HOW TO BUILD THE ENERGY AND STRENGTH TO WIN EVERYDAY

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice.

Before it's showtime. Here we go. Now, in sales, you know, we know how to sell. We do it all day. Do we have to do anything else?

I might question you if everyone knows how to sell, but yes, in general. Everyone thinks they know how to sell. Yeah, we typically know how to sell. I think You get beat up so much though over the years that everyone gets worn down. You get tired, you get down on yourself, whatever it is. So there's this other side of it is like, how do you stay physically and mentally fit during your sales career? Because ultimately, if you don't, you're gonna run into some pretty major hurdles, whether that be physically, mentally, et cetera. But if you can figure out a way to be physically, mentally fit, And you know how to sell, I feel like that's gonna substantially increase your income over your career the sooner you figure that out. So I've been thinking a lot more about it lately because you, you almost have to, if you wanna stay at a high level, you have to be doing that other stuff. Otherwise you won't survive.

Yeah.

Because what's the first question somebody in your life asks you in the morning? It's like, how you feeling?

Right?

And is that a That's kind of a mental and a physical question, isn't it? It's not a financial question, right? It's not a political question. It's a, you know, how'd you sleep? Did you get a good night's rest? Why, why, why do people care? Because it has a big impact on your day. If you feel, if you wake up feeling not so good, your day doesn't go too well. And it's just this cycle that keeps going and we try to ignore it a lot. We say, oh, you know, the weekend's coming, but what do we do on the weekend? We party, we decompress, right? And that decompression may not be great for you. Feels good when you do it, but the next morning, eh, you don't feel decompressed. You feel compressed.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, you see half the stuff on LinkedIn is bragging and the other half is complaining. And what are they complaining about? Burnt out. And it's always someone else's fault, right? It's always my manager's under stress, micromanagement. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

But you still have to deal with it. And the way to answer that question in the morning, how you feeling? You want to feel great, great night's rest. Can't wait to get to work, get going. Is that how you feel in the morning?

I try to, but there's a lot, there's a lot of factors that, that go into it. But I can tell you this, if especially maybe after I hit 30, if I don't get that 7 to, I try to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep roughly. I don't have the full time tracker and all that type of stuff. But if I don't get that, then I'm behind already and I'm playing catch up and I most likely double down on substances, not bad, well, coffee, coffee, and to, to try to overcome that. So that just creates a whole nother negative cycle in itself. So I, during the week I'm trying to do the, the 7 to 9 hours, but there's a lot of things that could factor into that. Do I stay up too late watching TV? Do I look at screens? after 9 o'clock. I mean, I started really trying to dive into this stuff and it's hard because we're addicted to our phones, we're addicted to TVs and all this news, whatever it is. So, but I, I mean, sleep, just starting with sleep, like that's one of the, probably the most underrated ones that no one even thinks about. I mean, we can talk about working out and all that stuff, which is really important too, but the sleep gets undermined probably the most. And that's like a third of our life. And if you don't If I don't have that 8 hours, I'm not performing at my, my A level most likely, or I'm working extra hard to perform at my A level, which gets me more tired and it has a ripple effect throughout the week. So just trying to keep it as a routine, as a schedule during the week, maybe you have a little fluctuation on the weekend and sleep's a huge one just out of the gates. So invest in your sleep as a salesperson.

Well, it's the easiest. I don't think anyone dislikes it. Um, I think it's the obvious one to ignore because it's Friday night. People don't feel like going to sleep. People feel like having fun. And okay, it's reasonable. But if you wear a wearable, do you have one? Or Apple Watch or an Oura Ring?

I have, I have Apple Watch. I haven't fully embraced it, but yeah.

Well, for 4 years I've had an Oura Ring and every morning, some mornings I don't want to look at the results, but I, I look at the results and you start to notice patterns. And it's a great way to keep you on track and have some accountability without doing anything because I've gotten to the point where I almost know the score before I open the app. By how I feel, what time it is. But it's also things like my body temperature. It's helped me regulate my rest and recovery because if my— I've noticed if my temperature's up even marginally 3 days in a row, I got to take time off. I've got to relax. Otherwise, I get a cold, you know, because Like this morning I woke up, it's 0.08 above normal, and yesterday it was 0.05. So I better take today off. And if tomorrow it's 0.01, I better really take some time off. But if it, if it's back to normal, you can go work out. Now, most people would wake up and say, eh, I feel pretty good. The weather's nice.

Go work out.

But then the next day you wake up, you get a sore throat, sniffles, achy. And why not have something, you know, for $200 or $300? I think everyone's got a watch. Just look at it. Just look at your Apple Health app every morning. It records it very accurately.

Yep. No, I need to hop on that bandwagon with, with the Oura Ring and, and at least take advantage of the, the watch because You can't really fully stay accountable with yourself because I'm just guessing. I'm just, you know, it's just thinking in my head of like, oh, this is why I didn't sleep good, or this is why I woke up early. But if you actually have something to track that, especially over a long period of time, you're gonna get way better results. So I, that's a great one. Obviously working out is, I, I think the best way to build like the habits and discipline is doing something hard on purpose. And working out is a, in my opinion, the, the best way to do that. So it doesn't have to be a hardcore workout, but for me, like I grew up playing sports, so if I don't work out during the week, I feel completely off. I'm just not at my top level. I need to at least work out 4 or 5 times a week in some capacity. I do yoga, running, light lifting now because I've had some injuries, but that sets the tone for my week, for my days. And I feel better and I perform better on sales meetings and I have more energy and a better mood. So it just, it has a pretty substantial effect, but we get busy. You get tied down with working, traveling, like going out, entertaining customers. So it's easy to forget some of that stuff, but it, it does pay off. And it doesn't have to be a crazy workout. I know you're big on the, the, well, running now too, but also the walking. But you could even just take a 15-minute walk instead of, you know, looking at your phone or Instagram. Why not go take a walk around the neighborhood for 15 minutes? And like, that's gonna, you know, maybe call somebody. You can still call a coworker or call a friend, whatever, but that's a way better thing to do than scroll on Facebook or Instagram. So I'm huge on the, the physical activity too. I know, I know you are as well, right?

Yeah, because everyone thinks it takes energy away and it does at first, but after a while, once your body becomes acclimated to it, it gives you energy and you feel better. You're clear-headed. Everyone talks about going for a walk, but it's kind of counterintuitive. And people take, you know, a nap is fine too. But you want to build up, get the body moving, get your brain going. And I heard an interesting thing this week that Alzheimer's patients, the number one most effective thing is human interaction. It's the talking back and forth conversations.

Hmm.

It's not just the social element, it's the forces your brain to think. In a way that uses the most amount of your brain. And guess who does that all day long? Salespeople.

Salespeople, right?

And we wonder why we're exhausted at the end of the day. Because you not only have to think about what you're going to say, you have to understand what they're saying, and then think about how they're going to react to what you're saying.

Hopefully.

Yeah.

Good luck. Good luck with that one.

Yeah. Or you can just assume. Yeah. So we're in this job that requires an enormous amount of brain energy, and a lot of us just cut it off by not caring, detach from it, and I get the detachment in certain times, but believe me, people sense if you care or not, and they want you to care, and it comes across pretty obviously if you don't.

Yeah, no, I mean, just doing the demos aimlessly and not really doing research, and it's just the same thing over and over again. I mean, I, I know for sure I can tell when that happens, and I— and when someone really prepares and is focused and has that energy, it takes me almost off guard. I'm like, okay, this person's serious. Like, I kind of like this person. I want to talk to him more. So that's interesting. But yeah, I mean, the physical side is obviously important. I know someone, his name is Sean. He actually, he made this a little famous where he'll do hiking meetings with his potential clients and they'll go hike like a mountain. You know, he finds people that are active. And I mean, you probably have great conversations because you're, you're not in the office. You're not doing a stuffy lunch or grabbing drinks. You're walking up a mountain doing something fun, and that was like a cool thing. So maybe that's a little extreme, but I used to do workout classes when I would call in Home Depot and we'd go do different things, and I thought that was fun too. So it builds some camaraderie too if you look into it. But the other thing I would say that I've really picked up on the last few years is trying— I'm the type of person that just works nonstop all day and I won't take breaks. Like, I'll just go, go, go, go, go. I won't take any breaks at all. And that can be even more exhausting in addition to the sales part of it that we talked about. So forcing myself to take some micro breaks throughout the day has rejuvenated me so that I am at my peak performance and then not doing back-to-back meetings as well because that's exhausting for me. So I'll maybe work for 50 minutes on one topic that I'm focused on, like prepping for a meeting, and then I'll take a 10-minute break where I don't Try not to think about work. I don't look at work stuff. I'll do something around the house, whatever, and just detach and making sure I have breaks in between meetings too. That, that, that was a really bad one for me where I was just back to back to back to back to back. And that wore me out because I'm more introverted anyways. So I think really looking at your schedule and then trying to purposely put breaks in there, that's helped me a ton to be, to feel better when I'm, when I'm having customer conversations. Yeah.

And if you look around, how many salespeople look like they're in— or they eat healthy?

Oh, it probably depends on the industries, but probably it's the ra— the ratio's probably not very good, right?

Yeah. And it, it's hard to tell somebody who's— because I was overweight, but I didn't look it because I'm tall. So it was just an optical illusion. But if you went online and you search height and gender, what my healthy weight was, was a lot less than what I weighed. So it becomes almost a denial thing because let's face it, you look at people today versus 30 years ago, you know, they always have those memes, you know, the people on the beach in the '70s and the people on the beach today. Huge difference.

Oh yeah.

Because guess what we're fed? And like, people complain about like Starbucks is just selling sugar. It's like, well, they're not force-feeding anyone sugar. They sell it because people want it. They'd be happy if you just had espresso. But if you're willing to pay 4 times as much to have a, what's it, pumpkin spice latte?

Right.

I'm sure it's delicious, right?

Yeah.

600 calories probably.

And we fall into these, and I, I was not in the spice, the pumpkin latte. I, I used to drink frozen, not frozen, iced venti mochas.

Loved them.

It was my drink when I traveled. I'd have one in the morning and one around lunch. Until somebody asked me, how many calories you think are in that? I think 200. No, no, it's closer to 500. And then all of a sudden you're like, wow, my pants are a little tight. And it sneaks up on us. It's not obvious. It's not like you go to one party or you have one cookie and then you're 5 pounds overweight. And this is why bad habits are so easy to start and so hard to break, because that habit was really hard to break even when I knew it. And when I switched from that to Americanos, which were like 10 calories, you miss that sugar buzz, but you lose weight pretty fast. And I think a lot of people have these things in their lives. And, you know, a lot of people on LinkedIn ask me, how'd you lose weight? And it's like, there's no mystery. There was no new equation that I came up with. I am not a genius. It's calorie deficit. How you get that is up to you. You know, make it as painless as possible. But you gotta do it.

Yeah, there is no easy button, unfortunately, which is the same thing that people are always looking for in sales. But yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a consistent daily, weekly thing you're doing for a long period of time. But, and then the hard thing too about the good habits, like working out, you're not gonna see results after the first week. You might not see results for the first month, maybe, you know, maybe a little bit, but then it's gonna take A few months to really start seeing it on the, on the outside from that standpoint. So that, that's what makes it so tough. But yeah, you're right. It's just, you're not reinventing the wheel. This is pretty simple stuff, but it's important because also society doesn't help us, but also sales. Let's, let's talk about sales in general. I mean, you got sales kickoffs which never have healthy food there. Everyone stays out till 3:00 AM and then gets up at 7:00. Death by PowerPoint all day and then they crush 4 coffees to stay alive. And the same thing, no matter what industry I've been to, it's always the same. And then you're a lot of times maybe entertaining customers during the week, traveling, you know, have a few drinks at night. So I mean, sales does have this work hard, play hard culture that's been around for quite some time and that certainly doesn't help our cases based off what we're doing. And it's a, and it's a really stressful job, right? So The more stress you have, the more you want to go back to your coping mechanisms that help you, which is alcohol, food, whatever, whatever it may be. So I think that's why you see so many people that are maybe not in the best shape. But I think when you see people that are, you know, taking care of themselves, I'm not saying you need to be an elite athlete or something, but I think you, you tend to have more, you have some respect for those people because like, oh, okay, they're a pretty disciplined person. They take care of their family, their bodies, whatever. So they're probably pretty passionate about what they sell. So maybe I wanna listen to them a little bit more. I mean, maybe I'm overthinking that, but I feel like that is, you know, something that, that could help when you're in front of customers too.

Yeah. And it also takes that internal locus of control that we need in sales and almost can't succeed in sales without because what's the first thing people say when they go on a diet? Oh, it's my DNA, my genetics. My body type is different. My family struggled with this, and there's there's some truth to it. But did you try the calorie deficit thing? I did that for a day, and it didn't work. It's like okay, and they they simply think it's something outside of them. You know, and even today, when you can get like there's that Ozempic. A drug to do it.

Yeah.

And it does do it. The problem is if you stop taking the drug, it stops doing it, and then you're left on your own. And hopefully maybe your habits have changed. You know, same thing is true with, you know, an operation. You could have your stomach stapled. And I always wonder, it's like going to a hospital to have an operation Is less difficult than not eating as much, getting the junk out of the house. That's, that's harder.

I mean, yeah, I've, I've had, I've had my, my surgery experiences myself, so I would, I would avoid that at all costs. But that, that is true. It's like you're, it's gonna be really hard either way and, and the latter is much harder In our opinion, I guess, compared to just getting it in a habit. But yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. What do you think about the— we talked about the physical a lot, but there's also the mental side too of, I mean, because you get beat up, it's a roller coaster, you get rejected every day, you feel like your life is over, you're not making money. All these things happen in sales, but you also have to— the mental side has been huge for me the last few years because the physical is more natural for me because I grew up playing sports and it's just It's so ingrained in me at this point and it's hard for me to get out of it. But the mentally fit side where maybe I did a morning routine or I, you know, now I do breathwork before big meetings, like stuff that I picked up over the years that took, I had this sort of macho attitude that I'm like, you know, a sales guy, I didn't need to do that stuff. It didn't make sense. But eventually I think I found that it almost makes a bigger impact for me sometimes than the physical side. So do you, Do you, uh, do anything like that yourself, like on the mental side, to get prepared for the week or the day?

Yeah, you know, I mean, I got 3 things that I focus on when I wake up. One is, I probably say it 20 to 30 times, I'm 100% responsible for my life. That, that is building up that internal locus of control, because if you, if you take that belief Then all of a sudden, all the other stuff is easier. The second is I go through everybody in my life and I forgive them. That reinforces I'm 100% responsible. You can't blame your teachers, you know, your coworkers, your manager. You can, but it doesn't change anything. You're unlearning. And when I say forgive, if you have a grudge, you don't have to give up your grudge. You don't have to forget. You can still hold on to it if you want, but it clears up your mind. And then the third is what I'm grateful for, and that gets you on a positive track. And, and when you go running, it's It's 100% conversation with yourself. Because that first mile, your body and your subconscious is telling you, you left a nice warm bed to come out here in the cold dark to run, and you got 4 miles ahead of you. Genius. Let's go back to bed. And I gotta get through that mile to warm my body up. Every footstep hurts. My back hurts, my legs hurt, my head hurts, everything hurts. But by the time I'm done, I feel great. And my running coach, you know, talk about a guy who he— I have to show him all my Oura Ring stuff every 2 weeks, picture of everything I've eaten.

Okay.

And he's always at, what happened here? You know, and I have to explain it. And, you know, what he taught me, probably the most powerful thing, is you're trying to think yourself faster. I go— then he asks, he goes, can your body do this? I go, yeah, it can. And they go, so who's stopping you from doing it? Is it him? No, it's me. So you gotta— and he also taught me, you gotta find that emotion that'll drive you. It's not gonna be intellectual. It's not gonna be counting steps. You know, the music happened. Why is that logic? No, it's emotion. It riles you up. And he gave me some ideas and I hooked onto anger. Because anger gets you focused. Anger gets you mad, gets you— you want to do something. You want to expel energy, not conserve it. It shuts down your prefrontal cortex and you're connected to something. And I mean, he's gotten me— I've made more progress in the last 2 months than I made in the last 3 years. You know, got, got a minute off my mile in 2 months, which is insane.

Yeah, that's a massive percent depending on what, I don't know what your times are. That, that's great. I enjoyed hearing that. I, yeah, so I'm big on morning routines as well. I work out, I actually am more of a working out during the middle of the day. So I like lunch or mid-late afternoon workouts, which I make my schedule now so I can do that. But my morning routine, I picked that up a few years ago and that's sort of been my rallying cry the last few years to, to get over a lot of obstacles that have came up. So I start the day with just a little quick prayer because I got some spirituality going there. It's a little, little prayer before I get outta bed. I'll do the gratitude stuff that you mentioned. Just so simple, like 3 things I'm grateful for and say it out loud. I mean, it can take less than a minute to do that. It could be something different every day. It could be same things, whatever it is. Then I have, I call it running parachutes. I learned that from another gentleman and a book that they wrote, but it's stuff that, you know, that's holding you back in life, but you can't just talk about it once. You have to like address it every day and remind yourself. So I say out loud these things that are holding me back and how I overcome that. And then I do a quick little empowering statement similar to what you were talking about, like some positive statements on these fixed mindset things I know are in my head just first thing in the morning. It's like you literally have like that mindset's gonna, the default setting every day is to be fixed. So I try to reverse that and say the opposite on certain things that I know I want to focus on. And then the last thing I do is I visualize my day. like high level of what I want to do, like the one big thing I want to accomplish going through the meetings, like going through the motions. And then I have some overarching goals that I want to do that year and I'll visualize those as well. So that, you know, took a lot of tweaking and I used to do way more than that. And then it was actually doing the opposite where I was, it was burning me out by doing like, yeah, because I thought I had to do an hour morning routine to be cool and to be trendy. with everybody else or cold plunge this, cold plunge that. But then I was like, man, this little 20 to 25 minutes while I'm getting ready, that worked best for me. So it took me some time to get there. And you don't want to— you want to start small too with everything we're talking about. Just start with something small, like one thing, like praying or gratitude. Like the gratitude thing is probably the easiest. Like 3 things, 3 things you're grateful for. You can write it down, say it out loud. Like that's like boom. And that just gets you on a positive trend. in the morning.

It does. And because usually that first half hour kind of sets your day, you know.

Oh yeah.

If you open your email and there's some stupid message from somebody and all of a sudden misinterpreted something, and all of a sudden you wrap yourself around that, you can't get it out of your head, that's the wrong way to go through and start your day. And You know, when something goes wrong during the day, you got to have some way of processing it. I just tell myself, who cares? Doesn't matter.

Move on.

Because usually it doesn't matter. You just feel like it matters, right? It hurts your ego or your feelings. And I think you have to separate your feelings from facts. And does— is it going to matter an hour from now or a day from now? You know, those hangups or the deals that, oh, they're going to tell you they're going to close and they don't. The ghosting, all this stuff, all the things you invest your time in and it falls apart. Well, we're in that business, right?

Yeah, it's, it's tough. It's tough to Detached from all that. But I think when I do, you're exactly right. If I don't do my morning routine, you know, you're gonna have off days, you're gonna have something happen, whatever. But if it starts to become a streak where it's like 3 or 4 days in a row where I'm not doing it, I gave myself a break on the weekend, by the way. So I don't do it as much on the weekend. That's on purpose. But when I notice a streak in the wrong direction, then I'm not in as good a mood and I snap at people quicker. I get pissed off quicker. So it does set the tone for the day, and I, I noticed that difference for sure. So it's— I, I try to be 85% compliant with my morning routine, and I, I keep track of that. Otherwise— and now I've done it so long that it's— if I don't do it, I feel off, right? So that's, that's the goal with, with all these habits and routines. But it certainly sets the tone. And I did have a time where I was doing the complete opposite, where I would wake up and look at my phone right away, look at social media, look at emails and then I see some fire drill from the CEO and I'm like, shit. And it just, your whole day, then you start, your heart starts racing even more and you don't need that because sales is already gonna be so stressful anyway. Like you don't need to add to it. So if you do these other things we're talking about, that at least helps you mitigate it as best you can or handle it where like, oh yeah, I've been through this before. This, this happens. Another good thing too is when you do start having those bad moments, like when you lose a deal or you get thrown off by whatever, getting ghosted or whatever it may be, is I write down things I've overcame in the past. And I have a list of like 30 things that I've overcame, like big, big, you know, some small, but most of them like bigger type stuff. And I'm like, oh, this is a drop in the bucket compared to that. Like, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals.

That's what it's all about.

Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah, the difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals. And do you have the game?

Few people do.

Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level.

You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it.

But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today. We'll see you next time.