Ep 342 | 3 Lessons I Learned From 29029 About Momentum

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. There are some people in my world, a lot of listeners here at No Days Off, that are presently in the midst of a 60-day sales production challenge. I got to thinking about these individuals because I'll tell you what, 60 days is a long, long time. It doesn't look that long on paper. Yeah, I guess it kind of does. But when you say 60, doesn't sound like the end of the world. But you're— when you're into something like a contest of some sort or a challenge of some sort, that last 60 days, it is really, really damn hard to maintain your momentum. First week, you're all excited. Second week, you're kind of building on that momentum. Maybe third week, you hit stride. Fourth week, you're in maintenance mode. By that fifth or sixth week, it looks like you're never going to get to the end of the road. That seventh week, man, maybe you pick up a little momentum because you know you're nearing the end, and then the eighth week is the finish line. But Weeks really kind of 5 and 6, that middle of the, of the 60 days, let's say, really, really hard to keep your head down and doing the work. Now, you don't have to be doing a 60-day challenge for what I'm about to discuss to apply to your world. The reality is we're all running something in business, in life, that requires us to maintain not just build, but maintain momentum. And it got me thinking about the 29029 events that I've been fortunate to participate in last year. And I've got a couple of them this year, as a matter of fact, one coming up in a month or so in Whistler. And if you don't know about 29029, you can look it up, but it is essentially you're hiking the equivalent of Mount Everest, 29,020 feet, 29,029 feet. You are hiking up a ski resort or ski mountain like I'm doing at Whistler, and then you gondola down and then you hike up and gondola down. You do a number of these cycles until you reach 29,029 feet. It's a pretty damn hard challenge. Last year I did Snow Basin and I was thinking about that event, Snow Basin, Utah, that 29029, and was thinking about the operation that is 29029 in general. And how they got so many people to power through to the end of that event, even if they weren't going to get to the finish line, even if they weren't going to complete the 29,000+ feet. They still witnessed, we all witnessed people go 1 or 2 or 3 or even 4 hikes beyond what they ever thought they were physically capable. 50 or 60% of the people completed the challenge, which means 40 or 50% did not. Yet those 40 or 50% still persevered or still did an additional rep or 2 or 3 beyond what they likely could have done. How did 29029 do that? Here's what I observed. Number 1, leading into that event, the day or 2 leading into it and even during the event, all of the communication, all of the talks, all of the presentations done by that 29029 group were, that there was a theme. And that theme was resilience, perseverance, grit. It was all about you're going to encounter obstacles, you are going to want to quit, and you've got to persevere, you've got to push through. In other words, before anybody even got to that point of, gosh, I don't think I could go on, you were already mentally conditioned and dare I even say brainwashed to expect that moment, to expect that moment. Like, you knew you were going to have that point of pain, that point of reflection, that point of self-doubt, and the 29029 crew had already mentally conditioned you for it. So number 1, I found that that 29029 leadership team had you mentally prepared for that, for that moment when you wanted to tap out. The second thing I witnessed 29029 do was the community. Create a community that you felt like you didn't want to let down. In other words, when you were observing a few hundred other people around you continuing to push, you didn't want to tap out. You were inspired. You were motivated. You saw so-and-so doing something and you're like, gosh, if they could do it, I could do it too. Over the course of the, the event, which is a 36-hour event, it sounds crazy, but because of the shared experience, because of the shared pain, you really created some deep relationships. You almost felt like these friends of yours now. You, you didn't want to let them down. So this camaraderie, this community created a momentum and a desire to push through, to persevere, to have resilience, to have grit. So in addition to mentally preparing you, number 1, number 2, the community that was created made it darn near impossible for you to want to tap out. And then number 3, the third thing I witnessed as it pertained to helping people get that extra rep, that extra hike, that 2 extra hikes, 3 extra hikes, whatever it may be. I watched individuals that worked for the event put their arm around people at the base camp area. So you'd come down the gondola after doing a hike, and you came down to the base camp, and that's usually where people would tap out or quit. People don't quit mid-mountain, they quit after, after a cycle, after a revolution. They come down to that base camp, which is kind of your, your point of greatest weakness and they put their arm around you and they'd usher you, like, in this kind of creative, covert way. They'd usher you in, in a manner up to the start line. Now, maybe it was a physical arm around you, but it was just like words of encouragement, or a person on a mic, you know, that was, that was loud and obnoxious, like, all right, get— all right, Brian, like, time to get back to the line. Oh, Brian's about to start, it's next. And it was almost like you were forced to the start line, and all you had to do was take one step off that start line, and now you're doing another repetition. So I don't know how strategic that was. I just know that your point of greatest weakness at base camp, when you could tap out and go home, they were more— they were louder. They were putting a physical arm around you from time to time and walking you to that start line and almost pushing you off the diving board. They were just pushing you off the edge. And once you started walking, you couldn't turn back around and you were off to another revolution. So, how does this pertain to any sort of challenge that you may be dealing with, a challenge that lasts more than what you would define as a sprint? What I would encourage you to do is to do what 29029 did, which is, Number 1, set your company, set your people up with the right mindset. Let them know well in advance that there is going to be a moment in time when you're going to want to quit. There are going to be multiple moments in time. Odds are that time is going to be, you know, when you've gone for a little while, but you don't see an end in sight. You're going to get down on yourself. You're going to have self-doubt. Start preaching the message and coaching around it right now. Like, you just embarked on some sort of journey, but you know it's going to be hard. Start mentally preparing for that time where it's going to be hard so that we're prepped when we get there and there's no surprise. Number 2, build your community, right? Like, get people rallying around one another. Create energy, excitement, uh, encouragement, accountability. Get your community doing the lift for you. People don't want to let down their peers, so create a, a greater bond. Maybe it's more bonding experiences, whatever it may be. There's shared experience here, capitalize on it. And then lastly, as you're leading a team through, say, a 60-day challenge, there will come a moment where you're gonna have to put your arm around somebody and you're gonna have to walk them to the starting line, and you're gonna have to push them off that starting line so that they they get going. Let's say you, you got people, salespeople making phone calls. You may have to make calls not just with them, but maybe you got to make a phone call and hand it over to— and that call, that phone over to them, as crazy as that may sound. Or if you're in real estate and you're running some sort of door knocking challenge, maybe you got to walk to the door and bang it for them. Maybe if it's an open house challenge, you got to go work an open house with them or set it up for them and just push them out the door and have them go hold it. I know that seems extreme, and I don't literally mean do that, But you might have to put your arm around some people and just get them to the start line. And once they get going, once they get moving, once they're sitting down and, you know, like many great authors say, I'm struck with inspiration the second I sit at my keyboard, which it's not inspiration, their fingers go on the keys and they have nothing else they could do but work. In other words, they can't procrastinate. Same sort of thing here. You may need to lead them to that activity. So I love these 29/0/29 strategies. They make a lot of sense to me around prepping mentally and creating that community and putting your arm around people and getting them to the start line. These are ways to maintain momentum such that you can get to the finish line. So if you're in any sort of contest or challenge or some sort of maybe 12-week sprint at work or whatever it may be, think something that's long that requires momentum over time where you know things are going to go up and down. Let's get strategic around it right now. I want to encourage you to leverage all 3 of what we just talked about. The focusing question for you: which of these 3, 3 can you go implement today, or do you need to take action around today? That's all I got for you. Thanks for joining me, the No Days Off podcast. We really appreciate your commitment to this movement. It means the world to me. Continue to share all that we discuss here at No Days Off, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.