MP&S Bruce Cruickshank - March 24, 2018
Bruce Kirkshank delivers a motivational talk describing his path from university football aspirant to sales professional and business owner. He stresses two core rules for business success—showing up consistently (80% of success) and having high energy—and the importance of implementing knowledge rather than merely collecting it. He recounts growing a company from $27M to $950M, training over 5,000 salespeople, suffering a financial and personal crisis culminating in multiple suicide attempts on June 27, 2015, then finding transformation through meeting Dave Swanson on June 29, 2015 and joining Major Market/MP&S, becoming a facilitator and international speaker.
Questions this video answers
June 27, 2015 (attempted four times).
June 29, 2015.
Grew the company from $27 million in sales to $950 million in sales over about 10 years.
Over 5,000 salespeople across North America.
Graduated university with a business degree in 1984 (Bishop's University).
How are we doing this morning? Welcome to our first ever Saturday two hour event. So you people are making history with us just right along with the business. So thank you for coming. Thank you for giving up to Saturday morning and coming and joining us. Who here wants to have fun today? How's the energy, guys? How many people here sincerely want to grow their business and be massively successful? How many people here want to learn some things today? I'm going to give you two right now. Let's write them down. You want to be successful in business? I'll give you two general rules really right now. 1, 80% of your success is just showing up every day, getting up every day and going at it, and giving your best every day. 80% of success comes from that. The other is he or she who has the most energy usually wins. I want you to write that down. He or she who has the most energy usually wins. I'm a pretty high energy guy. How's our energy today? That's better. Let's get going at it though. Okay. All sincerity. How many people here came here to learn some things today? How many people believe learning should be fun? How many people believe running your business should be fun? Therefore, how many people believe life should be fun? Absolutely. If we're not having fun, why the heck are we doing it? Right? Let's have fun making money. That's what I always like to say. Make sense. Turn to somebody, give them a high five and say, let's have fun making money. I'm going to ask you to do two things today. There's two things that I want you to do today. And those can be the greatest gift that you give to me today. Make sense? Only two. One, we're going to give you a lot of different tools and techniques and strategies that will absolutely, massively grow your business. How many people heard knowledge is power? Knowledge is not power. Debunk that. Knowledge is purely knowledge. Knowledge is purely knowledge. If you don't do anything with that knowledge, what good is it to you? If you go to things like this and you take all the knowledge out of this and you put it on the shelf when you go home and you do nothing with it, how's it going to help you? That's shelf help. That's not self help. Okay, so knowledge is not power. Knowledge implemented is power. Knowledge implemented is power. And so one of the greatest things that you can give me today is, and I mean this very sincerely, take one or two. We're going to give you a whole bunch of different things because we're all different. Our businesses are all different. We're all in different ways. We're going to give you one or we're going to give you a bunch. I want you to take one or two and sincerely go put them and implement them into your business. That can radically change your business. And it will start the habit, the success habit within you of implementation. We're going to be talking about success habits throughout the day. Highly successful people implement. Highly successful people have the habit of implementing. Whatever they learn, they go implement into their life. Okay, the other that I'm going to ask you is to play full out and be open. Okay? If we're all closed and we're not open to the learning that we're going through, how are we going to have it valuable to us? If we are ready to play full out and open and receive the learning and then go and do it, you're going to be successful. Can I ask those two things of you today? Show of hands. How many people are committed to do that? Great. Turn to somebody, give him a high five and say, I'm committed. Are we ready to get going? Are we ready to get going? Yes. There we go. Much better. My name's Bruce Kirkshank. That's myself. And I graduated university with a business degree back in 1984. How many people are familiar with Bishops University back in the Eastern Townships of Quic? Oh, we got a couple. Good. Bishops is a small little liberal arts school. It was absolutely the place that I was meant to be go to for the university. I had a great three years there and I played football for them. And my dream was to become a professional football player. I was good enough to get there. And I got into camp in 1984 with the Toronto Argonauts. That's what got me to Toronto. And I was in camp for about three weeks. I thought I was doing pretty good. And one morning I got a message saying that the head coach wanted to see me. I was all excited. I thought I was doing well. I went running off the field and I'm running through the locker room to go see the head coach because his office on the other side. And I ra by my stall and I knew what was coming because my stall had been cleaned up. I got caught and in a moment's notice, my dream tent was thrown away. Really disheartened, didn't know what to do. I was exiting the facility from that point of view, and one of the special team coaches, we had kind of bonded over the three weeks that I was in camp. He came up to me and he said, what are you going to do now? I said, I have no idea. He says, I think you'd be pretty good in sales. My best friend is the app manager for Reader's Digest. Would you like me to give him a call, see if I can get an interview for you? I said, sure. And two days later I had an interview by that name. Fellow was named Larry Thomas. He was the ad manager for Reader's Digest. And about a week and a half later, I found myself selling ad space for the Reader Digest. That's how I fell into sales. 96% of all salespeople fall into a sales career. That's how I fell into mine. I did that for about 10, 12 years. I had an amazing opportunity. I started work with a company. They were $27 million in sales when I started working with them. They had just come to the Toronto market. They were a Quebec based company. They'd just come to Toronto. There was one other gentleman myself. We were literally hired at the same time. We put an amazing. We didn't know it at the time. Okay, that's another thing. In your business and success, you don't know what idea is going to lead you to success. So just take the idea and run with it. And so we put in an amazing sales strategy and over the next 10 years, we grew that business from 27 million in sales to 950 million in sales. We had an absolutely amazing, amazing time. It was a really strong strategy and we got up and we worked hard every day. That led me to then starting my own business from that point of view. And I started my own sales performance management business back in the early 90s. I've been doing it for more than 20 plus years and I've personally trained over 5,000 salespeople across North America. You want to talk to me about sales, I'll talk all day long about sales. I love sales. Okay. I got into the business because in my mind a lot of salespeople were trained how to sell the way the Wright brothers were trained how to fly through crashes and burns. That teaches you what not to do. It doesn't teach you what to do. I wanted to teach salespeople what to do on purpose and how to do it on purpose to be successful. And I did it for 20 plus years. And I had a great time traveling all over North America. At the height of the business, I was on the road 36 weeks out of the year, traveling. My children, my children are my world. You'll find out about more of that in a little bit. And so I'd fly out on a Sunday night, Chicago, Louisiana. Detroit, wherever, do some training, fly back afternoon flight, get back into Toronto in time to make my children's events, and then fly out on the red eye and be training the next morning. Because you got to make commitments. Everything in life is about what you're committed to, not what you want. And then in June 2015, I lost over a million dollars of net worth. It actually started two years before that, 2013, through a series of what I'll say, bad decisions, bad financial decisions, bad emotional decisions, bad personal decisions. I went on a downhill decline from a financial point of view and lost more than a million dollars worth of net worth. And on June 27, 2015, I'll never forget that day, I attempted to take my life four times. And I'm a pretty committed individual, and so I attempted four times. Pretty good. The mind's an amazing thing when you understand how it works. If you don't understand how it works, it can be a very dangerous thing. At that point in my life, I had convinced myself that my family would be better off if I wasn't around because there was a large insurance policy. And given the downhill slide that I'd been on for 24 months, from that point of view, that's the decision that I made. Where I live, there's a quarry about 30km away. Routinely going up and down the highway. There are dump trucks full of £70,000 of crush gravel. And I had convinced it in my head that I could go and I could put my car in front of that truck. The truck would go up and over, and while the driver would be emotionally scarred, would not be physically damaged or hurt, I would be gone. The family would have the insurance, and they would be okay. I attempted it four times. Four times I crossed the center line. Truck was honking its horn, was flashing its legs, and I was going right for its grill. Each and every time I pulled it over at the last minute because of my children. On the fourth time, I just, just, just missed the truck, and I almost lost the car itself. Finally settled the car on the side of the road, and I absolutely bawled there for an hour. And in that moment, how many people believe the universe has a plan for you? Okay? In that moment, I made a decision that my life was going to change and I would never be here again. And I'll tell you this, that was the first time in my life I started to listen to the plan that the universe had in place for me. Up until then, I was so busy being busy. I was so focused trying to be successful. I was so focused trying to be something that I wasn't or doing some things that I wasn't. And I started to listen to the plan that day. And my life has grown so much in the last, I'll say two and a half years from there. It's been absolutely amazing. And this is how the universe works. It's pretty freaky. Two days after that, June 29, 2015, I met an individual. How many people here have met an individual who's come into your life for a very short period of time, a day, a meeting, a week, and has a profound change in your life? I met a gentleman by the name of Dave Swanson. He was actually looking to transfer to Calgary from Lethbridge. He was in sales. He had heard that I could possibly help him find a job in sales. And so we had met for a coffee. That meeting was already set up. We had a wonderful meeting. And for whatever reason I trusted Dave. I don't know why, I just immediately trusted him. And he told me about this incredible course called or company called Major Market, this wonderful course they had and I should go to it. While I was listening to the Universe, I wasn't quite listening to it that much because he said it's a wonderful three day course. And I said I'm not going to do a three day course, are you nuts? And he said there's a two hour event. I said okay, I can go to two hour event. And I went to the two hours just like you people are here today. And that changed my entire life and the course of my life over the last two and a half years. I became a student in August 2015. I became and joined a family in 2016. What I mean by that? I was going through the course and then I started to become a facilitator for the company, facilitating some of our accountability groups. And then from there I started teaching some of our courses, one of them being our sales warrior course. I teach that from that point of view. The other is our profit, of course. And then I'm an international speaker, Trina Sherpa and I live in Cochrane, Alberta. I don't live here in bc. I fly in every Sunday night. I go home every Friday night. I'm here this weekend to be in front of you and thank you for coming and I enjoy the opportunity to be in front of you. I love Cochrane, Alberta. I don't say I'm even from Calgary, I'm from Cochrane. How many people know Cochrane? Yeah, near Banff. Cochrane is about halfway between Calgary and Banff. And I love the mountains. I love the Rocky Mountains. That's why.
