Stress, Mental Health, and Sales with Jeff Risely of Sales Health Alliance

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet, beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings and close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd and today we are talking about mental health, something that is not talked about nearly enough across the sales industry. And the person I have joining today is the perfect person to talk about this. His name is Jeff Risley and he's committed his career to to trying to bring sales mental health, or actually the lack of sales mental health to the forefront. He started a community and a company called the Sales Health Alliance. Without effective strategies to manage burnout and protect mental health, the downward spiral that that causes for people is immense. We have all these tools and all these processes to try to go book more deals, but then we have no tools and no processes on how to take care of the mindsets of the salespeople in the role. This is what makes it so hard for salespeople to show up and sell, let alone get out of bed. He is committed to helping the person and salesperson just like I am, which is why I'm so excited to have him Jeff, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Katie. Love the intro. I'm so happy to be here and so grateful for the opportunity to continue to spread awareness around this topic. So thank you. I'm looking forward to this.

Nah, for sure, man. I've been looking forward to this all week. Anyone listening? Jeff and I have actually been in touch over the past years on how important this is. So let's dive straight into it, right? Because, you know, I think sometimes mental health in general either gets pushed aside or people think it's fluffy or it's not that important. Let's get right to the core of it. Why is taking care of our sales team's mental health so important?

Yeah, well, it's very simple. Like this whole, this whole journey has really been born out of one simple belief. And that is anxiety in sales is not optional and it's part of everyday life. And when salespeople start to become anxious, depressed, or they start to burn out, their sales performance suffers. So sales for me, at least, I don't know how you feel about this, but sales for me has always been a performance driven sport and I've always liked to look at salespeople as the corporate athletes of the organization. So if they're not given the tools to protect their most important, the most important asset like their mind and the ability to rest and recover, that performance is only going to suffer. How can you expect them to perform at a high level day in and day out? It just doesn't work. It's a very simple belief around anxiety in sales not being optional and a need to address it because there's no space in the sales floor to do so right now for sure.

Why do you think anxiety is so high in sales? It might be obvious to some people, but I think even sometimes as leaders, they forget what it's like to be a salesperson. Why is anxiety so rampant as a sales rep?

Well, sales is hard. Every single day we are facing negative experiences that can totally rock our boat. Like the missing target. Deals falling through last minute or last day of the month, getting rejected over and over and over again. All of these experiences can happen within one day. And as a result, they are accompanied by very difficult emotions like embarrassment, anger, shame. Fear is another one. I know when I first started in sales myself, at the end of every day, I had no idea these emotions would be stacking up, but I had no idea what those emotions were. I had no idea what mental health was. All I knew was I was buzzing at the end of the day and as soon as 5pm hit. I was like, how can I escape these feelings? Where's the closest bar? How can I play more video games? Like, how can I escape these emotions? Because it just builds up if you're not careful. And it really comes back to, in my opinion, just salespeople and sales leaders not necessarily being given the training to know how to use stress to their advantage. Going back to sort of that corporate athlete piece. Athletes are really good at using stress to their advantage. They work out, put their bodies in distress, they rest and recover so that they can grow. And for salespeople, it's the opposite. They're just hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt all day. And there's very little rest and recovery built in. It's very easy to lose perspective. And the pace of sales is only increasing. So this challenge that we're facing is only getting worse and worse and worse.

No, and I'm glad you bring up the athlete comparison too, because I think a lot of people would be shocked to know how many psychologists are, are on staff for so many of these professional and even high collegiate level teams in terms of sports psychology mindset. Like they, they employ people to help their athletes be in the right state of mind. Yet we get to sales and we don't. Why do you think that is? Like, why is the conversation we're having right now, the rarity? Because, you know, everyone knows sales is stressful, right? Everyone knows, like the anxiety is high, all those emotions, the fear, the rejection, the shame, the embarrassment, the uneasiness, like all that's there. Why hasn't mental health, I guess, made the jump yet? Or why is this still not being talked about enough?

I think based on what you post on LinkedIn, I think you're going to love this comment. It all comes down to practice, practice, practice, practice, whether it's in society or home life. It's not just an issue within sales, it's more rampant within sales for sure. But we have never, we're never given the opportunity to practice expressing our emotions. Sales leaders are never have given, been given the training or the practice. In terms of how do you properly, how do you properly talk to your team about mental health? What does that look like? So there's this underlying, this underlining tone of fear and this fear about seeing weakness being seen as weak. And I hear stories all the time. And it's not that these fears are misplaced either. I get messages all the time on LinkedIn from salespeople saying, hey, this happened to my friend, they opened up about anxiety, or they mentioned to their boss that they're depressed and three weeks later they're let go. So it's this misperception of burnout and declining mental health, either one being misperceived as a performance issue or two being a difficult conversation that neither party knows how to approach together. So the stigma remains. There's a survey by Uncrush. Uncrushed is great. They're another organization, create a lot of awareness around mental health and sales. And they ran a Survey that said 67% of people are close to experiencing burnout, but 60% would be viewed negatively for taking time off, which is crazy to me. It's absolutely insane. So I think it really just comes down to practice. And without having practice and creating space to have these conversations, it just remains this really feared topic that neither side knows how to approach.

So I'm not going to let my fellow sales leaders off the hook here though. Do you think it's practice or is it awareness? Practice assumes that they're even aware or care about this. Right? It's one thing like, oh, I don't know what to do about it, but even what you were just saying, it sounds like a lot of leaders not only don't think about it, but they almost think about the wrong way. They see it as a negative to even talk mental health. Why do you think so many leaders do struggle with this or aren't aware of it? Because to me, I hear practice and I go, okay, that means they're actually trying to fix it and they don't know how. But I'm in these circles, I'm on LinkedIn, there's very few of, let's call it us talking about these types of things. So I guess let me rephrase the question so we can keep it tactical. What needs to be done to educate the leaders on how important this is?

Yep, measurement. Like it comes down to measurement. Like if it's not being, if it's not visible and it's not being measured, then it's never going to get improved. So the standard sales organization will measure their sales pipeline health. They'll usually have leading indicators like how many dials are reps making, meetings booked, how many emails are being sent, whatever it is. And then they'll have lagging indicators like length of sales cycle, revenue, close, whatever. And every day they're looking at these dashboards and they're looking at these spreadsheets measuring, okay, here's the health of my pipeline. And I can forecast and predict performance based off of these leading and lagging indicators. And I think you're right. It really does come down to an awareness piece because in reality, the leading and lagging indicators, they're both lagging indicators. The real input metrics, the real leading indicators that need to be focused on are how anxious is the rep, Are they depressed? What's their self esteem level like? Are they feeling confident? Did they exercise today? Are they sleeping well? And two, when they encounter negative experiences on the sales floor, like that deal falls through, like they get rejected, like buyers ghosting them and they're spinning their wheels trying to chase this person, do they know how to respond to these difficult situations that are accompanied by these really challenging emotions? Do they know how to respond to those situations in a mentally healthy way? And that's kind of where I'm focusing my business in the conversation. It's getting people to realize that those are the real leading indicators for your sales pipeline. Those are the things that are gonna be impacting your performance. So yeah, I'm with you. Like, I think it's a huge blind spot for organizations right now for sure.

So we're gonna shine the light on this here then. So then how, how do I measure those things, right? Like, what do I just like walk the floor and be like, hey Julia, you depressed right now? How you feeling? Like, how do I measure those things? Especially because of the stigma in place, a lot of reps may not even feel comfortable expressing it. So say I am a leader who cares, which I am. And maybe some leaders are listening, going like, actually you're right, I should. How do you recommend measuring those leading indicators? Because I don't have that dashboard yet. I don't have my salesforce.com mental health dashboard that's tracking the mental like health of my team.

How can I. Yeah, so you can get really specific with it. Like there's, there's companies popping up that are providing these, these mental health check ins you can provide. One in particular is Avail app.

Sorry, say that again. What's it called?

It's a veil app, is the website so that will provide like a weekly or daily check in that your sales team can, can do. And then based on where they're struggling, whether it's sleep, whether it's anger, whether whatever it is, the emotions, it'll make recommendations for them in terms of pieces of content that they can use and it will roll up to the sales leader so you can get a pulse on where the area of your team is struggling the most. So that's one if you want to get really tactical. When I think about what sales leaders can really be doing specifically. It really starts with them to be sharing their personal struggles and their vulnerabilities consistently and as frequently as possible. I think based on what I've seen from the stories you share, I think that's something that has made you extremely successful in building that trust and building that rapport with your team is because you're so open about talking about things like burnout and how it's affecting you on a day to day basis. The way I always connect mental health and the way it feels is I don't know if you've ever worn one of those rubber Halloween masks back in the day for Halloween. Like I picture trying to sell with anxiety. Like wearing one of those Halloween masks all day. Your perception is dull, you can't hear as well, you're hot, you can't breathe. And a sales leader, one of the key things they need to do is really create a space in the sales floor where people feel comfortable taking that mask off. And a space that I think has four key components. And the four key components that I believe is one the rep needs to feel safe. So if you're openly sharing your stories, that's amazing. It won't feel as a trap. Like a trap, there needs to be a self esteem component built in where the sales leader is consistently making sure that that identity shift of I've failed in sales hasn't turned to I'm a failure in sales. So checking in on that self esteem then it's really creating spaces for in person connection. Especially now more than ever. Whether it's with this pandemic. How do you build connection between the teams? Whether it's through gamifying different metrics and incentives and contests or get togethers. And then finally 4 is how do you make sure that work is meaningful on a day in and day out basis. How can you make sure that every single person on your team knows why they're showing up and knows the purpose behind each task? I think those are the four key components that sales leaders really need to prioritize when they're creating the space for sales leaders or for their sales team to talk about mental health.

No, I really like that. And so let's go a layer deeper there and get tactical.

Right.

So you said feeling safe, a lot of that was like sharing your own stories and own vulnerabilities.

Right.

And I do got to say that guys like stop telling only your glory stories. Like you know these leaders out, they sound like they were this perfect rep. Always crush quota, always at predis club, never Struggled, never got rejected. Stop it. One, it breaks trust with your team. They don't believe you. But then to Jeff's point, it creates an environment where people feel like they can't share their struggles. But let's jump over to this, like the self esteem part, right? Like how as a leader, can I help build that up in my team?

Yeah. So it's really being. Shifting the priority and the focus, like a lot of the priorities within sales in terms of how you're being measured is outcome only. Like, did you hit your metrics today? Did you close your business? And if you hit this metric, you are either praised or you're punished or reprimanded for this one outcome. And as a result that when those things start to stack on top of each other, your identity gets tied to these outcomes. It's that whole idea of, I think the sales culture really perpetuates this fixed mindset where you either believe you're good at sales or you're not good at sales. It's not something that you can master through practice and growth. So from a self esteem standpoint, if your identity is tied to these outcomes and you have a tough month, that small shift in identity from I have failed shifts to I'm a failure, which is personal. That's hard to shake. And because you're a failure, there's no room for growth. There's no room for learning and progress. And I think that's why it's critical for sales leaders to really keep that mind where you need to get back to focusing on the learning and growth that happens every single day and every single week at an individual and at a team level. I don't know how you feel about this. I'm curious. I think the, the sales leaderboard is a little bit of an archaic tool that is again, perpetuating this fixed mindset approach. Where are all the personal bests? Where is I want to see progress and I want to see growth in myself. Where is the personal best of most demos set in a day? Biggest revenue close, Total revenue close. In my career at this company, why are those metrics not being shown? Why is it only I'm either better or I'm worse than someone on this dashboard based on one or two outcomes? That feels really shitty and that takes a toll on your mental health. So we need to kind of readjust and get back to, I'm all for team against team competition, but individuals on the same team competing against each other, we know that shit doesn't work. Compare yourself to social media every day and you're going to be depressed. It doesn't work. I think that's where we kind of really need to reiterate and revamp this whole sales leaderboard. And keeping progress and learning visible.

No, I love it. I completely agree there. And this is also my growth as a leader. Right. KD6, seven years ago, no leaderboard. See it? You don't want to be at the bottom, get off the bottom. Right. But then I realized that there's always someone at the bottom, bottom. Right. And so now that person's being shamed every single day. And as much as we like to think shame actually causes people to take action, it doesn't. And this is like, emotional intelligence. And sales is so low. Like, what does shame normally make you do? It doesn't make you improve. It makes you hide. It makes you cower. It makes you, like, turn away. It doesn't, like, motivate you to do much of anything.

And.

No, I'm with you there. It's funny. Before this whole pandemic thing, we were actually working on a personal best wall. Like, we were gonna put that up on the wall and show where people were tracking to and, like, have those things up there. Cause you have your hall of fame. Yes, that's fine. But we were. We were working on getting this built on our wall, and now we have no walls. But it is what it is.

Yeah. Well, the other thing I'll say about, like, the leaderboard, I love that you were working on that personal best, but my girlfriend ran a marathon recently, and she was explaining to me about her process for running the marathon, training for the marathon, which is this idea of tapering. So she would run 16 kilometers, then her next run would be 14 kilometers, and she'd run 18 kilometers, and it'd be 16 kilometers. It's this taper up, taper down, taper up, taper down. And I thought that was awesome. All I could think about was, like, how cool would that be in sales? If you had one month where you tapered up, which was kind of a bit of a stretch goal, you could, as a sales leader, position it as, this is the big game. Like, here we go. Like, let's get fired up about this. And that. Knowing that you have a taper down month after, where all of your incentives are prioritized around rest and recovery, like creating new strategies, you know, bringing in learning, development, creating that extra space to really, you know, develop and get better during this, this down month to then taper up for a really big game. I just thought that could Be so cool from a sales standpoint that I'm really excited to try and test once there's clients that are open to exploring this further.

I love it. And my teams know this. So generally speaking, I give my teams the day off on the 1st of every month.

Nice.

Because we have monthly quotas, right? And so you grind, grind, grind. You fight to the very end, and then you wake up on the first at a zero. And it's just I and I fought for eight years to make the first productive contests, games, you know, carrots and sticks, like all these different things. And like, I never could. And then I flipped the thinking for a second, said, well, what if I just embraced it? Like, why is the day back? The day is bad because they're tired. And I know they're tired because I'm tired too. What if we just embraced it? So when I reversed it, right when I started giving that day as an off, like we do, basically it's like two to three hours of work, right? Clean up your pipeline, clean up your leads, get everything organized, update your fields and everything, then you're gone. Right. And just like allow that recovery results went up from it. We didn't lose a day of production. We got way more out of it across the month. And so I love this idea of the same idea. Like you blow out a month, the expectation actually is the next month is a recovery and a recoup to blow out the next one. And getting into that up down, intentional cycle versus what we see a lot in sales now is up, down, unintentionally, you have a big month, but you run yourself into the ground. So then you have a bad month and now you feel bad about it, and now you're trying to catch back back up again. So now that roller coaster, man, takes a toll for sure.

And I like what you said there as well. Like, it's an unintentional up down. And if you're consistently bumping that target every single month, I think again, we go back to that whole idea of perpetuating this fixed mindset of outcomes are the only thing that matter. But if you taper down one month, you create this extra space where people have some brain capacity to actually prioritize things like learning and development. Like I always say, like I, I wanted to be a rep that was always learning something new every single week reading those personal development books. But you're so burnt out, like, it's hard to kind of create space for that. But if you kind of have that culture that prioritizes this Stuff and gives you space to actually do some of these things. It's, it's that personal growth and that development of mastery of sales that becomes so addictive and so much fun.

No, I love that. So then let's go to the rep level. Right? So all right. I am in sales. Sales is stressful. I have all these anxieties, I have all these fears. I teeter that line between depression and just anxiety at all time highs. What are things that reps can do.

To help with these things?

Right, because they're not always going to have the support of leadership. It's not always going to be built in. But also there's just things we should be doing to take care of ourselves anyway. So what are some things that you know or have seen to really help alleviate stress, to lower anxiety, to lower. Really salespeople too? Like we know we have a lot of addictive personalities, right? Like we go from our coffee to coffee to Red Bull to lunch to then drinks out with people. And it's like we have these addictive personalities that only make it worse. What are some things we can do intentionally to help with our mental health?

So I think the first big step that I had to take was I needed to become more aware and more mindful of when my mental health started to decline. So mental health is a spectrum of well being and we fluctuate along this spectrum on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And when you start to encounter these triggers, depending on what they are for you, you'll move further and further down the spectrum. Something to keep in mind is there's really three things that you want to be mindful of. So you want to be mindful of things like intrusive thoughts. So that usually starts as a what if statement, such as what if this deal doesn't close? What if my manager gets bad at me? And they tend to cycle? They tend to cycle. I have anxiety, this happens to me. Like what if this deal doesn't close? What if my manager gets angry? What if I get fired? What if I lose my job? What if I lose my house? And it cycles out of control? So that's usually phase one. And those what if thoughts, they're pretty sneaky and they're very tough to notice. Then the next thing that you want to be mindful of are things called somatic symptoms. So these are the feelings that you get when you're anxious or you're depressed. Your mental health starts to decline. So dry mouth, sweaty, sleepless nights. For me, I get this pain in the upper right top Corner of my stomach that just starts to ache. I've had it checked out by hundreds of doctors. There's nothing there. It's purely related to stress. And nine times out of 10 when I feel that pain and I say, wait a second, what am I thinking about right now? I usually connect it back and there's an intrusive thought that snuck into my head that has me worried and anxious. And then the third thing you want to be mindful of is and for sales leaders too, this is a big thing that you want to keep an eye out on your team is behavior changes in your habits. So are they becoming more intense and are they becoming longer durations? So if you go out for one night and you get super drunk, you recover? Sure, we all have those days. But if you're going out and getting super drunk five days in a row, there's something going on there. There's something that's kind of happening with your mental health that you need to start talking about, start opening up about. So it's kind of that intensity and duration piece from a behavior change that you want to be mindful of as an individual level and as a sales leader level. So that was the first big step that I need to be aware of, is like that movement along the mental health spectrum, if that makes sense for sure.

So what are some ways reps can I guess, do those check ins? Like, okay, I want to be more aware of it. Like, are there questions they should ask themselves daily? Is it things like journaling? How can we build the habits of these? Because I fall into that too, right? I'll find myself having a thousand fake arguments in my head, right? Because especially as a leader, I'm trying to look for problems and I almost have to think about worst case scenarios often.

Right?

So I'm going down these, what we call it the what if funnel, what if this and what if this and all of a sudden, like, you're buried, right? What are some, I guess, tactical ways for reps to catch themselves or to build in the habit of that self awareness you're talking about?

So one thing that's worked really well for me has been bookending my days with self care, especially with this pandemic going on. So my morning routine consists of exercise, personal development, and a cold shower. So once I do them every single day and once I go through this routine because we're at home, the other thing people aren't mindful of with this whole pandemic is there's all these subconscious triggers that are going on. So Usually when you're at home and you see your kids, you see the tv, you see the couch, your subconscious triggers are saying it's time to rest and digest. It's time to relax. You're good. But now we have to figure out a way to be productive. So by starting my day with a specific routine it knows my brain is starting to learn it's work mode now. And then at the end of every day I have a shutdown routine. So this is things like I write what I'm grateful for, I journal, I meditate, I, I do something called the WIM HOF method. Nice. Yeah, love the WIM HOF method. So if you haven't tried it out, check it out. So I have this wind down routine that I do every single day that's extremely helpful. And again it puts me into that, okay, work's done. Time to rest and digest, which is huge. And then throughout the day, the one acronym that has really been helping me lately to again be mindful of this change is halt. H, A, L, T And HALT is a very simple acronym that helps you check in consistently throughout the day and say H are you hungry? A are you angry? L are you lonely? And T, are you tired? Those are sort of three things that you want to be mindful of because when one of those buckets is starting to get empty, your mental health is starting to decline and you need to start implementing some of those self care strategies to refill those buckets.

I really like that, that bookend ideal like how you start and how you end. WIM HOF highly recommend people look into it. But I will say go easy to start on it. Like I went way too intense like the first time I went through it. Like almost passed out. Like you know, the breathing then to the push ups and like the cold. Like I actually wear cold, I wear a cold ice vest for a couple hours a day as well. Right. For like some the thermogenesis and everything. And I love it. So what would you say is a good start? Right. So all right, you have that routine. If you could recommend one thing in the morning and one thing in the evening that would start someone on this journey, what would that be?

So exercise for sure in the morning, like 100%. The benefits around exercise are just insane. Like there's it, there's this, what exercise does is like there's all sorts of these benefits that everyone, you know, we've been, we've been expressed and been pulled out for years. Some fun ones that people might not be, might, might not Be aware of. So there's a study done on two groups of people. One group, one group exercise. One group did not exercise. The group that did exercise, even if it was a mild amount, $25,000 more than the group that did not exercise, which is crazy. And exercise also releases this chemical called bdnf, Brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is essentially like steroids for your brain to help protect it against stress. So I think exercise is absolutely critical. And then in the evening, big thing is gratitude. You need to build gratitude because it helps rewire your brain and helps strengthen the serotonin pathways and the dopamine pathways. It'll help you make you feel better over time. And then combine gratitude with a journaling practice where you're sitting there and you're just fully getting curious with what you're thinking, what you're feeling and what you've been doing throughout the day. Like I said, it's important to have a sales leader that creates the space for you where you can start to explore these emotions, turn inward, but if you don't, you can do it at an individual level. And that's where journaling has been really helpful to really help you kind of learn ways to approach these difficult emotions on a daily basis so they become less scary. Yeah.

Now we're in the final stages. So I created a live, better sell, better journal. That one side is your daily plan for sales. Right. Your call blocks, your demo follow ups, everything there, where you're at to goal, all that stuff. And the other page starts the day with gratitudes and affirmations and your why. Then it ends the day with self reflections. What you're grateful for, what went well. And then it has a habit tracker at the bottom. Did I exercise? Did I meditate? Did I read? And so you can track. Did I knock out some of those core foundational things. So I'm actually working to get that printed over the next week or two and I'm super excited to roll that out to the team.

Nice man. You have to let me know how that goes and the feedback for sure.

I'm excited for it, dabbled with it a little bit. Like few of the reps like know about it and they're like pretty pumped just to have something right. Because like to have that tangible. There is something about writing because I've done both. Like I use the 5 Minute Journal, but they also, they have apps right. Where you can, you know, type it in. It's not the same like when I sit and write, the impact that has on Me mentally is way different than just, you know, using my thumbs to put it into the phone. So I would encourage everyone, like, journal. And it doesn't always have to be like, so Billy was mean to me today and here's how it made me feel. Like, that's a lot of people think about with Journey. It's like, just write what comes to mind. Put it down on paper.

For sure. And I think part of the journaling as well. Like, I don't know if you. I'm sure you do a to do list of some kind at the end of every day. Like, that's also huge. Like, that is just a critical part. Like, there's a survey done on like 30,000 people globally and they found that the most effective strategy for reducing stress was having a plan. Because it gives you the opportunity to think about future obstacles that you might encounter in the next day or the next week and create a plan. Like, you might not necessarily be more in control of the situation, but the feeling of control that comes with having a plan helps protect your prefrontal cortex and that logical part of your brain that you need to sell day in and day out.

No, I love that it does. Like, I notice it big time anytime I'm struggling with sleep.

Get out.

Just write. What am I thinking about right now? What are those things? I can't remember who said it. They said one of the reasons why you'll lose sleep or have a hard time falling asleep is because your brain is trying to help you remember it. And by writing it down, it knows. It knows it's there.

Yeah, yeah. It's like a worry loop.

Yeah, right. It's like it knows. Okay, I wrote it down. I can come back to that at another time. I don't have to make this. This ingrained in my head. So journaling is huge. So then let's bring this all together now. So we've talked journaling, we've talked self esteem, being open. How can me as a sales leader, how do I build this into my org? Where are some good places to start? Say, okay, I care about my team. I know mental health is important. I start sharing my stories. And how do I build, I guess, a culture around mental health?

Yeah. So I think it starts from day one and day one. What I mean by that is the onboarding process. I think there needs to be a mental health and sales program that's being built into every single onboarding process. So from day one, they know I'm being given the training. This is over openly talked about. Here's all the things that I can do to improve my eq, my mindfulness and my resilience. This is wicked. So it needs to start very early on from the onboarding process and then you have your sharing consistent. I've put together ebooks of 40 thoughts, tips and ideas that sales teams can use to start the conversation around mental health. It's all about being consistent with it. And once you're aware of the problem, you need to find ways to practice these conversations on a weekly basis, whether it's in your one on ones with individual teams or within one on ones with individual reps or with at a team level. And really kind of having those conversations consistently throughout the day rather than, you know, once in a once a year when it's, you know, mental health awareness month or whatever and you're like, yeah, let's talk about this and then never again. So those would be two things that I would say. It's tough. It's still like, I'm not gonna pretend to have all of the answers, but I think just trying new things, having open and honest conversations with the team and just trying new things, this is new for everybody. And I think it's important that sales leaders start sharing these best practices. What's working, what's not working in terms of how they left, how they've led these conversations with their teams as well. So it's still a new frontier, my man.

Indeed it is. Which is a shame considering how long we've been doing this sales game that.

Like now this is a new thing.

Or something that people actually trying to bring into the industry now, figuring us figuring ourselves out as humans, that's a never ending struggle. I don't know that we'll ever really figure ourselves out. Half the books behind me right now are just on the brain and why we as creatures do the crazy things that we do. But as we start to wrap this up, one of my favorite questions to ask here, I called the big three, right? We're saying, okay, so we've been talking mental health, we've been talking, you know, stress reduction, been talking, you know, how to deal with the emotions and the anxiety. Say they forget everything we talked about today, except for three things when it comes to either mental health or taking care of your mental health. What would be the three, three takeaways that you would want everybody to walk away from from this conversation?

Yeah, great, great question. So I think first thing, number one, like I said, anxiety is not optional. It's part of everyday life. Like, I have yet to meet a Salesperson or a sales leader that doesn't have their own personal story. So there's this idea of shared compassion when it comes to mental health. Like, everyone is struggling. And I think this pandemic has done a really good job of giving us an external event that we can all rally around to show compassion towards each other. So we're building this skill right now, which is really awesome. But we have to remember that compassion was there before with mental health. It's going to be there long after the pandemic with mental health. So compassion, you're not alone, and it's okay to struggle. I think the second thing is I like to combine servant leadership and really adopting an altruistic view within sales. The thing about anxiety that's really important to understand is when you start to become anxious, it becomes all about you. Like, I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to end up on the street. It becomes very you focused. So the antidote to anxiety is serving others, taking that altruistic view of trying to help others. So this sounds cliche and repeated, but that's why it's really important to develop a personal why around really helping your buyers grow and helping your customers feel a little more safe in this really scary world with this product that you're offering. And then number three, I would probably say is, I don't know if you know who Jeff Goldblum is, but I love Jeff Goldblum and we all need to take a Jeff Goldblum approach to our day to day. And what I mean by that is if you've ever seen him, the guy is just so obsessively curious about in every situation, Whether he's talking to some random person on the street or a big executive. He's so curious and his curiosity is so infectious. But what it does is it brings him into the moment. You can't be nervous about what the future. You can't be worried about what's happened in the past. If you're just obsessively curious about every single thing around you. When you're walking down the street or engaging or talking to someone new, it forces you into the moment to try and learn and grow from every experience. So those would be my top three.

I love it. I absolutely love it. And then here's what we get to wrap with, right? So the name of this show is Live Better sell better, right? Like taking care of the person in salesperson. And we've spent a lot of this time actually focusing on the live better side, right? Of like here's how we can live better. Could you end with either a piece of advice or, or, you know, facts, figures, surveys, things, you know, and like, let's end this with saying here's how mental health affects your ability to sell. Why does taking care of your mental health actually make you a better salesperson?

Yeah, so it really, the thing we need to remember is that there's really like two parts of the brain that are consistently fighting on a day to day basis. You have the prefrontal cortex, which is your logical cortex, part of your brain, and then that's responsible for your creativity. The objection handling really picking up on those buying signals, that's the part of the brain you need and then that's consistently dueling with the limbic system. So that's your emotional part of your brain that's responsible for fight or flight, keeping you safe. So as you start to get anxious, that fight or flight brain starts to take more and more of your brain power. It's like a, a stereo that's getting dialed up. So all of those things that you need to be successful in sales, like I said, the creativity, the objection handling the, you know, asking good questions, all of that power is being taken away. I did a survey and found that more than two in five salespeople struggle with their mental health, which is more than, which is essentially double the average, which is usually the numbers 1 in 5 of the population.

So surprised it's that low, to be honest. Like if I think about the amount of people I know that struggle, I think 2 and 5 might actually be low in terms of self reporting. That's very interesting.

Yeah, it was, it was very interesting. But again, it is more than double the average, which was crazy. So mental health is really important. It's going to help you. Like if you, there's a way to improve, if you take care of your mental health, it'll lead to better sales performance. So a key thing to remember, live better, sell better. Start treating self care like a daily multivitamin as opposed to an aspirin that you take when you're really burnt out. Start doing these things every single day to prioritize your mental health. Like a multivitamin that you take during flu season. If you're in a very difficult month or you're outside your comfort zone, you need to update, you need to up, you take more of your daily multivitamin to build that resilience and protect your mental health. So yeah, that'd be it from my end. I love it.

And that's a hell of a way to wrap on this, right? Your mental health is the multivitamin. It's taken daily, and if you take it daily, it prevents you from having to do the reactive aspirin. Right? It keeps you from getting sick. It keeps you from burning out. Versus so much of what we're doing is we get burnt out and then we're trying to recover afterwards. So, Jeff, my man, thank you so much for this. I loved having you. The content was amazing. Keep going on your mission. You know, you have a full supporter in me in terms of the sales health alliance. In any way I can support. I am. But, hey, thanks for being on the show today, man. This was great. Really loved having you.

Thanks, man. Appreciate the opportunity again. And, yeah, looking forward to this conversation continuing. So thanks, man.