The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 196: Anthony Iannarino - The Only Sales Podcast You'll Ever Need

Episode Date: March 19, 2017

Episode 196: Anthony Iannarino - The Only Sales Podcast You'll Ever Need   Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Who you are matters more than what you do." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Good vs. Great.  What separates the two? Self Discipline - "Me Management" Prospecting - Opportunity Creation "If your dream client could already get the result they wanted, they wouldn't need you" Qualities of the best: Caring Other Oriented Leading with insight "The skill set doesn't matter until the mindset is there" Competitive Is selling an art or a science? Creation of The Sales Blog Consistent processes "I decided I'm a writer... So I write everyday." Asked to do his first keynote after writing everyday for 10 months "The more you work, the more opportunity finds you" EEA for every keynote: Engage & Entertain Educate - Mindset shift Actionable Ideas - Know how to do something different Interview people from the audience before every keynote.  Get to know them, their goals "The best leaders don't look at the scoreboard, they look at the players" Winston Churchill leadership Learn from both the good and the bad leaders -- Take notes "Leadership is the decision to be accountable for a result" "You need to lead NOW.  You can decide to lead whenever you want, wherever you are." "Leadership is a decision. A choice." "Leadership is the decision to be accountable for a result" Continue Learning: Follow Anthony on Twitter: @iannarino  Read: The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Anthony Iannarino on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by FreshBooks: FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to FreshBooks.com/Learning and enter LEARNING LEADER in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section.

You have to trade frustrated for empowered. I mean, that's what you have to do. You have to say, I'm going to decide not to be frustrated, and I'm going to teach people that we can find a way, and it doesn't matter what any external events are. And, Ryan, there's two kinds of people in the world, and you fall into one of these buckets. And most of us don't even recognize that we're in one. Successful people believe that everything is my fault, and I'm empowered to do something. about it. I'm empowered to make a new decision, to make a new choice. There's always something I can do

to respond to external stimulus. And behind me over my shoulder is Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people. And Covey wrote that the pause between the stimulants and the response is where we make a decision. And that decision to do one thing or do the other thing is the source of all of our results. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation with my featured leader Anthony Anerino. He's a highly respected international speaker, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and sales leader specializing in the complex business to business sale. He's also best known for his work at the sales blog.com, which has gained him national recognition

as a thought leader where he writes on a daily basis and has for years. A few of the topics we got in the difference between the good sales professionals and the great ones. Then how to handle a poor leader in your organization? I feel like I'm emailed this question on a regular basis, and Anthony does a great job answering it. Then how to make the jump from individual contributor to a leadership role. It's a choice. Ladies and gentlemen, I know you'll get a lot out of this one with Anthony and Areno.

All right, Anthony, thank you so much for joining me here on The Learning Leader Show. Thanks for having me, Ryan. I appreciate it. I've been really looking forward to this one for quite some time. Obviously, I know we talked in the pre-show about the fact that we both have an extensive history in the background of selling. It's within my family. It's all I've ever done in my career. And so I'm really excited to dive deeper into all the work that you've done regarding what I think is the greatest profession in the world. And that's the profession of selling. So first of all, I think the way to get started is a very very probably a common question that you get asked quite frequently. And that is when you study sales professionals across the world, when you write about them, when you read about them, when you work with them, if you look at the good sales professionals versus the great, what are the biggest differences you found between the good and the great? There's a number of differences that I could immediately point to. And the first book that I published came out last year.

It's probably about six months old now. It's called The Only Sales Guide you'll ever need. And I picked out some things. But if I had to just point to the difference between good and great, the first chapter of the book is self-discipline or what I call the art of me management because there's nothing that you can do to manage time. It ticks away relentlessly. And all you get to do is decide what you do between the ticks.

So people who are great make real. good decisions about what they do with their time and they have rituals and they have practices and they stay true to those so particularly around things like prospecting the best salespeople that I've ever seen the greats they think of prospecting as selling they think it's opportunity creation and opportunity capture so that's the way that they look at it so they're always prospecting and even if they're busy and they've got a full pipeline they're still making calls every day. They're still doing the work building the funnel at all times. They just never let up on that.

So that's probably one of the most important attributes that I would say, differentiating the good from the great. Right now, we're in the third or fourth turning of the sales profession. It's changed dramatically, and it'll change again dramatically. And I'm just working through all these kinds of concepts in my mind right now. But it used to be enough that you could prospect and close and storytell. And now you have to be a business person. So the skill sets that have changed that allow some people to be great where other people who are still competent are only good tend to be things like business acumen and situational knowledge. Do you understand your business? Do you understand your client's business? Do you understand the general economy? Can you see into the future

because you're reading and thinking and studying. And it also tends to include things like the pluralistic decision making where we're democratic and we're going to bring a lot of people into a room. And we may not get unanimity on what the right decision is, but we're going to get some sort of majority of people who understand that to make the right decision for the business, something has to be done. And so consensus building and understanding the dynamics of change and different individuals in different cultures and being able to lead that,

tend to really separate the good from the great. And the great salespeople can figure out how to help other people change and get the better results they want. And I say this all the time, Ryan, but if your dream client could already get the results that they want, they wouldn't need you. And if your competitor was already getting them those results,

then they wouldn't have this dissonance, they wouldn't have this pain, this dissatisfaction. that they're still trying to work through. So that's the part where we have to really, really step up and say, I'm going to be here to do something and be somebody very different than what another salesperson might look like. There are a lot of sales books out there for people to read. I mean, you could just rattle them off.

I'm sitting here looking at your office and you have, it looks like hundreds and hundreds of books behind you as well as your Kindle with thousands of books on it. I'm sure some of them relate to sales. Some of them probably relate to history and military. I know you're interested in that as well. What separates? Why would somebody want to read the only sales guide you'll ever need versus something like, let's say, the Challenger sale or other famous sales books?

I think my book's the precursor to the Challenger sale. Actually, I think that that's what I wrote. And Matt and Brent and Nick, who helped them with Challenger customer or friends. And I think that their book is pointing towards this long trend that I've been talking about, this next generation salesperson where you're leading with insight, you're able to help somebody design the solution that they need. You're taking control of the process and helping people figure out how to buy. I've been writing about that for as long as they've been studying it.

And I think the reason that you would choose this book is because who you are, matters more than what you do. And I want to be really clear about this because it was a big argument I had with the first publisher who asked for a book from me. They didn't understand why I had so much about the mindset in the front half of the book. And they thought, why don't you write the second half of the book and expand it? Because you have a nice framework for all the things that sales entails. And I continued to make the argument that none of this matters in the second half of the book. the skill sets don't matter until the mindset is there, until the person is shaped, right? And they're thinking about what their real role is now.

And we say things like, I want to be consultative and I want to be a trusted advisor. And you only need two things to be a trusted advisor. You need trust and you need advice. Those are the two things. But you have to be somebody who can sit and act as counsel. And so that ends up being a whole bunch of attributes that we can recognize, but that we don't talk about and that we don't develop in salespeople. And so things like caring, you know, being other oriented now in today's day and age is a critical factor in a salesperson success. Things like being competitive and

understanding this is a zero-sum game. And in my next book, The Law Starter Closing, I write a lot about this concept of preference. We're trying to create a preference for ourselves and our solution and for our company. And that means we're in a competition. So I have to have this competitive spirit and know that this is the game I'm playing. Things like resourcefulness, which means figuring it out when the rules haven't been written yet, and that's the world we live in, taking initiative, being persistent, all of these kinds of things make you someone that's worth doing business within the first place. So I think if you're going to be a challenger, I put that after this book specifically because first get your own self together so that you're somebody

worth buying from and somebody who's going to be a great partner, then go get the challenge or and read that and say, okay, so how do I take Anthony's idea in Chapter 16 on business acumen and now start thinking about what these commercial insights are and how I'm going to engage with clients? I think my book is the precedent to challenge her. But you should read, you know, if you're new in sales, you asked a question and I'll answer it now after giving you all that. If you're in sales, you should read every book. And here's the thing. There's a lot of discussion and a lot of argument about should you be a challenger, should you not be a challenge? and all these kinds of things, every single book that's written, and my friends have written

a lot of the books that you probably are thinking about when you think about sales books, Jeb Blant, Mark Condor, Mike Weinberg, Brent Adamson, Nick Tomman. I mean, these people, I know, all of them have a partial view of the truth. And so selling, Gerhard Schwantner from selling power asks me all the time is selling an art or a science. And he wants me to say it's a science, but it's not a science because in science, if I run an experiment and I run experiment A and I get result B every time, I can repeat that and I can say there's scientific proof that this works every time. But in sales situations, A doesn't always get me B. A sometimes gets me C or A sometimes gets me D and something that I do in one situation may be exactly the wrong thing to do in another

situation. So it's art. And you want to look at all of the things that are available to you as choices that you can use. You want to see all of them so that you can be the kind of person who knows how to make the right decision in certain situations. So I say read everything. Other people listening here, Anthony, who are maybe hearing about you for the first time on this podcast are saying, what have you done in your career that has created this platform for yourself? I mean, I think about the sales blog, obviously your book, your history and selling. But if somebody is listening and maybe they're perhaps skeptical, they're saying, why should I listen to Anthony? Can you share a little bit about your background and your history that's led you to this point to give all of this advice to write on a daily basis for many years?

Published now what's going to be multiple books, be a keynote speaker, kickoff sales meetings throughout the country and the world. I love to hear how you've gotten to this point. Yeah, you know, it's funny the way you frame the question up around. Ryan, I wouldn't try to convince anybody to trust what I say or read my advice at all. I would tell you, look at it. And if it speaks to you and you find it useful, then say, I found this useful and I'll see if I can apply it. And if it doesn't, if it's not useful for you, go find something else. I don't feel that I have any kind of monopoly on the truth based on my experience. but my experience has been I really started selling at a very young age, probably about 15.

About 19 or 20, I went into the family business and it was staffing and I ended up having to make calls just because we were a startup and I needed to win clients, but I didn't think what I was doing was selling. I was fronting a hair metal band from the time I was 17 until I was 25. That took me to L.A. And I needed a job and I had a manager who forced me into full-time outside sales because I was winning more clients than salespeople. And I was horrified at the idea of even going into outside sales, specifically because

I thought salespeople were horrible human beings and I never considered myself one. Even though I was winning clients, I never thought of what I was doing as selling. I thought I was out trying to actually help people get better business results. That's all I thought I was doing. They're struggling. I know how to help them. I'll go help them. After being forced into outside sales, I became a horrible salesperson for about 60 days because

then I thought I have to do things to people. to get them to buy. And it took a little while for that to wear off. And after a brain surgery, I came home back to Columbus, Ohio, and I went back in the family business. I built that from 3 million to 45 million with six salespeople. And in a commoditized industry where it's very hard to competitively displace your competitors, we've taken accounts from every single one of our major competitors and held them for decades. So it's something that I've been passionate about. I had enough people start asking me to share what I knew that I decided to start doing that. And then I had enough people start asking me to do more than that.

So then I started to do more in 2007, 2008. 2009, I started the blog. And I've written there every day minus 13 days when I was in Tibet in 2010. And I should have written those 13 days. I just didn't know how good China Mobile was. I mean, all the way through the Chinese countryside to base camp. You've got perfect Wi-Fi the whole way. But I had no idea that that was going to be true.

So I didn't carry the equipment I needed. I should have. But I would say to your question, just read the blog. And if it speaks to you, it does to a lot of people. A lot of people recognize what I'm writing is what sales is now versus a lot of things that were written at a time when sales was a very different endeavor. And if you even go back and start looking from 2009 forward, you can see my sales experience and my thoughts. evolving over time because I'm on, you know, Anorino version 3.0 right now. Yeah, it continues to

change and we change with it. What has been the key to your, I guess it would be good to know your daily process because when I see somebody who's able to be that consistent, for me, I really look up to that. Like, I am really dedicated to releasing for two plus years and at least one episode per week every Sunday night at 7 o'clock. I love consistency. I feel like that's a core tenant of somebody who you can trust, who you can depend on. I think that's been brought up and ingrained in my family. We all, I think that's a phrase you would use.

Thinking about you writing daily for the sales blog.com, in addition to everything else that you do, what's your process on a day-to-day basis to make sure that you remain that consistent? it is just it's a commitment i mean i've made a commitment and i'm i'm disciplined about many things in my life that i find it's just more useful to be disciplined and i made the decision on december 28th two thousand nine to write daily and i knew that that was going to help me launch a career as a speaker and it was going to give me a different level of exposure and i sat down with my wife and i told her i'm going to write every day so I set my alarm clock at 5 a.m. instead of 6.30 a.m. And I started waking up at 5 in writing every single day. And that's my process. I get up and I write. And what I've decided is that I'm a writer, which means I can't not write. And some people say, how can you write every day? And I think, how can you not write every day? To me, it's strange that you wouldn't when you have all these thoughts coming through your head that are useful and valuable. Why wouldn't you take the time to explore them and write them down? So I've been doing that.

that now for a little over seven years every single day. But I tend to do it in the morning. And sometimes I change that up and I write later in the day. But I tend to do it first thing in the morning because that's when my brain is the cleanest. I don't have any clutter. The Dalai Lama said the best meditation is sleep. And for me, that clears everything out. And when I wake up, I'm in the right mental state to actually sit down and write. And so writing comes very easy for me. then, everybody's asleep in my house. I now get up at 4.30. I changed it last year. I started a half hour earlier because I wanted an extra half hour of time in the morning. And those first couple hours are the most productive hours of the day for me. So I do a lot of work between

430 and 7 o'clock in the morning. And my process is to write, I just write. I edit later in the day. I sit down and I just start writing. And I have a list of things I want to write. But whatever has my attention is what gets my attention. And so I write it down. Are you a Seth Godin fan? Yeah. That's one of the reasons I started writing every day. Okay. I figured so in regards, because I know he's dedicated to writing every day. And so sometimes I always wonder people who publish content on a daily basis, as if do you have big batch days where you'll try to get 20 posts done in one day or it's literally a daily practice? And it sounds like, Like obviously in your case, it's I'm a writer.

How could I not be writing on a daily basis? I never have a day where I would write 20 blog posts. That would never, ever happened. That would be like, that to me would be like going to a factory. Yep. You know, and doing that kind of work. And it's not for me, I have to care about something enough to write about it. And I have a lot of ideas.

But there are days where I'll write four parts of a blog post. I'll write pieces because an idea strikes me, so I'll write down two paragraphs just so that I've got that piece of content sitting there because I want to make sure that I don't miss it. And sometimes I'll have just two words written down. And those two words will spur something. Like right now I have two words written down, aggregate and momentum. And I'm just thinking about how if you want to be super productive, you have to aggregate. your work and say, this work all needs to be bundled together. And then this work needs to be bundled together. And momentum is when you start doing some work and you stick to it, you start to build. And then one task allows you to wipe off the next one, allows you to wipe up the next one. Because I spend a lot of time thinking about how do you be productive and do meaningful work in a world where the hardest thing for most of us to do is to define our work and determine what needs to be done now. Anthony, I love thinking back to moments and flexion points in our lives.

And I love to, since you made that decision to be a daily writer and to publish and to ship it and to get it out there to help other people to impact them, was, is there, can you think of a time, a specific moment through this process, through your career where, where I don't know if you could call it a tipping point or to where you finally felt like, you know what, this is really starting. to work. I'm being asked more to speak. I'm getting probably paid good sums of money to speak. They're asking me to write books, teach, give programs. Did it start because you became a daily writer? Was it something else? Or can you, maybe there's a story or a specific moment to where you felt like, wow, this is really starting to tip. And it's making a big impact. It was about 10 months in. Ten months of writing. I got the first call. and asked to give a keynote. So I told my wife it was going to take a year before that started to happen, and it took 10 months.

And then from there, it's just continually grown. It's been incremental. So there hasn't been any kind of great inflection point. But I would tell you that one thing has consistently brought me to another level and another level and another level. And I had publishers ask for the book. I turned two publishers down. I decided so many people asked for it. I would write it myself.

And the end of 2015 portfolio reached out to me on a tweet, a direct message, and asked why I hadn't written a book. And I was literally six weeks away from publishing the book. Wow. And I was going to self-publish it because I didn't feel like there was anything a publisher could do to help me. And they asked. And I gave them the book. I let them look at it. And they gave me a two book deal.

so I got the second book coming out this year. But it's been event after event after event like that. There hasn't been any kind of moment where I've said, my plan is finally succeeding. You know, it's just been more good things happen. And I think the more you work and the more consistent you are about your work, the more opportunity tends to find you. And the great thing about publishing every day is Google's constantly working in the background

to make sure your ideas get to the people that need. them when they need them and so having a lot of content helps people find what they need and find you at the moment they need you which is different it's a very different strategy than what I've executed in businesses my whole life which was go find people and develop the relationship and competitively displaced somebody and this inbound kind of idea it's still people finding me when they need me but they're finding me instead of me finding them because I would never find the people I'm working with there's no way I wouldn't know

of them. Many of them come to me from companies I've never heard of and parts of the world I've never been. So that's harder to do. Do you remember that first paid speaking gig? Mm-hmm. Who was it? How much did they pay you? Where was it? I love to, how do you recall that you did? I asked this to Eric Wall, who now is, you know, he's making 40K a speech and he paints and he's unbelievable he was on this podcast. And just he remember the story in detail. I'm curious if you do as well. I remember the story in detail and I don't want to talk about the money because people are listening to this, but I asked for an amount of money at the time that I thought would be equal to the value that I would create. Sure, sure. And it was what I assumed to be a lot

of money. And the immediate reaction was, okay, send us a contract. Wow. And I thought, damn i should have went on with a higher i mean if i didn't put back at all yeah i i underpriced the value that i'm creating and uh i did underpriced the value that i'm creating so i i learned from that experience even though it was a good sum of money it was uh not not what i not what i charge now i mean it was it was a fraction of that so yeah how many speaking gigs do you do a year now about 50 50 a year okay you're and you're at you're all all over the world, right? I know multiple countries. You're doing what's your schedule look like now? Has it has the, you don't have to say the rate. I know you don't want to talk about

that part, but has the rate gone up and the number of inquiries gone up since the only sales guide you ever need came out? Yeah, the rate's gone up before even the book came out. And the rate doesn't really have anything to do with the book. It's just what are we doing and how much value are we creating. Yeah. And I think that's the way that I would tell people to price. Yeah. Whatever you're doing. Price it on the value that you're creating for the other person. What's that worth to them? Yeah. And the book has brought more speaking work for sure. There's no doubt about it.

Yeah, I think when it comes to the pricing, it's interesting. And I wasn't planning on talking about this, but it's funny. I just deposited a really nice check that from a gig I just did. And I made sure to take one of my dollars with me to the bank because I wanted to show her like, this is what can happen. And she's like, you get paid that for one hour? And I said, no, it wasn't the one hour. It was the hours and hours and years and years of work that led up to that one hour. And if you are focused on being consistent and working and preparing and showing up, understanding when you have great opportunities and making the most of them, then yes, you could get paid whatever sum of money for a one hour talk. But it wasn't, I wasn't getting paid for

that hour as paid for everything I did leading up to that point. I'm sure you feel the same way. Yeah. When I feel the fact that people can leave and know something that they didn't know and know how to execute it afterwards, there's a multiplier there. So if there's 500 people in a room, you know, and they all do 1% better than they did the prior year. Yeah. For the company that paid, it's the easiest deal on earth. It's not, it's not very much money. Yeah. And I know you talk about EEA from a speaking perspective. That's entertain. and educate and actionable ideas. Can you talk to me about how you prepare to deliver EEA at every speaking gig? Yeah, you know, it takes some pre-work.

And I think the one thing is you have to engage and entertain people. You have to get their hearts and minds at the beginning as a speaker. And I think the people who are really good are able to do that. They're able to get the audience to lean forward. And you can almost tell by looking at the audience, if people have their phone in their hands, you know, and they're doing something other than taking pictures of your slides, then you're not engaging them. And it means you need to do something different to get their attention. The educate, I think it's important that people get a mindset shift, especially in a

keynote. They need to get something different than they believe to look at and maybe to shed some old beliefs. But for me, the big outcome is I want people to be able to immediately take action on what they've learned. So it doesn't make sense to have a mindset shift and to be entertained and then to walk out and not be able to do anything different than when you got there. So for me, it's a lot about actionable insights that people can go out and know how to do something different than what they were doing before, even if it's only one or two things. I tend to interview people and I tend to ask to speak to people that are going to be sitting in the audience specifically so I can understand how they think about their world and what kind of language they use to do.

describe their challenges so that I can unpack that and figure out how to give them something that gives them a new choice that they didn't recognize that they had. I could go about speaking all day, but I want to kind of shift focus back in regards to the people, the primary people listening and for myself as well being in the profession of selling. And specifically, Anthony, I mentioned that I get a lot of emails from people who are on that progression, whether they're an individual contributor in the profession of selling or maybe something else. And they're looking to advance their career and to go into some sort of leadership

slash management role where they're going to have direct reports. So when you think of people in that mode, what are what are some of the ideas slash advice tips you would give to the new manager, the person who's new in the role of the first time ever having direct. reports to them. There's so much in that, Ryan. I'll try to handle as much of it as I can, but this could be days and days of a conversation. So the first thing is, if somebody tells you you're a manager, that may be your title, but you should refuse to think of yourself as a manager.

And you would be better off thinking of yourself as a leader and then deciding how do I serve the people in my charge? How do I help these people grow and develop? and how do I coach them, develop them, train them, educate them, inspire them, influence them to become the very best version of themselves possible. And that's what a leader does. A leader has a vision. And a leader is someone who sees something in you that you don't yet see in yourself.

And so a lot of young leaders haven't had this kind of a leader themselves. So they're going to end up being a manager because they didn't have a leader who had a good model for themselves. So now we have generations of people who didn't have a great leader. But I would challenge you, if you're listening to this, to think back of the people who have made a difference in your life and who have made you better. And invariably, you're going to say it was this football coach or it was this dance teacher or it was this acting coach or it was this boss that I had in one of my early jobs. it's going to be someone who saw something in you and said, I see more for you than you see for you right now. And I want to help expand your vision.

It's somebody that helps you see this part of you that you haven't yet recognized that allows you to transform and move up a level. That's what you want to become as a manager, as a leader. I mean, and so early on, you're going to have to figure out how do I help each of these people individually grow to be their very best? And if each individual on your team delivers their best performance, then you've got the best team. And the best leaders, they don't look at the scoreboard. They look at the players. And they think by making the player a better player and winning the game, the score is better. And then there are other leaders who tend to look at the score and think that if I don't like these players and they can't make the score better, I'll swap out the players.

and they think of human beings as disposable and as, you know, we say things like people are our greatest assets, but if they are, then why aren't you investing in them? And that means your time and your energy and your emotion and giving them what they need to grow. Another common question I get, Anthony, it's a fact I was just reviewing them because I'm getting ready to do a Q&A episode with people in my Facebook community, the learning leader community. And this happens all the time where these people have been promoted into some sort of leadership role. And they say, I listen to your work. I listen to others.

I'm really motivated. I'm inspired. But the people who either I report to or maybe who they report to, they are just simply not like that. They're just purely managers. They purely ask about just the numbers. They do nothing but that. They've maybe never even sold in their life. So they don't understand selling other than the fact that what are the numbers, what are the numbers?

what are the numbers, what's the forecast? I'm certain you've seen these types. And so they're in this kind of mid-level leadership slash management role and they report to people who just don't, they don't have a growth mindset. They don't think about learning. They don't think about leading. They don't think about people. They think strictly about the budget and the numbers and nothing else. What advice do you give to those people who are stuck maybe in a situation like that and how to handle leadership in that regard. As you've already mentioned is unfortunately somewhat common. I would say first, don't believe you're stuck. I mean, if you believe you're stuck, then you're stuck. But if you believe you're not stuck, then you're not stuck. That's going to be

true for you. Whatever you decide is going to be your belief system around that. So one, you know, Jim, Jim Rohn used to say, you know, you're not a tree. I mean, get up and move. You're not planted where you are. That's one choice. The other choice is to just run an insurgency. I mean, build a bubble around your people and protect them from the nonsense and run an insurgency and say, in this department, I'm going to do what I need to do to be the leader that I want to be in spite of this. I'm going to give them their numbers. I'm going to check the box for them, but I'm going to run my team the way that I want to run my team and do as much as you can to protect them from that.

And there's plenty of people inside companies that do this that build something special and then try to infect the rest of the company with what you believe. I mean, do great work, be positive, be optimistic, be future oriented, build a team of like-minded people and people are going to start paying attention to you and say, why are they able to do that when other people can't? And they'll start to see that there's clues there and the belief of the leader becoming the belief of the team. and the way that the leader operates becoming the way that other people can operate. And you can infect other people with your beliefs. This is just generally true, Ryan. Either you're being infected with other people's beliefs or they're being infected with yours. So you have to as a leader, inoculate your people and protect them and protect the culture.

That's the number one job for a leader. Build this culture of future orientation, positive, empowered, optimistic people and then protect them from anything that's going to be the cancer that is negativity that's going to infect them and allow that to spread through your team. So you've got to do a lot to create this bubble to protect them from that. But once you have that and everybody starts to believe that way, they'll be inoculated from the rest of it. I love that advice because unfortunately it seems to be more common than not actually. And I hate that because that's kind of a skepticism that people gain.

But I love the advice because I say, one, you're not stuck in this situation. You can make a move if you really need to. But two, and probably most importantly, you're able to create change to tweak, change the culture for the better by by inoculating your people by, by protecting them from any of that if that is happening. So I will, I have to tell you, Anthony, I'm going to borrow some of what you said or all of it when I do this Q&A episode because I think it makes so much sense to people who are in those situations to where they like their company, they like their team, they like their people, but maybe they're not incredibly fond with the overall thought process of a specific leader within the business. You have to trade frustrated for empowered. I mean, that's what you have to do. You have to say, I'm going to decide not to be frustrated and I'm going to teach people that we can find. away and it doesn't matter what any external events are.

And Ryan, there's just, there's two kinds of people in the world. And you fall into one of these buckets. And most of us don't even recognize that we're in one. Successful people believe that everything is my fault. And I'm empowered to do something about it. I'm empowered to make a new decision, to make a new choice. There's always something I can do to respond to external stimulus. And behind me over my shoulder is Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people.

And Covey wrote that the pause between the stimulants and the response is where we make a decision. And that decision to do one thing or do the other thing is the source of all of our results. So we have the choice to say, I'm not the external factors and I can't allow the external factors to determine my state or my condition or my success in any endeavor. You can't control the economy. You can't control your clients. You can't control your competitors. You can't control your sales manager. You can't control the people at the top of your company who are making decisions that don't make any sense to you.

That's all external stuff. And there are people who look at it externally and say, I can't succeed because these external factors prevent me. And then there are other people who look and say, it doesn't matter what the external circumstances are. Because I get to choose what I do and how I respond. I'm empowered to do something that allows me to succeed. And you have to make that choice. You have to make that choice every day and every decision when you see something like this. Your boss isn't what you want your boss to be.

Okay, well, that's a stimulus. They're angry. They have low blood sugar. They're focused on the scoreboard and not the players on the team. That's them. You don't have to be that. You can do something completely different simply by making the decision and then deciding you're going to act in a way that best serves you and your people.

Have you ever been in that situation? Have I ever not been? Well, I mean, I asked because I don't, you know, you, you quickly went through your, your career progression. And I guess it's just different because you're in the, you're, you're, you're the leader of your company, right? Like, there's, you don't, who do you report to? I'm the leader of a couple companies. Right. And I have people I report to and I have people that report to me depending on which company we're in.

Okay. But yeah. I've had good leaders and bad leaders throughout my life. And the thing that you learn from the bad leaders is how not to behave. Yeah. I mean, you learn more from a bad leader in some cases than you do from a good leader. You get an absolute blueprint of how to make producing results very difficult. I mean, have you ever heard people who have been inspired by a pessimistic leader right over your shoulders a picture of Winston Churchill?

Yeah. I mean, and Churchill said success is going to from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. Yeah. You know, this is a guy who's going to beat you because his optimistic mindset is more persistent and it's going to outlast you. And he did in World War II. He outlasted the Germans. I mean, under circumstances that would have broken a lesser mindset.

And I think that's one of the things about democracies. We tend to get the leader we need when we need them. And they needed Churchill then. and they got a Churchill. Have you ever heard people say, you know what, I really want to follow this person because they're super pessimistic. They believe it can't be done. They're totally discouraging.

They're wonderful to work for. No. Nobody wants to follow that person, right? Yeah. So as the leader, you've got to look at it and say, it doesn't matter what the external events are. And think about the long arc of human history. Every single challenge that's been put in front of us, over time, we destroy.

It doesn't matter what the obstacle is. Space flight, polio, landing a rover on Mars, figuring out how to get along in the world. I mean, there are lots of things that we're still figuring out, but given a long enough timeline, we solve every problem. That's what the human being does. That's the thing about having a massive six-layer neocortex on top of this limbic system and this reptile brain that looks at everything through, you know, freeze, flight, or fight. You know, but we have the ability. to think this through and where we do that and we're at our best, we solve everything. That's such good advice. I think a little bit of Carol Dweck's work. I've been fortunate to have on this podcast when you talk about mindset having if you notice the people who have a fixed versus growth mindset and sometimes you're going to be in a situation to where you may be working for somebody or there are people in leadership roles who have a fixed mindset.

And obviously it's unfortunate. However, it's all about how you make the choice to respond to those situations. And that's where the power lies is if we consciously make a choice. I say this in my talks all the time when we get out of bed every day. It is absolutely our choice of how we want to act. My dad has always said, I've repeated this many, many times. But as the leader, it is your duty to be in a good mood every single day. Your people are going to see that.

They're going to follow you. And if you are constantly positive, you are overwhelmingly optimistic. You firmly believe you're going to get it done. You're going to make it happen. You're going to support your people to be there and to do it. Be right alongside them. You take that org chart and you flip it upside down, right? You report to them.

You serve them. If you have that mindset, you're going to be so much better off than the person who just simply says, what's the forecast and why aren't you hitting it? What's happening in this business, you know? There's no question. There's just no question. your dad's right. Yeah.

And so it's inspiring me. And I could, Anthony, I could talk to you for, for hours about this. Let me ask you one more question about the individual contributor. And I know we bounced around, but I love the insight that you bring to this. This has been even better than I expect. And I had really high expectations. One of a question, because it's another one I get off. And I think it's helpful.

And some of us have already made this jump, but there are other people who are working on. And if you're at an individual contributor role and you're looking to make that leap. And we already talked about some of the problems and some of the issues of people who are new managers, new leaders and how they should view themselves or leaders. But let's say you're still an individual and you're looking to make this jump. What are some of the tips slash advice you would give to those people who maybe they're in the first, it doesn't matter how many years they're in their role, but they have desires to go into leadership and they're not there yet. What would you say to them? Leadership is the decision to be accountable for producing a certain result. That's what a leader does.

A leader says, I'm accountable for building this future state. That's what you do. So if you want somebody to recognize you as a leader, what you have to do is lead. So what I'm telling you is that there will probably come a time when somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, okay, now I'm going to call you a leader. but you can decide to be a leader whenever you want to. You never have to wait for anybody to tap you on the shoulder. You can just say, I'm going to be responsible for delivering this outcome, and I'm going to make sure that everyone knows I've got this,

and I'm going to take responsibility for it. You can start acting like a leader today, and people will recognize it on you, and they'll point to you and say, that's the leader. In fact, if you just think about your own life and your own circumstances and situations now, there are people that you know right now in your business that you're working with or you work around who are leaders who don't have the title of leader. But people go to them because they know they're going to be accountable for that result.

And people go to them to look for direction because they know that they know where the direction is and where we're going and how we get there. You can decide to do that now, just in an instant, to say, I'm accountable for this result and I'm going to lead, which means I'm going to take responsibility for aligning all of our resources, aligning all of our energies, inspiring and bringing other people to this cause and then moving this thing forward. Leadership's a decision. It's just a choice that you make. And as soon as you make that choice, everyone will recognize you as a leader. And then you get the tap on the shoulder after that where somebody says, we should give this person more responsibility inside our organization because they tend to be accountable for big things and they tend to move people to action.

Be a leader. I love it. I love it. When you, final question, when you start. I know we got a couple minutes. When you saw a cold email from somebody who leads, runs, has created a podcast called The Learning Leader Show. What was the first thought that you came, that came to your mind when you saw that phrase learning leader? Peter Singay. I mean, I think about institutional leadership. And I think that a leader

is charged with continually learning because what's happening is our environment continually gives us new challenges. And I call this age we're in the age of accelerating disruption. And you have to learn and you have to pay attention and you have to be reading and thinking and studying and listening to podcasts like this so that you know how best to make good decisions around what's coming. So I was optimistic and hopeful we'd have a great interview. Wow. Well, thank you. And I know you absolutely brought it, man. And I, like I said, I had very high expectations. I've watched your videos, read your blog, read your books or your book, and I'm looking

forward to your next book. And I just want to acknowledge the fact of the great work that you do, Anthony, talking about espousing some of the great aspects of what I feel is the greatest profession in the world. I was so excited to have you and you killed it, man. So thank you so much for being here. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? The best place is the sales blog.com. That's my primary hub for everything I do.

And there's a newsletter there. So when you go, you'll be accosted by a big banner that will ask you to sign up and give you some free video resources. And if you don't get there that way, it's the salesblog.com forward slash newsletter. And the newsletter is probably what I would say, my best content every week, at least as perceived by the people who read it. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Anthony, for being here. and I absolutely want to, I mean, given that we're both Ohio guys, this is one where I'm going to, I have family. My younger brother lives in Columbus, so I might have to come up and take you out for a couple

coffee or lunch one day. It would be great to further this dialogue in person. I really appreciate it. Let me know when you're up here. All right. I will. Thanks so much, man. All right.

Thanks, Ryan. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to LearningLeadershow.com for more information and to request. your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books.

The working world has changed. With the growth of the Internet, there's never been more opportunities for this self-employed. To meet this end, Fresh Books is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting. software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly. The all-new fresh books is not only easy to use, it's also packed full of powerful features. Like, create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and see

when your client has seen your invoice and put it in to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners to claim it. Just go to freshbooks.com slash learning and enter Learning Leader in the How Did You Hear About Us section.