THE SECRET TO CONSISTENT SELF-IMPROVEMENT AND INCREASED INCOME IN B2B SALES

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Here we go.

Hey, Dustin, there's a lot of talk certainly in the last 5 years about morning routines and a lot of people joking about it, making fun of it, and a lot of people passionate about it. What's your take?

It can be very cliché. I mean, I, I feel like on Instagram and Facebook and all that, I'm getting cold plunge, Advertisements all over the place, and that seems to trend once you say it out loud, it's all over the place. But no, I've been hearing about it for a long time, and then I had my own kind of epiphany with it where I started doing some dedicated things for myself every morning, and it really helped me kind of level up and take things to the next level. So I definitely get kind of the haters out there cuz it can become very cliché and kind of like rolling your eyes back when you hear about morning routines. But I will say I had my own sort of epiphany with it where it really helped me. And then a lot of people I work with on sales teams and different friends that I have are, are pretty passionate about it too. So I'm a fan, but I totally get it out there with all that, the haters, because you hear a lot of noise about it too.

Yeah.

And I'm a fan too. And I, I think you gotta maybe separate or not get locked into the word morning because a lot of people will, I'm a night person. That's okay too. And especially a lot of people in your 20s tend not to be morning people, right? They're partying at night. They got a lot of energy after work, and then that kind of eats into their sleep time. So they wake up, you know, 5, 10, 15 minutes before they have to be at work or at their desk, and they scramble. I think the, the better way to look at it is what can you do every day To make yourself just a little bit better, you know, because I've— what I've learned certainly since I started my own company where it's been 100% me and my money is that the better I get, the more money I make, the more success I have. And to do that, I have to change. I learned that the world won't change for me, so it's up to me. And what I've learned is, you know, the crazy bootcamp stuff and determination and all that stuff and reading books, it's good, it's entertainment, but your life doesn't change. You have to do it. You have to do it consistently. And you know what I'm learning is focus on streaks. I don't know if you've used any of the apps to keep track of habits or something, but streaks is a big thing where you do it every day. And I think people look at it as like, well, it's too much to do every day. You don't have to do all of it every day. You have to do something every day.

It doesn't matter how you track it, but you have to track it somehow. I actually have a habit tracker right by my desk right here that I use. I just, I like to handwrite it. There's something about checking that box or X-ing through it if you don't do it. And then you can kind of see the trends if you're, getting off target that week for whatever reason. I mean, give yourself a break, but once you start doing, not doing something 3 or 4 days in a row, that's starting to become a routine and habit. So you have to kind of watch yourself. So you're right, the morning routine, evening routine, afternoon routine, whatever you wanna call it, I think you can kind of make it your own. You don't want to get overwhelmed with the 2-hour crazy bootcamp stuff that you're talking about, cuz that's not gonna work for most people. But it could be something as simple as 2 or 5 minutes that you do To start off and it could really kind of change the trajectory of where you're going. I mean, for me, where it kind of hit, hit a wall is I had a lot of good influences around me, but I found myself waking up, pressing snooze multiple times, not giving myself time to myself and going straight into meetings and conference calls at the time, already in a stressful job. And that was just adding a whole nother level of stress on top of that, traveling all the time, entertaining customers, not taking care of myself as well as I should have. And I was younger so I could get away with it a little bit more, but over time that, that's just not sustainable. So I was just kind of burning the candle on all ends possible and I knew I had to kind of change it up a little bit. So, and at first I tried to do too much, but it, it was something as simple as kind of empowering statements, trying to work with the mindset first thing in the morning and just saying some things out loud. And literally for 3 to 4 minutes is what I started with eventually. And then now it's, it's closer to 45 minutes to an hour of what I do, which is really effective for me. So I think you have to make it your own. Don't try to do too much too fast. And then you definitely have to track it, whether it's an app, your computer, or I just use a handwritten piece of paper, like journal. And, and that works for me.

Yeah. And, you know, I use Post-its, you know, right by my bed on my dresser and I have 'em colored. I have, you know, 'cause I have a sequence of them because when we change, It doesn't happen automatically. And our brain forgets the things that we don't want to do, the painful things. So really good at remembering the pleasurable things. I never forget my cup of coffee in the morning. Haven't forgot that at all. Oh, but I forgot to— yeah, I forgot the stretching or the something that I didn't want to do. And people rationalize that. And I think if you are in your 20s and you're not a morning person, here's something you should be aware of. Ask yourself, how many people do you know in your 40s or 50s that are evening people?

Nearly none.

Great point. Because this crazy thing happens is that when we're young, we kind of steal from our sleep, but our sleep doesn't give it up easily. So it steals from our morning. So we end up having our morning be really tight. Certainly when I was in my 20s, I was a night person and I'd get up with an alarm, you know, hit the shower, head to work, and you're just like crammed. And then you get to work and you go, okay, so what do I have to do? I didn't have a to-do list, so I would react to my inbox.

Right.

React to my voicemail, react to what my manager says. And all of a sudden it's noon, half the day's gone, and I haven't accomplished anything for me. Half the day's gone. And then you just, you rumble and you just kind of ruin the day for yourself. But if you get up and you have a, your to-do list from the night before, or have a generic to-do list that you have to do every day, which is Come on, we know what we need to do, but we tend to push off the things that we don't like and focus on what we do like. You know, we get our LinkedIn all done, but then we don't get any prospecting done, and all of a sudden we're popular but no pipeline. I think as a sales rep, you gotta start your day right because that's the time you have control over, and it Do you have to get up earlier? Maybe you have to go to bed a little bit earlier, you know, certainly during the week, because you know how much sleep you need. If you need to wake up with an alarm, you're not getting enough. You should wake up naturally. And if you need 9 or 10 hours, take it, because sleep is— doesn't give up easily, because you'll end up having to take a nap in the afternoon. You'll be dragging your butt the afternoon. It, you can't really run a deficit with sleep and be healthy. And I don't know about you, but when you get a good night's sleep, yeah, your productivity is dramatically different.

There's no doubt. Otherwise you're gonna be crushing caffeine to try to catch up. And that's not a good loop to be in either. And yeah, if you look at successful salespeople, really any successful person, whatever you deem as successful authors, Financiers, entrepreneurs, all these people, most of the time, the most common trend that I see is that they have some dedicated thing they do in the day, most likely in the morning, but it could be other times. So all these people that are achieving things that maybe you want to achieve are doing something dedicated for themselves in the morning or other times a day. So that's how I kind of look at it too, is who are the people that I want to kind of emulate and I'm trying to get to and what are they doing and let's try to replicate that. So that's how it kind of Started with me. So there's a lot of common things I see with a lot of salespeople I talk to of what they're doing in the morning to help them. And it was, you know, once I did that, started doing the morning routine, as cliché as it sounds, I mean, I was working less hours, I was getting more done, I was being more productive and closing more deals ultimately. And I wasn't as stressed as I was before because I was kind of focused on the things that mattered. And I think achieving some challenging things first thing in the morning It kind of feels like you're a productive person, you're getting something done, and then, you know, you're going to go into the sales battles and get told no and all these ups and downs. So if you do some hard things in the morning on purpose, it kind of preps you for the ups and downs of sales because, you know, you're going to get punched in the mouth a ton. So it's better if you purposely do hard things than it is to have hard things happen to you. So that's how I kind of look at it because it kind of gets me ready for the day and the week. And I give myself a break too. It's like, you don't have to be a machine. So I try to do 5 or 6 days out of the week. I'll give myself a day off on the weekend where I just kind of do whatever I want. And you don't have to be so rigid cuz you can also be too rigid where it stresses you out if you do too intense of a morning routine. So I, I learned my lesson on that too, where I give myself a break and I kind of go with the ebbs and flows of it sometimes.

And how long did it take you to get used to it or even look forward to it?

I would say probably, I think within a month or so I was kind of getting in the groove of it and then I just slowly started adding some other things that I wanted to do, like, you know, reading one page of a Stoic or devotional and, you know, just simple things like one page, two page, and kept adding. But I think after a month it was something that I felt off if I didn't do it. So I was almost like, it, it became a routine, a habit. So I think they say what, 21 days, most of the books with the habits. So it was kind of around that mark. And then I slowly just started stacking to it over time. And then here I am a few years into it and it's close to an hour, but that's what works for me. So I don't, I always tell people like, don't go try to do an hour right away because you're going to set yourself up for failure.

Yeah, I think that's the key is to start super simple, get it down to 1 minute. You can always do more, but you have to do the 1 minute. And that puts a trick on people because people don't understand that. You know, it's like the 1 pushup or the 1 prospecting email or, Anything that it's not time constrained. Because what does our brain say immediately? Oh, I'm too busy. Do you have a minute? You have a minute, right? It's not going to feel comfortable, certainly for the first— I've got it down to about 2 weeks to seed a new habit. But you have to— I have to remind myself every day. I have to check it off every day. After the 2 weeks, it kind of happens, but I still aren't used to it. Takes me about 2 months before it's really a, a craving that if I don't do it, I'm like, oh yeah, I gotta do that. And it, it does get you a lot better because you're doing it every day. And the power of a streak is really underestimated. Especially in sales, which is a performance profession. Everyone thinks, oh, I'm going to read— what book should I read? Well, the book is knowledge. It's not performance.

Okay?

You still got to do something. And if you got to do it, not think it, not reminisce about it, you got to do it. And people will fight that to the very end. Because their little brain's like, I don't wanna do it.

So true. And when I started doing it, it was when I was working in healthcare at the time. And as a lot of people know, healthcare has its challenges, has its struggles. You see a lot of negative stuff there. So I had a friend of mine, another salesperson that was just kind of mentioned to me like, man, dude, you're, you're coming off super negative all the time with what you're talking about. And maybe I just got kind of tainted from being in healthcare and just seeing all this dysfunction all the time, which, which happens naturally probably. And I realized, man, I'm actually kind of got that fixed mindset going. And I started researching more and then ended up working with someone that kind of focused on a lot of different things. But he, he kind of helped me with those empowering statements. So it's, it depends on what works for you, but it helped a lot with my mindset cuz a lot of what I do in the morning is, is around empowering statements, gratitude, all these things to kind of get that growth mindset or performance mindset like you mentioned. And that kind of just sets the tone for the day because We're automatically triggered to kind of have that negativity bias. So if you don't work on it at some point during the day, it's gonna be tough to overcome that. So I use, I kind of parallel that mindset activity with my morning routine because that just sets the tone for the day where I kind of have a different perspective and a positive perspective going into all the challenges that you have with sales. So yeah, sometimes you need a little kick in the butt and someone to call you out on something. And that for me, it kind of, kind of works. So.

Right. It's kind of our internal weather. We have control over it, but we don't take control over it. We kind of react to how we feel and then blame somebody else for making us feel that way. It feels better when we do that instead of saying, oh, that's me. And I think everyone also has got to develop and verbalize their why. Why am I doing this? Because that, that is what our subconscious is asking, because all it cares about is survival. That's all it cares about. That's what— where we get into trouble is that it's happy when we survive. So why are we doing all this work? And whatever your why is, whether it's your family, your income, your status, your career, whatever it is that motivates You got to remind yourself of that. And when I interview great salespeople, they, they all have a why. Might be their family, might be a charity, it might be competitiveness, it might be the challenge. Whatever lights you up, remind yourself of that, you know, in as much detail as you can. And then it all of a sudden makes sense.

100% agree. I have a lot of sticky notes around my desk as well, like you talked about, and a lot of it is around goals for the year, why I'm doing this, because you'll have those, those bad days to your point, especially for salespeople. And if you don't go back to that passion while you're doing it and remind yourself, you're gonna get into that negative mentality. So I love that for sure. And that's part of also what I do in the morning is try to Sort of visualize the day a little bit. Not, not some crazy meditation, but I visualize the day, visualize my goals. And if you kind of look, reflect back on how far you came and all the work you put in, that kind of helps reinforce the why and passion of, of why you're, you're doing it. So I'm, I'm a big fan of that. So there's a lot of things I really enjoy for, for my routine. What, what about you? What's, what's the biggest things that were kind of game changers for you with your morning routine or just in general throughout the day that helped you from a sales standpoint?

I think you have to have it written down. You have to keep track of it. You have to start super small but consistent and have a good mix. I think what's helped me the most in the last couple years is when you look at fitness and sales, you would think that they're orthogonal.

Yeah.

They have nothing to do with each other, but to get better at one is the identical thing to get better at the other. What, why can't people lose weight? Does anybody not understand the heuristic?

Nope. It's pretty straightforward.

Yeah, it's calorie deficit. How you get there is up to you. You can use a drug, you can use exercise, You can fast, but which one is the most effective? You gotta change your lifestyle. You know, everybody's all excited about these drugs that are out there, but they, it's appetite suppressant is what it is. And it has side effects. So you can e— and if you don't change your lifestyle, you have to be on it the rest of your life. But people refuse to change their lifestyle. They need a drug to tell them, I need to not feel hungry. So what I learned is you can't have the stuff in the house if it's in the house. And then I ask myself, is it better off in the trash or in my stomach? That's the, that's the, the, the acid test. So, you know, trash day in my neighborhood is Wednesday morning. And I take a big trash bag. I look through my refrigerator, my cupboards. I go, is there anything here that's better off in this bag than in me? And I put it in the bag before I even think about it. Start rational. Oh, you might have guests. Oh, someone else might appreciate that after I move out of here. No, you've got to throw it out because it's going to be some late night. You wake up, you don't dream about salads. You dream about cake and cold pizza and cold Chinese food and sweets, right? Because that's what your brain wants. That's what it remembers. And you go downstairs, if it's not there, well, decision's over. You're not going to the grocery store at 3 in the morning. It's not open and you don't feel like going outside. So for me, and I really started this 13 years ago when I started my own company, the problem was I I wasn't consistent. There was, you know, seasonal things that would muck up my consistency, either travel or the weather. You know, being outside becomes painful instead of pleasurable. And, you know, trying to do something inside, it's almost a whole different habit even though it's the same physical motion.

Hmm.

And also, like when you're doing something that you sh— you can't physically do every day, you gotta find something to put in this middle between the— you can't run every day. It's not good for your joints. It's not good for a lot of things. You need recovery. And what I learned is if you don't get that recovery, you get, you tend to get sick. So you gotta find, okay, if I'm not gonna go run, what kind of exercise can I do? I picked up like rowing. It was good for running, it was good for all body. And then I go, well, why don't I put a TV set down there so I can catch up on a show that will distract me from running, from the rowing? And, you know, of course I started with an hour and then all of a sudden I found out I was skipping it. I go, why am I skipping it?

Hmm.

I know I always get, it was, it was too much. So I, I moved it back to a half hour and then I go, why don't I add a minute a week? Which is a ridiculous amount of improvement. Yet now I have zero resistance to going and rowing.

There you go. That's, that's an awesome one. And yeah, no, 1 hour of rowing's gonna beat you up pretty fast. So no wonder you had to To drop that back, but movement seems to be one of the most consistent with salespeople that I see, whether it's running or working out or yoga, CrossFit, whatever it may be. But that seems to be a great parallel because it's something challenging. To your point, you don't see results right away, but over time, if you're consistent, you see a lot of results and it becomes kind of like a drug, like a really good drug that, you know, you keep wanting and have to do. So I see that pretty consistently. I don't work out in the morning, but I definitely work out lunchtime, mid-afternoon. That's kind of like my go-to time. So it's sort of my afternoon routine. I try to work out at least 5 times a week, but don't overdo it because I've been injured as well. So you gotta make sure you give yourself a break to your point. And then removing the negative things. So you mentioned all the, you know, food, alcohol, nicotine, just get that stuff outta your house, but also your phone. So I used to be really bad about looking at my phone at night and first thing in the morning. And it was just, it just puts you in kind of a zombie mode, just scrolling on Instagram or whatever first thing in the morning or late at night. So I, just put it away from my bed so I physically can't get to it. So the only time I can get to it is if my alarm goes off or whatever in the morning. So I'm not scrolling in bed at night or in the morning. So just getting it as far away as possible so that I can do that. The other thing that really can kind of show you how much time you're wasting on these bad things in the morning or whenever is if you write down, okay, hey, I scroll on social media for 15 minutes every morning or whatever it is, it's kind of sort of a negative type of habit. And then you add that up during the week and the month and you can be, you can see you're, you're wasting hours just scrolling first thing in the morning and you could literally take 5 of those minutes and focus on something positive and that could be a game changer. So when you, when you start writing it down and seeing how much time you're spending on the, the negative stuff, it can kind of be eye-opening too. And that's an exercise that kind of helped me as well.

Yeah. And one of the things that happened when I got my phone upgraded was I forgot my password to a couple of social accounts. And I just left it. So it still works on my laptop because it remembered my password that I can't see, and I don't feel like resetting it. And I went a week without being able to access a couple social apps. Didn't really miss it. I haven't changed it. You know, I still have like LinkedIn and stuff, but the others, it's like, well, Was I really doing anything productive on there? Probably not. So maybe some of them, you can delete the app for a day or two and see if you're okay because they are time vampires. And, you know, when, if you really keep track of your time, which might be a good way to start, like, what do I need to work on? Time management might be one thing. I think that the first step is be a little bit aware, you know, just, you know, get an Oura Ring or, uh, one of those bands or an Apple Watch, something that monitors what you do during the day without you having to consciously think about it. See what time— what do you— time we wake up to the first time you do something productive. You know, and productive isn't scrolling, right? Productive is moving, doing something towards what you want, not just distracting you from what you don't want. And all of a sudden, how do I get rid of that? Get rid of the fluff.

There's a lot of time you can be saved if you just think about your first hour of the day and write, just kind of brain dump down what you do. You'd be surprised how much time you may be wasting. And that's something that, that really helped me. So whether it's writing it down or getting an Oura Ring or having some type of app, it, it's, you know, looking at the negative side of it, but that will help you kind of free up some time and, and be a lot more focused. And I mean, if you just imagine taking those 30 minutes back to do something productive every day for a full year, like how far you would go on whatever it is you were doing, whether it's working out or reading or whatever, whatever it may be that's productive for you. So It can make a huge difference a year from now if you make those changes. So I'm a fan of morning routines, waking habits, whatever you want to call it. It also can bleed into the afternoon and evening depending on the person. And I think whatever it is, if you do something challenging first thing in the morning or throughout the day, it's just going to set the tone to be a productive person, especially for salespeople because it's such a productivity and performance profession. I think if you can kind of find something that works for you and it could be 5 minutes and then just take it from there and keep building on it, it was the definitely something that I kind of swear by now. And I'm not on the bandwagon with crazy cold plunges and all the stuff you see on Instagram and social media. But I do believe in a lot of that stuff because it's challenging to do and it kind of helps you in sales.

Yeah. And I think the thing about salespeople you should be a little self-aware about is that a lot of salespeople got into sales for the variety. So they like the new. And this is what I've noticed. I notice it myself too. I'm not exclusive of this crowd, but something new, some new habits, some new skills, some new technique, people try it and then it drifts away. And this is the power of the streak because you don't get good at something and you don't even really like it For 2 months. So doing it for 6 weeks and then stopping it, no, it's really not a core skill anymore. That's why the dieting analogy is so good. Everybody wants the 2-week, 20-pound diet instead of the 52-week, you know, 40-pound diet. You know, the idea of, you know, giving up this or reducing that is a little bit of pain.

Yeah.

But if you're consistent, all of a sudden you're like, I'm not going to go back. And that takes a lot of time. That's probably, you know, 2 or 3 months. But people want results immediately. And I see that with salespeople. I, I just want the result. Well, that's not how it works. Everybody wants the result, but you have to go through the process. And the way to do that is understand that it's a process and stick with it.

For sure. And it's that instant gratification society makes, makes it tough. But, and you can also continue to make tweaks too. I have found over time, you're, you're talking months and years when you're doing the same thing. I, I do add some variety intentionally sometimes to change it up because if I, so there was moments where I was recovering from surgery, so some of the things I used to do were a little probably too intense for me at the time. So I changed it up and had more meditation type stuff I was doing because it made sense. So you can add some variety in it too, but you have to be consistent for a long period of time. And, and yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. So I'm all about the morning routine and waking habits for salespeople, that's for sure.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already Has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, uh, the, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, We want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Um, just really, you know, read a book, uh, listen to a podcast. That's good, good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes.

And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline. Gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation is when the client is talking about what they care about. What they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order. But what if they don't know how to get it done? You get a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives? Or these no decisions because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales Obstacle, your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get 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.