”.  They’ll lambast your 1st Prize ribbon as self-serving and selfishly ego-maniacal luck.  They’ll call you all manner of sophisticated names and even use religion, race, or pedigree as a platform for mis-characterizing your activity.

If you happen to eavesdrop long enough you’ll find out that you might have even murdered the queen of England…

It’s fairly ridiculous behavior.  Right?

Here’s an observation for you:  These same people back down when you say VERY clearly what you are “intending”…

When you say “I intend to make that happen”, they say “Go to it…”.  But when you say “I am going to do that”, they say “Over my dead body”

While we are jealous and petty people at times, we find ourselves reluctant to challenge inanimate intention…  When a motive is clearly stated, we tend to accept it.  Start stating yours…

Don’t take this lightly.  Here some things to consider:

1. Be smart about the abuse you decide to take — Life is short but it certainly comes at you hard.  It’s a non-stop game of survivor.  Be careful about how much effort you place in convincing people of your point of view.  Leave the politics around tactics to someone else and state your motives right up front.  It will take a lot of guts for someone to challenge you.  Some still will.  And, maybe, you do need to be challenged.  You will find, though, that the mindless jibber-jabber fades into the background when you are clear about your intention.
2. Create your own drama to boost your productivity — Great politics is great PR.  You certainly don’t want to launch a full scale ad campaign every time you want to get something done, but it doesn’t hurt though to tell your side of the story first.  Create the narrative before people start imagining.  There is a reason we call the imagination “wild” — because it is.  Stating your intention early and often keeps all of us sane and motivated.  The more you remind people of the goals from the beginning, the less you will find yourself “challenged” as you attempt to navigate an every changing tactical landscape.
3. Make doubters look like idiots, debating themselves — Make your activities a by-product of your intention and strategical downplay your exact movements…  Let’s talk turkey here.  You don’t always know how you are exactly going to get something done.  Right?  You might have a ton of experience in a specific area, but that doesn’t mean that this challenge is exactly like all the rest.  You might want to tell us more about the destination than the journey.  Ask the doubters what tactics they would like to employ to get your goal accomplished.  One of two things will happen — your goal will get done or you will silence your critics.  Either way, I am sure you’ll be happy.

Let me show you how this works:

I intend to change the world of high-performance…

That’s my motivation.  That’s what I am “up to”.

And, no, in case you overheard the same thing I did, I’m not like “that”.  Just a guy with a different perspective trying to help you be more effective and unstoppable.

What do you intend to do?

It’s that time of year again where we take stock of our poor performance from last year and write down blissful wishes for what we want to make happen this year.

It actually a pretty worthwless activity…

From joining a new gym to going to church more to drinking less — whatever you resolve come New Years has a 78% chance of ultimately failing.  That’s almost everybody!

I didn’t make that up.  That’s what a recent international study of almost a thousand people indicated.

Just like we have been trained to do nice things for people around Christmas even though we act like inconsiderate jerks the rest of the year, so we have also trained ourselves to pause ever so briefly at the beginning of each year to wish we could do a few things differently in the coming year.

And it’s a worthless waste of time for 8 out of 10 of us.

And while I am on the subject, why are we still talking about 3-year and 5-year plans when we can’t get this yearly thing figured out?  Seems like a bunch of silly nonsense.

Seriously, are we committed to real change? Real sacrificial “it hurts like hell” change.

We don’t even apply the same level of respect to our own goals as we do the dudes we watch on ESPN.

We respect an obsessive work ethic that makes an all star like Michael Jordan sink 100 free-throws in a row before leaving practice.  We marvel at the obscene practice put in by perfectionists like Tiger Woods who practice distance putting at 3 and 10 foot intervals for hours a day.

And yet when it comes to putting in a little more effort for ourselves, we tend to be the first to come up with excuses (good ones too).  And the older we get, the more experience we gain explaining why our failure was really a good thing.

Aren’t you tired of mediocrity?  Of being an “almost all-star”?

Are you willing to do something about it?  To change?

Are you willing to:

1. Connect your goal with a larger mision in life… (turn “making more money” into “helping a small company flourish”)
2. Construct your goal into a series of smaller monthly milestones… (turn big deadlines into a series of progressive tasks)

If so, you might be ready to see breakthrough this year.  This might be the year of YOU… ALL of the 22% who accomplished their annual goals noted that these two were the two primary drivers for their success — passion and planning.

It’s amazing what you can do when you really want something more for yourself.

You might just change the world.

High-performers in the world of “deal making” share the universal quality of self-assessment. It’s an internal process of strategically measuring the inputs and outputs of a process or idea (or just “what went down…”) and deciding if it could be done better.  And that’s all good.  It’s more than good — it’s necessary.

But it’s probably not good enough to make you an ALL-STAR (the stuff of legends)

You work better when you work with gut instinct.  At this stage in your deal process, you generally know what NOT to do (which is 2/3 of the learning process) and WHERE you need to head.  But to be the best, you have to be extraordinary — and that requires a different, new, or abstractly innovative idea.  Everything that your boss won’t probably agree with…. because it’s not safe.

But there’s actually science to prove that you do make better decisions from gut instinct rather than thinking too much.

“Whether evaluating abstract objects (Chinese ideograms) or actual consumer items (paintings, apartments, and jellybeans), people who deliberated on their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” write authors Loran F. Nordgren (Northwestern University) and Ap Dijksterhuis (Radboud University, The Netherlands).”

And check this out.  The science gets even more compelling.  After 5 different independent studies, the authors found that “the more complex the decision, the less useful deliberation became.”

That means that less “thought-manship” and more gut instinct is the key to outrageous deal success.

P.S.  Ever wonder why outrageous success is so hard to predict (i.e. there’s no formula)?  It’s because you’re thinking too hard about it.  As you move with gut instinct you see enough of the distance to move around obstacles to get to the finish line.  And, like running at the North Pole, you don’t really need to look over your shoulder because your competition is slim…. (and that’s where I like to play)

I aspire to be courageous.

I don’t really think I am.  What I do (who I am…) doesn’t seem to demand courage.  But I might be wrong….

A few days ago I received an encouraging email from a friend who is much older than I am and was a mentor at one time.  We didn’t always see eye-to-eye on everything (especially in some recent interactions) so the email was altogether unexpected.  Here is the first paragraph:

You are a great teacher, a great contributor, a fine example of someone with  the courage to stand up, trust in his ability to create value in the scary moment of now, and make a real difference.

As I read this email I literally had to pause and collect my emotions so I could read the rest of the email.  So many thoughts at the same time. Glad to be recognized.  Challenged to continue. Thoughtful for the task at hand….

I realized that courage is not no much a single big action as it is a series of small and seemingly insignificant ways of living.

Here is what the inches of courage look like:

1. Planning for greatness when you feel clueless….
2. Turning a 5 mile run into 6….
3. Not apologizing for being different….
4. Dialoging with people that are smarter than you….
5. Changing your mind….
6. And then changing your mind again….
7. Telling the world what you are passionate about….
8. Disagreeing with a good idea….
9. Waking up and doing it all over again….
10. Fighting for the extra 1% when 99% seems good enough….
11. Saying “NO” because your “YES” won’t be worth it….
12. Believing in yourself even though you are the only one….
13. Telling yourself the truth about what scares you….
14. Facing your fear of failure….
15. Starting something new when the old stuff isn’t done yet….
16. Pausing to be grateful for past life lessons….
17. Finish reading all the books you half started….
18. Using personal doubts to fuel activity….
19. Asking a close friend what they think your faults are….
20. Answering the phone when you see it’s the bill collector….
21. Teaching a class on a topic that you have mastered…
22. Mastering a topic well enough to teach a class about it….

How many times will you be courageous today?

Your Effort Differentiates!

My CEO buddy Kriss Wilson posted a quote on Twitter from Buddha that fit right in to some of my recent thinking about selling and the differentiation between those who SELL and those who are “working on it.”

I return to my passion about effort and the idea of the PQ that creates All-Stars.

First — a quote from the mind of Kriss:

“Fools wait for a lucky day but every day is a lucky day for an industrious man.” ~Buddha

Quite a lot of selling is doing…

It’s about putting in the necessary effort to navigate your way around obstacles to be successful.  It’s about being indefatigable, unstoppable, completely motivated…

It’s NOT:

……saying,
…………thinking,
………………planning,
……………………preparing
…………………………debating,
………………………………creating,
……………………………………testing,
…………………………………………searching,
………………………………………………building,   or
……………………………………………………making calls!

It is about EFFORT and the art of EXECUTING!

It’s the age old principle of “making your own luck”!

No sooner had my mind stopping spinning when I got a call from Tom Searcy which led to another discussion with a CEO in need of “sales execution” — not any of the things listed above.

And I again questioned this.

WHY? Why is execution so hard for start-ups?

And it really comes to a handful of explanations:

• You don’t know how…
• You are too busy with less important details…
• You underestimate the required amount of hard work…

I usually find in working with high performing CEO’s that the last reason is by far the most common reason for lack of sales.  The “sweat cost” of “always on” selling is easy to underestimate and it’s deadly if not fixed”

Entrepreneurs give up just before they become successful.  CEO’s quit long after they should have given up on poor selling ideas.  High-end “sellers” over promise results without understanding the resources they are being promised by the organization.

What to do?

• Put in the effort!
• Stay committed to putting in the effort!

You can change just about anything when you have the effort to back up your planning!

What would you be doing if today were the last day for you to be alive?

Would you work harder, take the day off, or just spend the day with regrets?

For the vast majority of us, there will be more days than today, but there won’t be a way to get back the time you spent today NOT focusing on your priorities.>

Focus on your priorities for today like tomorrow might never come.  It’s amazing what you can accomplish with the proper perspective…

P.S  Don’t worry about getting it wrong as long as you are willing to keep trying…