“Strong minds suffer without complaining; weak minds complain without suffering.” – Lettie Cowman
On a call with my friend Jack Daly last week, I asked him to come into our office for a day of consulting to kick our asses into high gear. I have big goals to hit this coming year, so we need it.
If you know Jack, he’s not someone to mince words and WILL tell it to you straight. Spoonful of sugar? Nope. More like a shot of cheap whiskey and smelling salts. A lot of people can’t handle Jack for this reason, but I completely overlook any harshness or even rudeness because Jack is a LEGITIMATE expert in building a super-productive sales department and company, no fluff or B.S. And if I’m going to base my 2025 sales goals on someone, I need a REAL expert who’s actually done what I want to do guiding us.
These days, we’re surrounded by fake “gurus,” 12-year-old kids on YouTube and Facebook who need a lesson in how to iron their shirt and shave the tuft of fur off their chin before they try telling me how to “stop being the bottleneck to my business” or scale it to “7 figures.”
Call me crazy but I think they ought to have at least ACCOMPLISHED something of significance in business before they get the right to “coach” people on the topic. Today, if someone has a phone, they have all the requisites to delivering advice online – that’s why you have to be a lot more discerning about WHO you take advice from. Second, if you’re serious about achieving a tough goal, you want to find someone who will be bullish on YOU to make sure you don’t slack off.
The Little Book Of Talent provides the following as advice on looking for a mentor:
- Avoid someone who reminds you of a courteous waiter.
- Seek someone who scares you a little.
The author is 1,000% right: IF you are TRULY serious about achieving a goal, you do NOT want a coach who will go easy on you, accepting and tolerating your B.S. excuses, giving you free a pass.
I was recently told by Sitima Fowler, founder of Iconic IT, Better Your Best winner and my cohort in running our sales Accountability Group for Producers Club members, that some of the members don’t like “being yelled at” by Robin.
They prefer to just get the training and have a gentle, nonconfrontational discussion about sales instead of my style of belligerent focus on the numbers: How many clients did you CLOSE this week? This month? This quarter? How many new opportunities did you open? Qualified leads generated? ZERO is not acceptable, NOR is not knowing your numbers at all. The feedback to Sitima was that they don’t want to be called on the carpet every week. Let’s just sip our tea and eat our crumpets as we say jolly-ho and good day, sir, in polite society.
Look: you don’t join a sales ACCOUNTABILITY Group with ME and expect it to go easy, do you? It’s called Accountability for a reason. It’s NOT a meetup or a social hangout. Accountability is, by definition, an acceptance of responsibility for someone or something. Personally, I think we’re all going too damned soft. All you hear is “Don’t be too hard on other people. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Just surrender and accept yourself as you are.”
But what if you’re grossly out of shape, in poor health, with piles of debt, shitty relationships, zero financial security and failing at your job or business? Should you just put on a happy face and embrace your dysfunction? I think not – and reinforcing this idea of accepting anything less than your best is a recipe for a failing life. You get what you tolerate in others and in yourself.
When looking for a mentor, someone who is “nice” and tiptoes around your failure to launch to avoid the risk of aggravating you is almost certainly doing that because they are needy and fearful of losing you as a client – and that’s NOT a good thing. I can assure you that anyone who’s truly great at what they do is NOT going to waste their time pandering to your preferences, skirting around the hard topics and only telling you what you want to hear to avoid losing you as a client. A GREAT coach will give it to you straight and tell you off when you need it…a stern but loving parent who is more concerned about getting you the result you want than bruising your fragile ego. Further, great consultants/coaches don’t want to waste their breath on someone who’s simply not going to execute and prefers a good excuse over a good opportunity.
Here’s something to consider: Are you WORTHY of your mentor’s time and attention?
You are NOT entitled to receive a coach’s full attention and effort because you can write a check. Great coaches are not going to waste their time dickering around with your basketful of excuses and “reasons” why you can’t get something done. They want to work with champions who implement.
So, as we roll into this New Year, how about thinking in terms of BOLD moves and BIG initiatives? Not timid and tiny. Not incremental improvements but MASSIVE innovations and inventions never done before. If you’re not playing to win BIG, why get in the game at all? And YES, it’s going to be very, very difficult and SUCK, which is why you need a grizzled, seasoned pro to be TOUGH on you. If you’re not willing to hire that person, you might question if you’re truly serious about the goal at all.
Ready to make 2025 the year you go big? At our IT Sales & Marketing Boot Camp in April, you’ll learn how to stop playing small and take bold, decisive action toward your biggest goals. With no fluff and no excuses, we’ll give you the tools to innovate, lead and succeed. Secure your spot today!
