HOW THIS DALLAS COWBOY BECOME GREAT AT B2B SALES AND SELLING

Got a great rep today and a great story. Imagine going to college and you get a great growth spurt, and all of a sudden your ability to play football goes from good to great, and your dream comes true. You make it into the pros, but it gets competitive in the pros. It's really tough, lots of competition, and it didn't work out. So what do you do? Let's try something harder, maybe business-to-business sales, and let's go to a big company. But one of the things about a big company is a lot of times you have a 2-sided sale, meaning that you have to get the internal organization to adapt, to go after new, exciting, huge opportunities. And you have to work the client side as well. That's what we're going to be talking about today. And also that mindset and routines that got this guest into the NFL is now getting him to become a great salesperson. And too often we think it's just charm and personality and gregariousness or whatever you think it is. It's still a lot of work. Especially when you're dealing with large complex sales. And as I always say, anyone can take an order. But very few people can sell, can really get clients to change, can get our own company to change. That's a lot to do, isn't it? Let's get into it. And if you're in the courses already, especially if you start the conversation, get the meeting, we had a great one-on-one yesterday. Make sure you check it out. You can listen to it on the app. Just follow the instructions when you get into the course. They're all in the first chapter as far as office hours, one-on-ones in the app. And check out our friends over at Brevite. This guest came from my relationship with Brevite. I guess these football players all seem to know each other. Brevite is the way to become better at sales every day.

Why?

Because it allows us to interact, open our mouths without risking a sales call. Now, this silly-ass sales trainer on LinkedIn says, oh, I'd rather have people talk to potential clients. Well, that's real life. That's not practice. That's real life. How would you like your doctor to practice on you or your lawyer to practice on your case?

Uh, no.

You'd like them to be prepared, wouldn't you? Brevity allows you to have interactions. Now, people say, hey, it looks like a script. No, you can have a script in there. You can have nothing in there. You can have little bullet points, or you can just wing it. But what it does is it gets you talking, and all of a sudden you get to hear how well you're ready for the things you anticipate and the things you don't anticipate. So grab your manager, go to brevitypitch.com, and sign up for a demo. Here we go.

Hey, Micah, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Hey, Adrian. First off, appreciate the opportunity. A little bit of background about myself. My name is Micah Pellerin, nickname Moosa. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. Went to college. I was a finance and econ guy, hit a growth spurt, got super lucky, uh, ended up playing in the NFL for 4 years. And I always say on calls, you know, the truth is don't be intimidated by the fact that I played in the NFL for 4 years. I only have one more career tackle, assuming you didn't play in the NFL or play defense, than the people I'm on the call with. Uh, did an Eat, Pray, Love year, had a great time, decided, you know, A, I don't have that much money to just run around gallivanting around the world, but B, I also wanted to find you know, what was the next chapter in life. So I went to business school, went to Indiana University, did finance for real, studied marketing, corporate innovation, started working at 3M in a corporate strat role, moved over, became an investment manager on the CVC side at 3M for a year, and then just decided, you know, I want to do something different. I want to get involved in tech. I found an opportunity at Microsoft where I work now with what's called the HTP team. That's the High Tech Partnerships team, where we've basically been given leverage, been given license, excuse me, to leverage the entire Microsoft ecosystem to drive strategic partnerships with unicorn companies, namely. So I know partnerships is a very vague word. So let me unpack that a little bit. It includes investment, albeit from Corp Dev or M12, that's our CVC arm. It also means go-to-market support, co-branding support, white labeling of the technologies, integrating the technologies into our tech stack, go-to-market, co-branding, the whole kit and caboodle. Now understand that that's not the case for each and every deal, but different elements of those, of what I mentioned are part of my utility belt for engaging with unicorn companies. So, yeah.

So when you were in school, was the objective, clearly you made it to professional athletics, which is an enormous milestone in and of itself. But you studied or did you really get into college or was college just kind of a way to get to the NFL?

Yeah, I mean, so my, my mom is a doctor, my dad's a lawyer. Um, so the truth is, yeah, as, as far as like academia is concerned, I was always aware that, okay, look, there's an opportunity for me to do this. I'm probably gonna have to get some sort of graduate degree to some extent to really understand from a technical perspective what it is that I want to do. So I knew I kind of had a window where I said, all right, whatever I do after undergrad, I should swing for the fences. And like I said, I hit it in the intro. I hit a growth spurt. So I was, I was smaller. I was like 5'9, 150 pounds. And then in 18 months, I kind of grew to what I am now, right? Which is like going from 5'8, 150 to 6'1, 200 pounds.

Wow.

And so, yeah, that coupled with the fact I was halfway athletic, once I started hitting people and I noticed that they, they were moving now, I said, you know what, let me, let me just go all in on this football thing. We can figure everything else out later. And, you know, I was super fortunate. That, you know, my number was called and I was able to play for a minute. Yeah.

And how did that, or what tricks did that play on your head? Because as a young guy coming, I mean, that's pretty much the lottery, isn't it? It is. It is.

It is. And I, as far as the tricks that played on my head, I think what it really did for me was expanded my concept of what's possible, right? And really reinforced the value of discipline. You know, I have a I'm here, I'm not even going to call it my home office, but I'm here in a room in my house with a whiteboard behind me. I'm super organized when it comes to how I address and approach whatever problems I'm looking to solve. And I think one of the benefits of playing, you know, collegiate sports and ultimately professional sports, sports in general, in any organized way is that, you know, there's a program, right? And every day you have the opportunity to follow the program, right? And I think, you know, just that's the compounding effect of doing such, I was able to see it manifest itself in me getting the opportunity to play in the NFL. So that's probably the main trick. Yes, it's that discipline and organization.

And that's what you got from the coach and the team.

And you internalize it and you internalize it, right? Because it's just your environment, right? And that's sort of, and I'd also jump and add in there like radical accountability, right? Each and every day we practice Practice is filmed. And then at the conclusion of that practice, a couple hours later, you watch practice with all of your peers. And they say, Brian, what are you doing right here? Everybody else is doing this. You're not doing this. And, you know, they say, look, if you don't want to do it, that's fine. You just won't play, right?

Fear.

And whatever consequences associated. In the NFL, it means you get cut or you're a starter, you know, so forth and so on. In college, you just don't play. Maybe you lose a scholarship. In high school, Maybe you don't get the opportunity to play and extend your playing career, etc., etc. So I think that sort of accountability is big too. It's something I take pride in, is being accountable and responsible.

So, and so when that ends and then you went to get an MBA, is that kind of the path? What was your thinking there? Because now all of a sudden the world's very different.

Right, right, right, right. Well, I know for me that I knew what sports meant, right? So I have a bunch of buddies that are in front offices, a bunch of buddies that are coaching, you know, Power 5 schools and things to that effect. And I said, well, you know what, growing up, I wanted to be a banker, right? I'm not a quant by any means. I'm not like the best numbers guy, but I'm decent. And that's why, you know, I studied like finance, econ. I said, well, you know, what is— what do I look like outside of the sports context?

Yeah.

Right. And not only that, I mean, I started a couple of businesses, was involved in a couple of businesses in New Orleans. I wanted to expand my concept of, I mean, excuse me, my knowledge of big business, right? So much of my understanding of business was localized, right? Like small LLC, 5 to 10 employees, you know, we're doing all different sorts of things, right? I said, man, what does it look like? What do these monoliths look like, right? And I wanted to understand that. And that's why I went to school was really just to develop that skill set. And from a technical perspective, I think I had a lot of the intangibles coming in, like like some military vets and stuff like that, but really at a technical lens, understand, okay, what does it look like to read a 10-K? What does a go-to-market strategy look like, right? What does supply chain look like, right? And start to give myself an opportunity to say no to some things, to get out of the whole boiling the ocean thing, trying to figure out like, oh, well, do I want to do this today or that today? Business school gave me the opportunity to say, okay, this is what the world looks like. we're gonna throw everything at you. And I can start to say immediately, like, you know what, I don't want to do accounting no matter what. And that's not a— no offense to accountants. My dad's an accountant, but I know I don't want to do that, right? And I start to programmatically assign value to the different functions or industries that I'm interested in as a consequence of that. So that's why I chose to go to business school.

And what excites you today?

Man, right, a little bit of what I'm doing right now, right?

So I have— Sounds like it.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm having a good time, right? So I mean, every week, I mean, C-suite executives, for unicorn companies, right? So they're already pushing, pushing the narrative in their own way, like fighting upstream because it's very, it's a very competitive market, a very competitive industry, especially right now. Learning a lot from them and then also finding ways and opportunities to help them accomplish their set goals, right, and missions. And it requires a certain level of creativity, right? It's not programmatic. Like our role within Microsoft, the unique thing about it is, I mean, everything is bespoke, right? Nothing exists in a vacuum. There isn't a 101. I can't look at, I can't look at a checklist and say, okay, I asked this question, now I ask this question. No, it's, it's completely different every time. So yeah, it's definitely given me a lot of excitement and enjoyment.

And I gotta speculate that Microsoft's a matrix organization.

Is that okay?

And you've got a great job coming out of grad school. How did you do that? Was that through networking or you recruited or?

Yeah, so I was super fortunate going into the business— going into business school to be a part of what's called the Consortium. So in that, they have a conference in advance of, you know, your first semester of business school where a large number of employers make themselves available for you to recruit for said summer MBA position.

Okay.

Right, so the Consortium is, is a program designed to help support minority MBA applicants, what have you, and they have as you would imagine, like the top 20 schools in the, in the country, or top 20 MBA schools depending on how you rank them, um, at these said conferences. And, uh, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do, I noticed 3M, obviously a bunch of others that I applied for, but 3M gave me the opportunity to really just explore once again what I want to say no to, right? So 3M, Fortune 100 company, we got 4 different divisions across a number of different industries. And the role itself, the SMD program at the time, really afforded me the opportunity to explore what different functions look like within different industries. So 3M has, you know, healthcare, consumer, transportation, electronics, you know, old school, old school industry-related—

Packaging.

Adhesives, right? And everything, everything in between. But Supporting that, there's also an opportunity to work as, you know, working with the CMOs, working with the CFOs, working with the chief strategy officers. So to be able to apply that across all the different industries and then sit at the top from a corporate strategy perspective and help guide the macro narrative around how the different divisions would work both together and separate, I thought was something that I really wanted to, wanted to do. So yeah, I put a lot of my eggs in that basket and I was fortunate enough to get a role at 3M.

And now that you're at Microsoft, huge company, how do you get the matrix to work for you? I had a short stint at a matrix-oriented company. It's really hard.

Right, right. I think the thing that I learned first and foremost is it's maybe not so important to meet everybody as much as it is to meet the right people. Yeah, because you can't meet everybody. I mean, you would get Nothing done. So with Microsoft, they do a really good job. My managers do an amazing job, Kenny and Kelly, encouraging me to say, hey, you need to meet this individual. They work in this particular product group. They can align you with XYZ depending on the use case. There's so many different products. And then within the different products, similar to 3M, there are BD leads. There are people who are involved in different sales motions. There are people who are involved in customer support. There are people involved in compliance, etc., etc., around deal structure and things to that effect. So really knowing who the number one person is, right, and then allowing the dominoes to take place after that, I think is really important. So starting, starting with the top is what I, what I learned. And, you know, the more top-to-top engagements you have and developing those relationships in a deeper way to help expedite the process saves you a lot of time, energy, and stress.

But the top people are the busiest people, right? And the people in most demand, how do you get their attention?

Yeah, I try to make it a point anytime I'm engaging with someone, I'm offering them something before I ask for something. That's my number one. And maybe it's just the Southerner in me. I feel guilty asking for something unless there's some value in it for them. So just like anything, we're always competing for people's time and attention, right? It's an attention economy, right? And to that end, if I'm asking some CVP or exec, what have you, for 5, 30 minutes, they're measuring that meeting against the litany of things that they have to do, right? So it's not, hey, let's just talk, I want to figure something out.

I want to pick your brain.

Gosh, please stop if I get another one of those on LinkedIn. But it's, it's, hey, this is the opportunity. This is why I think there's value. This is how I see you adding value. This is maybe another way that you could add value. this is the desired outcome. And this is the deadline, just to kind of manufacture a little bit of that sense of urgency. It inspires on their end the need to say, you know what, let's get on the phone with Micah. Let's see what's going on here. And we move from there.

And did someone teach you that? Or is that kind of your parents kind of brought you up that way? It's like, this is how to approach people and strangers and win them over?

Yeah, a little bit. So I mean, my dad, you know, longtime trial attorney, right? And before that, he was a CPA. So he did a bunch of corporate law and stuff like that, sitting in and seeing him engage with people, right? And understanding that in any relationship or partnership, right, the assumption is that there's, you know, some sort of asymmetrical exchange between the two parties. But that can't be measured in a very static way, right? It has to be measured against time. So to that end, I always recognize the more I can invest on the front end in providing support, right? Like I always joke, It's good to— there's a Southern saying, it's good to fix your roof while the sun is shining, right? So if I'm in a place where my deal flow maybe isn't as robust, what have you, I look for opportunities to engage with said people that we mentioned earlier to say, hey, how can I add value to whatever it is you're doing while I have the capacity, while I have the time, right? And it's not necessarily simply because, oh, well, when I want something, I want you to be able to do it for me. Because knowledge is transactional. There might be an opportunity for me to learn something and doing something for someone else that then requires me to not have to call you later on because I know, oh man, there's a compliance program that's, you know, it's just literally plugging in something into a CRM. I don't need to necessarily reach out to somebody, right? Which also that knowledge share within my team helps us save time and become more efficient and things to that effect. But it, yeah, I learned it a lot from, you know, my dad and my mom, just seeing how they engage with people and then You know, as you matriculate in the corporate world, there are different ways, right, to approach things. And, you know, certain professions have, you know, similar personalities, right? So the way I engage with the engineer is not the way I engage with the CFO, is not the way I engage with the business leader necessarily. While there are some themes, it's once again going back to the programmatic versus bespoke. It's different depending on who exactly I'm engaging with. So yeah, right.

And that's smart because most people fix the roof when it is raining.

Yeah.

That's when the pain is felt.

Way harder. It's way harder.

Way harder.

Yeah.

Way harder. Fix it while the sun is shining.

And, you know, and I think you've kind of seen that lesson with staying in touch with college friends, NFL friends, NBA friends, and a lot of people don't do it until they need it. And then it's too late because people just sense it.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's been 3 years now. He's calling.

How convenient. Ryan, I love the podcast. I have some questions. Can I pick your brain? It's like, oh my gosh, here we go. You know what's coming.

Yeah. And where do you see yourself taking your career?

Yeah, I think right now, super fortunate that I'm doing something I'm really passionate about. And so, you know, my mantra this year is kind of, you know, what's next for me is right now. So I always think the best marketing, the best, uh, the best marketing and networking you can do for yourself is be really good at whatever it is you are doing. So that's my goal right now. So I was fortunate enough to win, you know, Rookie of the Division a couple quarters ago. I'll be at Microsoft about a year next month. So it's been really exciting, really rewarding. I want to get really good at what I'm doing. So that's, that's my principal focus. I kind of map out my life in 2-year increments. I have a macro goal of what it is I want to do and all those things, and that's That's great. But right, but all of those things involve partnerships, sales, and a lot of technology, all the things that I'm doing now. So I'm building up that toolkit right now. And that's kind of just my principal interest is just getting really good at this role.

And do you have the kind of like the same mindset as you did in the NFL with the daily routines, the practices and the morning routines? Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

Right.

I, I, I think it's, you do, what do you always say? Control the controllables.

Yeah.

Control the controllables. If I can control, and, and make no mistake, I'm not a, one of these biohacking performance freaks, you know, I'm not out here measuring every calorie or anything like that. Right. Let's be clear.

Yeah.

Uh, but I do have a regimen, right? So I know Sunday through Thursday, more or less what I'm eating. what time I'm working out, when I'm sleeping, when I'm doing my deep work, when I'm not doing my deep work, right? What types of, what types of tasks I'm doing in the beginning of the week versus the end of the week. Now, in that is varied and it fluctuates, right? But that's part of life. That's part of the ebb and flow of a sales cycle of whatever it is that you're engaged in with. But yeah, I do, I do think to your point, having that same NFL college football programmatic way of addressing things offers you the opportunity to then extend your, you know, your intellectual capital for more deep, deep tasks and not the one-on-one, like what am I wearing or what am I eating or where am I gonna, where am I gonna work if I'm a remote worker? Am I working at the house today or am I working at WeWork or some coworking space, etc., etc.? It helps give you the opportunity to manage your time and your priorities in a way that's most productive.

And what do you attribute To winning that Rookie of the Year? What do you think contributed to that?

Well, yeah, it's an individual award, but it's a team. It's a representation of the team, right? So I'm super fortunate that the people on our team and the HDP team, they come from a number of diverse backgrounds, right? So we've got bankers, we've got technologists, we've got finance individuals, etc., etc. So I'm a sponge. Right? You talk to me, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna write it down, right? I've got notes right here. I'm always paying attention to what's going on. And I think the, you know, the collective brainstorm, brain, brain share across all of them has kind of just inspired me in ways to kind of curb that sort of, that sort of, that sort of learning curve. Excuse me, to curb the learning curve, doubling down on that one, to, to learn more about the role and, and, you know, just exercise those best practices. So that's, that's what's been most beneficial. And Yeah, the output of that is me performing in such a way and presenting myself in such a way to where, you know, I can receive some sort of award, which is great.

And working at big companies, I'm sure you've seen a spectrum of people, skills. What differentiates the people who are doing really well from the people who just aren't getting it?

Yeah, I think I think it's representative of what's going on in the economy in general. The thing that helps most people is just kind of that sustained intellectual curiosity and openness. You know, I'm a big fan that, hey, look, there's some things that you should know how to do, right? And you should feel confident that you know how to do. And everyone has their skill set. And they say, look, I know I'm good at this. I'm not questioning this. Okay, but there are also a number of different elements around whatever role, role you have where it's— you need to constantly be expanding in your, in your ability to engage with whatever material that's coming out such that it fits, you know, your, your, your core skill set, but also the opportunities where you think you can improve. I think that's really the, the key, right? So technology is— it's not static, it's dynamic. Right? So it's— if you were, if you were doing really well when there were motherboards and stuff, it's a different, it's a different world, you know? It's, it's just a different world. And, you know, once again, similar to football, similar to the NFL analogy I gave earlier, you have the opportunity to engage with it or not, right? And I think so many, uh, so many people that do really well constantly challenging themselves. The good thing is we kind of— you can kind of codify some of these, uh, your learnings in some some of these, you know, these little like awards you can get, not so much awards, I forget what they're called, certificates you can get to say like, hey, I learned more about generative AI. Hey, I learned more about cybersecurity. Hey, I learned more about quantum security, et cetera, et cetera. You can, you can, you can really go down a rabbit hole in that, but that, that signals that, hey, I'm learning, I'm progressing, I'm trying my best to put on the best version of myself in my role.

And I think you clearly managed that well, but it seems like you're very mission-oriented. I think if somebody gave you something to do, you'd figure out how to get it done.

Oh yeah.

As opposed to saying, that's not my bag, but you get it done.

And get it done. We'll get it done. We'll get it done. That's the beautiful thing about technology, right, Ryan, is I think if you really want to learn something, if you really want to do something, There's an overwhelming amount of information and resources available to you. But you gotta look, you gotta dig.

Yeah, you dig it up. I mean, yeah, I call that the new smart. It's like you don't have to go to the special building and special person and the special book. It's all online. You have to search for it maybe a couple times and dig in a little deeper and ask some questions and Get overwhelmed a little bit. But, and then how you mentioned kind of the know-it-all mindset, because I'm sure you run into that at big companies, just people get comfortable in their groove.

Sure.

And they're the expert in that groove and, but they don't go outside of it and that becomes their limiting factor.

That's true. Yeah. Good.

Yeah. And I'm sure you've been exposed to a lot of different salespeople, both internally and externally.

Right.

Well, what do you think makes a great salesperson?

There are a number of different things that make for a great salesman, right? That's the business school answer is not directly answering the question and leaving it open-ended. But Well, for me, I think that the number one thing to be a good salesman is to understand the nature of the relationship you have between whomever it is, is your point of contact, right? And so it's, and in that it's layered, right? It's who are the key decision makers? Who are you engaging with? What are they motivated by, right? And what is your relationship with said individual? What kind of relationship does that individual wanna have, right? And I think when you start to, you know, master and understand those things, you can then start to infuse Different things like a sense of urgency around the deal, right? A sense of confidence around the deal, a sense of negotiation around the deal. So it's not as static and cut dry, but you got to kind of have those first 4. And it all starts with the relationship and the understanding of the technology and business that you're selling.

So yeah. And do you map this back to football or maybe law with your dad? Because litigation and sales, I mean, you know people's motives, you're trying to distinguish between real and perceived.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So we have a really good training in-house at Microsoft that I was fortunate to receive. And we joke, we call it the rooms in the house, right? And it's similar to what we were talking about earlier about what are the different motivations across the different, entities within the org. And yeah, that's kind of where it starts, right, is understanding, okay, who am I talking to? What's gonna help them? It goes back to earlier what we were mentioning. How do I get on the phone with the CVP? How do I keep them engaged? What's in it for them, right? Because that also helps me prioritize, you know, the engagement to say, okay, if this isn't of interest, if there isn't any value that we can add here, then, you know, I don't have a quota, right? Like, I'm a salesperson without a quota. I have a unique role. But I can stop the conversation, right? And we can pivot to something else or nothing else, right? But in understanding, okay, where are the different people within the respective rooms, I can then assign value to certain conversations and prioritize bringing in individuals on my side to say, okay, this individual needs to have a conversation about, you know, third-party apps, right? This individual needs to have a conversation about security specifically. Okay, now we need to talk about DevOps. This person is going to be more responsible for the partnership details. So my compliance person needs to talk here, right? It kind of engaging and understanding, you know, the different dynamics around, you know, their relationship to my outcome and their outcome helps us better, you know, forge a plan together to say like, okay, Brian, I understand you're motivated by this. I'm gonna make sure that's taken care of one-on-one. This is what I'm trying to do. This is why I think there's value in it. This is why I think we're uniquely qualified to do it. And we work together to figure it out. So yeah, it starts with that sort of heat mapping, so to speak.

And you look at the whole game, the whole thing, as opposed to one play, right?

Yeah. And I think, you know, working at 3M really, really helped me with that because at the time, you know, there were 4 different divisions within 3M. And then there's, you know, corporate, which kind of sits on top of all of it. And, you know, it's analogous to like an elephant. If you, if we're all blindfolded and we're touching an elephant, we might have very different ideas of what an elephant is.

It looks like.

But if we zoom out, you know, we can see like, okay, this is how this works, right? In the same way with business, I think any great salesperson, especially on the corporate side, it's imperative that you understand, you know, where all the rooms are and that you're seeing the full elephant. Cool.

Hey, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

LinkedIn, obviously. I work for Microsoft, so I'm gonna push a product. So LinkedIn is best. And yeah, whatever, whatever, if you're a unicorn founder or something to that effect, great. If you're a soonicorn, also great. Reach out to me. I would love to add value and see what we can do to work together.

Now imagine if you took that same methodical training that it requires to become an NFL player and you applied it to sales. Don't you think how successful you would be? The regular routines, but you did it every day, every year, all year long, not just during the season. We don't have an offseason in sales, do we?

No.

I think that's what we all need to do. Now, it doesn't have to be 24/7. It can just be a few minutes a day. But we need to really think through our sales process. Now, I had an interesting story to share with you that kind of gives you an idea of why we need other people in our lives to give us feedback, to help us, to show us and convince us Convince us that there's a smarter way. For the last 3, 4, 5 months, I've been really trying to get my speed up in my running, and I tried all kinds of things— speed work— and it's not like I don't know what it takes to do that or how to do it, but I wasn't successful. It wasn't clicking. I go on YouTube. I Try these exercises, stretch, all this stuff. And I finally broke down and found this running coach and spent a few sessions with him. I explained, you know, my challenge. He watched how I ran. We ran together. He gave me some routines. But what it boiled down to is my particular knees were weak. I was doing lots of squats and stuff, but he goes, you really have to do these lunges to get this— I don't remember the exact ligaments and muscle names— to really build up in strength because they tend to weaken with age. And even though I've been running my whole life since I was essentially a freshman in high school, And I, I was basically pushing this off thinking that I'll do some other exercise because that lunge really was painful. And what he said to me was, well, that's why you need to do it. Once you build it up, the pain will go away and your knee will become stronger, which will make the faster pace More comfortable. And it took a good 3 weeks of, you know, doing this exercise, and I really started to notice a difference. Now, my point here is not running and doing lunges. My point here is that even though we've been selling our whole lives, we tend to get stuck in a rut, and we come up with these belief systems that don't serve us any longer because things have changed. The market's changed. Our processes maybe got a little stale or aren't looking at the, the way we need to. So that, that's my little vulnerability here, is that— did I not know the importance of lunges? I knew that. I didn't do it because it hurt. My little brain would push anything was more important than doing these lunges. But I needed to build up my knees in that particular area. So, you could say, oh, it's stupidity. It's not. I knew about lunges. But I had a mental block about doing them. And I think we all have these things in sales. We have the, oh, I did everything possible. How can you do everything possible? There's a million possible things. No one can do everything possible. Or everything was done perfectly. There's no perfect. This is a performance, the same way football's a performance, debating's a performance, playing a musical instrument is performance, debating is performance. We get stuck in this knowledge mindset. I either know it or I don't know I can pass a test or not. That's memory. In sales, it's how well you do it at that moment. And that takes some knowledge, lots and lots of practice, and lots of feedback. And this is what you'll get out of the courses, is hearing other people do it, getting feedback from other people, understanding Why something is either working or not working well enough. Get more eyes on it, more years of experience visible to it to improve your game. Now, a lot of people just make— they become sensitive about their identity, their ego, but it's okay. Everybody there is vulnerable. Like me with my running. And me with my selling is also— the beauty happens with what's known as Solomon's Paradox. And Solomon's Paradox says that the person experiencing it can't see it, but somebody else, Solomon, can. Because it's obvious to somebody else, but oblivious To us. Think about that. We all have it. Some people call it blind spots. Some people— whatever you call it, doesn't matter. The key is, do you want to fix it? I wanted to be a faster runner. It wasn't the money of a running coach, yet I needed that type of feedback. I wasn't giving it to myself. I was kind of trying all kinds of different training approaches and ignoring what deep down I think I knew I needed. At least I say that now. But what we need is help getting over these hurdles in life. And how do you do that? All kinds of ways. Find yours. One is to go to b2brevenue.com, invest a year of your life in becoming great at the profession you chose. And it's not expensive, not even relative to college, which you're probably still paying for. And you can tell me how valuable that was for you. And isn't it worth a little bit of time, a little bit of money? To make you better, sell more, make more money. It's up to you. Don't let your ego get in the way. It's not about intelligence. It's about becoming better. Go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up today. We'll see you next time. You see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. Check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. We'll see you next time.