#197: Dominating The New Economy: Modern Sales For The Contemporary Entrepreneur With Joe Semaan

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I'm sitting here today feeling really, really good, and mostly because I've just found time to be quite creative. The last couple of weeks I've been working on a new book. It's been draining, but it's been a wonderful process. It's a book that's going to come out this coming spring. I'm sort of convincing myself that the process is really going smoothly and that this time around, maybe it won't be so painful. So basically, I'm lying to myself, but we'll see. I'm also monitoring that little chatter that says it doesn't have to be painful. Maybe it doesn't have to be. So we'll see, and I'll definitely let you guys know. Really thrilled. I've got a great guest on the show today. His name is Joe Simon, somebody that I think you guys are going to learn a lot from. I'm very interested in his philosophy. I'm just getting introduced to him, so I don't know a whole lot about him, but I want to read a bit of his bio and then of course we'll dig in like we normally do. Joe Simon is a modern sales expert. We're going to talk about what that means to be a modern sales expert. New economy keynote speaker and domination mindset coach. We'll dig into that as well. He has mentored over 350 companies in over 20 industries in the last 14 years, including audiences Like Microsoft, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Equinox. In many ways, Joe is known as a secret weapon because he's invited to speak on his secrets of selling and domination. So, Joe, I'm so happy to have you on the show, to be with you and for us to be together today.

Thanks for joining me. You too, man. I've been looking forward to this.

Way cool. So, you know, you've got a very impressive bio. What's not in that bio, the one thing that you'd love for people to know about you?

Oh man, it ain't pretty. You might love my Instagram posts and all the other things that we put out there, but I promise you, it's about 80% of our time, my time and many others, is spent trying to figure out what did we do wrong? What did I do wrong? How come it didn't go the way that I wanted? And I love what you just said a few minutes ago, that maybe you're lying to yourself as you move forward. And I always find myself having to do the same thing, like to trick myself into moving forward. When they say, love the process of whatever it is that you're working on, I don't know if love the process is maybe the best way to put it because I can't say that I'm in love with the process of the type of growth topics that you and I like to talk about, but more so of understanding how important it is. It truly is important to keep leveling up your game, your mindset, your skills, all of the above, and which leads us to a lot of those domination economy or that new economy mindset that you need to have in order to be a strong Individual, professional, provider, all those things going into this new world that we're in?

Yes. Well, we're living in really disruptive times. And if you're not a fan of disruption or if you don't like change, it's going to be a grind. I mean, it's already been a grind for a lot of people. And I think it'll continue to be a grind. It'll continue to be painful unless you at least consider what Ram Dass said, which was to make friends with change. I think you got to make change your best friend these days. So maybe we'll use that as a way to sort of leg into the conversation around modern sales. Maybe define a little bit of that for us.

Of course. Of course. I have to walk you through the short version of the story because, you know, like many entrepreneurs or sales professionals, whatever you want to call it, you know, everybody has to be doing some level of selling right now. It's just the way it is, especially with it as competitive as our economy is getting and the world economy for that matter. But basically, I mean, I spent, you know, the first 16 years of my career in sales, in some type of sales position. And a couple of things fascinated me throughout that journey as I became a little bit more mature. I'm not going to say I became mature, but as I became more mature, I became fascinated with why in my sales career and then helping to lead so many others, why are there so many ups and downs in something that I practice every single day? And I compare myself to an athlete. If I were an athlete and I had this many ups and downs in my career, where would I be? I wouldn't be on the starting lineup. I probably wouldn't be in the NBA. I probably wouldn't be respected by many. And I'd always have that fear lingering in my background of maybe limiting my aggressiveness or limiting my creativity because I'm wondering when I'm going to be strapped again or budgeting again or what disaster is around the corner. And that's— you and I both know, and hopefully most of our audience knows by now, whether you're young or old, you know now that you can't really predict where next year's going to be. And right then and there, I realized what it was. And it was that people develop their skills far too slow for the world that we live in. And they become romantic about their experience, meaning once it works for them, they tend to get attached for what works for them. You need to realize in the new economy that what works for you is probably for a temporary period of time. And more importantly, to anticipate where you think things are going, or at least be prepared, as you like to say, pivot and add to your skills, add to your network. Don't be so emotionally attached to something that previously made you successful. something you read in a book 10 years ago or whatever the case may be. And the one skill that we don't tap into enough, and we probably never will unless Elon puts a chip in our brain or something, is we forget how fast we can learn and how good we can get quickly. We forget that the thing that makes us human is how fast we can adapt. Fear of change is constant. There's nothing wrong with that, but to be willing and ready to accept the fact that Constant change, constant adaptation is now either a part of your life or it's not. And if it's not, the next 3 to 5 years might be really, really challenging for you.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So, to be a modern sales entrepreneur, let's say, or someone that utilizes modern sales techniques, does that mean somebody that knows how to leverage uncertainty, leverage the power of uncertainty, or leverage resiliency? What's a signpost, let's say, to somebody that's—

Right. Yeah, man, people ask me all the time, like, what exactly do you mean by modern? Are you just using that word because your popularity is just now growing and you found it to be a great catchpiece, hook piece? And that's not really it. It came from the frustration of me going through the last big economic shift or pivot period of '07, '08, '09.

Yeah, brutal time in so many people's lives.

Yeah,

it's 10 years ago, more even now, but we can still remember the blood was thick in the water.

Because of human behavior fundamentally, a lot of rules and sort of associations with sales are still there. A lot of the human details are still there. What I noticed is quickly becoming outdated, constantly becoming outdated are the tactics in sales. The number one reason for that, Markel, is because people are sold so much that our customers are adapting to how we sell 1,000 times quicker. Right. And so when we say modern selling, what we're really saying is be ready to adapt your tactics, adapt your language, adapt your questions, constantly be looking for a more meaningful, more effective way to communicate. Yeah, your customers can't see your intentions. All they can do is hear your words. And if you're face-to-face, some body language too. And what I find in every industry I've been to, every single one of the 20 I've been to, is 80% of their tactics are handed down to them. That's what you do. Your parents can't be—

So they're playing from a— using a playbook that's been passed down from predecessors.

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. You're still going to be able to do business. You're probably not going to end up in a domination type performance culture or consistent level of paycheck for your people. And the most notable way, the most recognizable way for me to measure that over the past 10 years, after being so intimately involved in so many industries, is knowing, seeing that the conversion ratio, their average conversion ratio has gone down over time. So they're not as effective, which means they have to market more, spend more, blah, blah, blah. Your company becomes top-heavy and you become focused more so on how do I build my brand, which is important? How do I market my product, which is very important right now? But if you're a high-level consulting type industry, not like small-ticket items, and the customer is still looking for that consultation or that conversation in order to provide clarity or to help them make a decision, You got to be aware that people have probably been selling in your industry for a while. So your customer's finding it very difficult to, who do I choose? Who do I go with? Because their mind can't differentiate very well between your approach and my approach. And so people tend to lean into their product, brag on their product, educate their product. And what you're doing in the new economy or now the domination economy is when you lean into your product too much, you're actually inspiring your customer to go shop. You're actually inspiring them to go research. Even the rule, educate your customer, was created prior to the internet.

So you use that word domination, and I'm in the domination economy, a domination mindset. What distinguishes that word? Like, what does it mean in today's context?

Yeah. What it means is to be competitive is probably a fair play, is probably a safe play, but to be in a domination mode means that you're probably 4 or 5 steps ahead of everybody else. So it really comes back to accelerated learning and adaptation. Whether it's an organization or an individual trying to assess overwhelming themselves with skills that are not common in their industry yet, sort of being the pioneer or being at the forefront of cutting edge, whatever that is in your line of work. Instead of waiting for your customers to demand it or waiting for your competition to try it and then reacting to it, to be in a domination mindset and actually invest time, money, and effort into learning things that are going to advance your career and provide excessive value before it's too obvious, before it hits you in Right.

So, it's really about planning for change ahead of change, disrupting perhaps your own way of doing things, your own SOPs or whatever process it is that's part of your— the paradigm of your selling or the paradigm in many areas that exist within the company that you're either running or the one that you're working in, that you disrupt that paradigm before the market disrupts it? Is that—

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there are indicators that you're behind the curve. There are indicators that your production's up and down all the time. There are indicators that your sales team has a really sporadic array of conversion ratios and performance results every other month. And it's constantly going up and down and you start blaming the environment instead, like, oh, people aren't consistent, or, oh, they don't put in the time, or, oh, they don't— Well, really what you should be asking is, how can we massively improve our clients' experience every single month? How much time are we spending on developing our people's skills? Where are we finding those skills? It can't all be internal unless you have somebody in your company that's constantly studying human behavior, psychology, modern research, Gallup Foundation results, Forbes, all these different things and innovating, constantly innovating. We basically underdevelop and underprepare our sales and leadership teams completely disproportionately to what competition is like in the new economy.

So when you go into an organization, let's say to look at what their numbers are, what's the first thing that you're looking for typically? Is there something you look for before anything else?

Yeah. The first thing I notice is that for most companies, they measure their sales, not their losses. So you see whiteboards, you see reports, you see printouts. How many calls did you make? What's your call time? They're doing all these things that they've been taught. But they don't properly expose or measure conversion. So that's the first indicator that I know that somebody like me or similar can help them out. And the second thing that I notice is that when I listen to them in their industry, I hear the sounds of selling. I'm able to tell right away because a lot of the industries that I help, fairly fluent in. So I can tell when they think they're a really unique organization or have a really unique product. But when I listen to their sales or I play back their phone calls or whatever the case is, I tell them 90% of the words and the techniques that you use are extremely common in your industry. So I monitor, I'll monitor for a week or two, you know, and then I'll explain to them the psychology of what needs to change and we'll work on it little by little. Yeah. But if your customer cannot tell that there's a significant difference in the way that you lead them towards a decision and that the many of even the words, even the sounds, the questions, the qualifying, the pitch, the benefits, the are very, very similar in your industry makes it difficult for a customer to choose you. And instead, what they're going to do is then resort to price shopping. If everyone looks the same, drives the same cars, takes me to the same restaurant, orders the same drink, listens to the same music, who do I choose?

That makes sense.

It's uncovering their sales patterns. What are the sales patterns in your industry? Start there. And with the most common sales patterns, either eliminate them completely or look for a more meaningful way to communicate those to your client.

What have you noticed in terms of sales patterns that have changed over the course of the last 6 months while we've been seeing this pandemic unfold?

Yeah, so really, you know, it kind of depends on your industry. As an industry becomes popular, its sales patterns accelerate. So right now, let's take the mortgage industry for example. Rates are super low. So what's the pattern right now? Pattern is going to shift much more quickly. Now, what can I anticipate because of that? I can anticipate because of that, 3 quarters of the country is going to have a low rate next year, and then they're going to call asking for cash. Well, when they call and ask for cash, what's going to happen to their rate? Going to go up. So right now, my customers are forming the pattern of, give me the lowest rate, give me the lowest rate. I want a 2% rate. And so I've got to shift my language to be able to appreciate and align with those things, but then lead them in a more intelligent direction. So literally it means if you're still using the same words, the same questions, the same approach in your sales calls this year as you are next year, then your customers are going to expect the same result or they're going to shop the same result. So already companies will reach out to me and they'll be like, hey, we've already worked with each other, or they kind of understand how this goes now because of what I've been preaching. And if they want to have a rockstar first quarter, They start developing now. We start anticipating the patterns that we're going to see that are forming.

Anticipating the change ahead of the change that's going to come.

What's going to have to change in our sales process or in our communication flow so that we can better consult a customer when the tides change?

Right. Well—

It's not as easy. Yeah.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode. of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. You and I talked before we actually hit the record button that we've both experienced our fair share of challenges in our lives and the ups and downs, including coming out of the last Great Recession. So let's talk a little bit about resilience. I'd like to get your personal definition of what resilience is and how it was that you applied that definition to picking yourself up, getting back in momentum, and creating something out of the last sort of great challenge, financial challenge that you faced.

Yeah. I think Gary Vee, a bunch of others might argue this, but I think resilience is the fastest way to build self-awareness. Basically adversity. Tough times are the fastest way to build self-awareness. It's kind of a game of like, how fast can you be honest with yourself?

Yes.

About what's really happening. And when people lack— you can tell when people lack going through challenges or at least having to face them or take responsibility for them because their downtime is so much longer. They're so much more reactive. They're much more likely to flip somebody off in traffic than I am. They're much more likely to be too emotional about the normal everyday stuff in life.

Yes.

You're

not suggesting that people shouldn't care about what it is that they get, those things that get them upset. They're upset for a reason. So it's not about not caring. What is it then? How do you flip that script?

I would say it's the acceptance that that is a profound life. That is a life well-lived, is a life full of adversity and challenges and trouble and drama and heartache and financial setbacks. That is a life well-lived if you can finally, in this modern luxurious world that we live in, Say to yourself, this stuff is supposed to happen in life when I want bigger things for myself, when I have higher standards, when I have morals. These things are supposed to happen. It's how quickly can I accept it? How quickly can I learn from it? And is there something that needs to change?

It's a catalyst, in other words?

I would say it's a major catalyst for growth. I mean, resilience comes from that type of experience. And by the way, there are people who go through things all the time, but they don't become more resilient. It's lacking the self-awareness piece. It's lacking the acceptance piece. It's lacking the forgiveness piece that you need in order to say, hey, I'm still here. Okay? I'm still here. I still woke up. How long am I going to draw this out? How long am I going to use this as an excuse? How long am I going to make my past part of my present before I finally wake? And people go through this all the time. I mean, I think One of the more evolved things that people are accustomed to is breakups now. It's like you can spot when somebody has just gone through a breakup and has caught themselves. What kinds of things do they do when they're on the comeback? Where do they go? The gym, new hairstyle. All of a sudden there's a new car, or maybe they move. Maybe they're more vocal. Maybe they're more active on social media. Maybe they're— So it's kind of like, no matter what's happening in your life, what is this setback telling me? We've heard people say that before, you know, millions of times, you know.

Yep.

What is this doing for you? Not to you, but for you. You know, resilience is a big piece, you know, in business and in sales and in leadership. Of course, it doesn't necessarily make you successful on its own. What it makes you is less sensitive, less sissy, right? And able to recover very quickly. And I think, you know, this year, And who knows, maybe next year too, is a major, major wake-up call for just how resilient people are. Now, listen, let's have some real talk. We're not going to have all of a sudden the majority of the country or the world become resilient because of this whatever pandemic that we're going through. Right. But for those of you who are listening to this, you're listening to this for a reason. You subscribe to certain channels for a reason. You're trying to pick up information That allows you to progress faster in life. That's what you're trying to do. And this year is a great opportunity for you to find out, what areas of my life can I become more resilient in after experiencing what I'm experiencing, both emotionally and physically? What are those improvements I need to have? What planning needs to happen? How can I become stronger?

What do you do daily, Joe, that produces more resilience for yourself? Do you have rituals for certain things? Do you have practices that have been with you for years and years?

It's not as if I have some daily ritual that helps me to build resilience. I think what's most important is when I'm experiencing, when my mind that's been conditioned by the world partially, especially through upbringing, you learn things, mediocre type mindset stuff. When I find myself slipping, thinking negative or feeling bad for myself or whatever the case may be, the exercise comes in how quickly I catch myself. Yes. How quickly the voice in my head, the new guy says, hey, hey, hey, hey, stop bitching, bro. Remember, you're the one talking to people about catch yourself quicker, make a pivot, change your course of action, release that relationship, learn something new. Who can you talk to that can help? It's more of a catch yourself type process. Right. Yeah. And you get into daily rituals and everybody's got their daily routine, their morning routines. And I always say to everybody, I'm like, come on, man. You don't do that 100% of the time. Tell people, I don't do it 100% of the time, but here's how my ideal day goes. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the rituals and whatnot. But I think what's more important is the self-awareness piece, especially in business. Now, I'm not a life coach by any means. I spend the majority of my time mentoring and training sales teams, sales professionals, and sales leaders or entrepreneurs. And so, it applies In that world, obviously, because it's a performance-based world. But if you're talking about resilience in general, you don't have to wait to go through something difficult to become self-aware of what resilience is.

Well, how would you define resilience inside an organization? You're looking at a sales team. I speak to organizations all the time, same as you. And a lot of them, or a fair number of those organizations have me speaking to their sales teams. And if they've had a bad year or a bad quarter, They can be really down on themselves and those guys and women need— they're looking for something as a catalyst to perform better, to be better, any number of improvements that they'd like to see. So, what's resilience look like within an organization in your view?

Yeah, I mean, part of it is—

In other words, how do you create it? Do you think it's important at all within the organization itself or is it something that like— Like a soft skill. What's your—

Yeah. I think not only is this one of the most important areas, but it's one of the most lacking areas is having open communication with your entire staff. Communicate, figure out what it is, where the challenges are coming from, not just in a closed-door meeting, but listen to your people. Listen to your people. What are the challenges? Find the common denominators. And then you have to come to a little bit of an honesty check again and a little self-realization check. Do we have the resources or do we need to bring somebody in? Maybe these things are happening because we don't have a skill or resource or a platform that we need to fix it. Maybe we have to bring in a mentor like yourself to help accelerate this process, speed us up. Maybe it's the fact that your recruiting process is not what it needs to be. So the most challenging piece I find, maybe because of egos, maybe because most business leaders don't go through leadership training, they basically evolve into that position, Usually through sales performance or relationships or having money in the bank or whatever the case may be, is the transparency of communication. Being able to sit everybody down, you know, and say, hey, here's some of the challenges we're having. No matter what, we're committed to getting through this. Let's get everybody's input.

Right.

Let's get everybody's input and let's go find somebody who does it way better.

So more transparency, better communication. What, what other things do you think organizations ought to be looking at improving to become more resilient?

Performance accountability, visual performance accountability, not waiting so long before people are slipping down the hole, the rabbit hole, and then addressing it. For some reason, sales organizations usually wait to address something and then they try to have this intervention type platform or period. And that type of quick shift, and it's not as nourishing, tends to create a lot of problems within an organization. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it before. I'll see an organization that has 25 sales agents. We won't do much work together. I'll come back in 9 months and 16 of those people are gone. There's new people now. I find it hard to believe that—

Turnover is a sign of that.

Turnover is a major sign.

That's a big issue in so many companies is that they see high rates of turnover. When you see that, that's a telltale for you. What do you want to be looking at when you spot that?

I'll give you an example. I just started a new relationship with a pretty large organization, a multi-state organization in the finance And one of the questions that I get is they show me everybody's production and they'll say, hey, should we let these 10 people go and just recruit new ones? We've been giving them— it's their 4th chance or 5th chance now. And then when I look at all the other indicators, I'm like, well, not yet. Now, if you've got 10 people that are lacking performance for 6 months, why would I come in and say not yet? Because I probably recognize that you haven't developed these people in a manner that is fair to them yet.

You haven't set them up for success.

Yeah. You may not have. Now, I'm not going to come out and say that. But what I would tell them is I'd say, hey, let's give them 90 days in the program that we're working on together and then see how they do. And then guess what? A significant number of those people not only turn themselves around, their boats around, but I have dozens of video testimonials where those people have become the top producers. So it raises a big question. Is the turnover because there's no good people out there, Joe? Is that why you have turnover? Or is there a lot of turnover in your organization because you're not properly developing and holding people accountable from day one? You're setting them free because of their experience. This person's been in the field for 4 years. They should know what to do. You're trying to take the lazy man's way of building a team. Whether you have 20 years experience or 2 months experience, everybody has to go through the same development. And I think there's a sense of entitlement. Oh, this person doesn't have to go to training. We don't have to monitor that person's calls as much. They have 12 years experience. He's 46. I don't want them to get offended. You guys are going to micromanage me? I'm out of here. Kill that cat early, right? Markel, we monitor everybody. We constantly train. We love it. It's part of an athletic type of a mindset. Who's your favorite athlete? I'm sure you know they do that all the time. We do that here all the time. Is that okay with you? Because if it's going to get annoying to you or if it's going to be You know, your participation is greatly appreciated. You got to communicate that right up front. But if you wait till somebody is not performing and then say, hey, you know, we want you to start working with this person, shadow this person, go to this— now it feels like punishment. Now it feels like you're being isolated.

Right. So what I'm hearing you say is you've got to be proactive.

Yeah, it becomes a part of your culture. There's certain things in your family that are given from day one. You don't wait till the kid's 15 years old and go, you know, We're going to add a few more rules now that you're 15. It's a cultural thing. And by the way, if you're a seasoned organization and you're afraid of making that shift because of how people might feel or what they might say, that means you have a communication problem. I got to communicate to my staff, here's what we'd like to see. You guys are capable of more. We're capable of more. We're going to start discussing ways that we can improve accountability and improve performance. Not everything's going to be comfortable, But we're going to communicate about it for 30 days, and then it's going to become mandatory.

Right. That makes total sense, Joe. Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So I got one final question for you. If you're given access to the most influential companies on the planet today, what's the one thing that you want to tell them that they're not hearing from other consultants or other people? Meaning, what's your fresh idea, your fresh thought for them?

Oh, man. Man, I'd love to give you a list or run through a bullet point. Wow. If I had to narrow it down, man, such a great question. If I had to narrow it down, I would say invest massively into understanding human behavior. The more rare a human skill becomes, it proportionally also becomes more valuable. And so that misunderstanding of our customers or our workforce or our industrial environment, whatever it is, on the human behavioral side, especially if you're a sales-based organization, I get it, you have a product, you should know your product, but you don't make money because you know your product. You make money because you know your customer.

I think that's really sage actually, to not only be studying human behaviors as it pertains to the people you're selling to, but also the people who work for you, the people that work within your organization.

And if you look at the big ones, the ones that are killing it right now, you'll hear them allude to that customer-centric culture. How is our customer going to work?

Well, I don't hear too many people talking about studying human behavior in quite as a way as you just explained. So, I so appreciate you inspiring us with that idea. I think that is quite sage. I know our viewers and our listeners, they're a combination of people that are running organizations as well as people that are founding, starting up. Sort of amend my question to ask you, somebody that's in a startup right now. So I asked you about the most successful companies. What's your advice for somebody that's in a startup space right now? Well,

I'm assuming that you have a product that has already been well-researched or you're going into an emerging market, meaning you're not picking something that you're in love with, but it's actually popping right now. So assuming that, I would say, you know, the first thing you need to do is learn how to sell, perfect your communication skills, and stop reading books that are 20 years old. You're not going to find the new economy skills in there. Yeah. You

know, new paradigm selling. It's different today than it was 10 years ago. It's different today than it was 6 months ago, even.

I'll leave you with this for the newcomers. My number one rule of selling is the one who understands the customer the most will have the greatest commitment.

Yeah. That makes perfect sense, Joe. I will say in passing, as we conclude this episode, I've enjoyed the conversation. And I think more now than any point in my lifetime, things have to be reevaluated. What was the status quo? What worked 6 months or a year or 10 years ago, as you said earlier, is definitely something that may not work now. I can't say it won't work, but for sure, it has to be evaluated. And you said that early on. You said, you've got to assess these things. So we'll have full show notes. People that want to find out more about Joe's work and the consulting he does, as well as his keynote speaking, you'll find those in the show notes. And of course, you can leave a comment at adammarkel.com/podcast. Leave a comment there. And as we opened, I was expressing just my gratitude for being here and having this opportunity to have a conversation with a new friend. I'll leave with my own ritual, which is something that I do every day, but I haven't done it every day for my entire life. And it's also something that I have to remind myself to do. So occasionally when I wake up in the morning, I'm not immediately set to feel grateful about that. I want to feel grateful. I certainly realize that when I go to bed at night, there's no guarantee I'm going to get to wake up the next day. So it's an ongoing practice and one that I think, Joe, you pointed out. It's not something you can dial in. You've got to be vigilant. I know I have to be vigilant every single day to wake up with a certain consciousness, in this case, of being grateful. And then when I put my feet on the floor, I start my day differently than when I was a lawyer. And for so many years, when I started my day in that profession, I used to feel not at my best and often even anxious at the start of the day. And now I don't feel that. I haven't felt that in probably the better part of 12 years. I still have anxieties. I still have challenges, of course. But when I start my day, I put my feet on the floor and I will myself to really be in that state of appreciation. And then I say these words out loud. I say, I love my life. 4 simple words that have gained meaning for me over time. They have not been easy to say every single day, and I don't expect that they ever will be. But It's what Joe and I discussed in this episode. It requires a certain awareness. You've got to be able to assess where you're at and become aware. And often it's through adversity that we become even more greatly aware. That practice, the I Love My Life waking ritual for me is an adaptation. It's me going inside and saying, I can be my best if I set myself up to be my best or I can be my worst. If I set myself up to be that as well. So, Joe, I really appreciated the conversation today, and I know that folks are going to love it. So thanks again.

You got it. I appreciate your time, man.

Good luck to you. Yes. Ciao.

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