Defeating Your Own Worst Enemy - The Motivation Rollercoaster

You are your own worst enemy. And in this video I'm going to share with you how to get out of your own way so you can be wildly successful.

You're not alone.

Many people in this business have this thought, maybe you do too, that says I am my own worst enemy.

I have confidence.

It goes away, I struggle to regain it, and then once I do, I struggle to hang onto it. And your motivation goes up and down.

Like a roller coaster.

Now this stands in the way of you performing at your best, just like it did for Travis. So what you're about to watch is Travis and Mai's one on one coaching session. I offer these, I call them Roofing Sales Rescue, exclusively to members of the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. And despite the fact that Travis is in his first year, he's already signed 65 contracts. The guy's on his way to an incredibly successful year. But he said to me that he's his own worst enemy and he keeps getting in his own way because he wants to find a way to stay motivated. I share in this interview that I believe that motivation is a crock of garbage because it is fleeting, up and down. And what I share with him, which you're about to watch, is a new way, an entirely new way to look at motivation so you can stay motivated without ever being motivated or having to think about motivation ever again. Now I realize that sounds weird and crazy, but believe me, when you watch me explain these three steps in this video, it's going to make sense to you. And I hope that it helps you get out of your own way so you can smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience. Now let's get to it.

So, Travis, thanks for joining me. You know, what's the one thing that is holding you back personally or professionally right now?

Honestly, I think being pretty new, I just started gotten to this field this last year and so I just know it's, I've had a little bit of success with my door knocking and getting contracts and sometimes I think my worst enemies are just myself finding that motivation to get out there. Really having to just dig in a little bit, trying to get out there and knock those doors all the time.

Are you working storms or retail storms? Storms. So you said something. Your worst enemy is yourself. Tell me what you mean.

You know, some days like today has been a great day and so I'm just pumped up, I'm going, you know, flying around doing all kinds of work and it's going good and there's just those days you Know where you. I'm in a lull, and I just feel I gotta really muster it up because I'm like, I gotta get out there. People aren't gonna just call me to. Always. Not at this point in my career at least, to come out and do inspections. So just getting out there and trying to stay motivated.

Yeah. What do you. I'm. You said staying motivated. Where do you find your biggest inspiration right now? Like, what? Inspired what? Let me ask this in a better way. What does feeling motivated feel like to you?

So I have a daughter. She's 14. And I mean, honestly, a lot of times, just being able to, you know, let her know how I'm doing, just, you know, just doing a good job, knowing that, you know, I want to go places I want to do. I want to be making impact.

In.

This field in general. Like, I hope I can just be really good at this. And I want to be able to train people and make other people good. But just being successful and being, like, having my kid be proud of me, that's a big one. I pray a lot, too, so I'm always praying. I go to church a lot, so just, I don't know, just proud. Mostly my daughter and family.

Yeah. So what is. What is not feeling motivated? Feel like.

You know, when the weather might be a little bad, I'm in my car, sit there too long, you know, and it's just especially like, what's been cooler outside here. And so just, you know, getting that, like, just get out of the car and let's go. Yeah, just do it.

So you describe things that are all obviously outside your control. Weather, things like that. I think. I think motivation is a crock of garbage. And I'll tell you why. Because motivation comes and goes. And it happens to me, too, by the way. There's days like that I'll get completely unmotivated to do work. And there's days that I wake up that I'm not motivated to do a damn thing. And I don't know. Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever wake up and you're like, I just don't want to do anything. Like, I just want to do nothing. Does. Am I. Am I a total loser, or do you have this. These experiences also? You can call me a loser, too. It's okay.

No, we're both losers.

It happens, right? It's normal. There's certain days you just don't want to do it. And what I found is, like, so many of us, myself included, I spent years trying to tap into motivation how do I stay motivated? But motivation comes and goes. And if we try to rely on motivation, it'll fail us because there are days where things are beyond our control. We're not motivated when it's raining out. We're not motivated when we got yelled at by a customer. We're not motivated to go to work when we have an issue with our kid or our wife or something. We're not motivated to go to work when we have bad news or we don't feel well. And all of that goes out the window. So to rely, to try to rely on something that is, that is a very inconsistent resources is kind of this fallacy in approaching sales in life. And I would, I would challenge you to replace the word motivation with the word discipline. Because discipline doesn't matter if you're motivated. Discipline means you're doing the same things all the time, no matter what. And then we go one step deeper and I wonder if I have it on my shelf. I just set, set up my books on my bookshelf. Yeah, right here. This. And Charles Duhay books. Charles Du's book on habits. What is Charles Duke's book called? The Power of Habit. And then there's Atomic Habits. And I think at the end of the day, what we need to do is, is replace again.

Again.

We have motivation and we have discipline and we have habits. And in habits, good or bad, they carry us forward. They're consistent and they're reliable. Motivation is not. Discipline also comes and goes. But we use these to get to the end goal of creating a good habit. So I'll use my motivation, which is fleeting. I'm motivated one day and not another, and motivated one day and not another. By the way, the same thing even happens in my hobbies. Like, I love trail running and I go through times where I'm super motivated to run. And then in the winter when it's 15 degrees out and the sun doesn't come up till 7 in the morning or 8, 7:30 or whatever, and it's, I have to get my run in. And now I'm putting a headlamp on and running in the pitch black in the mountains when it's 15 degrees, I am not mo. I don't like, wake up like, oh, I'm so excited to go from my cozy warm bed resting to frigid temperatures in the dark by myself running in the mountains, like, there's absolutely no motivation. But it's like today, like 55 degrees sunny, beautiful, like, cool. Chris Bear and motivated. So I'm going to carry that motivation and then have discipline to say, hey, I'm going to do this every day. And you can create even a small. I like doing short windows of time, of short challenges. So the motivation that dwindles. Instead of being like, for the rest of the year, I'm going to do this, like, do it for the next three days or the next week because it's much easier to just put blinders on and think of conquering it in the short window. Similar to like, you know, if someone were to quit drinking, you don't think about quitting for the next forever. I quit drinking. What did I think about the next day? Right now making today's like this decision, the same decision over and over again. So we use the motivation energy to then have discipline. And as we have discipline, we start doing the same things over and over again. And then we create habits. And the habits will carry us forward. Good or evil. Evil habits, which I had end of work day. Drink happy, drink sad, drink right, celebrate, drink those habits again. There's good habits and bad habits, other bad habits. Like if you pick up your phone the first thing in the morning because it's on your end table and you're into it, that's a habit. We get a choice to create habits. So I think our goal is not to amp up motivation, but it's to have a deeper sense of why and purpose and then allow us to create habits that carry us towards our purpose and our why, regardless of the motivation. And we just look at work as a habit. I have a habit of waking up every day. I have a habit of spending my mornings, you know, in my pipeline, in CRM. I have a habit of showing up at neighborhoods by 3:30pm I have a habit of knocking at least 50 doors or 100 doors or the number is. And I have a habit of ending my day by planning tomorrow. And I have a habit of every time I sign a deal, I follow the system where I ask for referrals and I do this and then that way you don't need motivation. It's just like that's the habit. That's what I do every day. And anyway, so I just want to share that with you that I think the, the easiest way to get, to get over, as you put the worst enemy is yourself, is to get yourself out of the way and let your habits replace your, your, your own enemy.

I actually, that sounds really good too. I have that audiobook app. So I think I'm like, go on there, download. Because I get a book every month. I Think I'm gonna get that one today and maybe start taking a look at that.

That's a good one. So, James Clear, which is interesting. I think this is actually the best selling non fiction book in us or I think it was either us or world history. I forget. But anyway, yeah, an easy way and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. I really liked Charles Duhigg's book the Power of Habit as well. I know. Anyway, listen to the samples of both and pick the one that, that'll be the, the most, the one that resonates with you because at the end of the day they're very similar in their approach in the philosophy because they break down the science of what creates good habits and bad habits and changing habits sucks. But the one thing I will share on this and then we'll go on is there's an analogy that I heard and I don't remember, I don't, I don't remember who I can attribute this to. But like sending a rocket into space, the hardest part is getting off the ground. And if you look at space travel to get into space, all of the fuel and energy is at the very beginning to get the rocket off the ground. Once it's off the ground, the energy consumption is a little lower because it's not accelerating from zero to speed. It has to sustain speed. But then once it gets out of our atmosphere, gravity takes over. So, so that's kind of the same analogy of like creating habits is they take a boatload of energy to start and you're thinking about, I gotta go do the new thing and I gotta do this. And then what happens is after you start doing it, they require less energy. Until then the habit takes over. Just like you're in orbit, like you're just, you're just moving and it's second nature. And I, I've loved that analogy because as I've created new habits in my life, I'm just like, all I gotta do is like six weeks of doing the same thing. It'll be hard work for six weeks and then it'll take over and it's easy. So anyway, but, but what else can I help you with? You had your worst enemy, finding motivation and staying motivated. Did we not? Did we. Is there anything we didn't touch?

I think no, because that helps a lot. Because in all reality I'm trying to. I just got a personal trainer. So I'm on like this new workout. Like I'm supposed to go to the gym every morning. I have four days. I'm supposed to lift three cardio days. I have this set eating plan and everything. I think now think of it like that way. I'm just gonna try to. Instead of thinking of this for, like, oh, I got this for 12 weeks. I think even just hearing that, I'm gonna just try to do it, like, day by day.

Yeah.

Just start doing it. Hey, one day at a time. Let's get. Let's. Let's get the first day. And then like you said, maybe try to start making it a habit. Yeah.

Tim, is there someone either at the company or. Let's start there. Is there someone at the company that would join you on this mission.

To start doing these things? Yeah, I got a couple guys that would probably. That would probably join.

I would like to challenge you to start a WhatsApp group or group text with them and say, hey, who's in? I'm doing this because the reason I don't remember the exact stat. 80 to 90% of people that set goals are more likely to achieve them if they tell other people about them. And just like, when you mentioned. I brought this up because when you mentioned that you got personal trainer. I mean, people get personal trainers for one reason. Accountability.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's really easy to skip a gym day when no one's watching. It's really easy. But when you paid for it, it's also there's a saying, when you pay, you pay attention, which I think is really true. So get a group man. Put everybody. Have everyone throw a hundred bucks in. Say you break the habit, you lose a hundred bucks. Because when you pay, you pay attention. And if you end up putting both of those together where you're paying, everyone's putting a hundred bucks in the pot. And if you lose, if you break the habit, you forfeit it. And then everyone who succeeded, maybe you guys go out and do something fun with a hundred bucks. Like who the money together. Go. Go kart racing or go do something. Something wild as a. As a celebration, like 12 weeks from now, if they make it through. But having. Having other people in your corner is a really big help. Really big help.

Yeah. I think that's. That's what I told myself. I was like, if I get a trainer and I pay. Pay for this, I'm gonna do it. And then obviously you gotta, like you said, you know, you're telling everybody in your circle about it because then you're holding. It's like. It's funny because it is. It's like you're holding yourself accountable because you are Sharing that with everybody too.

Yeah, when I had, I had some running goals and I ended up hiring a coach. Same thing. It was through an app where he could see every one of my workouts. He, he prescribed them to me six days a week and then I would do them and I wore a watch that monitored everything and it would automatically upload to the app so I couldn't hide and I'd have to, like, update my progress and how it was going and it would get progressively more challenging. And anyway, that accountability, I think is a huge help. So, yeah, this, this, this industry is just battle of the mind, dude. That's all. It's the battle of the mind. What we do every day is so simple. I mean, all we do is we, we knock doors, we talk to people, we look at roofs, and then we educate homeowners on their options and we pull our hair out dealing with insurance companies. And it's really simple. It's not easy. It's all this stuff that makes it more challenging. And you know, it's funny, just this morning I filmed a video that I was inspired during my workout this morning. That work ethic makes you a lot more money than sales skills. And most people think it's the opposite. They say, hey, I'm going to be great at sales. I'm going to be great at sales. Which by the way, obviously, ideally both. But I've watched people who I would give a B minus to a C in their sales skills, and they're making multi six figures in roofing because they have the right sales habits, because the right work ethic, where on the other side, you can be the greatest salesperson in the world. But if you don't go to work every day, if you don't have the work ethic, pull in those extra Saturdays or work the evenings when you need to. You know, it's not just putting time in, but doing the right activities all the time. They don't make money. And I've watched people that, like, in theory, you talk with them and you're like, man, you know this stuff. Like, you're good at sales, but they're not good at making money because they have no work ethic. Meanwhile, the guy that's got a killer work ethic, who's not that great at sales, he's going to make money because he's just in front of people doing the right things every day.

So I've had a lot of people ask me, especially like, newer, they're like, how have you had so much success at the doors? Like I've signed a lot of contracts since the beginning of the year, and then now I'm starting to get my builds. I just, like, closed out my first job today, like, which just felt really good. And congrats. But my. It's so hard to explain to. It's not hard, but it's like, I just don't stop going. Like, I work when I'm at home. If I'm just, you know, I'm single guy, I'm at home, I'm on my couch going through all my files or like, whatever I'm doing that I need to touch. It's just like you said. It's just staying consistent with that. And I'm at the office every day. A lot of guys, I'm like, hey, what's up, man? What are you doing? He's like, golfing, you know, and it's like middle of the day. I'm like, oh, so, yeah, you're like, sweet.

I'm working.

Yeah.

Don't get me wrong, it's great to take a break. Like, we need to treat ourselves to stuff. But I know what you mean is there. There are some people that have a tendency that. I mean, hey, that's the beauty. Everyone's got their own choice, right? Some people just. They want the flexibility and they're going to work a little bit. But you get what you put out, and as Brian Tracy says, you get what you. You have to be willing to pay the price. So if you want to be. If you want to make a bunch of money, you got to be willing to pay the price of putting in the time. If you want a bunch of freedom, cool. You got to be willing to pay the price that you're going to earn a lot less money in exchange for the freedom for the time. And you just pick one and there's no wrong answer. But you got to do what's right for you.