Chris Johnson's Personal Blog

How do you set your goals?  If you’re like most people that follow GTD or something similar, you probably take the end result and back out of it.

So, you’d say “I want earn $100,000 in commissions in 12 weeks.”  Then, you back out of it.  ”To do that, I have to sell $750,000 in new sales. That’s $62,500 a week.  To close that much, I must get 12 proposals out each week.  To do that, I must get 25 leads contacted a day.  To do that, I must make 100 cold calls.  To do that I must get to the office by 7am.”

This is a better plan than most, but can you smell the familiar funk of failure?  I can.  This is what I did for years and years.

Here’s what will happen:

-You’ll start strong, go through a day.  You will go through the motions and get your calls made (or sit ups done, or calories, or whatever).  You’ll record this.

-Then, you’ll be exhausted.  And because it doesn’t prioritize, you’ll still feel the paralyzing guilt when you don’t hit your targets.  But maybe the best thing you could be doing was talking to the one guy that could give you 8 sales…

-Then you fail.

-Then you don’t hit any goals because you missed the one that requires you straddle the hamster wheel of destiny.

—

It’s happened before, it’s probably gonna happen again.  And you’ll never, ever, ever catch up once you bury yourself and measure by output.

The right way?  Simple.

Start with one goal.  One thing.  One item a day, maybe at a time.  Forget the rest.  Forget the volume.  Do it.  Do it again.  That’s how you win.  

One thing.

 One easy thing, just to get going.  You’ll not catch up.  You’ll crush your goals. You won’t have the guilt.

And when it’s time to pursue another direction? When that big thing that’s off book is available? You’ll do it.

That’s how winning is done.

Him: “You are saying that we can’t have your work if we don’t pay a deposit?”

Me: “Yes.”

Him: “We’re usually net sixty.”

Me (confused) “OK…”

Him (slower, louder) “So, we’re usually net sixty….” (Pausing.)

Me: “We don’t offer our stuff at those terms.”

Him:  ”We don’t really do this….”

Me (cheerful) “Fair enough, let me let you go- I appreciate the opportunity.”

Him: “What?”

Me: “Well, you only want to do net sixty, we have a no exceptions policy, and it seems you do too.”

Him: “I didn’t say that but you have to throw me a bone.”

Me: “Most of our customers are prepaid – this deposit gets your place in line – listen, I wish you well, but I have to go, either hire us or don’t.”

Him: “We’re obviously going to hire you, but we’ll need you to take net sixty.”

Me: “You’re not going to hire us at net sixty.”  I put the it’s time to go in my voice.

Him: “I don’t understand?  You’re a new vendor, and you’re asking for a lot of money.”

me: “And you’re asking me to lend you mine.  I can’t afford to finance your company.”

Him: “What if we don’t like what you make?”

Me: “Then you don’t like it.”

Him: “That’s not good.”

Me: “Hey, hire us or don’t we do a nice job, we stick to our terms.”

Him: “I have to hire you, but we require net sixty.

Me: “Well, good luck with that.”

Him: “You’re really serious, aren’t you.”

Me: “Yes.  I’m going to assume you won’t hire me, I gave you the best and final offer, and I appreciate your team and [redacted].  I’d love to work with you, but we are only able to work on our terms.”

Him: “Can you give us a discount.”

me: “Yes, I can.  But I won’t.”

Him: “Why not?”

Me: “Because this conversation was a pain in the neck, and if this is the ethos of your company, I’m taking on a lot of risk.”

Him: “So you really won’t do net sixty.”

Me: “I really won’t.”

Him: “OK, we’ll send a check for the deposit.”

Me: “You’ll sign the contract, right?”

Him: “Well, legal may have some questions before we sign the contract, but your deposit is on its way.”

True story.

—

When we start our business time itself is almost always more scarce, rare and vital than money. When we take on a client, or commit to a project, what we're doing is incurring a debt of time. Committing future time to something. We may get a check for it, we may not, but what is true is that we owe time.

It took me a year or more to get a good handle on that idea. That I owe time to the future, and growth itself is constrained by that . I have always, always been able to sell more work than our team can do. But, when we sell without regards to timing it creates bottlenecks at bad times and increases our risk because we're not delivering in tune.

Each month, I estimate how much we need to do next month and I observe it: did we add or clear time debt? When must the time come due? Keeping this in mind lets us know what we say yes to.

So much to do.

People in your life.

So many projects.

But-  what’s necessary?  What’s moving the ball forward?  What’s noise? Hard telling, always.

Run.  Write something.  Think a little.

Work out to exhaustion.  Plan something.  Rest.  Read something hard.

Stretch.  Inspire someone.  Run.  

All things to do in a good day.  

I wonder what’s necessary as part of a good day?

At the end of every bit of work I do this is what I hope to be able to say with honesty:

Here is the very best work I can do in the time I have been given for this project.

I have committed to improving my skills for years to come. I hope that the work that I can do will serve today’s needs. I know my thinking has changed over time and I expect that process to continue.

I release my work to you with pride and gratitude for this opportunity to be of service.  

I will consider your ideas for improving my work or my skills.  I invite you to share your best work with me so we can inspire one another.

…

Since perfectionism has kept me from moving forward – since I used to be fine with “quick and dirty” ( and I’m not fine with that these days)… I must have some sort of answer to my brain in advance.  I have to tell my brain: this is what I can do today, but just wait till later.

Since this blog is a practice blog, I’ll tell you that I’m going to start a podcast today.

I’ll do everything here, and give 10 or so short lessons on sales.

I’m **all in** on podcasting, this is just a place that isn’t designed for traffic or traction.  I have become rusty at presenting, at my schtick and so this will be something like a rehab assignment in the minor leagues.  Once I feel comfortable, my Phase II plans will begin in earnest.

So, that said, I’ll be doing this by the end of business tomorrow with 10 quick lessons  on sales and networking.

I’ll play with levels, pre-production stuff etc.

I’ll put it in iTunes and mess with syndication and yes, it’s only practice.

The first step you have to undertake to change yourself, the world, your organization is to grasp reality.  We always want to be normative (oh, but if the world would see things my way…)…and that’s not a poor way to think.  But it’s limiting when you become myopic to reality.

The Secret types believe that if you “ask and believe” you’ll somehow get stuff.  We know the world works differently.  It’s not enough.  (I.E. having a positive attitude is necessary…though almost never sufficient for success).

You have to really understand what’s actually going on.  The terrain.  You have to get the big picture in a bigger way than everyone else.

Once you do, you can equip yourself to overcome whatever comes up, to make the “normal” stuff trivial.  It’s not negative thinking to predict and plan for obstacles, it’s basic competence. Then you can use “willpower” or energy or whatever against the stuff that comes up by surprise.  Yes, virginia, will encounter obstacles.  It’s an absolute certainty especially when you’re doing something hard.  What we have to do is conserve our efforts towards stuff that’s a real surprise.

What’s the point of failure in a new routine (going to the gym)?  Might be something as simple as “having gym clothes,” or “having a charged iPod.”  So figuring out the way to overcome that (Pack 10 gym bags) is a core part of winning.

We can’t win if we just “want it bad enough,” or “out work everyone else.”  What we have to do is address reality where it lies.

Hold on a little longer.  Just hang in there.

Make payroll.  Stall  my vendors.  Wait.  Chase my receivables.

Close a huge deal.  Get rejected.  Burn through a friendship.

Make a new friend.  Mentor someone, get mentored. 

Get screwed over.

All of these things happen, and I’m the same guy the whole time. 

We’re making a marketing plan right now. It’s going to be broadcast/value oriented.

However, we are being careful to not create some insatiable content monster.  It’s hard. When you broadcast, there’s always that next thing.  

Harder than you think.  Making something that is optimal and not insatiable.  Sustainable content marketing.

It seems to me it is excellence that is sustainable: having one epic piece is better than 40 pieces of grist. 

There is forever something to do at most companies.  For those that code or work on projects there may be a semblance of “done” when something is finished/over/handled.  For the rest of us, it’s not quite that way at all.  We have to deal with a company that needs to grow.

Endlessness. Priorities. Tests. Rules.

And we have to do this while working on/in the business. There is too much to do.  Not all of it is important, but there are things that simply need to be done, right?

I see this sort of thing.  Block out big blocks of time.

I see some things in my business I never do enough (selling directly, lead gen, etc).  I see things I do too much of (observing analytics, chatter on social, ‘research).

I haven’t figured it out, but I’m gonna try.

It may not be realistic for me, personally & the way I live my life.

I can get better which is the point.

Someone told me weight loss was WWI trench warfare.

True enough.  And so is every day. Every single day – is literally a matter of life and death.  The problem is that we’re impatient. It’s hard to be disciplined.

It’s hard to go to bed at a reasonable hour so that…

…you can wake up with energy…so that…

…you can go to the gym…so that….

….you can build muscle.   So that…

you burn fat faster…so that….

…you fit into smaller pants.

Each step is easy enough, but the whole of it, living in the lines and building yourself up so you can take bigger risks is hard. Doing what it takes to prepare yourself to win is hard because look, there are endless distractions out there.

Each step is easy.  One time, it’s not hard to skip a latte and have a black tea.  Or whatever. But the whole of it can get crushing sometimes, we rebel even when we see results.  And when we plateau, it’s hard.

I’ve made endless “bold announcements” that this time I’d stick to some sort of schedule.  It was the only way I was able to stomach being in real estate for so long.  The schedule, the koan.  Every day was about submission to something I predetermined.

But that only works so long, I’m not vile enough to make it as a realtor and so cognitive dissonance wracked me.  

Still, there’s a balance between “doing any old thing you want,” and being over-scheduled like a 10 year old with Ballet, Gym, etc.  I’m trying to find it.

I know people that use spreadsheets, index cards, evernote to do this sort of thing, and it might be what I have to do, I’m commited to living like each day is a matter of life and death.  I’m willing to try whatever tools can help me live it out.

Each day I want to be exhausting, intense, and I want to make progress everyday.

I don’t know how to get there just yet.