Brian LaManna (speaker) applies James Clear’s Atomic Habits framework to an Account Executive (AE) career. He outlines three levels—goals (surface), systems (processes like weekly activity quotas, cold calls/emails/demos), and identity (the most powerful layer)—and emphasizes forming an identity to drive consistent effort. He provides personal examples: writing a Q2 identity on his wall (‘self sourced machine that’s scrappy, a hustler…’), using activity targets as system-level plays, and a resilience tactic of extending work on good days and intentionally cutting short bad days to recharge and recover for the next day.
Chapters
For any folks out there, if you've read Atomic Habits with James Cleary kind of talks through the different levels of motivation. The most surface level is goals. But I think the challenge with goals is that winners and losers often have the same goals, right? All 32 NFL teams, what is their goal when they start the football season to win the Super Bowl. Same thing with sellers, right? Is like everyone's goal for the most part is to make presidents club, yet not everyone's going to make it. So the second layer behind goals are some of the systems for what's going to help you actually achieve that goal. In terms of my plays of the day that I referred to earlier, or how many activities you're going to make on a weekly basis, or how many cold calls, emails, demos you're going to try to schedule for yourself, things like that. And then the third layer, which I found the most powerful is that identity piece where it's like you have an identity that you want to live up to as a seller. And I think everyone's is going to be a little bit differently. I actually have mine written on my wall here. But for Q2, I want to be a self sourced machine that's scrappy, a hustler, and that if I don't hit my goal, it's not going to be due to lack of effort. When you want to form an identity like that, you put so much pressure, hopefully in a good way on yourself to actually fulfill that and live up to it, that even when I'm not feeling it, or maybe the day could have ended a little bit early, I'm thinking about that identity I want for myself and that I want others to think about me as well when they hear my name. That it gives me some of the discipline to go through and execute and make sure I'm making the most use out of my 40 hours a week. The only last thing I'll throw in there is that we're all human. Every day you're not going to feel amazing, every day is not going to be great and sunshine and rainbows and things like that. So a small trick I've just found for myself is if I'm having a really great day, I'll actually continue working a little bit because I'm feeling good, I'm feeling energized. I might put in that extra 30 minutes, that extra hour. But conversely, if I've just had a really tough shitty day, I've had a couple demos go the wrong way, everyone's hung up on me when I've cold called them and I'm just not feeling it. Like, I'm not afraid to cut my day short at 4 o', clock, go work out, watch my favorite TV show, do whatever that helps me recharge, and just get up a little bit early that next day and get after it. Prospects Customers know when you're having a great day for whatever reason it compounds and you're feeling even more confidence and swagger. And when you're having a tough day, just sometimes feel like the rain can't stop as well. So just a small tip I've learned as well.
